<Kari Lake — the presumptive Republican nominee in Arizona's 2024 U.S. Senate race — recently embraced one lost cause while standing in front of the symbol of another.

The Guardian reported recently that Lake, who lost Arizona's gubernatorial election in 2022 to Democrat Katie Hobbs, continued to double down on her claims that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" during a visit to a store selling merchandise in support of former President Donald Trump. That store openly displayed the Confederate battle flag, which was seen prominently in the background while Lake spoke to supporters in rural Navajo County. In addition to denying the results of the 2020 election, Lake also still refused to accept the results of the 2022 gubernatorial race.

At one point, the outlet reported that a supporter falsely said that Lake won the gubernatorial election (she actually lost by roughly 17,000 votes). Lake responded: "Of course we did. They stole our government," referring to Democrats.

Lake has been regularly making election denialism a key plank of her Senate primary campaign. That rhetoric, according to the Arizona Republic, could jeopardize the former news anchor's chances of attracting moderates in the general election, where she would face off against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona).

"The optics of an image of her in front of the symbol of the Confederacy could undermine her efforts to reach Arizona’s sizable independent voters and deepen the Democratic narrative of her as an extremist," the Republic's Ronald J. Hansen wrote.

In a speech last week to Republican voters, Lake again publicly doubted President Joe Biden was the true winner of the 2020 election, despite Trump's campaign losing virtually every post-election challenge in court. The Campaign Legal Center found that out of more than 60 cases — including some presided over by judges Trump appointed to the bench — Trump's lawyers lost all but one challenge. That litigation was from a challenge to mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania that didn't impact the final result of the Keystone State's election results.

“I’m the only person running for U.S. Senate – either Republican or Democrat – who truly believes there was fraud in the election in 2020,” Lake said at the event. “Anybody believe there wasn’t fraud in 2020? Anybody believe Joe Biden really, truly got 81 million votes?”

Despite losing the gubernatorial race nearly two years ago, Lake confirmed on X/Twitter Friday she would be filing yet another appeal of a court decision rejecting her challenge of voting machine results in Maricopa County (which houses Phoenix). Lake lost Arizona's most populous county by approximately 37,000 votes. While there were technical issues with Maricopa County machines, a CNN fact check found that there was no "deliberate malfeasance" in the county's administration of the election.

"We’re trying to get rid of these damn machines that are corrupt," she said.

Arizona may end up deciding which party controls the House, Senate and White House in November, given the Grand Canyon State flipping from Donald Trump to Biden between 2016 and 2020, multiple contested U.S. House races and what's certain to be a close U.S. Senate race in November. Arizona's Senate primary is on July 30.>

<Even the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals — considered to be one of, if not the most conservative federal appellate court — doesn't think Texas school districts can pull books from shelves simply because of parents complaining.

The 5th Circuit handed down its decision on Friday in the case that originally stemmed from complaints about the Llano County public library system making books available that showed "butts and farts." According to the Houston Chronicle, the complaints were mostly in response to "a book about a farting leprechaun, a book about a transgender teen, two books about the history of racism in the United States and a book about puberty."

"Librarians may consider books’ contents in making curation decisions," 5th Circuit judges wrote in their opinion. "Their discretion, however, must be balanced against patrons’ First Amendment rights... a book may not be removed for the sole—or a substantial— reason that the decisionmaker does not wish patrons to be able to access the book’s viewpoint or message."

Some judges dissented with the majority opinion. Judges Kyle Duncan and Leslie Southwick — appointed to the 5th Circuit by former Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush, respectively — derisively referred to Senior Judge Jacques L. Wiener and other judges who struck down the book bans as the "library police." That phrase is itself a reference to a short story by acclaimed prolific novelist Stephen King, and Judge Wiener did not let the reference go unacknowledged in his response.

""King, a well-known free speech activist, would surely be horrified to see how his words are being twisted in service of censorship," wrote Wiener, who was appointed to the bench by former President George H.W. Bush. "Per King: 'As a nation, we’ve been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn’t approve of them.' Defendants and their highlighters are the true library police."

The Chronicle reported that while the 5th Circuit's opinion only pertains to public libraries, the decision could potentially have a ripple effect in future litigation involving public school libraries in Texas and other Southern states, as well. The 5th Circuit — whose jurisdiction encompasses Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — upheld an injunction to order all books pulled from shelves be reinstated within 24 hours in response to a lawsuit filed by seven library patrons.

