Utah Judge Rules It’s ‘Lewd’ for a Woman to Be Topless in Her Own Home
oy….
The Senator Who Stood Up to Joseph McCarthy When No One Else Would
Only four months earlier, McCarthy had delivered an inflammatory speech claiming 205 people working in the State Department were secretly communists. Since then, Smith had been closely following his words and actions, meant to undermine the Democratic party and seed suspicion everywhere.
…“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,” Smith said, in another thinly veiled jab at McCarthy’s tactics.
…“It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life,” said Smith.
It was a remarkable moment, not only because Smith was a woman, or the first person to speak out against McCarthy, but because she was willing to speak out against her fellow Republicans.
The Senator Who Stood Up to Joseph McCarthy When No One Else Would | History | Smithsonian Magazine
hmmm
Trump Brags on Hiding Evidence: ‘We Have All the Material, They Don’t’
President Trump said he’s happy with the way the impeachment trial is going thus far because his administration has not released “materials” that would hurt his cause.
“When we released that conversation all hell broke out with the Democrats,” Trump said. “Because they said, ‘Wait a minute, this is much different than [what Adam Schiff] told us.’ ”
The president continued, “So, we’re doing very well. I got to watch [the impeachment trial] enough. I thought our team did a very good job. But honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.”
Trump Brags on Hiding Evidence: ‘We Have All the Material, They Don’t’ – Rolling Stone
Scientists move Doomsday Clock closer to midnight
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of its symbolic Doomsday Clock closer to midnight, indicating that the likeliness of a human-caused apocalypse has increased since last year.
The Bulletin adjusted the clock to reflect looming threats from nuclear weapons and accelerated global warming.
The clock is now set at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to symbolic doom and the first time the hands have been within the two-minute mark.
Scientists move Doomsday Clock closer to midnight
sigh…
FactCheck.org: False and Misleading Claims at Impeachment Trial
False and Misleading Claims at Impeachment Trial – FactCheck.org
just gonna leave this right here
Take That, AP Style! Court of Law Rules the Oxford Comma Necessary
Take That, AP Style! Court of Law Rules the Oxford Comma Necessary
Not a recent article but foghting for the Oxford comma never gets old.
Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village
Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village | CrimeReads
for all those fans of English murder mysteries out there
Neo-Nazi Rinaldo Nazzaro running US militant group The Base from Russia
Neo-Nazi Rinaldo Nazzaro running US militant group The Base from Russia – BBC News
Scum.
And on the somebody’s thinking is broken front: that’s a lotta vowels for the name of a man claiming to be a Nazi.
‘They Sprayed Her Blood All Over Her Fellow Students’: Cops Assault Teen In Viral Video
Attorney Paul Jubas has been retained by the girls family to take legal action.
“Sergeant Christopher Mordaunt and Officer Tommy Trieu committed a crime when they brutally assaulted this tiny girl,” he said in a December Instagram post. “They sprayed her blood all over her fellow students and incited riot-like conditions on a school bus. Everything was calm on this bus until these officers began their vicious assault. To make matters worse, other videos prove they lied in their affidavit of probable cause.”
‘They Sprayed Her Blood All Over Her Fellow Students’: Cops Assault Teen In Viral Video | News One
daaa faaa?!
Greta Thunberg fires back at Steven Mnunchin after he said the teen should get a college degree
Thunberg, who’s taking a gap year from school to campaign for action on climate change, called him out on Twitter, saying it “doesn’t take a college degree in economics” to see that “ongoing fossil fuel subsides and investments don’t add up.” She paired her tweet with an interactive graph showing the correlation between greenhouse gas emissions and the “carbon budget” — how much room is left before average temperatures rise to a perilous level, another 1.5 degrees Celsius.
hmmmmmm
Trump Removes Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands
The Trump administration on Thursday will finalize a rule to strip away environmental protections for streams, wetlands and other water bodies.
…The Obama rule protected about 60 percent of the nation’s waterways, including large bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bay, Mississippi River and Puget Sound, and smaller headwaters, wetlands, seasonal streams and streams that run temporarily underground. It limited the discharge of pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and industrial chemicals into those waters.
…This is not just undoing the Obama rule. This is stripping away protections that were put in place in the ’70s and ’80s that Americans have relied on for their health.”
…The new water rule will remove federal protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands, and hundreds of thousands of small waterways. That would for the first time in decades allow landowners and property developers to dump pollutants such as pesticides and fertilizers directly into many of those waterways, and to destroy or fill in wetlands for construction projects.
…[The changes] on Thursday will complete the process, not only rolling back 2015 rules that guaranteed protections under the 1972 Clean Water Act to certain wetlands and streams that run intermittently or run temporarily underground, but also relieves landowners of the need to seek permits that the Environmental Protection Agency had considered on a case-by-case basis before the Obama rule.
