<The son of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) was allowed to phone in virtually to a court hearing on his driving violation, sparking accusations of political favoritism, reported Westword.

"On April 24, the favoritism apparently continued: A Garfield County judge let Tyler appear in court virtually, instead of in person, despite his failure to show up at a previous hearing and getting hit with a bench warrant as a result," reported Chris Perez. "'Typically, if a defendant misses a court hearing and a bench warrant is issued or stayed, they are required to appear for the next date,' says Sarah Nordgaard, deputy district attorney with the 9th Judicial District. 'Whether that is virtual or in person just depends on individual circumstances.'"

Tyler crashed his vehicle in September of last year, putting a friend in the hospital with a concussion and hand lacerations that nearly severed his thumb. Initially, Tyler was charged with "careless driving leading to bodily injury," a misdemeanor, which was later reduced to the civil violation of driving with broken headlights.

According to prior reports, the congresswoman was unaware her son missed his original court date.

"Tyler, who turned eighteen in March, was scheduled to appear in court and provide proof of completing the 'Alive at 25' driver awareness program — one of the key terms of his 'defective vehicle for headlights' plea deal," said the report. "It was the very last stop on his months-long road of legal drama. 'He must've emailed in the certificate,' said a Garfield County court clerk, who added that virtual appearances are considered on a 'case-by-case basis. If people request it, they can be granted or denied.'"

Boebert has been accused of covering up details of the incident from the public, including the extent of the injuries caused by the crash.>

If the patriarch can drop trou and let his manhood stand at attention for chillun to see, what's a mere traffic accident involving a former friend?

<I can’t say with confidence who was the first Republican to complain about the Biden administration successfully stopping illicit drugs at the border, though Rep. Andy Biggs was certainly among the first. It was nearly two years ago when the Arizona Republican complained via Twitter, “Under Joe Biden, enough fentanyl to kill 238 million Americans was seized at the southern border last month. Where’s the outrage in the media?”

Even at the time, it was odd to see a member of Congress complain about drugs being seized before they could reach American soil. The only folks who had reason to be “outraged” were drug dealers.

In the months that followed, this nevertheless became an oddly common criticism of President Joe Biden and his team. Every couple of months, from the Republican National Committee to the halls of Congress to the presidential campaign trail, the more the administration seized drugs, the more Republicans complained for reasons that never made a lot of sense.

Yesterday, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik joined the GOP chorus with this tweet:

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates asked a couple of years ago, “Wait, Republicans are now attacking us for stopping fentanyl trafficking?” Evidently, yes, and those criticisms have become one of the GOP’s more frequently used talking points for reasons I’ve never been able to explain.

Ordinarily at this point, I’d make the usual schpiel about how strange it is that Republicans don’t seem to know what “seized” means — a phenomenon that remains genuinely odd — but in this specific instance, it’s not the only problem.

Indeed, what was striking about Stefanik’s line of criticism wasn’t just its self-defeating qualities, but also its poor timing. Fox News reported late last week:

In a written statement issued last Friday, the White House’s Bates issued a written statement with a headline that read, “House Republicans vote to cause a recession unless they can fire 2,000 Border Patrol agents.”

The deputy press secretary added, “Let that sink in. With this week’s vote, House Republicans looked their constituents in the eye and said that they are willing to single-handedly trigger a recession unless they can fire thousands of Border Patrol agents.”

To be sure, GOP lawmakers would likely respond that their debt ceiling hostage note doesn’t explicitly single out border security for specific cuts, which is true. But as we’ve discussed, such cuts would effectively be inevitable as part of the Republicans’ demands not to deliberately impose an economic catastrophe.

In other words, the House GOP Conference chair didn’t just push a weird complaint in response to drug seizures at the border, Stefanik did so in the midst of her party’s debt ceiling crisis, which includes a Republican plan that would put funding for border security at great risk.

This is not a fight the GOP should expect to win on the merits.>

<When Dr. Thomas J. Harbin published his seminal work Beyond Anger: A Guide for Men in 2000, it was a simpler time. Sort of. Anger, especially among men, was a widespread problem, but it was hardly so communicable as it is today. Now, anger travels like a virus, transmitted from the individual to the masses with the tap of a touchscreen. As he writes in the prologue to a new edition of Beyond Anger, the social media age has proven “perversely liberating” for angry men.

“They don’t have to deal with the consequences of angry diatribes and don’t have to fear retribution,” he writes. “They can say whatever they want to whoever they want and get away with it. They can rant and rave, call people names, make false statements about people, start or contribute to rumors, and sometimes ruin lives — and forget all about it when they walk away from the screen.” This behavior, he concludes, is nothing short of cowardly.

A clinical psychiatrist practicing in North Carolina, Dr. Harbin spent decades working with angry men and their families, teaching them to come to terms with and control their anger. In that time, he’s come to a robust, nuanced understanding of anger, where it comes from, how it works, and how people can deal with it. We spoke to Dr. Harbin about what he’s learned, why anger is so present today, and what men can do to manage theirs.

For readers who might be unfamiliar with your work, could you briefly outline a working definition of male anger and how you think about it?

I think that male anger is probably like everybody’s anger, only that men tend to express it differently than women. Men tend to be more physically aggressive than women, men tend to be more verbally aggressive than women. But I think in general, anger is anger.

And how did you come to specialize in anger?

The first aspect of it was trying to deal with my own anger as a young man. So I started putting some of my thoughts down on paper. I’m a clinical psychologist, so in dealing with some of my angry male patients, I wanted to have something that they could read. There weren’t any books out there at the time that I really thought fit the bill, so I started writing a few chapters here and there and then decided to expand it to a book.

