<perfidious' personal forum is dedicated to attacking FTB and people wearing orange EVERY DAY. (I don orange for Halloween and hunting -- not often.) perfidious makes up all sorts of lies, lies, lies. No, you don't have to take my word for it -- just read his forum. He's too big a coward to allow me to respond -- I'm blocked. He knows he's printing total @#$%*&!#. When a real man prints the truth, he doesn't have to hide behind an iron curtain as his security blanket. Perfidious deliberately mischaracterizes me attempting to make others hate me with his falsehoods. perfidious could work for fake news CNN. He cannot out-argue me because the facts are not on his side on a regular basis, so perd cooks up a load of excretion and paints his personal forum with it every day. His imagination is bigger than a Chinese spy balloon over Montana.

The other day perfidious claimed I had a buddy named Mitch from Kentucky. What made him think that? All these lefty loons think I'm more popular than Harry Belafonte and Harrison Ford. They keep saying I've got more right-handed buddies than NYC has cab drivers. Aren't teddy's [sic] so out-of-fashion? We've long been replaced by unicorns, power rangers, vampires, zombies, yarbos, alexas, google nests, iPhones, air fryers, motion detectors, therapy lamps, gaming headsets, etc. etc.

The whistleblower is dysfunctional. It must have been left behind on the boat or needs to be recharged or rebooted or upgraded. It certainly doesn't work like it should.

FTB is attacked every day. FTB has complained untold number of times. These non-stop attacks have remained up for days, weeks, months, and YEARS. It's deliberate; a CLEAR DOUBLE STANDARD exists. Editors and the like get a free pass to harass members, not to help them.

Then you wonder why I attack back???

<The continued libellous content by one poster in this forum is de trop.

I have read quite enough of this portrayal of me as a pathological liar, when it appears the reverse is true. I should note that I have often gone to the whistle, as was sensibly suggested, yet that poster does not appear to grasp that some of his posts are deleted for a reason--all he does is carry on of how hard done by he is at every turn and parrot a victim narrative, time and again.

<More garbage from the blatant liar perfidious.

<What a chessforum is not: It's not a blog where you are free to discuss anything you like. It's not a political soapbox. It's not a place where obscenity is tolerated, nor is it to be used for advertising commercial services. It's not a place to be used for badmouthing other Chessgames users. In short, our normal posting policy applies to chessforums.>

On multiple occasions, perfidious cries, cries, cries that I attacked him in my forum: <when he had his forum open, he dedicated the header to attacks on <zed> and myself.>

Fredthebear has never had his own forum -- ever.

Fredthebear re-posted the nasty sexual posts and lies of perfidious and the Z sock puppeteer harassment from dozens of accounts. CGs finally did the right thing and limited Z to three accounts, although Z is running four currently. I simply combined and re-posted their trash showing how much I'd been harassed day after day, month after month, year after year. These cyberbullies did not like the exposure all condensed with a clear HISTORY OF THEIR OBXNOSIOUS [sic] BEHAVIOR IN THEIR OWN WORDS. Chessgames just would not address the issue until I took consolidation action. I had much to do with the clean-up on the Rogoff page, which is slipping back to the foul hostilities it once was.

Now, once again, it has been shown that perfidious lies and harasses members. He wasted no time attacking me again today. He should be stripped of his editor position and his personal forum should be SHUT DOWN. It is a gross violation of forum usage. On my chess page posts, he offers nothing of use about the game -- he just makes a personal attack and chessgames allows it.

<What a chessforum is not: It's not a blog where you are free to discuss anything you like. It's not a political soapbox. It's not a place where obscenity is tolerated, nor is it to be used for advertising commercial services. It's not a place to be used for badmouthing other Chessgames users. In short, our normal posting policy applies to chessforums.>

perfidious does nothing but violate the policy day after day. A clear double standard. Messiah gets suspended for tiddlywinks while perfidious rages all he wants. The double standard is SO UNFAIR.>

<fredthebore> wishes to post bilge without fear of retribution.

