More: The North Carolina State Board of Elections Friday voted 3-2 along party lines to pass two numbered memos, despite voter opposition, that make it harder for voters to return their absentee ballots and easier for counties to throw those ballots out.

The Board revisited the measures after more than 10 people formally objected and requested legislative review. But with the election nearly underway, the Board circumvented the General Assembly to quickly greenlight the restrictions.

The memos were not publicized until 7:09 a.m. today " just hours before mail-in ballots are set to go out at noon.

Overall, we rate Civitas Institute as far-Right Biased based advocacy for policy issues that align with Christian Conservative Ideology. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to the use of questionable sources and rejection of scientific consensus on some issues.

From an OpEd from The Charlotte Observer today: "I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country," Tillis wrote on X. "He is intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force."

A reminder: the disaster that has been Pete Hegseth was completely avoidable, and Tillis can blame himself for it. Hegseth was supremely unqualified from the start, and Tillis had every reason to be skeptical about his leadership before he was even confirmed. And he was, until he folded at the last minute after President Trump threatened a primary challenge. Had Tillis had more of a spine, we might not have this problem.

Tillis may be right about Hegseth's incompetence, but he's the wrong person to be complaining about it. Which is why his post received thousands of replies from people who really didn't want to hear it.

--

Tillis deserves every bit of the criticism he's getting. After years of watching Tillis undermine his own words with his actions, people are just tired of hearing it. He may be more willing to speak up now that he's retiring, but he often didn't have the courage to do so when it mattered. No amount of outrage or clever innuendo is going to change that.

As one commenter put it: "He put his career over his country, and in the end damaged both."

"priced for collecting"

You mean scam priced. You fools paid more than a dollar for a dollar coin that will be in regular circulation.

Heck of a job Orangey.

I see our new FSB agent has checked in.

Yes W is, was and always will be a terrible person. Just because Trump has made him look like an amateur when it comes to being awful doesn't mean he's somehow not the person who got us into two disastrous wars because of his daddy issues.

Even more: The result of all this is that the United States is losing a war to a third-rate power in the Middle East. The Russians, meanwhile, are continuing their rampage in Europe and apparently considering things so perilous that the CIA director had to fly to Moscow just to warn the Kremlin off of whatever it was thinking of doing. The Chinese are watching as Trump and Hegseth have stripped the Pacific theater of its only American aircraft carrier. In the midst of this chaos, Hegseth does chin-ups while he ponders calling all of America's admirals and generals back to another mass meeting so he can again carp at them about fat soldiers and bearded sailors.

Pete Hegseth has failed in every mission except one: keeping his job. But firing or forcing out everyone else in the Pentagon will not make Pete Hegseth into the secretary of defense America and its men and women in uniform need. With each dismissal, he exposes only his own insecurities, even as he manages to stay employed"but the people and the armed forces of the United States are paying the inevitable price of his incompetence.

More: But more issues were in play than "Army transformation." Hegseth's tenure has been disastrous on multiple scores. Instead of giving sound advice to the commander in chief and ensuring that America remains secure while the president fights a deeply unwise war of choice, he has been pursuing his political grievances about DEI and other pet peeves against the U.S. military. Hegseth seems to have a special animus toward the Army, an institution he claims "spit me out." He fired Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, and he has pushed out other senior Army officers; at this point, the Army has no Senate-confirmed chief of staff or secretary. (George's replacement, General Christopher LaNeve, so far does not have the necessary votes to be confirmed.)

Even in less dangerous times, Hegseth's irresponsible behavior would be a hazard to American national security. The Defense Department is a huge bureaucracy; it requires a leader who understands more than the mechanics of teaching trainees how to do push-ups or how to handle a weapon. Secretaries of defense must grasp the economics of the defense industry, the nature of alliances, congressional politics, the policy process, and dozens of other issues for which Hegseth seems to care little and about which he knows even less.

In a time of war, however, Hegseth's shortcomings may prove deadly. Leave aside his early stumbles, including the mishandling of sensitive information. Leave aside, even, that Hegseth dissembled about the severity of Iranian attacks on U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf that had succeeded in disrupting the logistical support for American forces in the theater and led to the kind of deprivations that were suffered by the crew of the aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln. Hegseth's incompetence, and his commitment to staying in Trump's good graces, helped launch the war itself in the first place.

