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Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society and one of the few people allowed to have portraits painted with Justice Clarence Thomas, said he will refuse to comply with a subpoena for testimony issued by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Washington Post reports, saying the investigation into potentially unethical gifts to Supreme Court Justices to keep them on the Court to enshrine conservative political philosophy is “politically motivated.”  The stand prompted Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin to pursue potential action to force Leo’s testimony after hearing Leo’s comment.

In a statement to the Post, the defiant Leo said, “I am not capitulating to [Durbin’s] lawless support of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and the left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition.”  Leo reportedly connected wealthy conservative funders like Harlon Crow and Robin Arkley II to conservative jurists–like Clarence Thomas who had expressed frustration that serving on the bench wasn’t more lucrative just before meeting Crow.

Sometimes, the ads just write themselves.  …’cept in this case, whoever puts the words in Fox host Sean Hannity’s teleprompter did the job for Democrats.  Hannity starts, “They blame Trump for…” and then scrolls through about twenty reasons why no one should vote for Donald Trump ever again for any public office.

“They blame Trump fo–this is pretty amusing–for the border crisis, for Covid deaths, for mass shootings, the Arizona abortion law, […]”. The Arizona abortion law, Sean?  Let’s look at that.  You mean, the one the GOP appointees to the Arizona Supreme Court resurrected after the Trump-appointed and other GOP-backed US Supreme Court justices overturned Roe?  You know, something Trump himself has bragged he did?  We wonder why “they” blame Trump for things Trump did.

The self-proclaimed Republican Governor of Arizona and the actual GOP Senate nominee Kari Lake is reportedly panicked that the recent state Supreme Court decision to revert to an 1864 abortion ban will sink her effort to leave Phoenix, and she’s pushing Republicans in the state legislature to make an effort to undo the damage, NBC News reports.

Most recently, Lake has opposed the complete ban on abortions despite having enthusiastically endorsed readopting the 1864 law in the past.  Now seeing that what energizes the GOP base to vote in the primaries to get the nomination is not what real voters want from the government, Lake must do a full 180-degree pivot from her previous “My personal belief is that all life matters. All life counts, and all life is precious” statement.  Apparently, Kari Lake now thinks that the only thing more precious than fetal life is Kari Lake’s political life.

This is real. This is actually what Republicans are preparing to spend next week on in the House. Really: https://t.co/8VyLSolMZO https://t.co/7yJxwYdFAO

— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) April 11, 2024

As Virginia Democrat Don Beyer confirms, the GOP-led House Rules Committee scheduled a meeting for Monday, April 15th to bring the six appliance-related bill to the floor for a vote, because Republicans have their fingers on the pulse of the nation.  We’re a little surprised that given Monday is also when Donald Trump’s Manhattan election interference criminal trial opens, the GOP didn’t include a “Donald Trump Right to Single Flush Toilets” bill, too.

Energy production from renewable sources on public lands surpassed 25 gigawatts of clean energy–enough to power 20 time-traveling DeLoreans–the goal the Biden Administration set to reach by the end of his first term, Reuters reports.  Biden’s plan includes drastically reducing fees for wind and solar energy projects on federal acreage.

In total, the Interior Department has permitted projects that would create 29 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power more than one million homes, an increase of 25% since 2021.  The Administration announced that permits for projects that would produce another 32 gigawatts are being processed.

Tyler Boebert, the 19-year-old son of Colorado’s own conjugal carpetbagging Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, appeared before a judge in Garfield County courtroom on Thursday saying he is having difficulty retaining counsel because he can’t afford their rates, Westword News reports.  He had no family with him.

Boebert the Younger faces fourteen counts, including felony identity theft that carries a two- to six-year prison sentence, for a series of car break-ins and robberies in Rifle he and a number of underage accomplices allegedly committed, including that of a woman with a brain tumor from whom they stole the last $75 “left to her name,” police said.

“We are working to hire an attorney, but it’s just been kind of hard with the prices,” Boebert told the judge. “Worst case scenario, if we can’t get something figured out with the lawyer then we’re going to apply for a public defender or whatever works best for me.”

Four people from Los Angeles are charged with multiple felonies relating to the organized theft of more than $300,000 in Lego sets from retailers around Southern California in what officials are calling a well-organized criminal enterprise, USA Today reports.

The California Highway Patrol charged 44-year-old Jeremy Johnson of Orange, 39-year-old Marta Hardt of Huntington Beach, 47-year-old Chung-Pei Yu of Studio City, and 35-year-old Shen Li of Brea with organized retail theft, grand theft and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Police say two of the suspects would steal expensive Lego sets, some costing up to $800, which their partners would fence to associates who would then sell them to unsuspecting buyers online or at swap meets for hobbyists.