<The administration is giving the coward sun another free pass today. The cyberbully is railing against us as usual. I don't know how any of them can look in the mirror and pretend to be honest. We're forced to fend for ourselves when the administration leaves jerkwad's litter up.

Just keep on complaining because the truth is on our side. It sure won't get fixed if we don't complain, so keep on complaining.

I've got a chess lesson in a few.>

Who is the 'coward sun'?

Who is 'jerkwad'?

Is the lesson to an aspiring 400 player?

Do tell, great genius.

<Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland on Thursday undermined GOP Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio by using remarks that the Republican made about former President Donald Trump running again in 2024.

During a congressional hearing in which he made his opening remarks as a minority witness, Raskin criticized the new House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government for trying to bring the former president back to the White House in 2024. The subcommittee is part of the House Judiciary Committee.

"If these people break from the habits of lying and lawlessness that define life as a camp follower in the cult of Donald Trump. But if the weaponized MAGA campaign isn't exactly partisan, it is entirely political because it's got an overriding electoral focus and you know what it is," Raskin said.

"It's all about restoring Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former president to the office he lost by 7 million votes in 2020 and tried to steal back in a political coup and violent insurrection against our constitutional order on January 6, 2021."

Raskin then cited remarks that Jordan made during a Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas, before the midterm elections where the Republican said the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story on Twitter and the Justice Department's investigations against Trump, among other matters, would be investigated by Republicans.

"All those things need to be investigated just so you have the truth," Jordan said at the time. "Plus that will frame up the 2024 race when I hope and I think President Trump is going to run again and we need to make sure that he wins."

Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and the weaponization subcommittee, is joining other Republicans in an effort to investigate the alleged "weaponization" of federal agencies under the Biden administration.

"We have a government that now I believe is targeting the very people it is supposed to serve," Jordan said Tuesday. "We plan on, as a Republican majority, holding them accountable."

In a 221 to 211 House vote in January, the Republican-controlled House pushed through a resolution to launch the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to look into a number of subjects, including the Department of Justice's criminal investigations into Trump and whether or not the FBI has attempted to censor conservative voices.

Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard and former FBI special agent Nicole Parker were called to testify during Thursday's hearing.

Newsweek reached out to Jordan's office for comment.>

<Fact:

All the regulars here know that perfidious attacks others on a daily basis. It's what he does. He has thousands of victims over the years.

perfidious is a consistent-as-the-sun cyberbully -- he enjoys it. Then he pretends he's never lied, never done anything wrong.>

perfidious is a consistent-as-the-sun cyberbully -- he enjoys it. Then he pretends he's never lied, never done anything wrong.>>

Nothing that a plain lie.

Fortunately it is relatively rare to see someone misrepresent God and Jesus in such an egomaniac way. He sounds like he has been bullied himself, way back.

For some time now, we have been subjected to the canard of 'Hunter Biden's laptop'.

Seems more than possible that the Orange Poltroon has one of them there thingies in his repertoire:

<Reports about former President Donald Trump's legal team handing over to prosecutors a laptop belonging to one of his aides has spurred calls for Republicans to hold a new congressional hearing to look into the matter.

Representative Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, said that House Republicans should hold a hearing about the aide's laptop similar to the one they held this week, which focused on the suppression of a New York Post article that was published in 2020 about Hunter Biden's laptop.

"Since MAGA Republicans are obsessed about laptops, @HouseGOP should do a hearing on the Trump laptop that illegally stored classified information. Instead, House GOP did a stupid hearing on what Twitter said about a widely known NY Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop," Lieu tweeted on Friday.

Trump's legal team in December and January turned over the laptop, along with more documents with classified markings, CNN reported on Friday. The documents included an empty folder with the label, "Classified Evening Briefing."

Pages with classified markings were found by Trump's lawyers at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and were turned over to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Trump's unnamed aide, who works for Save America PAC, reportedly made a copy of those same pages and added them to a thumb drive and laptop without realizing they were classified.

"Since House Republicans love to hold hearings over laptops, they should immediately hold a hearing discussing the #TrumpLaptop, said Democratic activist and lawyer Aaron Parnas.