How have cultural understandings of or approaches to anger changed throughout history?

I think that public recognition of some of the behaviors that we used to accept is no longer there. While we are a long way from dealing with a lot of the anger-related problems in men, there’s at least, now, a recognition that physical aggression is usually not acceptable, that yelling and screaming at family or co-workers or other people is not acceptable. So I think the acceptability of a lot of traditional angry male behavior is starting to erode.

A lot of angry men have a core sense of inferiority. They feel like they don’t measure up.

Other than your own work on the matter, do you have any sense of what the drivers are of those norms changing?

The last couple of generations of men — well, the two generations after the World War II generation, so baby boomers and then the generation after that, have really been caught. In former times, the definition of a man was you went to work every day, you worked with your muscles, you brought home a paycheck, and that was about it. And now women can do most of the work that men can do. The definition of what it is to be a man now is in flux, and I think that’s unsettling to a lot of men now. We don’t really have a hard and fast rules for what it means to be a man and a successful man. I think that causes a lot of dissatisfaction that gets expressed as anger.

A lot of angry men have what I call a core sense of inferiority. They feel like they don’t measure up. And then there is an idea that a Dr. [Michael] Kimmel has put out there in some of his book which he calls “aggrieved entitlement.” And that is a lot of men, especially white men, feel like other people are getting stuff that I’m entitled to and I’m not getting it. So I think it’s a complex that has changed over the last 20 or 30 years....>

<....Can you talk about that core sense of inferiority and what its root [sic] are?

Well, physical abuse. That teaches a boy that he is not a person, that he is an object, that whoever is abusing him can do whatever he wants with him — especially hitting on the head, that’s a humiliating thing that leads to feelings of inferiority. I think, again, the confusion as to what it means to be a man these days contributes to that. We’ve had some significant financial down turns in the last 20 years — the dot com bubble in 2001, the big recession in 2008. I think all of those challenged a lot of men’s self-confidence and caused them, a lot of times, to have to reexamine their identities as men.

A lot of people value belligerence in and of its own self. Belligerence is now a virtue. How have your own views about anger and attitudes toward treating and addressing anger changed over the years, as you’ve practiced?

I am concerned. I think over the last 10 or 15 years or so a lot of aspects of our culture have gotten increasingly aggressive. There is an acceptance of humiliating trash talk in sport, many of our political bodies sit and scream at each other instead of getting anything positive accomplished, I think a lot of people value belligerence in and of its own self, so that belligerence is now a virtue. I think there’s a lot of disturbing trends in our culture in the last 20 years.

Angry young men are in the news a lot these days, between men’s rights activists, the Proud Boys, so much of the alt right. And that seems to intersect so much with social media and the ways we live online. I’m curious what you make of that, or what you’ve learned about that in dealing with your patients?

I think the echo chamber has done a lot to exacerbate and perpetuate male anger. Guys can go online and find thousands of other guys that are just as angry as they are and they bounce it back and forth, getting angrier. I think that there has been a great reduction in civility and reasonableness over the last couple of generations, and I think that you’d be wrong to blame social media for that entirely but I certainly think that social media contributes to it. It used to be that if you wanted to get a bunch of people together to complain about something, you had to make some sort of telephone or mail contact, you had to arrange a place to be. And now people can just go ahead with a few clicks and they’re connected to thousands of people that are just as angry as they are....>

<....I’m fascinated by these connections between anger on a small scale and on a macro scale. Are there any commonalities, do you think, between how a society can remedy anger and how individuals deal with it in their own lives and families and relationships?

I think that society sets the parameters. So parents, teachers, coaches, other authorities set the bar for what is acceptable and what isn’t. So that’s sort of society’s contribution. And then the individual has to find ways to live within those rules or suffer the consequences. And I think a lot of the social parameters are in flux right now. I just think back to when I played high school sports — if I had done some of the things that are accepted now, I would have been sitting on the bench. Coaches would not put up with it.

Anger is not bad, anger is not good, it just is. What tips or recommendations would you give to a parent worried that their child might have anger issues?

I think that there needs to be consistent discipline. By that I don’t mean punishment, I mean that there — I think of my brother as being almost the perfect father, in terms of training his kids. He would say this is what I expect out of you, this is what will happen if you do what I expect, this is what will happen if you don’t do what I expect and then follow through with it. And he rarely had to raise his voice, because his daughters knew that if they did X or Y, then it would happen.

So I think consistent discipline is a good way to raise kids that are not angry. I think that by and large when parents hit their kids, they’re teaching them that that’s the way to solve problems. So I think a de-emphasis on physical punishment, and I think kids just need to know what the rules are and what will happen if they don’t follow the rules.

And suppose you’re talking to a father whose is worried that they themselves might get angry with their kids, who feel the anger bubbling. What do you say them to deal with that?

The first thing I would say is that anger is not bad. Anger is not bad, anger is not good, it just is. And it is for its own reasons. What we worry about, or at least what I worry about with my patients is: What does it take to get you angry, how angry do you get when you get angry, what do you do when you get angry? Those are the things that I like to focus on. But if a parent — let’s say a father — feels as if he is going to get out of control with his kids, the first thing he’s got to do is walk away until he cools off. Later on, maybe he can learn more sophisticated ways of dealing with his anger, but the first step is to get out of that situation so you don’t do anything that you’ll regret later on.>

And there ya have it.

If you've had the stones to come this far, thank me later.

That is my whole point, S. King is now calling an end to these shootings, but while the whole time/career have dealt/written pretty nothing but violence "Shining", "Firestarter", "Cujo", but with an albeit, alien/supernatural twist (or take) on the story.

<Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instructions, it listed the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting,” the documents show.

In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

In response to questions from The Post, Leo issued a statement defending the Thomases. “It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment. The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues,” he wrote. “As an advisor to JEP I have long been supportive of its opinion research relating to limited government, and The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas’s help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes.”

Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

Leo’s statement did not address questions about whether he had arranged other work for Ginni Thomas or how much money he directed to her in all from the nonprofit.>

<In his new book, "The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival," MAGA Republican Ron DeSantis isn't shy about resorting to identity politics.

The far-right Florida governor declares, "I was geographically raised in Tampa Bay, but culturally, my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in Western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio — from weekly church attendance to the expectation that one would earn his keep. This made me God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving."

Although the 44-year-old DeSantis has yet to make a formal announcement, he certainly sounded like he was planning to run for president when he made that comment — which was right out of the GOP's familiar "the real America" playbook.

Washington Post opinion writer Paul Waldman is vehemently critical of DeSantis' comment in his May 4 column, arguing that it is "ridiculous" and "irksome" when Republicans equate one's geographical location with "authenticity."

"Whenever a candidate, even an undeclared one, tells you they represent the superior values of a particular state or region — almost invariably, from the rural, manufacturing or Appalachian heartlands — they're usually trying to capture the downscale and traditional appeals of those places," Waldman explains. "They want to convince you their roots are more worthy of national office than those of places supposedly less saturated in realness, even if the latter is where most Americans live."

Waldman adds, "It might seem as though Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wouldn't even try to play this game, seeing as he hails from America's most surreal state, where people throw alligators through drive-through windows and call 911 to get a ride to Hooters. DeSantis (R) grew up in the town of Dunedin, a perfectly ordinary suburb of Tampa. Love him or hate him, there is nothing hardscrabble or poetic about DeSantis' life story."

DeSantis is hardly the first Republican to play the identity politics card. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for example, described rural areas as "the real America," implying that people who grow up in Massachusetts or California aren't truly American.

"Whatever distinguishes DeSantis from other Republicans," Waldman writes, "it's not his 'Ohio values,' because there isn’t any such thing…. Every place has its own identity, but the idea that 'values' can only be found in certain locales is repulsive. The truth is that every corner of America contains the hard-working and the lazy, the generous and the selfish, those who struggle and those who don't.">

<Embattled St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, the city's first Black prosecutor and a Democrat, announced Thursday that she will resign, following allegations of negligence and calls for her ouster by Republican leaders.

In a letter to Republican Gov. Mike Parson released by Gardner's office, she said she will step aside effective June 1. Parson in a statement said he will immediately begin looking for a replacement and that he is “committed to finding a candidate who represents the community, values public safety, and can help restore faith in the City’s criminal justice system.”

Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey took legal steps to remove Gardner from office in February. Bailey said too many cases, including homicides, have gone unpunished under Gardner’s watch, that victims and their families are left uninformed, and that the prosecutor’s office is too slow to take on cases brought by police.

Gardner said Bailey’s efforts to remove her were politically and racially motivated. A hearing on whether Gardner should be removed had been scheduled for September.

Gardner's resignation letter also cited legislative efforts on a bill that would allow Parson to appoint a special prosecutor to handle violent crimes, effectively removing the bulk of her responsibilities.

“It is hard to think of a more direct or brutal assault on our democracy ...” she wrote.

“Since day one of my tenure as Circuit Attorney, I have experienced attacks on my reforms, on my judgment, on my integrity, on my prosecutorial discretion, on my responsibility to direct the limited resources of this office and more,” Gardner said in her letter.

“Some of these attacks seem designed to stop the office from functioning, at the expense of public safety,” Gardner said.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo said Gardner called him a few days ago to assess the probability of lawmakers passing the bill by their May 12 deadline.

She began talks with Republican Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden about the possibility of resigning when she realized that if she didn't, the bill likely would become law and hamstring her and future prosecutors, Rizzo said.

Republicans “were completely dialed in on attacking Kim Gardner for her methods,” Rizzo said. He said laws dealing with the St. Louis prosecutor’s office are no longer needed, and he thinks Senate Republicans agree.

Republican House leaders on Thursday released a statement pressuring the GOP-led Senate to act on the bill anyway, arguing that even with Gardner gone “the criminal justice system in St. Louis remains in critical need of reform and support.”

Rizzo said Gardner had planned to announce her resignation Wednesday but delayed after an assistant prosecutor in her office died in a fiery crash around 5 p.m.

Bailey said he wants Gardner to leave immediately.

“There is absolutely no reason for the Circuit Attorney to remain in office until June 1st,” Bailey said in a statement. “We remain undeterred with our legal quest to forcibly remove her from office. Every day she remains puts the city of St. Louis in more danger. How many victims will there be between now and June 1st? How many defendants will have their constitutional rights violated? How many cases will continue to go unprosecuted?”

Other Republican leaders applauded her resignation.

“She has presided over miscarriages of justice for years, hurting countless victims who put their trust in her and letting dangerous criminals escape the accountability they deserve,” U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner tweeted. “St. Louis will be better off without her.”

“We have achieved an important victory in restoring law and order in the City of St. Louis with this resignation,” House Speaker Dean Plocher, House Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson, and House Majority Floor Leader Jon Patterson said in a joint statement. “Addressing the violent crime crisis that has destabilized the St. Louis region has been one of our highest priorities this session, which has included holding the Circuit Attorney accountable for the willful neglect of her constitutional duties.”