Ford Motors on Thursday announced a recall of 22,270 recent Bronco and 20,382 Escape models for a potentially faulty fuel injector, Jalopnik reports and yeah our headline’s missing a comma on purpose. How else are we supposed to evoke a slow drive down a memory lane of an LA freeway?

Fun fact: The infamous white Ford Bronco was actually the infamous white Ford Broncos. The one that OJ Simpson not really allegedly but definitely fucking did drive back and forth to the home where he murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her acquaintance Ron Goldman belonged to Hertz Rent-a-Car, while the one from the highway chase was owned by his friend, former NFL teammate, and sycophant Al Cowlings, who was driving the vehicle. Cowlings was such a suckup to the far more prolific Simpson that he bought the exact same color and model truck as OJ’s.

Cowlings’s Bronco is on display at the Alcatraz East Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, alongside Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen Beetle, John Dillinger’s 1933 Essex Terraplane, and the “death car” that Warren Beaty and Faye Dunaway were filmed in when they were playing Bonnie and Clyde in a titular 1967 movie. Not really sure why they put a movie prop in with the real, actually historic vehicles.

Anyway OJ’s Bronco was actually owned by Hertz and was impounded by investigators as evidence since it was used in the crime. For whatever reason, even though he was “acquitted,” the truck was never returned to him or Hertz and was subsequently destroyed, ESPN reported in 2017.

BREAKING: GOP Rep. Stefanik Reveals There is Incriminating AUDIO RECORDING of Biden Telling His Ghostwriter, “I Just Found All the Classified Documents Stuff Downstairs” (VIDEO) via @gatewaypundit https://t.co/aM38ghAIgC

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) April 11, 2024

An 85 year-old Idaho woman’s memory about how exactly she shot an armed intruder dead with a .357 Magnum revolver last month is a little fuzzy but local prosecutors are pretty confident it was a case of justifiable homicide and are not investigating any further, Fox News reports.

That octogenarian Christine Jenneiahn herself took multiple 9mm rounds to her abdomen, leg, arm and chest when the fatally wounded 39 year-old Derek Condon returned then fire might explain the memory lapses, as Jenneiahn apparently recalled in pretty specific detail about how she was able to retrieve the hand cannon despite being partially cuffed to a chair while Condon looked for two safes.

“At one point while Condon was downstairs, Christine drug the chair she was handcuffed to into her bedroom, and retrieved her 357 magnum revolver from under her pillow,” wrote Bingham County prosecutor Ryan Jolley. “She then went into the living room and hid the revolver between the arm rest and cushion of a couch next to where she was seated and waited to see what Condon did next.”

Jenneiahn then decided it was “now or never” and things got real. With Condon having found out and herself gravely wounded, she then collapsed to the floor, laying there for 10 hours before her disabled son – who slept through the 2:00 AM gunfight – came across her and called 911. The moral of the story is sometimes old ladies are really tough and you should not ever fuck with them.

A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows there is no link between young adults receiving a coronavirus vaccine and incidents of heart disease or fatal heart events in them, NBC News reports in another reality-based study that won’t penetrate the thick walls of the MAGA Bubble.

The study examined the death certificates and lab reports of more than 1,200 Oregon residents between the ages of 16 and 30 who died of a heart-related condition or unknown causes between June 2020 and December 2022.  During that period, more than one million people received either the Pfizer or the Moderna mRNA vaccine in Oregon.

In the hundreds of cases studied, only 40 people within the demographic died of heart attacks or unknown causes, and only three died within 100 days of getting the vaccine:  two had serious underlying heart conditions and one’s cause of death remains a mystery because there was no underlying health issues, signs of illicit drug use, or other obvious contributing factor. 

Ann Walsh Bradley, a liberal judge who has spent thirty years on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, announced that she’ll retire from the bench this Spring, allowing Democratic Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers to appoint a replacement who will then stand for election in the following year, NBC News reports.

The move jeopardizes the current liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which flipped with the election of Janet Protasiewicz to a vacant seat in 2023.  In Wisconsin’s system, the governor gets to fill a mid-term vacancy, but the appointee needs to stand for election typically after one year on the Supreme Court, but that schedule may vary if other justices are slated for their elections during the election cycle.  Terms are ten years, and there is no mandatory retirement.

Since 1960, only two Wisconsin justices failed to win reelection, and both happened in the last 20 years.  Louis B. Butler, an appointee of Democratic Governor Jim Doyle in 2004, lost reelection in 2008; Daniel Kelly, a 2016 appointment by the previous Ron DeSantis-like savior of the GOP, Scott Walker, failed to win reelection in 2020, losing to Democrat Jill Karofsky.

