Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, during her testimony this morning before the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, was asked if she knew what Habeas Corpus was, and it became obvious very quickly that she had no idea whatsoever, claiming that it was a Constitutional 'right' given to the president which allowed him to suspend the rights of individuals and remove them from the country, she went on to claim that Lincoln used this 'right' during the civil war. When it was pointed out to her that she had gotten it totally backwards, that the right of Habeas Corpus was a Constitutional right protecting a person from being arrested without the government providing them with a reason for their arrest and allowing them to make a defense, she then claimed that the Constitution allowed the president to suspend that right anytime that he wanted to. She was again told that NO, that that was wrong, that the president would first need the approval of Congress.

Noem has a BA in Political Science, but perhaps the class covering the US Constitution was one that she got 'college intern credits' for while she was serving as a member of Congress in 2012.

OCU

I can see Trump going after organizations like the ACLU or the SPLC, to say nothing of private universities and perhaps even religious organizations, like a Mosque or a Temple.

OCU

I suspect that WalMart's executive team will focus on shareholder value, rather than appeasing a bully. Willingly cutting profits is a great way for a CEO to lose his/her job...

#6 | Posted by catdog at 2025-05-19 01:12 PM

Walmart's CFO said that they might hold off on raising the prices of some products so as to gain more market share as the smaller retailers won't be able to absorb the price increases as well as they can. And yet people still wonder why so many despise Walmart and have sworn to never shop there (I can count on one hand the number of times that I've been inside a Walmart store).

OCU

Thank you...

OCU

I can sympathize with the former president as MY prostate cancer has metastasized to the upper lobe of my right lung and at least one lymph node in my chest.

I was diagnosed nearly four years ago and underwent nine-weeks of radiation treatments, which at the time we thought we had it beat, but this past October my PSA spiked back up to nearly 8.0 and the scans showed that the cancer had moved, but the prostate was clear so the radiation worked, just that some cancer cells 'escaped' before they were killed. The diagnosis is that it's stage-four, incurable and inoperative, but it is treatable, if you can afford it. Thank God for Medicare Part 'D'.

Last year the out-of-pocket cap for prescription drugs was $3,200. This year it's $2,000. The medication that they have me on is $17,296/MONTH. I hit my cap the first month of this year. I also have to have an injection of a hormone suppressant every six-months, which costs close to $7,000, but my Medicare Part 'B' pays for that. This drug regimen has been around for about 10-years now and has been shown to be very effective for at least three to five-years, and perhaps longer if we've caught it soon enough. So far, all of my tests (blood draws every three-months) appears to show that I'm responding well. The real test will come in October when they do another set of scans and then we'll know if the drugs are doing what they're intended to do, keeping it from spreading. If it stays contained, I can live with it for at least the foreseeable future. The goal is to get it to where it's simply a chronic condition, sort of like diabetes, incurable but treatable.

Anyway, I hope that there are treatment options for the former president which would offer him the same sort of prognosis as I've been given. Now there's an age difference, Biden is 82 and I'll be 78 in August, so that might complicate things, so we'll have to see.

OCU

AG Pam Bondi went so far as to claim that allowing this 'device' to be sold, will actually "enhance public safety". I'm not sure how she came to that conclusion, but we'll see what happens the first time one of these 'devices' are found in a weapon used during a mass shooting.

OCU

JPL - up the road from me. If you ever get an opportunity, do a tour

#2 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2025-05-17 03:50 AM

Yes, JPL was a customer of ours (for engineering software used to design, test and manufacture their spacecrafts), and I had several opportunities to visit their facilities. In fact, our CEO was invited to JPL to be there during the landing of the 'Curiosity' Mars rover in August 2012.

OCU

After all, Trump's got to get everyone out of Gaza so that Jared and his investors can go ahead with thier plans to turn Gaza into a world-class Mediterranean luxury resort.

OCU

Comer will regret it.

I'm waiting anyday now to hear, "My account was hacked".

#13 | Posted by BillJohnson at 2025-05-16 10:39 AM

His name is James Comey. James Comer is some wacko Republican Congressman from Kentucky.

OCU

OK looks like May 25-29 is a "State work period" when Legislators return to their home districts and states to hold Town Meetings with their constituents.

#4 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-05-16 06:50 PM

Fat chance of many Republicans holding town halls, at least not anything open to all of their constituents. They'll be calling them 'private gatherings' and checking voter ID cards at the door and only allowing registered Republicans to attend, which may not actually protect them much from the ire of the voters.

OCU

The irony is that the name of this group includes the word 'weaponization', which was exactly what Trump and his people accused the last couple of Democratic administrations of, yet the description of what their charter is going to be, it sure sounds like an attempt to 'weaponize' the DOJ.