"Trump laptop?????? Dear @Jim_Jordan , Will there be a hearing on the trump laptop?" asked Christopher Gibbs, chair of the nonprofit, Rural Voices USA.

Meanwhile, social media personality Brian Krassenstein tweeted: "'Accuse your opponent of what you are guilty of...' For the last 3 years we have been hearing about Hunter Biden's 'laptop from hell'. The real laptop from hell could be the #TrumpLaptop in which classified documents were copied onto and found at Mar-a-lago. THAT IS A CRIME!"

"Trump attorney James Trusty informed agents that top secret documents had been electronically copied to a laptop of a current Trump aide. Donald is a clear and present danger to our national security," wrote Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney.

A GOP-led House committee held a hearing on Wednesday over Twitter's decision to temporarily block the Hunter Biden laptop story. The social media company temporarily prevented users from sharing the New York Post's article in October 2020, fearing that the story about the laptop's contents was the result of an illegal hacking. The newspaper reported that the laptop allegedly contained information about Hunter Biden's finances and ties to foreign companies.

During the hearing, Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said that the former Twitter employees were "played" by the FBI, adding that the company's executives searched for reasons to remove the article.

The hearing was part of an ongoing effort to investigate the alleged "weaponization" of federal agencies under the Biden administration.

The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which is chaired by Jordan, was launched after a 221-211 House vote in January. The subcommittee aims to look into a number of subjects, including the DOJ's investigations against Trump and whether or not the FBI tried to censor conservative voices.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's media office and Jordan's media representatives for comment.>

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...

<Congresswoman Lauren Boebert went off on some former Twitter executives this week, complaining about her account being censored. And, after watching the footage, Seth Meyers isn't sure if she's an actual congresswoman, or a high school girl yelling at someone in the hallway.

The Republican-led house held this particular hearing on Wednesday, apparently in an effort to "prove" the baseless claims that the federal government quietly pressured and succeeded in getting Twitter to censor the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.

But, inevitably, people like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene made sure to use their time to call out Twitter for censoring their own accounts, both of which have regularly posted misinformation and conspiracy theories. In fact, Boebert was specifically mad about allegedly being shadow-banned for a tweet that said Hillary Clinton was angry she couldn't rig her own election.

Before he even began the clip of the exchange on "Late Night," Seth Meyers offered a challenge to those watching it.

"I would like you to watch this clip, and try to decide whether you're watching an actual adult, at an actual congressional hearing, or a high school sophomore, yelling at a friend in the hallway after class," he said.

What followed was Boebert angrily and loudly complaining that the "sinister overlords" at Twitter shadow-banned her for "a freaking joke," and asking "who the hell do you think that you are?" So, to help audiences answer his original question, Meyers then offered a similar exchange.

"It was a freaking joke Kayleigh! OK?" Meyers mocked, putting on a voice not unlike Boebert's. "I said it's cool you won prom queen, even though you're already the queen of Bitchistan, as a freaking joke! You overlord!"

Of course, Meyers couldn't leave Marjorie Taylor Greene out. Because obviously, she also complained about her own account getting permanently suspended (which, we'll remind you, was because she repeatedly violated Twitter's COVID misinformation policies).

The "Late Night" host joked that this hearing actually answered an important question: "What would Twitter look like if it was a physical room?"

You can watch Meyers' full "A Closer Look" segment in the video above.>

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/m...

<Donald Trump's ex-attorney Michael Cohen said the former president has "hit the panic button" as two Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations into his conduct appear to be heating up.

Cohen on Saturday said Trump has “hit the panic alarm” as DOJ investigations into his conduct heat up.

The DOJ is probing Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election, as well as whether or not he illegally removed classified documents when vacating the White House in January 2021 following a search at his Mar-a-Lago residence last summer.

Several new developments in these investigations emerged this week. Special counsel Jack Smith issued new subpoenas against former Vice President Mike Pence, as well as former national security adviser Robert O'Brien. Additionally, Trump's legal team reportedly handed over a laptop belonging to one of his aides that contained a copy of a classified document.