School districts within the Houston area, including Katy, Fort Bend and Cy-Fair (Cypress-Fairbanks) all pulled books from shelves in response to parent complaints. In 2022 alone, the American Library Association found that Texas led all states in attempted book bans, attempting to remove more than 2,300 books from the shelves.

Texas is merely one of several large states where book bans have become a contentious topic for between parents and school districts. In Florida, House Bill 1069, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in 2023, requires that libraries remove any book that a complainant claims "depicts or describes sexual conduct," even if the book itself is not pornographic. That law eventually led to the Escambia County School District removing dictionaries from its shelves. Another book the county removed was The Diary of Anne Frank.

"The Escambia County School Board banned most of these books at the request of Vicki Baggett, a high school English teacher in the county," journalist Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information Substack, reported. "Baggett is responsible for hundreds of challenges in Escambia County and neighboring counties.">

<Public opinion polls about the current presidential race are mystifying in a lot of ways. How can it be that the twice impeached, convicted felon Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party again? As inexplicable as it is to many of us, I think after eight years we have to accept that almost half the country is beguiled by the man while the other half looks on in abject horror and carry on from there. But as much as we may be dismayed by this adoration and fealty to Trump the man, it's still maddening that so many voters — including even Democrats — insist that everything was so much better when Donald Trump was president. I can't believe that people have forgotten what it was really like. By almost any measure it was an epic sh**show.

One obvious explanation is that Trump lies relentlessly about his record. So after a while people start to believe him. According to Trump, we had unprecedented prosperity, the greatest foreign policy, the safest, the cleanest, the most peaceful world in human history and it immediately turned into a toxic dystopia upon his departure from the White House.

The reality, of course, was far different.

From the day after the election, Trump's presidential tenure was a non-stop scandal. Even in the early days of the transition, there were substantial and well-founded charges of corruption, nepotism and collusion with foreign adversaries. There was the early firing of Trump's national security advisor, the subsequent firing of the FBI director and eventually the appointment of a special counsel. He did manage to set a record while in the White House: the highest number of staff and cabinet turnovers in history, 85%. Some were forced out due to their unscrupulous behavior, others quit or were fired after they refused to carry out unethical or illegal orders ordered by the president. This continued throughout the term until the very last days of his presidency when a handful of Cabinet members, including the attorney general, resigned over Trump's Big Lie and refusal to accept his loss.

Yes, those were really good times. Let's sign on for another four years of chaos, corruption and criminality.

But, let's face facts. What people think they miss about the Trump years was the allegedly great pre-pandemic economy and the world peace that he brought through the sheer force of his magnetic personality. None of that is remotely true. The Trump economy was the tail end of the longest expansion in history begun under President Barack Obama and the low interest rates that went with it. Nothing Trump did added to it and he never lived up to even his own hype:

Trump assured the public in 2017 that the U.S. economy with his tax cuts would grow at “3%,” but he added, “I think it could go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6%, ultimately.” If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, growth after inflation averaged 2.67% under Trump, according to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Include the pandemic-induced recession and that average drops to an anemic 1.45%. By contrast, growth during the second term of then-President Barack Obama averaged 2.33%. So far under Biden, annual growth is averaging 3.4%.

Inflation started its rise at the beginning of the pandemic (Trump's last year) and continued to rise sharply in the first year of the Biden administration before it started to come back down. The reasons are complex but the fact that it was lower under Trump is simply a matter of timing. Trump's economy was good but it wasn't great even before the pandemic. He had higher unemployment than we have now, he blew out the deficit with his tax cuts and his tariffs accomplished zilch. Sure, the stock market was roaring but it's even higher now.

Unlike Trump, who simply rode an already good economy, Biden started out with the massive crisis Trump left him and managed to dig out from under it in record time. No other country in the world has recovered as quickly and had Trump won re-election there's little evidence in his record that he could have done the same. All he knows is tariffs and tax cuts and he's promising more of the same.

