Category: Republican Reality

Critics: Postal Service plans imperil community newspapers

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The U.S. Postal Service’s plan to raise mailing rates could present one more damaging blow to community newspapers already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and advertising declines, a trade group says. 

Rates on periodicals would increase by more than 8% as of Aug. 29, according to agency filings. The price jump is part of a broad plan pushed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to overhaul mail operations. 

The impact of the periodical rate increase is expected to be felt most by small daily and weekly newspapers, as well as rural newspapers, which depend on the Postal Service since they have shifted from using independent contractors for deliveries. Continue reading.

TV news crews are increasingly threatened with violence on the job

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TV reporter Dillon Collier went to cover the aftermath of a house fire in a San Antonio neighborhood Monday morning. A routine story, he thought. But it turned out to be much more than that.

As he interviewed family members on the sidewalk outside the burned home, a man emerged from it shouting epithets at Collier and his station’s video journalist Joshua Saunders. The man also had two handguns — one of which he began firing. Collier, Saunders and members of the family scattered as bullets flew in their direction.

Police later fatally shot the gunman after he fired on them from the house. Collier and his colleague were unhurt but shaken. “I think I’m okay,” the reporter told The Post on Tuesday evening. “It’s going to take a while to process this.” Continue reading.

Civil rights leaders find meeting with WH ‘encouraging’ amidst voting rights battle

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President Biden met with civil rights leaders for almost two hours on Thursday as part of a broader effort by his administration to focus on voting rights, a key part of his agenda that has struggled to overcome the roadblock that is the evenly split Senate. 

The civil rights leaders emerged from the meeting, which included discussions on voting rights legislation and police reform, describing the U.S. as in a state of emergency. 

They cited restrictive voting laws imposed this year in states such as Georgia and Florida, and a recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld Arizona’s voting restrictions. Continue reading.

Report: 2 Seattle police officers broke law during DC riots

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SEATTLE — Two Seattle police officers who were in Washington, D.C., during the Jan. 6 insurrection were illegally trespassing on Capitol grounds while rioters stormed the building, but they lied about their actions, a police watchdog said in a report released Thursday.

“They were both standing in the immediate vicinity of the Capitol Building in direct view of rioters lining the steps and climbing the walls,” the Office of Police Accountability said in its report, citing video evidence. “OPA finds it unbelievable that they could think that this behavior was not illegal, contrary to their claims at their OPA interviews.”

After the release of the OPA report, Chief Adrian Diaz said he will hold accountable any Seattle Police Department officer involved in the insurrection, including disciplinary action up to and including termination. He said he would make a decision within 30 days. Continue reading.

Pentagon pushes back at GOP lawmakers over critical race theory claims

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“There is no contradiction here,” the Pentagon’s top spokesperson said.

The Pentagon is defending comments made by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin after GOP lawmakers claimed the military chief misrepresented the department’s stance on the teaching of critical race theory.

On Wednesday, an Air Force Academy professor wrote an op-ed in defense of discussing the subject with cadets, which prompted the lawmakers to criticize Austin, who said last month that the military does not teach critical race theory.

“There is no contradiction here. The Secretary’s comments stand,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told POLITICO Thursday. “That a professor at an academic institution such as the Air Force Academy teaches a given theory as part of an elective course does not in the slightest way signify some larger effort by the Department to teach, espouse or embrace said theory. Continue reading.

Why Mike Pence exploded at Trump — and 5 other stunning details from a new report on their finals days

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It’s no secret that former President Donald Trump’s last days in office were a political rollercoaster. Some of the chaos happened in plain sight, especially before he was kicked off Twitter. But despite his Twitter obsession, there were still things that occurred behind closed doors that are just coming to light. 

A new report published by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday sheds light on the unceasing chaos that ensued as the clock ticked down to 0 on Trump’s presidency. The author Michael C. Bender offered a detailed depiction of what went on behind the scenes of the Trump administration.

  1. Most of those around Trump actually believed he would eventually concede and do the right thing: Vice President Mike Pence and Republican National Committee (RNC) chairwoman Ronna McDaniel believed time would eventually give Trump the space he needed to process the devastating loss, Bender reported. Even his daughter Ivanka, who presumably knows her father better than others in his orbit, also thought he would come around and maybe invite Biden to the White House. That never happened, of course, and even now Trump insists he really won the election. Continue reading.

Senator’s Photos From Capitol On Jan. 6 Show Violent Insurrection Wreckage

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The pictures show yet again that the deadly riot at the Capitol was no “normal tourist visit,” as one Republican lawmaker previously put it.

Shattered glass. Overturned chairs. Broken furniture. This was some of the wreckage at the Capitol after the violent riot of Jan. 6, captured in newly released photos from a Democratic senator.

“I took these exactly six months ago – the morning after the insurrection,” Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown tweeted Wednesday, noting it was the first time he was sharing the footage. “This is what I saw in the Capitol.”

On Jan. 6, an armed mob of hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol where lawmakers were set to certify the results of the U.S. presidential election, which President Joe Biden had won. Five people died in the riots, including a Capitol Police officer.  Continue reading.

Kraken Lawyer Tells Judge ‘Any Attempt To String Cite [Caselaw] Would Be Insulting To All Involved’

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Listen, Judge. We’ve got cases backing us up. You wouldn’t believe how many cases we’ve got over here. In fact, it’s so many cases that I’m not even going to waste your time by pointing them out. 

While that sounds like something that a pro se litigant might have written, in this case it was Stefanie Lambert Juntilla, the local counsel for the Michigan Kraken lawsuit. A motion had been filed asking the court to take judicial notice of the Michigan legislature’s report debunking the facially bonkers election fraud claims that gave rise to the Kraken suits. Juntilla responds that the court should ignore the report because the legislature admits that the report is not “exhaustive” and a rogue member of the Michigan House claims that she — and she alone, apparently — is “in receipt of evidence reflecting systematic election fraud in Michigan that occurred in the November 2020 election.”

Italian space lasers? No… but apparently it’s Taiwan and Germany now?

Which brings Juntilla to this gem: Continue reading.

McConnell on American Rescue Plan, which he voted against: “State & local government are gonna benefit enormously.”


You can view the Recount video on Clipboard here.

Trump joked about Jamal Khashoggi’s grisly murder in phone calls to Saudi prince: report

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Former president Donald Trump cracked a joke about the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives, according to a new report.

The October 2018 murder of the U.S.-based journalist set off a crisis inside the White House, and Trump personally called Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and his father King Salman seeking answers about the slaying in Turkey, reported Yahoo’s “Conspiracyland” podcast.

“The president had multiple calls with MBS and with King Salman, specifically asking them, did you know anything about this?” said Kirsten Fontenrose, then the director of Gulf affairs at the National Security Council. “The president would flat-out ask, I mean, up to a dozen times on any individual phone call, whether it was with King Salman or with MBS or both of them, ‘Did you have any knowledge of this operation?’ ‘Did you know this was going to happen?’ ‘Did you give this order?'” Continue reading.