Cohen, who for years served as Trump's "fixer," but has since turned on him, weighed in on the latest developments during an appearance on MSNBC's The Katie Phang Show on Saturday.

Phang questioned Cohen on whether he believes Trump has "hit the panic button" in the investigation into his classified documents.

"I think he's hit the panic button awhile ago," Cohen said. "However, what he's very good at is hiding it. Anybody that's in the room with him would be able to attest to things I've seen in the past, which is Donald really losing it."

Still, Cohen said Trump would remain "calm, cool and collected" in public because "he is a sociopath."

Former U.S. Attorney Gene Rossi told Newsweek on Saturday that he agrees that the recent developments should be concerning for Trump, explaining that it appears the DOJ has "significant evidence" that the former president obstructed justice, describing this as the "crown jewel of Department of Justice investigations."

"The subpoena of his former Vice President Mike Pence is a red flag and loud gong that special counsel Jack Smith does not play flag football. He plays tackle," Rossi said. "And Jack Smith is on a mission to find the truth. When you serve a subpoena on the former vice president of the United States, that is a huge deal and a window into the thinking of a special counsel."

Trump's former attorney also warned Saturday about the national security implications of having copies of classified documents on an unsecure laptop owned by an aide, comparing the files to a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon the United States military shot out of the sky last Saturday.

"The true danger to our national security are not these floating balloons that are out there. It's now, as you earlier reported, the fact that they copied these classified documents and they were sitting on a computer of one of Donald's aides," Cohen said, urging prosecutors to check "every single place" Trump has been since leaving office.

Rossi said that if the DOJ has evidence that Trump transferred classified files to foreign nationals, he would be in "deep, deep legal trouble."

On Friday, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said Pence would be able to provide "sharply incriminating" evidence against Trump if he testifies before a grand jury.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office for comment.

Cohen Says Manhattan DA Has Evidence to Bring Case Against Trump

Cohen also shed light on the latest updates in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's investigation into Trump's financial dealings. Cohen met with prosecutors for more than two hours on Wednesday to provide details related to their case involving whether Trump violated election laws by providing adult film star Stormy Daniels hush money ahead of his 2020 presidential bid.

He told Phang he believes Bragg's team has enough evidence to bring a case against Trump. The Manhattan DA's office for years has been investigating his finances, but has faced criticism for not indicting him sooner.

"They're bringing me in for the 16th time, the third time with Alvin Bragg's team. At the end of the day, they're not bringing me in because there's nothing to talk about, because they enjoy my company," he said. "They're bringing me in because we're going through loads and loads of data. I mean, they have a lot of information."

Cohen emphasized that the seriousness of the case "cannot be underestimated," but said that the team is "extremely competent."

Rossi described the case as another "dark cloud on the horizon" for Trump.

"In my humble view, there's very strong evidence to support the allegation that Donald Trump willfully violated the election laws right before the election in November 2020," he said, adding that the case should have been prosecuted years ago.>

<During an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday afternoon, former GOP campaign consultant and current political analyst Tara Setmayer claimed the Republican Party has been taken over by "trolls" and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is right at the top of the list.

Reflecting on Taylor Greene's yelling as President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address, Setmayer told host Alex Witt that the controversial Georgia Republican's antics are hurting the GOP.

"I mean it is clear that the Republican Party has decided that they want to be a party of trolling -- they are not really a serious governing party," she told the MSNBC host. "Their behavior or misbehavior is evidence of that, and it's pretty on-brand. No one complained in the Republican leadership about the way Donald Trump behaved -- they would wave it off and then what do they expect? Of course, the discourse is going to become coarse because they've been rewarded for it"

"Marjorie Taylor Greene is now presiding over the House of Representatives during House proceedings," she continued. "She is going into classified intel briefings. She is palling around with the speaker of the House; she is the most powerful member of Congress right now. She is one of the worst of the worst."

"So of course, for the trolling operation and their fundraising and their base, yes," she elaborated "For the average American, for people who are in swing districts, is this attractive to them? No, because they look like children. I call it the cacophony of the kookery that goes on up there."