A statement from St. Louis Circuit Court said judges remain concerned about the high volume of pending cases for the understaffed Circuit Attorney’s Office.

“We hope St. Louis’ next Circuit Attorney is successful in restoring stability to the Office and rebuilding its ranks with experienced prosecutors,” the statement read....>

The rest rightcheer!

<....The Rev. Darryl Gray, a leading activist in St. Louis, lauded Gardner for progressive actions such as instituting an integrity unit to investigate allegations of police misconduct, and for a diversion program for some non-violent offenders.

But Gray said Gardner “has been battered from Day 1. How much more should we expect our champions to take? And she was taking a lot.”

Criticism of Gardner escalated earlier this year after 17-year-old Janae Edmondson, a volleyball standout from Tennessee, was struck by a speeding car after a tournament game in downtown St. Louis. She lost both legs.

The driver, 21-year-old Daniel Riley, was out on bond on a robbery charge despite nearly 100 bond violations that included letting his GPS monitor die and breaking the terms of his house arrest, according to court records. Critics questioned why Riley was free despite so many bond violations.

Mayor Tishaura Jones, a Democrat who also is Black, was among those who criticized Gardner after Edmonson was injured. In a statement Thursday, Jones said Gardner “made history by becoming the first Black woman” elected circuit attorney, and noted she “faced more obstacles than her predecessors because of it.”

Jones urged Parson “to appoint a successor who reflects the values of communities across St. Louis.”

Gardner has often been at odds with Republicans. In 2018, she charged then-Gov. Eric Greitens with felony invasion of privacy, accusing him of taking a compromising photo of a woman during an extramarital affair. The charge was eventually dropped. But Greitens, a Republican who was also under investigation by Missouri lawmakers, resigned in June 2018.

<Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert has been accused of illegally spending $60,000 from her PAC on campaign calls and texts.

The End Citizens United PAC filed a complaint with the Federal Election Committee on Thursday, accusing the Republican lawmaker of spending her donors' money on "get out to vote" calls and texts while not reporting it correctly.

"Congresswoman Boebert used her leadership PAC as a personal bank, but unfortunately for her, this practice is illegal under federal law," the ECU president, Tiffany Muller, said in a press release on Thursday.

The ECU argues that the "get out to vote" calls gave the Congresswoman an edge in the November midterms. She narrowly came ahead of the Democratic candidate, Adam Frisch, and was reelected by a margin of just 546 votes, per Newsweek.

FEC filings by the ECU accuse Boebert, her campaign Lauren Boebert For Colorado, We The People Leadership PAC, and Taylor Moose, her PAC and campaign treasurer, of not reporting the calls and texts as in-kind contributions.

In the FEC filing, the ECU accused Boebert of spending $4,623.22 on "text message advertising" on October 28, and her leadership PAC for spending $6,221.73 on "Voter Contact - GOTV Calls/Texts" on the same day.

The ECU wrote that these payments were made to Telephone Town Hall Meeting, a telecommunications service provider in Colorado.

The ECU also said in the filing that on November 18, Boebert's leadership PAC disbursed another $53,760 to TTHM.

These transactions, according to the ECU, violate federal guidelines on how much a candidate's leadership PAC can spend on in-kind contributions.

"The timing of the purchases, and the fact that they were made to the same vendor her campaign used, clearly illustrates that she was attempting to bypass federal law in order to either influence her own race or another campaign," Muller added in the release.

This is not the first time Boebert's campaign finances have been under scrutiny.

In June, Colorado officials investigated claims that Boebert deliberately inflated the amount she spent on her campaign travels in 2020, and claimed higher reimbursements from her donors to pay off tax liens on her restaurant.

Boebert's representatives did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside of regular business hours.>

<Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was schooled Friday on the ability of a “mentally incompetent” man to “mastermind a criminal empire."

‘Someone, please tell Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that President Joe Biden can't be mentally sound enough to run an international cabal of insidious elites while also being completely senile," The Insider wrote.

The website was responding to the controversial Republican’s claims, made to Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancee and former TV anchor Kimberly Guilfoyle, that Biden is heading an international criminal cabal.

"The true crimes are linked to Joe Biden himself. And he is the mastermind of the Biden criminal enterprise," she said on Wednesday, offering no evidence or details to back up her statement. "This is an international operation that has guided and steered the policy of the United States of America."

But just over a year ago, she responded to Biden’s State of the Union address by saying he was a “mentally incompetent, feckless, dementia-ridden piece of crap.”

And, in September last year, she compared him to Hitler and called him “frail, weak, and dementia ridden."

Insider pointed out that other GOP figures, notably presidential candidate Nikki Haley, have also taken aim at the 80-year-old Biden’s mental capability.>

<A prank led right-wing activist Laura Loomer into an unsuccessful lawsuit against a civil right group she now owes nearly $125,000 in legal fees, and now she’s alleging her former lawyer botched the case and wants him to cover the bill, The Daily Beast reports.

Loomer in 2019 sued the Council on American-Islamic Relations for conspiracy after a group posing as Twitter employees told her the Muslim advocacy group lobbied to get her banned from the social media site.

Loomer had in fact been banned from Twitter in 2018 for making disparaging comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and her Islamic faith in which she called the congresswoman “anti-Jewish.”

Loomer has been banned from several social media sites and ride share apps for hate speech.

Loomer persisted with the lawsuit even after CAIR provided evidence that Bernard Media, the group behind the prank, admitted to the hoax.

She was ordered to pay CAIR’s $124,423.37 legal fees after losing the case and subsequent appeals.