On the world stage, he was a disaster. From his ill-treatment of allies to his sucking up to dictators from Kim Jong Un to Vladimir Putin, everything Trump did internationally was wrong. He was impeached for blackmailing the leader of Ukraine to get him dirt on Joe Biden, for goodness sakes! Does that sound like a sound foreign policy decision? The reverberations of his ignorant posturing will be felt for a generation even if he doesn't win another term....>

<....And despite the alleged peacenik's boast that he never had a war while he was president, it's actually a lie. The US had troops in Afghanistan fighting throughout his entire term despite his promise to withdraw and there was a very ugly drone war carried out throughout his term. Trump bombed Syria and assassinated Iranian leaders and did all the things American presidents had been doing ever since 9/11. His only answer today to the vexing problems that are confronting Biden in Ukraine and Israel is to fatuously declare "it never would have happened" if he were president. On Gaza, Trump's solution is "finish the problem" and I don't think there's any question about what he means by that.

Trump's labor record was abominable, his assaults on civil rights and civil liberties were horrific and he did nothing positive on health care. There was the Muslim ban, family separations, the grotesque response to the George Floyd protests and the rollback of hundreds of environmental regulations. And then there was January 6.

Trump, who called himself the greatest jobs president in history, was the first president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression to depart office with fewer jobs in the country than when he entered. He can say that doesn't count because of the pandemic but so much of that was his fault that it actually is. It was his crucible and he failed miserably.

His administration had disbanded the pandemic office and failed to replenish the stockpiles of medical supplies so we already started out ill-prepared. He denied the crisis at first, and we learned from Bob Woodward's interview that he knew very well how deadly it was, he lied, he put his son-in-law and some college buddies in charge of logistics. He pushed snake oil cures and disparaged common sense public health measures because they threatened his desire for a quick economic revival despite the fact that Americans were dropping dead by the thousands every single day. And, as always, he blamed everyone else for his problems. COVID killed far more Americans than other peer nations and it was due to Trump's failed leadership.

For all these reasons, anyone who looks back on the Trump years as a golden time when everything was so much better isn't remembering the reality of those four awful years. There are worse things in life than inflation.>

<The Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, Mark Robinson, has been reported to have suggested that the United States government may have been involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of US General George Patton as part of a conspiracy to assist then-Soviet Union leader, Joseph Stalin.

Robinson, who currently holds the position of lieutenant governor in the state, is now a candidate in what is considered one of the most hotly contested gubernatorial races in the country.

North Carolina is also a key battleground state in the upcoming presidential election in November, according to the DailyMail.

What conspiracy theories did GOP nominee Mark Robinson share about Pearl Harbor? During a radio interview in 2018, the host claimed, "Japan is the one who bombed us, but the most of our material, and effort went to Europe."

"Right. It really calls to question the motives and the suspicion around our entire introduction into the war, it really does," Robinson replied. "It raises serious questions."

The aforementioned statements depict yet another instance in a series of conspiracy theories that Robinson espoused before entering politics.

Over the years, he has faced allegations of making anti-Semitic, homophobic, and sexist remarks.

The aforementioned outlet went through the unearthed audio from an episode of Politics and Prophecy with Chris Levels.

While there has been extensive coverage of Robinson entertaining conspiracy theories, this audio is thought to be the first instance of him discussing conspiracies related to Pearl Harbor and Patton.

The Old North State Republican can be heard saying, "You know, I'm not prepared to say our government intentionally set Pearl Harbor up. I know there's a lot of conspiracy theories that say that…"

At that point, the host interrupted with "I will! There's too much proof" to support the claim that the United States orchestrated the attack.

"Definitely," Robinson concurred. "There's definitely questions that are out there, serious questions that have been raised."

On December 7, 1941, the attack on Hawaii by Japan killed 2,403 Americans.

Furthermore, Robinson argued that the decision of then-US President Franklin D Roosevelt to join the war was a component of a communist plot to support Stalin.

"When you take in look at the totality of it, and look at the way FDR completely disregarded the fight in Japan and focused all of his energy, all of his energy was focused on a way for us to get to Europe, and not just to get to Europe, but to get over there to help the guy he called Uncle Joe," Robinson claimed.

He continued, "So wait a minute, we went to the Europe, and we quote freed Europe from the Nazis, but then we turned right around and turned over even more property to the communists. That doesn't make any sense."

The podcast host later asserted in the same interview that General George Patton was killed by the US government.

"I'm not ready to say it for sure, but it sure looks like it because Patton was a rabid dog when it came to that communism thing," Robinson remarked.

In December 1945, Patton was involved in a car accident that left him paralyzed. Less than two weeks later, he passed away.

