Minnesota leaders are calling on the federal government to allow state investigators to probe the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman by an ICE agent in south Minneapolis, after the FBI took sole ownership of the probe. "The FBI informed the [Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension] that the U.S. Attorney's Office had reversed course: the investigation would now be led solely by the FBI," said the state's top investigative agency. Gov. Tim Walz pushed back on the federal government on Jan. 8, saying, "Minnesota must be part of this investigation." State Attorney General Keith Ellison also addressed federal authorities during a CNN interview: "My question is, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of an independent investigation for?"
The first definitive evidence of poisoned arrowheads came from the mid-Holocene, in an Egyptian tomb dated to about 4,400 years ago and in a South African cave dating to about 6,700 years ago. In both cases, the arrows had been tipped with toxic plant compounds in what's considered by the study authors "a hallmark of advanced hunter-gatherer technology." But now, researchers from the University of Stockholm and the University of Johannesburg have detected traces of natural poison on five of 10 arrow tips collected from the Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In the first direct evidence of poison applied to Pleistocene hunting weapons, the discovery backs up the timing of human use of poisoned arrows by orders of magnitude, to about 60,000 years ago. read more
Approaching the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day is nowhere to be found. read more
The Trump transition team was informed about the DOJ's bribery investigation into Tom Homan, the former acting director of ICE whom Donald Trump tapped as his border czar shortly after he prevailed in the 2024 presidential election ... read more
Dear President Trump, Of all the wrong ideas you hold in your heart"that tariffs are paid by foreigners, that good looks are the chief credential for cabinet offices, that the 2020 election was rigged, that allies are bloodsuckers we'd be better off without"perhaps the most gobsmacking is your cherished notion that people respect you when they kiss your ass. read more
The film I mentioned is The Hunters (1957) (en.wikipedia.org(1957_film)). Just checked and it's also available on YouTube: youtu.be and youtu.be
Cassidy's behavior is typical of the enablers. Susan Glasser writes about them in "Trump's Golden Age of Awful."
Just a year ago, it was still possible to envision a different course for Trump's second term"to imagine that, while the President himself might really mean to carry through with his most radical plans, there remained strong forces in society to resist him. Republican leaders in Congress and the Trump-appointed conservative majority on the Supreme Court may yet prove to be something other than the willing handmaidens of democracy's demise, but they have so far failed to do so. This past year's disruptions are as much their work as Trump's; without their acquiescence, as passive or unwilling as it has been at times, many of Trump's most extreme acts would not have been possible. Just think about Senator Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana, a medical doctor who made much of the "assurances" he extracted from Trump's vaccine-denying nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Kennedy won his confirmation vote, then broke the pledges he had made to get it. Cassidy has, in the tradition of the Senate, been deeply concerned ever since.
www.newyorker.com
"I thought we grabbed Maduro to stem socialism in the Americas, not to turn D.C. into Caracas on the Potomac," said a defense industry official, referring to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro.
www.politico.com
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
Karl Marx, 1875
Yours is a very needy president, Boaz.