Attorney Larry Klayman on Tuesday filed a lawsuit on Loomer’s behalf against her former lawyer, Ron Coleman, who she accuses of “malpractice” in the CAIR case.

Coleman told The Daily Beast that the malpractice case against him was the result of “Klayman’s penchant for making headlines.”

“Laura filed a lawsuit that she very much wanted to file,” Coleman told the outlet.

“I think it was a difficult claim, and I think it was, frankly, wrongly decided. She had a meritorious claim. But she’s not happy with how it worked out....”

Klayman in 2018 represented Loomer in a separate unsuccessful lawsuit against social media companies from which she was banned.

Loomer’s latest move to get her former lawyer to pay her legal bills doesn’t appear to be going well.

According to The Daily Beast report, “The judge in the case appears unconvinced by Loomer’s efforts to delay the case while she accuses Coleman of malpractice. In a Wednesday order, the judge stated that Loomer’s “malpractice allegations against their counsel are irrelevant” to her legal obligations to CAIR.”>

Is Loomer first cousin to a <lurker> hereabout?

Hahahahaha!!!

<Kelleanne [sic] Conway appeared to confirm the off-the-record payments made to Ginni Thomas, as reported by The Washington Post Thursday.

The former senior advisor to the Trump White House appeared on Fox News Friday morning in her first public address since the story broke of how the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas received $80,000 in consulting fees paid to her by conservative legal activist Leonard Leo who used Conway’s polling company to funnel the money her [sic] according to documents review by the reporters.

The Post reported that Leo instructed Conway, a pollster who later became an adviser to former President Donald Trump and is now a Fox News contributor, to pay Ginni Thomas but added, “No mention of Ginni.” This comes a day after it was revealed that Crow paid for the private school tuition of Thomas’s grand nephew and previous reporting of numerous luxury vacations Thomas enjoyed at the generosity of his friend.

Host Dana Perino curiously introduced the story by way of other cable news outlets covering it before giving Conway a chance to respond. The former Trump advisor cited security concerns and noted that Ginni Thomas was a “serious person” who she contracted for work regularly. Conway said:

This is 2012, according to The Washington Post. Leonard, Leo’s quote in that article, I think it’s an important quote. He says, I’ve known the Thomases. They’ve been my friends since 1990, and I’m very mindful of how vicious and gossipy people can be. So I always try to protect their privacy and their safety. Viciousness from ten years ago, 11 years ago, has turned into violence now, where people are outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes trying to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh while his wife and daughters are sleeping in that home. So these people will stop at nothing.

They want Clarence Thomas to resign. So Joe Biden, of all people, can replace him with one of his own in this case. Jenny [sic] Thomas was one of my contractors and she’s [sic]. She had worked with the Heritage Foundation. She was part of the grassroots is part of the grassroots. She had worked in the Reagan administration. This is a serious person who for years had worked in public policy and at the polling company. We did public opinion research and data analytics. We had no business before the court.

Conway noted that The Washington Post was looking for her all day yesterday, before replying with a flair of drama. “I want to look them in the eye and tell them I’m aware that you contacted a lot of my former employees and you, as you suggested to one of them, that you go to her home and look at her old emails,” she said. “That is so beyond the pale, but that’s who they are.”>

<Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld has blamed the death of a homeless Black man put into a chokehold by an ex-marine in a New York City subway train, on the murder of George Floyd.

The death of Jordan Neely, who had complained of hunger and thirst, shocked and horrified scores of Americans who blamed the incident on the dehumanisation of not just Black communities but homeless members of society as well.

The death has also evoked comparisons with the murder of Floyd. Gutfeld, however, had a different take on Neely’s ghastly death – that was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner on Wednesday.

“If anybody says this is like George Floyd, no, it’s because of George Floyd,” he said on The Five on Thursday.

“Because since George Floyd, we’ve had the resulting chaos, the defunding, the emasculation of the police – egged on by The Squad, by the media, by different media outlets, except CNN. That created the pathway and a void where you saw fewer police.”

Gutfeld’s two-minute rant on Neely’s death had him seem to excuse vigilantism as a natural response to protests against police brutality as well as calling New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and MSNBC host Chris Hayes “disgusting”.

He also said people “can’t even take the subway anymore” and claimed liberals “didn’t give a s***” about Neely.

Gutfeld, a native of San Mateo, California, hosts a nightly show on the Fox News Channel.

He suggested that he supported the actions of the man who placed Neely in a chokehold. The man has not been arrested, though the Manhattan district attorney’s office is currently investigating the incident.

“They had to make the decision on their own,” Gutfeld said. “There was [sic] no police. They were adult men. It was on them: a chance to act. And they chose to act. And I support the fact that they thought people were in trouble.”

Neely, who worked as a notable Michael Jackson impersonator around New York to support himself in the aftermath of the murder of his mother in 2007, had reportedly fallen on hard times and was homeless when he was killed.

His friends remembered him this week as a joyous presence in their lives, with a gift for dancing.

Neely was said to have been acting erratically on the subway before he was placed in the chokehold, but had not attacked anyone and did not appear to be armed.

A number of prominent public officials and groups have labeled Neely’s death a murder. Ms Ocasio-Cortez described the incident as a “public execution”, though New York governer Kathy Hochul and mayor Eric Adams, in their initial comments about the incident, were both unwilling to condemn the passenger who choked Neely.

New York, like many major cities around the country, has dealt with rising rates of homelessness alongside rising rates of income and wealth inequality in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.>

Out of tune, racist dumbass about sums up this whole bit.

<Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Mickey Mouse dilemma goes beyond the debate about the proper use of state power to combat "woke" corporations. DeSantis' critics on both the right and left missed the main plot: woke companies from Disney to BlackRock won special deals from the governor, in a way that undermines the credibility of his crusade against them.The Walt Disney Company is now suing DeSantis, claiming he orchestrated “a targeted campaign of government retaliation,” which it said stemmed from the company’s criticism of the Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed the "Don't Say Gay Bill" by critics. This move follows Disney’s attempt to defenestrate the power of a DeSantis-appointed governing board and DeSantis’ retaliatory suggestions to bring other amusement parks to the state, impose new tax levies and regulations on Disney, and even to locate a state prison near Disney World.

DeSantis’ chief defense is persuasive at face value: companies like Disney shouldn't have special crony privileges in the first place. Disney has long enjoyed a smorgasbord of special privileges and legal carveouts as a product of its lobbying, even granted self-governing status for the last 50 years courtesy of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a special-tax district near Orlando that allows Disney to self-govern the land that houses its resort.

Before DeSantis rescinded them, these privileges allowed Disney to skirt local government approval processes, regulations and “impact fees” levied on property developers, and other regulations that competitors still have to navigate.

DeSantis helped Disney before he decided to fight the company But here’s the problem for DeSantis: as governor, he was also a purveyor of indefensible corporate welfare to Disney itself. In 2021, DeSantis signed a political anti-discrimination statute that penalized companies for engaging in viewpoint-based censorship on the internet. This was a signature piece of legislation in his anti-woke crusade, but the law specifically exempts companies in Florida that own a theme park larger than 25 acres. Disney’s internet properties and streaming services were exempted from a statute that was designed to stem corporate "wokeness" in Florida.

DeSantis’ own director of legislative affairs lobbied for the Disney loophole. DeSantis’ chief budget officer, policy chief and his then-general counsel also worked behind the curtain to change the terms of the bill to create the special carveout for Disney. Several lawmakers who voted in favor of that law had received campaign contributions from Disney....>

<....In his February 2022 announcement that he was purging Disney’s perks, DeSantis declared: “The corporate kingdom finally comes to an end, there's a new sheriff in town, and accountability will be the order of the day." That declaration falls flat when the same sheriff granted the corporate kingdom one of the crony capitalist privileges he ceremoniously cancelled.

Disney’s lobbying-laced exemption from the 2021 political viewpoint discrimination statute is even more relevant than its special tax district status because the point of the law was to combat corporate "wokeness" itself. When Disney waded into Florida's culture war, it’s as though karma answered DeSantis’ own call.

New legislation provided loopholes for Disney
Amazingly, Florida’s tech legislation continues to include new loopholes for Disney this year. A DeSantis-supported 2023 bill to safeguard technology companies from harvesting Floridians’ personal information is written in a way that would include traditional technology companies that own and operate internet properties − but not Disney − by applying to companies only if their online advertising accounts for 50% of the company’s revenue, despite Disney’s advanced online advertisement business.This is part of a broader pattern of behavior for DeSantis, a bait-and-switch headline strategy with respect to supposedly woke companies that he goes out of his way to protect. Take Florida’s relationship with BlackRock: DeSantis purported to take BlackRock to task by prominently announcing that Florida’s treasury would yank $2 billion in assets from the financial services company. The announcement was hailed by conservative media, notching yet another perceived political win for DeSantis in 2022.

But as with Disney, the move was just a PR stunt. The money Florida pulled wasn’t even causing the real ESG-related trouble. Florida claimed it pulled the money because it didn’t want to “fund BlackRock’s social engineering project.” But BlackRock pursues its environmental, social and governance investing strategy mainly via its clients’ stock holdings, where BlackRock leverages its position as the largest “shareholder” in American companies to push environmental and social goals. Florida’s $2 billion was largely in cash and bonds, not stocks, and it represented a fraction of the $13 billion total Florida had invested in BlackRock funds.

Then in January, Florida and BlackRock struck a truce. BlackRock could continue to manage Florida’s $13 billion in pension assets, so long as it abandoned ESG investing strategies. But BlackRock hasn’t, and it won’t, even if Florida’s money is invested in ostensibly neutral index funds. That’s because BlackRock makes virtually no distinction in how it pursues environmental and social justice in its ESG vs its non-ESG funds.

When it comes to using those shares to push ESG goals on American companies, BlackRock uses every single share it controls. Just listen to BlackRock’s own comments: “[BlackRock] actually integrate[s] ESG . . . . regardless of whether that portfolio has an ESG objective or not”; “A sustainable fund uses ESG integration, yes, but a non-sustainable fund also uses ESG”; “BlackRock now makes environmental considerations part of all our investment decisions.”

DeSantis and the corporations he lambasts are in a peculiarly co-dependent relationship: the governor gets his conservative news media hits, while companies like Disney and BlackRock get to continue doing exactly what they wanted to in the first place. In the meantime, constituents of both political parties are left fighting over nothing of any real substance.

In 1900, a Republican governor with presidential aspirations stood up against what he considered to be corrupt political forces. New York Gov. Teddy Roosevelt coined a phrase that history remembers him for: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Today, Ron DeSantis may fashion himself in Teddy Roosevelt’s image, but he plays the part with a twist: speak loudly and carry a small stick.>

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had only just completed her bipartisan rage-tweet before returning from castigating “both parties” for America’s problems to blaming Democrats exclusively. Greene portrays a world in which the United States has no enemies worth mentioning outside its own borders, and where the chief danger to the future of the U.S. is the opposing political party within it.