"I just don't know that Republicans want to continue down this road, which clearly they demonstrated that they do," she later added. "How well that will portend for them going into a general election? And how well that will portend for them for the 18 Republicans that were in Biden democratic districts in 2020; how well that helps them, those are swing districts? Is this okay with their constituents? I don't think so.">

<Fears that Donald Trump will be at the top of the 2024 ballot as the presidential nominee has galvanized the Republican Party establishment to work together to derail any momentum he has in an effort to forestall a repeat of the 2022 midterms where Trump weighed heavily on the poor GOP election results.

According to longtime political analyst Karen Tumulty, Republican insiders and donors see no path back to the White House for Trump in the 2024 general election should his supporters turn out in force during the primaries and make him, for the third time, the presidential nominee.

As she noted, the highly influential Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity Action has served notice that it will oppose Trump as the nominee, with chief executive Emily Seidel issuing a statement that said, in part, they plan to "... support a candidate in the Republican presidential primary who can lead our country forward, and who can win.”

According to Tumulty, "Though she didn’t say so specifically, Seidel made it clear that candidate will not be named Trump. 'The American people have shown that they’re ready to move on, and so AFP will help them do that,' she wrote."

That means, the columnist explained, that mainstream Republicans are beating the bushes for one candidate they can all line up behind to take Trump down.

Big GOP donors plot to replace Trump in 2024

"These Republicans are facing the reality that the only way to stop Trump — and it is far from certain that it will work — is for the party establishment to pick a favorite early and rally behind him or her," she wrote. "Beyond that, they must put their considerable resources into anti-Trump messaging in the key primary states. That step would relieve their candidate of having to go negative on a former president who still has a devoted following among GOP voters."

According to one GOP strategist, "There’s not a day that passes that I don’t have this conversation. In fact, I’ve had this conversation twice today.”

While Trump's top rival for the presidential nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), appears to be on everyone's list, Tumulty suggested there is a growing sense that Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) could also fill the bill since he has battled with Trump before and came out on top.

"There is also a fair amount of buzz lately around Kemp, a solid conservative who won a second term easily last year in what has become a swing state despite being targeted by Trump for resisting the defeated president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 Georgia results," she wrote before adding that stopping Trump is not the only result GOP insiders are hoping for.

"With a 2024 Senate map that favors his party, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Steve Daines (Mont.) has indicated he will be working to weed out the kind of fringe characters (for the most part endorsed by Trump) who blew what should have been easy wins for the GOP in 2022," she wrote before adding, "... what has finally dawned on the Republican establishment is that continuing to appease Trump while hoping for the best is a ticket to electoral oblivion.">

<Even though country star Chris Stapleton took the spotlight to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 2023 Super Bowl, conservative pundits were left upset over Sheryl Lee Ralph’s rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” during the opening performances.

In an act of flagrant racism, representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) have decried the moving performance as an act of “wokeness.” Thankfully, Twitter wasn’t having it.

Greene tweeted, “Chris Stapleton just sang the most beautiful national anthem at the Super Bowl,” before going on to reveal the true intent of her post. “But we could have gone without the rest of the wokeness.”

Journalist Dennis Perkins immediately put a halt to the representative’s attempt to spark a culture war, sharing a Taste of Country article that quotes Stapleton on his support for the Black Lives Matter Movement. “”Do I think Black lives matter? Absolutely. I don’t know how you could think they don’t,” Stapleton told CBS This Morning in November 2020. “There’s a very broad awakening that I guess has come about, and it’s time for me to listen. And it’s time for other folks to listen,” he continued.

Other comments call out Greene for her increasingly problematic behavior. “You are the only one who brought politics into the beautiful performance – and by wokeness, you obviously meant non-whites,” wrote one.

"Wokeness" is being used as a racist slur against Black people

— Devil May Cry ☀️🌕 (@moalusi_victor) February 12, 2023 Lmao. You had a great tweet. Then went on to ruin it.

— Josh™ (@Beardverse) February 12, 2023
Another tweeted, “You just can’t enjoy anything, can you? Always looking for the negative. I prefer positive people who authentically care about others.”