Regarding General Patton's death being the consequence of the accident, Robinson remarked, "‘How this guy ended up getting killed in a quote car wreck, I'll never know," adding. "I certainly don't believe it. It's just too fishy to me."

He also branded FDR a "quasi-socialist or a complete socialist that was surrounded by communists" who went to Europe with the "intent of saving Joseph Stalin, saving communism, and saving Marxism."

Mark Robinson has a history of referencing conspiracy theories, as evidenced by his previous claim that he's "skeptical" of "everything" he has seen on television, including events such as 9/11, the JFK assassination, and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.

While he stated that he does not believe the moon landing was faked or that 9/11 was an "inside job," he expressed that he would not be surprised if he were to discover otherwise.

Robinson, known for his right-wing conservative views, has also been a polarizing figure due to his controversial comments about women, Jews, Muslims, and members of the LGBTQ community.

Before campaigning for lieutenant governor in 2020, Robinson said that the Black Panther movie was "created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists."

The firebrand Republican's previous posts have included Holocaust denialism, including one where he wrote "this foolishness about disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash."....>

<....In 2016, following the tragic Pulse Nightclub shooting in Florida which saw 49 people getting killed, Robinson wrote that homosexuality is "STILL an abominable sin" and that he would "NOT join in ‘celebrating gay pride'."

Furthermore, he implied that celebrity talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, who is openly gay, was a "top ranking demon."

Robinson referred to the survivors of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, as "media prosti-tots" and "spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN" in his online remarks.

During Super Tuesday in March, Mark Robinson secured the Republican nomination for governor in North Carolina.

Endorsed by former President Donald Trump as "Martin Luther King on steroids" during a rally in Greensboro before the primary, Robinson previously referred to the civil rights leader as a "communist" in a 2018 podcast.

Furthermore, he criticized the Civil Rights Movement, labeling it as a communist scheme to "subvert capitalism."

People online lambasted the GOP nominee for Governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, for backing conspiracy theories alleging that the U.S. government was behind the attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of General George Patton.

One person commented, "Wow! This guy is off-the-chart conspiracy fruit cake. The Republicans now disrespect the entire US military and US government to desperately try to balance the fact that their presidential candidate dodged military service! They have no bottom to how low they will go to support Donald Trump!"

Another person said, "There is absolutely zero chance this man becomes governor of North Carolina. And you can take that to the bank."

Another person claimed, "Robinson has a background of endorsing just about every screwball theory and hateful reactionary policy in the book, in addition to a string of personal bankruptcies. In the past couple of years, he's flipped from being a rabid antisemite to becoming a rabid supporter of Israel….when it became particularly fashionable among the far-right to hop into bed with Netanyahu. He has virtually no experience in running a government agency or a business of any significance. In other words….he's the Perfect MAGA Republican Candidate !!!!"

One person remarked, "Why oh why, oh why do people insist on spouting or worse listening to, pure lies. The earth is flat, red is blue, cats bark, cows have wings, Paris is the capital of Italy. You see anyone can write lies unverified by evidence, empirical data, logic or even common sense. We seem to have entered an age of social media driven, post fact, lost reality delusion. Frankly it is all desperately sad and driven from the United States were some people seem to have lost their rocker completely."

Another person quipped, "The dumbing down of the GOP to make Trump feel comfortable."

Finally, this person wrote, "Members of the GOP have lost their minds.">

<Last summer’s federal indictment of Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol released a flood of concern-trolling from the establishment media. The arguments revealed something sadly defective about the intellectual tenor of the present age, a mindset that cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy. It is the root cause of American political and social dysfunction.

The verdict of the prestige journals was remarkably consistent: Trump’s eventual trial would hinge, not upon facts, evidence and patterns of behavior involving him or other actors in the case, nor on whether the trial scrupulously upheld the law and proper judicial procedure, but on subjective matters concerning the defendant’s beliefs, feelings and motivations, as well as how the public perceived the trial through the polarizing lens of political partisanship.

You know what’s coming when you read a headline like this New York Times howler: “Trump Election Charges Set Up Clash of Lies Versus Free Speech.” Really? Conspiring to violently overthrow the government and then inciting a mob to do it is just a little free-spirited political rhetoric, such as to allow legitimate disagreement? Does that require us to set aside the fact that people were killed?

The Wall Street Journal, as you might expect, chimed in with this one: “Trump Is Being Prosecuted, but Justice Department Is on Trial, Too.” Both-sides-ism, much?