Speaking to former Trump advisor Kimberly Guilfoyle, who does not interrupt or question Greene’s assertions, Greene mentions only vaguely what she believes American problems actually are. Instead, the Congresswoman launches a fear-stoking rhetoric that equates Democrats not just with Communists, but with Stalin-style Communism wherein dissenting voices are silenced by being incarcerated.

“We need to always remember who the Democrats are. These are the same people who when they were in charge last Congress, they would have loved to put every single one of us in jail. They would have loved to put you and your family in jail. President Trump in jail. People in his administration in jail,” Greene says. “They wanted to end everything that we know to exist.”

Guilfoyle does not ask Greene about the breadth of her accusation, which asserts that Democrats would imprison conservative families (“to put you and your family in jail”). Nor is Greene questioned about the logic of her assertions, even after Greene says that those who allegedly want to put conservatives in jail were “in charge last Congress” — and yet no Republican lawmaker was sent to prison.

Greene also implies that, rather than China or Iran or Russia, the Democratic Party “is the enemy we are dealing with.” Without saying what it is, specifically, that this enemy is doing, Greene says “we have to end what they have been doing to this country and to the American people.”

Green’s dog whistle is that “they want to fundamentally change America.” Her constituency, as she understands it, is one that doesn’t like certain kinds of change.>

<Clarence Thomas’ billionaire friend could be hit with hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes for the gifts he bestowed on the Supreme Court Justice, anew report stated Friday.

Harlan Crow reportedly took Thomas on pricey vacations and helped pay for the judge’s grandnephew’s boarding school tuition – all without Thomas declaring it, ProPublica reported.

One of those trip was a yacht jaunt around the Indonesian archipelago that ProPublic valued at $500,000.

And now the Daily Beast reported that, on top of the ethics scandal Thomas is embroiled in, Crow could find himself landed with hefty “gift taxes.”

“That Thomas has made multiple lapses in ethical judgment in not reporting the receipt of such valued largesse from Crow is something for him, SCOTUS, and now Congress to muse over,” the Beast reported.

“But what about Crow’s judgment? Did he file gift tax returns and pay gift taxes on any of the gifts he provided to the Thomas family?

“It is a reasonable question to ask, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) appears to have formally done so, with a reported due date of a response May 8. In lieu of gift taxes, did Crow expense the value of the trips and tuition provided the Thomases on either personal or business income tax returns? Wyden wants to know.”

The Daily Beast reported that any gifts topping a certain amount need to be taxed. The cap this year is $17,000 and Crow’s reported gifts are worth substantially more than that, the report said.

“The Indonesian junket — valued at over $500,000 by ProPublica — would generate gift taxes of approximately $200,000 for Mr. Crow,” wrote the Daily Beast.

And if he did, instead, declare the payments as business expenses, he would find himself in a different kind of trouble, the Beast reported.

“That’s because Crow has publicly stated he did not discuss any business before the court with Justice Thomas,” the report said.

“If that is true, then it is possible that Crow falsified his income tax returns by expensing the cost of the vacation provided the Thomases.”>

<Political nepo baby Sarah Huckabee Sanders went on right wingnut Dan Bongino’s podcast this week, where she talked about how people from blue states, California in particular, have been flocking to Arkansas over the past few years because it’s such a wonderful utopia for people with conservative values.

“Our economy is strong. Our state is doing well. And you know what? We don’t let the government dictate every minute and every second of your life here in our state,” the gay-hating governor said. “We believe not only in individual and personal freedom, but in making sure we do things that protect those freedoms.”

This, of course, is completely false.

Not only is Arkansas the fourth poorest state in the nation with a mounting affordable housing crisis and massive food insecurity, but since taking office in January, Sanders has signed several different laws controlling people’s behavior–from banning books and the gender-neutral term “Latinx”, to policing what bathrooms trans and nonbinary people can use, to restricting teachers from talking about race, sexual orientation, or gender identity in the classroom.

Now, here comes the kicker.

Speaking to Bongino, Sanders continued, “We have seen people from all over the country, blue states in particular, flooding into our state.”

She went on to say that, while running for governor, she traveled to all 75 counties in Arkansas and, in every single one, she met people who had moved there from out of state.

“Predominantly California,” she claimed. “And the message I gave them was very simple. Welcome to Arkansas. Don’t forget why you left California.”

Sanders added that she’s “excited” to welcome more people into the state–provided they are cisgender, straight, preferably white, Christian, and Republican.

“Our door is open,” she said. “We’re going to keep taking them as long as they remember why they left those blue states in the first place.”

Here’s how people, including many residents of Arkansas, responded when Sanders shared a soundbite from her interview with Bongino on Twitter today…

Yesterday, Sanders declared it “National Day of Prayer” in Arkansas and called for all citizens to get down on their knees and pray.

“Public prayer is a long-standing and significant tradition of American history,” she said in a press release. “Now, therefore, I, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, acting under the authority vested in me as Governor of the State of Arkansas, do hereby proclaim May 4th, 2023, as National Day of Prayer in Arkansas and urge the citizens of the state to recognize this event and participate fittingly in its observance.”

Hmmmm. What was that Sanders just said about “individual and personal freedom” and not letting the government “dictate every minute and every second of your life” again?>

<If you thought Fox News would take a new direction in prime time following the ouster of conservative provocateur Tucker Carlson, the choice for fill-in host in the hour next week suggests otherwise.

Kayleigh McEnany, who served 10 months as press secretary in the Trump administration, is getting a weeklong tryout in the high profile 8 p.m. Eastern hour starting Monday.

The network is searching for a replacement for Carlson, who was fired April 24 amid revelations that he made racist comments, promoted a conspiracy about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and sent texts critical of Fox News correspondents who fact-checked the unfounded election fraud claims on the network, even though he did not believe them himself.