A third chimed in with “I thought y’all boycotted the NFL. We’d all appreciate it it you’d do it again!” referring to the conservatives who were enraged by players taking a knee on the field to demonstrate their protest against police brutality and racism– a movement sparked by Colin Kaepernick.

Greene wasn’t the only one enraged by Ralph’s performance of the song, otherwise known as the Black national anthem. Boebert tweeted, “America only has ONE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Why is the NFL trying to divide us by playing multiple!? Do football, not wokeness.”

The comment section of her post is similar to Greene’s. “Why are you so scared of diversity and consideration of others?” tweeted one user.

Another tweeted, “Why are Republicans trying so hard to erase black people’s heritage and the wrongs that were done to them in the past? Stop trying to cancel history!”

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was written by the organization’s leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900 and the song was first performed in public to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, per NAACP. The song speaks towards the promise of freedom and was used heavily during the Civil Rights Movement.

Ralph took to Twitter earlier today to express her excitement to perform the musical number. The Abbott Elementary star wrote, ” It is no coincidence that I will be singing the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at the Super Bowl on the same date it was first publicly performed 123 years ago (February 12, 1900). Happy Black History Month!”>

<What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, "Liberal"? If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But, if by a "Liberal," they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say that I'm a "Liberal."

<Watch out, mid-to-upper septuagenarians. Newly minted GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley has questions about your mental acuity!

Haley is the second candidate to throw her hat in the ring after Trump’s announcement

The South Carolina governor and former U.N. ambassador formally launched her campaign Wednesday with, among other things, a call for “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.”

That line was surely aimed at pleasing Republicans who’ve convinced themselves that 80-year-old President Joe Biden is senile (while also being a devious criminal and an all-powerful leftist singlehandedly transforming America into a socialist hellscape). But it was also a shot at 76-year-old former President Donald Trump, a candidate as well, and at a sizable swath of the GOP’s most reliable base of voters.

A Pew Research Center study of the 2020 presidential election found voters ages 75 to 92 were the only ones who clearly favored Trump over Biden, by 58% to 42%.

As a liberal, I can see why you might want to check the mental competency of anyone who supported Trump, but from a strategic point of view, launching your Republican campaign with a heavy dose of ageism seems unwise.

Haley 2024 - Unwise!

Of course “Unwise!” may as well be Haley’s campaign slogan, given that a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed she’s supported by a non-whopping 4% of registered Republicans. And that was before she suggested people in their mid-70s might be incompetent.

In her speech, Haley called for “a new generation of leadership” while reciting what sounded like an “Every Republican Talking Point From The Last 40 Years” Mad Lib.

The South Carolina governor and GOP presidential candidate declares racism over!

The first woman of color to run for the Republican presidential nomination, Haley declared America is “not a racist country.” As she was saying that Wednesday, a white man in Buffalo was being sentenced to life in prison for killing 10 people in a racist mass shooting, admitting during the sentencing: “I shot and killed people because they were Black.”

Between that, a rise in anti-semitism and the fact that, according to Gallup polling, 64% of Americans “believe racism against Black people is widespread” in the United States, I’d say the jury’s still out on that whole “racist country” thing.

Hi, I'm Nikki Haley, and I'm not old like some people

But setting all stump-speech pablum aside, Haley made clear she’s going to leverage her age for advantage in the primary race. At 51, she’s 24 years away from requiring the kind of mental competency test she suggested, a fact I’m sure will weigh heavily on the minds of voters who think the average 75-year-old should be set adrift on an ice floe.

You can see the political ads now: “Hi, I’m Nikki Haley. Are you ready for a new generation of leadership? Do you think politicians like Joe Biden and my former boss who I would never insult, Donald Trump, should be sent upstate to farm pancakes and catch butterflies? Do you want a president who has the guts to look your pop-pop or mee-maw in the eyes and say, ‘You’ve reached an arbitrary age, so I no longer think your brain works right’? If so, and if you are under the age of 75, I’m asking for your vote.”

