More from the article ...

... The targeted firms included Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Susman Godfrey and Jenner & Block. They had fought back against executive orders by Trump that took aim at their security clearances, government contracts and access to government buildings due to their clientele and hiring.

Perkins Coie has represented high-profile Democrats, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; WilmerHale employed former special counsel Robert Mueller after he investigated Trump; and Jenner & Block hired Andrew Weissmann, who was a part of Mueller's team.

The firms, which stood up to the administration at a time when many other major law firms caved, welcomed the administration's capitulation.

"As we said from the outset, our challenge to the unlawful Executive Order was about defending our clients' constitutional right to retain the counsel of their choosing and defending the rule of law. We are pleased these foundational principles were vindicated," a WilmerHale spokesperson said in a statement Monday. ,,,

@#5 ... Paxton is a criminal.

Therefore he'll win the GOP primary. ...

While I cannot say whether or not he will win, I do note...

Final results expected to be in.... when?

@#4

FTFY...

I never understood how shooting American citizens was something to brag about.

@#6 [continued] ....

Kennedy talks slow. He asks questions slow. He lets silence do the heavy lifting while the witness thinks they're getting away with something. They are not getting away with something.

He wanted to know about $220 million.

That's how much DHS spent on television advertisements during a government shutdown. A shutdown where TSA workers weren't getting paid. A shutdown happening while the United States is at war with Iran. Two hundred and twenty million dollars.

On ads.

Featuring Kristi Noem.

"How do you square that concern for waste," Kennedy asked, his voice somewhere between a Louisiana front porch and a federal courthouse, "with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently?"

Noem said the president told her to get the word out.

Kennedy raised an eyebrow that contained multitudes. "Well," he said, "they were effective in your name recognition."

He then noted that one of the companies that got the contract " Save America Media " was created eleven days before receiving it. That its head was the husband of Noem's former spokesperson. That other contractors had worked on her campaigns back in South Dakota.

Noem said that wasn't correct.

"I think it is," Kennedy said.

Then came the kill shot, delivered the way Kennedy delivers everything " like he's got nowhere to be and nothing to lose.

He read her own words back to her. On the record. January 27th. Noem, explaining away her "domestic terrorism" remarks after Minneapolis, said: "Everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Stephen."

Stephen Miller. The White House deputy chief of staff.

"You blamed those statements on Mr. Stephen Miller," Kennedy said.

Noem said that was anonymous sourcing.

"This wasn't anonymous," Kennedy said. "It was you."

Noem's allegation could have serious consequences for Miller once the presidency is over and the oversight chickens come to roost on the lawlessness that's defined DHS throughout Trump's terms in the White House.

In the end, there's a word for what happened in that room today, and the word is accountability. It's a word that gets thrown around so often in Washington that it has almost lost its meaning. Almost.

Today it meant something. Two Republicans " not broken migrant families, not the families of Renee Good or Alex Pretti, though God knows they all deserve answers " sat across from the woman running the nation's immigration apparatus and told her plainly: you are not fit for this job.

The migrants at the southern border didn't send Tillis or Kennedy. Nobody lobbied them. Nobody organized a march for them to attend.

They just looked at what's been done in America's name " the dead bodies, the wasted money, the stonewalled investigators, the dead dog invoked as a leadership seminar " and they decided they'd had enough.

That's not nothing. It might even be the beginning of something. But it's hopefully the end of something, too: Kristi Noem's embarrassing tenure as security of Homeland Security. ...

From the cited article...

... Sen. Thom Tillis is a former homebuilder from Charlotte, which means he knows the difference between a foundation and a faade. He looked at Noem and he saw a faade.

"I'm conducting your performance review here," he told her. "I don't seek a reply."

Ten minutes. No interruptions. The audience applauded more than once, which doesn't happen at Senate hearings unless something has gone badly wrong for whoever's sitting at the witness table.

Tillis reminded the room that two Americans " Renee Good and Alex Pretti " were shot dead by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. He reminded the room that Noem called them domestic terrorists, which turns out to have been a lie. He reminded the room that she never apologized.

"Why can't we just admit we made an error?" he asked.

Nobody answered. Noem had been told not to answer.

Then Tillis did something you don't see in these rooms very often. He got personal. Not petty-personal. Revealing-personal. He brought up the dog (see above).

If you missed it: Noem wrote in her 2024 memoir about shooting her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, and presenting the episode as a leadership lesson in "tough choices." Tillis trains dogs. He did not find this charming.