But the absurdity of the media mentality is perhaps best captured by this Washington Post headline: “Heart of the Trump Jan. 6 indictment: What’s in Trump’s head.” Absent some breakthrough in neuroscience, what goes on in the minds of others is denied to us; just as a scientist can’t infer the intentions of the solar system, only its behavior, we can only draw conclusions from a person’s words and actions, not his subjective state of mind. In all the media reports I have cited, the journalists seem to have made Trump the final arbiter of his own intent.

If criminal conviction depended on a defendant’s own representation of his state of mind, there could be no law enforcement. But the unspoken premise of legal experts typically quoted in the media is that a default assumption of benign intent only applies to certain claimants like Trump. Try robbing a 7-Eleven or stealing a police cruiser and I doubt the judicial system will be unduly concerned about what was going on in your head, or your claims that it was free expression under the First Amendment.

In the last several years, we’ve been inundated with similar claims: Refusing to get vaccinated is a matter of religious conscience; Jan. 6 rioters were honestly convinced the 2020 election was stolen; the anti-abortion crowd fervently believes that life is sacred; refusing service to a retail customer or firing an employee is dictated by sincere faith, burning like a pure flame, rather than mere spite or ill will.

These extraordinary claims have long been embedded in law, politics and social convention, and they are related to, or devolve from, a particular form of ideological advocacy: religion. Religion and its adherents, contrary to assertions that the faithful are beleaguered by the aggressions of secular society, have obtained extraordinary privileges well beyond their tax-exempt status.

When the U.S. had military conscription, formal adherents of certain religions could obtain exemptions from the draft if the religion in question explicitly espoused pacifist principles. That loophole did not, however, apply to a nonreligious individual who merely objected to killing. While the attitudes towards taking human life were identical, the law granted legal exemption to one and not the other.

The Supreme Court ruled, in a Wisconsin case involving members of the Amish community, that parents have a constitutional right to withdraw their children from public school by the eighth grade. No one, however, consulted the children to determine whether their rights to become educated, functioning citizens might have been infringed. The same religious or “conscience” exemption from generally applicable law prevails in many states with respect to home schooling or childhood vaccination if a petitioner claims he doesn’t “believe” in public schools or vaccines, whatever that may mean.

What is a belief, anyway? It can be defined, approximately, in terms of the mental perception that something is true based on generally accepted evidence or established standards of logic. But belief also has a secondary meaning: an attitude, disposition or emotional commitment that has nothing to do with facts or logic. It is a stance that can be firmly maintained regardless of evidence to the contrary and, taken to an extreme, becomes the willful suspension of critical thinking.....>

<....In contrast to the doubt and uncertainty that assail most people when considering complex matters, the dogmatic vehemence with which adherents of various fringe ideas often advocate their case can tempt us to conclude that an “untrue” belief is held more strongly than a “true” one. But this certitude can only be sustained if it is never questioned, because the leaders of authoritarian movements that propagate these beliefs instinctively know their doctrines are brittle and cannot survive open debate.

That is the reason fundamentalist Christians have built an entire subculture of home-schooling, Bible colleges, retreats and a vast body of approved literature to reinforce their dogma and avoid contact with contaminating ideas; conservatives have done much the same with their Fox News bubble. Since all authoritarian movements are founded on obtaining followers of weak character and low intellectual curiosity, and sustaining them within that information bubble, an outsider challenging even absurd doctrines will have a difficult task.

Adding to the surrealism of the situation, the very doctrines that gain privileged exemption from generally applicable laws (like taxation and nondiscrimination against retail customers) may not even be sincerely held. Russell Moore, a former Christian fundamentalist and current editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, has described why he sees religion in crisis:

It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — [and] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.

Being a devout evangelical these days apparently does not require church attendance: “In the farming communities of Calhoun County [Iowa] . . . church adherence fell 31 percent from 2010 to 2020 — the steepest decline in the state — even as 80 percent of the population continued to identify in surveys as white Christians. More than 70 percent of the county’s voters cast ballots for Trump in 2020.”

This apparently contradictory phenomenon of devout yet nonobservant evangelicals can lead to some peculiar theology: “Ron Betts, a 72-year-old Republican who said he plans to caucus for ‘Trump all the way,’ said he felt the former president ‘exemplified what Jesus would do.’" One wonders if that includes paying $130,000 to a porn actress to hush up a tryst.