That being said, using the vocabulary of one Donald J Trump, this has all the markings of a "witch hut" (I'll leave it to Trump to use all-caps).

OCU

You know, it may be reporting like this which is prompting Trump to try and end federal funding for NPR and PBS.

OCU

Remember when Republicans and the right-wing media attacked Biden for flying immigrants into the US. The claim was that Biden did this in the middle of the night to try and hide what was happening. Of course, Trump would never try to hide these flights bringing in White South African 'refugees'. No, he would do it out in the bright light of day, so as to rub it in the faces of everyone, showing them what he can get away with, to say nothing of trying to ingratiate himself with the far-right/White nationalist crowd.

OCU

The effects of the tariffs are starting to be noticed, if not yet in the stores, it's manifesting itself in other ways...

Our oldest son, and some of his family, drove out from Texas about 10-days or so ago, via the Palm Springs area and eventually ending up in Monterey, CA to visit their oldest daughter and family. They then stopped and spent a couple days with us and then stopped again in the desert to visit our daughter-in-law's sister. They then left on Thursday arriving back in Katy, TX, late, this past Friday evening.

They've driven this same round trip from Texas, perhaps not the Monterey portion, but at least the Irvine, via Palm Springs, route many times over the years.

Our son said that on the way out here he noticed that truck traffic was a bit less but not really that noticeable if you didn't stop and think about it. However, on their way back to Texas this past Thursday and Friday, he said it was like night and day. He had never seen the roads so empty of big rigs. He said it was almost eerie, like some scene from an apocalyptic movie. What really got his attention was that they had driven that same route, at least between Katy and Palm Springs, only a week ago and in that time, things had totally changed.

OCU

And speaking of federal workers leaving their jobs, Republicans in Congress are now talking about reducing the pension benefits for federal employees. They say that they're still looking for places where they can get the money needed to pay for Trump's 'big beautiful bill' that they've been working on for the last couple of months.

OCU

IRS Hopes to Replace Fired Enforcement Workers with AI

Following considerable cuts to its enforcement workforce, the US's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to use AI to supplement its ability to collect taxes from US citizens.

Posted by LampLighter at 11:31 PM

What could possibly go wrong...

OCU

This is a very dangerous place to go since once this has been invoked, there would be nothing stopping Trump from arresting virtually anyone he deems to not be supporting America, which in his mind, is becoming more and more to mean himself.

OCU

I mean, she had less than a year left in her 10-year term. Trump could have simply waited, but then he would not have seemed sufficiently mean spirited enough to the MAGA crowd as she was an obvious DEI hire, despite the fact that Dr. Hayden was an actual librarian, unlike most of the people who've held that position in the past.

OCU

Why did the hebrews wander in the desert 40 years?
-one of them dropped a quarter

#6 | Posted by chiligordo at 2025-05-08 04:22 PM

And then they settled in the only place where there was NO oil.

OCU

When a Pope selects his pontifical name, it's often to indicate how he wants the Church and the world to see him, that is when you look at the previous Pope who carried that name, in the case of our new Pope, he's telling people to look at what Pope Leo XIII was noted for.

For more on Pope Leo XIII, go to:

While Pope Leo XIV is an American from Chicago, and he attended the seminary in Chicago, he was ordained in Rome and until 2023, when he was made a Cardinal and was brought to Rome by Pope Francis, he had been serving virtually all of his liturgical career in Peru, where he became a naturalized citizen in 2015.

OCU

The new Pope will be known as Pope Leo XIV.

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The average Conclave, at least for the last three or four Popes, has been two-days or so. The shortest Conclave was 10-hours in 1503. The longest was just short of three-years in 1268, after which was when then started locking the Cardinals in St. Peters so that they were motivated to be a bit more expeditious.

The new Pope is an American, Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, from Chicago.

OCU

I guess adding the Bible to public school curriculums wasn't enough...

OCU

Now Trump want's to rename Veteran's Day to 'Victory Day for World War I' and declare May 8th as 'Victory Day for World War II'. He implied that the United States won both of these wars, claiming that no on else came close to accomplishing what we did but we never celebrate that fact.

It's interesting in that Trump appears to not know when World War II actually ended. He's suggesting that May 8th is the appropriate day to celebrate this historical event. Do you know who else celebrates the end of World War II on May 8th? Russia. Just so that Trump knows, if he's trying to give the United States credit for winning World War II, he should be looking at making September 2nd 'Victory Day for World War II', as that's the day Japan formally surrendered, just like November 11th, 'Veterans Day' (what used to be called 'Armistice Day') was the day that Germany formally surrendered after World War I.

And just so that you know, it appears that the Pentagon is going ahead with plans to hold a military parade in Washington DC on June 14th to commemorate the birth of Donald J. Trump.

OCU