More proof that Trump lives in a fantasyland and is completely divorced from reality.

There's a Trump dressed as George Washington with an axe in his hand saying "I cannot tell the truth" joke in there waiting for someone with better photoshop skills than me.

Will the students be called Space Cadets?

More: Slavin and Korte said the alleged insubordination cited in their termination notices was related to interviews they gave to CBS News for a piece on "CBS Sunday Morning" that aired in July. In the story, Korte said that she worked for Stars and Stripes, "not for the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policymaker."

More than a month later, the newspaper published a piece detailing flagging mental health and food and water shortages aboard the Lincoln, which has been deployed for nine months. A day after that story ran, the lawsuit says, the defendants "ordered plaintiff Max Lederer, Stripes' publisher, to present notices of separation to Mr. Slavin and Ms. Korte."

"The notices charged them with insubordination for the statements they made five and one-half weeks earlier on 'CBS Sunday Morning,'" the lawsuit reads.

He did not deliver the notices. Lederer announced his intent to retire at the end of September over "fundamental" differences with the Defense Department, but the Pentagon fired him before he could.

The three fired staffers' complaint says they are "facing imminent retaliation and termination in violation of their First Amendment and statutory rights."

"This action seeks to prevent the blatant violation of the First Amendment rights of these journalists and challenges the U.S. Department of Defense's ("DoD") extraordinary censorship efforts in violation of both the First Amendment and DoD regulations and policies," the lawsuit reads.

It would however be hilarious if the Canucks pulled the same trick renaming Lake Michigan Lake Canada. MAGA heads would explode.

The world doesn't give a ---- about Trumps pathetic executive orders. This just makes him an even bigger laughingstock.

Oh sh t!

Posted this with a gift link on the user blogs page earlier this morning if anyone wants to actually read the article.

More: In a dramatic capitulation, the owner of Facebook and Instagram agreed to the financial penalties for violating federal child privacy and states' consumer protection laws, the states announced. Meta also agreed to limit how long teenagers can spend on its platforms and to bans on features that stoke mental health issues, striking at the heart of the company's business of engagement for advertising.

"The focus of this case was to protect our kids: stopping notifications and alerts at night and when they are in school, encouraging them to take breaks from social media, protecting them against harmful features," said Colorado's attorney general, Phil Weiser, in a statement. The agreement exceeded what most courts might order, he added.

The settlement effectively ends a bellwether federal trial in the U.S. Northern District of California in Oakland, where California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were seeking roughly $200 billion over accusations that Meta harmed children. The states filed their agreement with Meta on Wednesday morning in that court, where Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is expected to approve it.

Meta still faces numerous other lawsuits from school districts and individuals, some of which are scheduled for trial in the coming months.

The settlement could signal an inflection point for a social media industry that has largely escaped regulatory scrutiny over the harms its products have caused children. The settlement amount is one of the highest ever paid by a tech company to states.

"Meta wouldn't settle unless it sees the writing on the wall and feels really exposed," said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a law professor at Stanford University.

More: The Bulwark's Will Sommer published a report on the story Monday night, writing:

"In Pounds's portentous telling, an unnamed official"soon after revealed to be Sarah B. Rogers, the undersecretary for public diplomacy at the State Department"had offered to leak her government documents about Cuba to publish as an exclusive.' While Pounds was initially enthusiastic, markings on the documents prompted her to panic that she was being set up. Had she published the documents, Pounds felt, she would've exposed herself to criminal prosecution. She took the news of her supposed entrapment directly to her audience."

But Rogers explained the markups that had Pounds thinking she was being set up.

"The markings' are FOIA redactions required even for voluntary disclosure," Rogers wrote to Pounds on X. "To prove this isn't a trap,' I will happily disclose the documents myself."

The entire situation, in Sommer's view, "highlights a real problem facing the Trump administration: a lack of talented media figures who can handle even the basic function of laundering the administration's message."

Named my dog Jolene after the song.

Missed the "Dolly Departin'" headline opportunity.