Aside from the legal deference given to purported holders of such beliefs, there is social convention: Most of us are brought up not to question or argue about another person’s faith. This exemption from the rough-and-tumble of genuine debate allows the purported believer to wield religion as a stick to beat others and a shield against accountability.

This deference, and the impunity it breeds, carries over into public policy debates. Those Americans wondering how insurrection-supporting judges landed on the Supreme Court should read excerpts from the establishment media’s coverage of Samuel Alito’s nomination hearing. He lied about his previously documented position on abortion and obfuscated when his membership in a Princeton alumni association that discriminated against women and minorities came to light, yet the supposedly godless press scolded Senate Democrats for bullying a man of faith, rather than correctly calling out Alito as a liar.

Iustificatio sola fide: Justification by faith alone. This is the core tenet of Lutheranism, and, more broadly Protestant evangelicalism. When William L. Shirer, probably the most widely read of all chroniclers of the Nazi regime, drew a straight line from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler, he was mostly referring to Luther’s notorious antisemitism. Shirer received a lot of subsequent criticism for an exaggerated historical determinism, and there is probably some merit in that critique – but we are left with the fact that Luther did indeed write a furious 65,000-word tirade against the Jews and, 400 years later, Hitler approvingly quoted him.....>

<....Missing from the controversy (which still sputters on, to the present day) was a broader look at Luther’s thinking, and a recognition that its implications don’t just affect German history but are universal. What Luther was propounding was the acceptance of a complex of beliefs based on blind faith, without any reference to facts, evidence or reason. It is not difficult to see how this mindset leads to dogmatic inflexibility, intolerance and epistemic closure. With Luther, those attitudes preceded the antisemitism he espoused later in life — his pathological hatred of a nonconforming out-group logically flowed from his pre-existing mental disposition.

After the European wars of religion that culminated in the Thirty Years’ War (which may have killed 20 percent of the population of Central Europe), most of the branches of evangelical Protestantism, along with the Roman Catholic Church against which they had rebelled, gradually shed their zealotry, if only from sheer exhaustion. Undoubtedly in part from the disgust with the desolation that zealotry always brings in its wake, the dawning of the Enlightenment showed a new way of explaining the world, a worldview that required neither gods nor demons.

When the great scientist Pierre-Simon LaPlace presented a copy of his "Celestial Mechanics" to Napoleon, the latter asked why LaPlace never mentioned the divine creator of the system he had described. His reply: "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là" (“I had no need of that hypothesis”). And so we thought, with LaPlace, that the ghosts would gradually be banished and the world made a little more straightforward and sane once the God hypothesis received critical scrutiny.

But just as there was no straight line from Luther to Hitler (else how can we account for Beethoven and Schiller?), there is no straight line of civilizational progress. I grew up as an Eisenhower Republican and thought that I, and the party, would remain more or less as such, despite the transient shock of Barry Goldwater in 1964. I spent most of a decade in Europe during the 1970s; the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's resignation came and went. I might as well have been living on Mars, given the ideological transformation which occurred in America in that misunderstood decade. Out went the cloth-coat Republicans, the small-town bankers and matrons with big hats. In came Jerry Falwell’s dervishes, back-country Southern accents and the Party of Ideas. And what ideas!

When I came to Capitol Hill in the 1980s, I gradually discovered that the country had catapulted itself back into the Age of Faith. One congressional staffer informed me, with the air of wearily cluing in a gullible friend, that dinosaurs were a hoax. I was too startled to ask whether the fossil remains had been counterfeited by evil Darwinians intent on subverting the faithful, or by God himself for some inscrutable purpose, perhaps as a test of faith....>

<....Another staff member I’ll call Jim, because that was his name. A self-cultivated religious eccentric, he once declared the now-universally accepted Gregorian calendar, adopted because it was more accurate than the preceding Julian calendar, to be no good. The reason was that it was a product of Pope Gregory’s “atheist astronomers.” Yes, these people make the policy that runs the country.

The same person announced to me that he was philosophically indifferent as to whether stars were celestial bodies many light years away or just tiny, twinkling lights in a dome over the earth, like LED lights above a suburban patio. Aside from the fact that GPS wouldn't work on his cellphone if scientists had somehow miscalculated distances by many orders of magnitude (as well as having to adjust for relativity), there are enormous problems with this point of view.