…That could open millions of acres of pristine wetlands to pollution or destruction, and allow chemicals and other pollutants to be discharged into smaller headland waters that eventually drain into larger water bodies, experts in water management said. Wetlands play key roles in filtering surface water and protecting against floods, while also providing wildlife habitat.
… The E.P.A.’s Scientific Advisory Board, a panel of 41 scientists responsible for evaluating the scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, concluded that the new Trump water rule ignores science by “failing to acknowledge watershed systems.” They found “no scientific justification” for excluding certain bodies of water from protection under the new regulations, concluding that pollutants from those smaller and seasonal bodies of water can still have a significant impact on the health of larger water systems.
Trump Removes Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands – The New York Times
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
US drinking water contamination with ‘forever chemicals’ far worse than scientists thought
The contamination of US drinking water with manmade “forever chemicals” is far worse than previously estimated with some of the highest levels found in Miami, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.
…The chemicals were used in products like Teflon and Scotchguard and in firefighting foam. Some are used in a variety of other products and industrial processes, and their replacements also pose risks.
…The chemicals, resistant to breaking down in the environment, are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Some have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems.
…Of tap water samples taken by EWG from 44 sites in 31 states and Washington DC, only one location, Meridian, Mississippi, which relies on 700ft (215m) deep wells, had no detectable PFAS. Only Seattle and Tuscaloosa, Alabama had levels below 1 part per trillion (PPT), the limit EWG recommends.
In addition, EWG found that on average six to seven PFAS compounds were found at the tested sites.
sigh…
President Trump is dismissive about injuries to US military troops under his command
[Trump] was asked about the clear discrepancy between his initial claim that no Americans had been harmed in Iran’s retaliatory strikes against a US base in Iraq and reports of 11 military personnel diagnosed with concussions and an unnamed number of others also being treated in the wake of the attack.
…11 soldiers initially injured were evacuated from the base in Iraq — eight to Germany and three more to Kuwait. In addition, the Pentagon announced Tuesday that an unspecified number of other troops had been injured in the attack and evacuated to Germany.
“As medical treatment and evaluations in theater continue, additional service members have been identified as having potential injuries,” said CENTCOM spokesman Bill Urban. “These service members — out of an abundance of caution — have been transported to Landstuhl, Germany, for further evaluations and necessary treatment on an outpatient basis. Given the nature of injuries already noted, it is possible additional injuries may be identified in the future.”
sigh…
Tulsi Gabbard sues Hillary Clinton for defamation over Russia remarks
“I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said, speaking on a podcast with former Obama adviser David Plouffe. “She’s the favorite of the Russians.”
Clinton, in the same interview, suggested that person she was talking about was a “Russian asset,” while not naming Gabbard.
…The lawsuit stands little chance of success, but it offers Gabbard much-needed publicity for her campaign ahead of the Iowa caucuses next month.
…Gabbard has previously used her confrontation with Clinton as a way to draw attention to her presidential campaign, like when her lawyer wrote a letter demanding a retraction from Clinton in November 2019.
…The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in the Southern District of New York, says Gabbard has suffered damages that are “estimated to exceed $50 million.” She is seeking unspecified compensation and the prevention of a further spread of the comments. Clinton spokesman Merrill responded to the lawsuit by calling it “ridiculous.”
Tulsi Gabbard sues Hillary Clinton for defamation over Russia remarks – CNNPolitics
Trump inaugural committee improperly paid president’s hotel $1 million
Trump’s inaugural committee …violated its nonprofit status by spending more than $1 million to book a ballroom at Trump’s D.C. hotel that its staff knew was overpriced and that it barely used.
During the lead-up to Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, the committee booked the hotel ballroom for $175,000 a day, plus more than $300,000 in food and beverage costs, over the objections of its own event planner.
…Hotel management emailed the committee in November 2016 saying an eight-day package of meeting rooms, food and drinks would cost $3.6 million — an enormous number even by the standards of luxury hotels during the inauguration.
Rick Gates, a lobbyist and the committee’s deputy chairman, then emailed Ivanka Trump to say that cost “seems quite high compared to other properties.”
…Racine’s lawsuit specifically targets a $1 million deal made between the committee and the Trump Organization for the ballroom during four days around the inaugural, which he alleges was a knowing waste of the nonprofit’s resources to benefit the Trumps.
…After hotel management agreed to charge $175,000 per day for meeting space and to charge separately for food and beverage, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a friend of first lady Melania Trump who had previously produced the Met gala and New York’s Fashion Week, expressed alarm, writing that other properties had been offered to the committee at little or no cost.
…Wolkoff said the meeting space should cost a maximum of $85,000 per day. Even that was pricey compared to offers from other hotels.
…D.C. law requires that nonprofit organizations not operate for the purpose of generating profits for private individuals.
…Trump’s company is now trying to sell its lease to the hotel. Initial bids are due Thursday for the property.
hmmm
Comments From The Peanut Gallery 