But there are no signs Fox News is giving up on provocative and inflammatory viewpoints in the hour. McEnany comes in with a head start on creating controversy as she made a racially offensive crack Friday on "Outnumbered," the Fox News daytime show where she is a co-host.

McEnany introduced a discussion of a New York City protest over the May 1 killing of a Black homeless man by a Marine veteran on a subway train. Jordan Neely, 30, who had a history of mental illness and multiple arrests for assault, ranted and allegedly terrorized passengers before the veteran put him in a choke hold that police have determined caused his death.

After coming out of video showing a drum-beating mixed-race crowd chanting about Neely’s death, McEnany said “Justice or burn it down — well at least they have rhythm,” evoking a stereotype about Black people.

Through a Fox News representative, McEnany said she did not know the racial make-up of the protesters. She said she heard singing in her ear through the segment and did not see the video.

But her remark was not lost on critics who saw it on Twitter. Many said it showed how McEnany is ready to pander to the MAGA element in Carlson’s audience, which has fled in droves since the host was ousted.

"OMG! #KayLie doesn't even try to hide her bigotry. C'mon #FauxNews! Can't you hire someone better?" wrote Erin Snider, a retired teacher, on Twitter.

Fox News has lost more than 50% of the 3 million-plus viewers who were watching Carlson in the hour, and has seen declines throughout prime time in the wake of his firing.

The network is still the most-watched cable news channel, outperforming MSNBC and CNN, according to Nielsen.

McEnany, the third on-air talent to get a tryout in Carlson's time period, was hired by Fox News in March 2021.

During her tenure at the White House, McEnany had a reputation for perpetuating Trump's falsehoods from the lectern of the White House briefing room.

Fox News even cut away from her during a Nov. 9, 2020 press conference, when she repeated Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud in the election he lost to Joe Biden.

Airing such claims cost Fox News mightily, as it paid a record setting $787.5-million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems, which sued the Rupert Murdoch-controlled network for defamation....>

<Two Supreme Court justices did not recuse themselves from cases that arose before the court involving their book publisher, Penguin Random House, according to a recent CNN report.

There have been two cases that came before the Supreme Court involving publishing conglomerate Penguin Random House. In both situations, the Supreme Court declined to take on the copyright infringement cases, allowing the publisher to win at a lower court level.

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was confirmed in 2009, was on the high court during both cases, which occurred in 2013 and 2019-2020. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch was confirmed in 2017 and was also a member of the Supreme Court during the second case.

Sotomayor and Gorsuch had both signed major book deals with the publisher before the cases occurred, and both justices declined to recuse themselves from the cases involving Penguin Random House. Former Justice Stephen Breyer, who had reported receiving royalties from the publisher, recused himself from each of the cases.

According to Sotomayor's financial disclosures, as CNN reported, she's made approximately $3.6 million in royalties and advances for the several books she's published under Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is part of Penguin Random House.

As for Gorsuch, his financial disclosures note he's made at least $655,000 from Penguin Random House over the past few years from his book, "A Republic, If You Can Keep It."

Gorsuch and Sotomayor's decision not to recuse themselves from the two publishing cases has received fresh scrutiny after a series of reports from ProPublica revealed that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted numerous lavish vacations and gifts from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.

A key difference between the revelation about Gorsuch and Sotomayor compared with the recent news about Thomas, however, is the manner in which the news was collected. In Sotomayor and Gorsuch's case, the impropriety was discovered due to the diligent record-keeping of their earnings in their financial disclosures. In Thomas' case, however, his accepted gifts were only discovered due to whistleblowers and leakers coming forward to ProPublica.

Prior to the news of Sotomayor, Gorsuch, and Thomas' mishaps, a group of 15 Democratic senators declared they want to withhold $10 million from the Supreme Court's funding until the group high court institutes a public code of ethics, an idea that Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen — the chair of a subcommittee in charge of the Supreme Court's budget — has encouraged.

"It is unacceptable that the Supreme Court has exempted itself from the accountability that applies to all other members of our federal courts, and I believe Congress should act to remedy this problem," Van Hollen told the Washington Post.>

<In a series of posts to his Truth Social platform on Friday morning, former President Donald Trump attacked the Justice Department and special counsel Jack Smith.

The former president first turned his ire to the January 6 prosecutions — hot on the heels of key figures in the far-right Proud Boys being found guilty of seditious conspiracy.

"Back in the USA, but sadly I see so many really bad things happening to our Country," wrote Trump. "The DOJ and FBI are destroying the lives of so many Great American Patriots, right before our very eyes. The Court System is a RUBBER STAMP for their conviction and imprisonment. All this while the Radical Left protects and coddles extremists and murderers at a level, and with intensity, never seen before. GET SMART AMERICA, THEY ARE COMING AFTER YOU!!!"

Trump also attacked Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating both the January 6 attack and the classified document stash at the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort, which has similarly expanded in recent days to probe how the Trump Organization handled Mar-a-Lago's security footage — even comparing the investigators to the secret police of Nazi Germany.

"The leaking coming out of the Special 'Prosecutors' Office and DOJ is unparalleled, and illegal," Trump wrote, baselessly adding, "THEY ARE LEAKING EVERYTHING, WITH ABSOLUTELY NO SHAME OR GUARDRAILS."

"These people are thugs and criminals who allow ANTIFA & BLM to thrive and flourish, but who use full Gestapo force to shut down opposition and Interfere in our Elections. which is what this BULL…. is all about!" he continued.>