Precisely those people who rant about eternal values and verities have now lurched into nihilism, the diametric opposite of what they claim to espouse. This is nowhere more evident than in the fanatical devotion to Donald Trump expressed by nearly 80 percent of evangelical Christians. They have tossed overboard every tenet of decency, religious or secular, to embrace Trump’s hatred, because his burning torch of ill will, in their minds, is the royal road to the only thing they care about — power and domination.

How ironic, then, that religious “belief,” by abandoning every constraint imposed by empirical reality, has adopted the nihilistic theories of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in George Orwell’s "1984." In that novel, we read of protagonist Winston Smith's exchange with his interrogator, the cynical O'Brien, as to whether objective reality exists apart from the Party's commands:

"But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach forever."

"What are the stars?" said O'Brien indifferently. "They are bits of fire a few kilometers away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the center of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it."

I might have been tempted to doubt the plausibility of the fictional O’Brien’s declaration of the triumph of belief over reality — if I had not actually heard someone say it to me.>

<Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito may have made a "grave" move in his letter to Congress following backlash over a photograph of an upside-down American flag being flown outside his home, according to legal analyst Harry Litman on Saturday.

Last month, a photograph taken on January 17, 2021, of an upside-down American flag displayed outside of conservative Justice Alito's home was reported by The New York Times. The inverted flag—spotted just days before President Joe Biden's inauguration—is a symbol, often referred to as "Stop the Steal," that has been used by supporters of former President Donald Trump to contest the 2020 presidential election results and was taken less than two weeks after a group of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

Shortly after the photograph was reported, Democratic Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island sent a letter to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts requesting that Alito recuse himself from Trump v. United States in response to the recent controversy. The case centers around the former president's claims that presidential immunity should protect him from criminal prosecution as he faces a federal election subversion case.

Alito responded directly to the senators in a letter dated May 29 and told them that he refused to do so because the incidents they cited did "not meet the conditions for recusal."

In his letter, the justice reiterated his previous statement, which had placed all the responsibility on his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, flying the inverted flag as he wrote that his wife had a "legal right to use the property as she sees fit" and repeated claims about how upset she was over a "very nasty" dispute with neighbors at the time.

In a Saturday interview on CNN, Litman, a former deputy assistant attorney general, was asked about Alito's letter and if the justice misled or lied to Congress following his former neighbor, Emily Baden, speaking out against Alito.

"At best, he's mistaken, but at worst he's just outright lying," Baden said earlier this month while appearing on CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront about the time frame of the dispute.

Baden said the verbal exchange with Alito's wife occurred in the middle of February 2021, adding the inverted flag was "absolutely" not flown because of the confrontation that occurred that day and had been put up weeks earlier.

Newsweek has reached out to the Alito through the Supreme Court via email for comment.

In response, Litman said while it's unclear if the neighbor's account of events is accurate, if there is a discrepancy with Alito's letter, it is an "exceptionally grave" move.

"I'm not saying that the neighbor's word should be taken over that of the Justice of the United States. However, there is a discrepancy and I really think it is essential to get to the bottom of it. If it's the case, I am not saying it's the case, but if it is that Justice Alito sent a letter to Congress and didn't tell the truth in it that is exceptionally grave. I think that would be an impeachable offense," he said.

Litman added: "As to this discrepancy the neighbor says that there is material evidence, we have a picture in The New York Times in January and a police report of the altercation in February, which Justice Alito says triggered it."

Amid recusal calls, Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, previously told Newsweek that the weakness of the Court's ethics guidelines may save Alito from recusal.

"I doubt that the Chief Justice will suggest that Justice Alito recuse," he said, noting Alito's letter, adding that it "seems to assert that recusal decisions are ones that each Justice makes perhaps after consulting other colleagues."

Tobias said the controversy surrounding Alito highlights a weakness in the ethics code that Supreme Court justices adopted in November 2023 as the conflict of interest standard in the code was lower than the legally-binding conflict of interest standard expected of lower court judges.

"The Chief Justice cares deeply about the Supreme Court's legitimacy, so one way that he could address this issue is by strengthening the Supreme Court ethics code," Tobias added.>

<Onetime White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has warned former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe that he "should be worried" about being targeted if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election.

Speaking on his WarRoom podcast, Bannon was reacting to a recent interview McCabe gave to CNN in which he said those in the intelligence community are having "tortuous discussions" with their family about whether they should leave the country to avoid being "unconstitutionally and illegally detained" if Trump enters office next year.