I can almost feel the Haley-mentum already. (If you’re over 75 and not feeling the Haley-mentum, please immediately get a mental competency test.)>

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opin...

< Local governments in Oregon can’t declare themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries and ban police from enforcing certain gun laws, a state appeals court decided Wednesday, in the first court case filed over a concept that hundreds of U.S. counties have adopted in recent years.

The measure in question, which was approved in Columbia County, forbids local officials from enforcing most federal and state gun laws and would impose thousands of dollars in fines on those who try.

The state Court of Appeals ruled that it violates a law giving the state the power to regulate firearms. The ordinance would effectively, it found, “create a ‘patchwork quilt’ of firearms laws in Oregon, where firearms regulations that applied in some counties would not apply in Columbia County,” something lawmakers specifically wanted to avoid.

Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions have been adopted by some 1,200 local governments around the U.S., including in Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Illinois and Florida, experts say. Many are symbolic, but some carry legal force like the one in Columbia County, a conservative, rural logging area in deep-blue Oregon.

The sanctuary movement took off around 2018 as states considered stricter gun laws in the wake of mass shootings, but it had not previously faced a major legal challenge.

The Oregon case was filed in 2021 under a provision in state law that allows a judge to examine a measure before it goes into effect. A trial court judge originally declined to rule, a decision that was appealed to the higher court.

The ordinance's supporters included the Oregon Firearms Federation, which said in a statement Wednesday that the ruling “calls into question the legitimacy of the court and the likelihood of getting fair rulings from it.”

Opponents included the legal arm of the group Everytown for Gun Safety, which had argued that the ordinance violated the U.S. Constitution. Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law, called the court's decision “a win for public safety and the rule of law.”

“Opponents of gun safety laws have every right to advocate for change at the ballot box, statehouse, or Congress, but claiming to nullify them at the local level is both unconstitutional and dangerous,” Tirschwell said.

State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who has also sued two other Second Amendment sanctuary counties, also applauded the ruling.

“Today’s opinion by the Court of Appeals makes it clear that common sense requirements like safe storage and background checks apply throughout Oregon,” Rosenblum said. “Hopefully, other counties with similar measures on the books will see the writing on the wall.”>

<Unpacking The Trump Classified Docs News

I would hope by now it’s obvious to regular readers that I’m trying to use Morning Memo to bring together the scattershot incremental developments in the various Trump investigations into a coherent narrative.

The challenge for readers is that the federal probes of Trump are largely operating under the veil of grand jury secrecy. Especially after the bizarro special master review in the Mar-a-Lago classified docs case was shut down by an appeals court, the probes have been mostly underground. Reporters occasionally penetrate the veil of secrecy and get tidbits about who has been testifying, what they’ve been asked about, and other nuggets that in isolation can be confusing, misleading, or incomplete.

Case in point: We learned Friday that two Trump lawyers appeared before the DC grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago case (yesterday CNN learned of a third). Note it’s “appeared” not “testified.” That’s because it wasn’t clear whether they’d actually answered questions. The obvious out for them would be attorney-client privilege. The suspicion, however, was that Special Counsel Jack Smith was preparing to do an end run around attorney-client privilege using one of the exceptions, in particular the crime-fraud exception. Now that’s been confirmed in new reporting from the NYT and others.

It appears Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran answered some but not all of the grand jury’s questions, and cited attorney-client privilege in refusing to answer others. Smith is now seeking court approval to pierce the attorney-client privilege. I suspect it’s not on the grounds that Corcoran himself was a party to Trump’s crimes but rather an instrument of those crimes.

Among the many reasons this is significant news:

Trump used multiple lawyers to interact with the National Archives, FBI, and Justice Department and if they’re compelled to testify about those interactions it opens up new avenues of potentially explosive evidence deeply damaging to the former president.

It suggests Smith is in the later stages of obtaining the evidence he needs to make a charging decision, as this former Mueller prosecutor notes:

A “win” by Smith in the attorney-client privilege dispute would mean a federal judge has found sufficient evidence of a crime involving Trump and his lawyers to dispense with the privilege, itself a notable conclusion....>