"You decided to kill that dog," he said, "because you had not invested the appropriate time in training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about tough choices."

The room went silent the way rooms do when someone says the thing everyone was thinking.

He drew the line himself, slow and deliberate, so nobody missed it: impulsive with the dog, impulsive in Minneapolis. A pattern isn't a coincidence. A pattern is a character.

"We are an exceptional nation," Tillis finished, "and part of that exceptionalism is our expectation of outstanding leadership. Unfortunately, what I've witnessed from you has been anything but that."

He had already called for her resignation. He wasn't changing his mind.

If Tillis was a five-alarm fire, Sen. John Kennedy was a gas leak " odorless, invisible, and far more dangerous.

[continued]...

The Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps. still seem to be the ones in power.

So, a regime change seems now to be an outlier case.

Which leads me to my main concern ...

What will the next leader of Iran be like?

How does FIFA feel now about awarding Pres Trump its first Peace prize?

Found this...

@#1 ... Skilled piloting is not a miracle, just good training. ...

Yup.

Among that training --- stay rational under adverse circumstances, don't panic.

I have a scanner, and I often have listened to the air traffic in the area. What always has amazed me is the calm and rational analysis the pilots have shown in the face of adversity.

@#25

The Philadelphia Inquirer has been a good news source.

But I cited an OpEd, so there's opinions therein.

That aside,

VP Vance has similar comments at the Munich Security Conference.

@#4

Most apropos quote.

thx.

More from the article ...

... The medical journal The Lancet did not pull any punches in a scathing editorial on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., calling the anti-vaccine activist's first year as US Health Secretary "a failure by most measures, especially his own."

The Lancet is one of the world's oldest academic medical journals still in publication and one of the most cited sources of peer-reviewed medical research. But it is also well-known for publishing an infamous study by prominent anti-vaccine activist and disgraced ex-physician Andrew Wakefield, which falsely claimed to find a link between vaccines and autism. The Lancet retracted the study more than a decade later.

Kennedy is among the prominent anti-vaccine activists who continue to embrace the thoroughly debunked claim, along with other dangerous conspiracy theories. The Lancet assailed Kennedy for spreading misinformation as the country's top health official and politicizing health policy at the expense of vulnerable Americans, including children.

"The destruction that Kennedy has wrought in one year might take generations to repair, and there is little hope for US health and science while he remains at the helm," the journal's editorial board wrote in its latest issue. ...

Another aspect to consider if the Strait of Hormuz is shutdown for a while...

The oil processing system in the area is not designed for storage, it is designed to pull the oil out of the ground and ship it off to somewhere.

From the reports I heard, there is no significant storage capability in the area.

So, if the oil cannot be shipped, then the countries pulling it out of the ground may have to stop pulling it out of the ground, reducing the available supply when the Strait of Hormuz reopens to normal traffic.

@#2 ... As a born-and-bred Staten Islander ...

Hey, me too.

But I haven't been back to the Isle of Staaten in about 50 years or so ...

@#16 ... Why? What are you basing this assumption on? ...

The oil fields in Venezuela are not going to come fully online overnight. It is going to take some time to get the oil flowing fully.

Meanwhile, The Strait of Hormuz is having problems now.

... at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ...

@#15 ... ran was close to giving in on negotiations, ...

And now with Pres Trump's ever-changing objectives, how does anyone, Iran included, even know what he wants to stop his unprovoked war on Iran?

Apologies for the double post. The site told me there were problems with the submission and that I should try again.

Looks like some site issues this evening.

@#15 ... "Lindsey Graham: "If we lose anybody in this operation, they will die a noble death because they will have sacrificed their lives to make us safer here at home."" ...

Related ...

@#15 ... Lindsey Graham: "If we lose anybody in this operation, they will die a noble death because they will have sacrificed their lives to make us safer here at home." ...

Related ...

@#10 ... whatever he has after that---WHATEVER IT IS---He'll claim victory. ...

That is likely why Pres Trump is so cagey about what his actual objectives are.

He started out saying he wanted a regime change.

Is that still one of his objectives? If not, why not?

!#14 ... Why? ...

If the Strait of Hormuz is shutdown, then oil prices will increase (as they have just when there was a threat of it shutting down).

I doubt if Venezuela can make up for the oil that would be missing from the world market if Hormuz were shutdown.

And then there is the comparison of the quality of the Middle East oil compared to that f the Venezuelian oil.