Trump, who was recently convicted of 34 felony counts in his hush money trial and still faces charges in three other federal and state criminal cases, has recently hinted he would enact "revenge" on Democrats and federal officials if he beats President Joe Biden in November. The Republican has frequently claimed the criminal investigations into him are politically motivated "witch hunts."

Bannon, who has been ordered to surrender by July 1 to begin his four-month contempt of Congress prison sentence, discussed how federal agencies will be "purged" in a second Trump administration. He also said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will be "jailed" after his office brought the falsifying business records charges against the former president.

Bannon has now suggested that even if McCabe does flee the country to avoid being targeted by Trump, the "long arm of American justice" will still catch him.

"First off, everything that's going to be done is going to be by the Constitution, under the rule of law," Bannon said.

"And McCabe, you should be worried. You should be very worried. But also understand this, brother, we have extradition treaties with virtually every country in the world. And you go ahead and run and run as far as you want. We're going to come and get you."

"These are smart people, they know the law. Hell, he was the Deputy [Director of the] FBI, they know the laws they broke. And here's the thing McCabe, we're going to have access to everything," Bannon added. "Oh, these are 'torturous conversations?' Well, if you didn't do anything wrong, then they wouldn't be torturous conversations."

Bannon went on to suggest that McCabe should "leave the country run [and] as far as you can" as the "long arm of American justice is going to get you" and return him to the U.S.

"Judgment Day is five November of this year," Bannon said. "Accountability day starts on the afternoon of the 20th of January after Donald John Trump takes his hand off the King James Bible, and we go to work."

The FBI has been contacted for comment via email.

In a recent interview with talk show host Phil McGraw, Trump suggested that revenge "can be justified," in the latest sign the former president is seeking to target his opponents should he enter the White House next year.

Bannon also recently suggested that House Republicans should go after "government officials and private actors" if the GOP return their majority in the lower chamber after November's elections.

"The House Judiciary Committee should issue subpoenas for documents, staff depositions, and public hearings to the government officials and private actors who are conspiring to violate the civil rights of President Trump, his aides, and his allies by waging this unprecedented, Republic-ending lawfare and election interference," Bannon previously told Newsweek.>

<A nuanced attempt by Sen. Linsey [sic] Graham (R-SC) to assert that the U.S. should never have been in the position to have to launch the Normandy invasion eighty years ago fell with a thud on Sunday morning after he told a CBS host that D-Day was a "failure."

Discussing battling Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine, Graham tried to compare that war with fighting Nazi Germany.

Referencing the massive invasion that was a pivotal battle that helped lead to the end of the war with Nazi Germany, Graham stated, "We celebrated the 80th anniversary of D-Day. It was a failure. It was the 'unnecessary war, ' described by Winston Churchill. We had a dozen chances to stop Hitler. It's not about NATO. It's not about American weapons in Ukraine. It's about a megalomaniac wanting to create the Russian Empire by force of arms." Want more breaking political news?

With members of the Allies having spent the past few days honoring the D-Day fallen, Graham's inartful comments with Margaret Brennan of CBS set off a wave of condemnation on social media, with attorney Bradley Mos writing about the posted clip, "Tell me that’s fake. Please tell me that’s fake."

Stewcat2006 wrote, "Man, Graham is soooooo close to catching on how important it is to stop a facist [sic] wannabe dictator before he gains too much power…"

With another commenter suggesting, "He's truly lost his mind," SnarkyPanda added, "He's backing Hitler Jr while saying people should have stopped Hitler earlier."

"Politicians who make statements like this are beneath the dignity of this country. We will never be whole as long as traitors serve in the highest positions in government. Graham is disgraceful," Just A Guy accused.

Marc Goldstein contributed, "Because Fascists are running rampant again 80 years later? Don't blame the heroes of D-Day for that, Lindsey. Look for the reason in a mirror."

"What a vile little man," Covfefe added with Colette Flanigan writing, "You know what WAS a failure? You and Trump trying a coup against America on 1/6. You failed.">

<[Event "48th New Hampshire Open"] [Site "Manchester NH"]
[Date "1998.07.18"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Sciacca, Patrick"]
[Black "Ivanov, Alexander"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B68"]
[WhiteElo "2065"]
[BlackElo "2576"]