Mistake in an earlier draft of the LA Times’s obituary for OJ Simpson.

Trump minions Chris LaCivita and Susan Wiles on Thursday formally demanded the Commission on Presidential Debates schedule more and earlier face-offs between their Orange God Emperor and President Biden, writing in a letter to co-chairs Frank Fahrenkopf Jr and Antonia Hernandez that “in 2020, the Commission ceded to the wishes of the Biden campaign on every front, refusing to move up the dates of the debates, failing to reschedule the debate canceled by COVID-19 [that was Trump’s fault], cutting off President Trump’s microphone over and over [also Trump’s fault and the mute button applied to Biden too] in the middle of a debate, and in the case of the first debate, selecting a demonstrably anti-Trump moderator clearly positioned to aid Joe Biden [lol].”

“Fairness in such a setting is paramount and the Commission must ensure that the 2024 Commission-sponsored debates are truly fair and conducted impartially. The Commission must move up the timetable of its proposed 2024 debates to ensure more Americans have a full chance to see the candidates before they start voting, and we would argue for adding more debates in addition to those on the currently proposed schedule. We have already indicated President Trump is willing to debate anytime, anyplace, and anywhere – and the time to start these debates is now.”

Doesn’t really feel like they’re in a position to demand any conditions right now if they’re also demanding more debates. Again we have to point out that pushing for more debates simply isn’t what leading campaigns do (look no further than Trump having completely fucked off from every one of the GOP primary face-offs). Now we’re not trying to get ahead of our skis here, but maybe Trump and his scumbags know something we don’t. Maybe their private internal polling is saying something different than what all the MSM horserace polls are saying. Why else are they so thristy?

New Jersey Senator Gold Bars Bob Menendez will face a jury starting early next month as a New York judge on Thursday ruled that Bob and his wife/co-defendant Nadine can be tried separately, scuttling a delay to (tentatively) July 8th that Bob had gotten prosecutors to agree to on Wednesday on account of Nadine’s health issues, MSNBC reports. Probably won’t be a very long trial.

“Crooked Joe Biden and his crew of Hacks and Thugs, led by Merrick Garland and Deranged Jack Smith, are working overtime to try to illegally intimidate and harass respected Federal Judge Aileen Cannon. They are calling her terrible names, wrongfully threatening her with Impeachment, and disrespecting her, all because they want her to act like the dishonest, politically biased, and conflicted Judges in New York, and not like the fair and impartial Judge that she is. These Persecutors are using Third World tactics in a corrupt ploy to ‘play the ref.’ However, no matter how hard he tries, Deranged Jack Smith will never be Coach Bobby Knight, a Basketball Legend for all time, who led the last undefeated team in College Basketball. Coach Knight would always ‘play the refs,’ but not to change the last call, to change the next one,” posted fat former President Trump.

Never mind that he simply made up that shit about the harassment and intimidation, that his own lawyers tried and failed to get Judges Juan Merchan and Tanya Chutkan removed from his cases, that he and his fans have harassed the shit out of every judge except Cannon. Skip that for now…

…because the Bobby Knight thing is just so fucking stupid when this is literally the second news story that comes up in a Google search for “ncaa basketball ref misconduct.” Aileen Cannon wouldn’t be anywhere near this goddamned case if she was held to the same standard as an NCAA ref.

Former CourtTV celebrity and Hertz rent-a-car spokesman OJ Simpson died of cancer at the age of 76 on Thursday, nearly 30 years after he led a famous car chase in a white Ford Bronco.

The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia on Thursday named their own executive director Pete Skandalakis to serve as special prosecutor in investigating Georgia Lt Gov Burt Jones over his involvement in disgraced former President Trump’s failed post-2020 election coup attempt in the Peach State. The only reason Jones wasn’t indicted already in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s sprawling RICO case against Team MAGA was because she fucked up and campaigned for Jones’s Democrat opponent in the 2022 election and a judge ordered her recusal.

“Pursuant to the authority contained in OCGA § 15-18-5, Peter J Skandalakis, Executive Director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, or his designee, will be appointed to act as District Attorney Pro Tempore, Atlanta Judicial Circuit, in the matter concerning Burt Jones. In accordance with State Bar Rule 3.8 Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor and pending litigation, no further comments will be made at this time” said a notice from the Georgia PAC.

Reform UK Party head Nigel Farage won’t tolerate his Party’s candidates not pulling their own weight, and he wants them to know how seriously he takes it:  candidates who don’t put in the effort or who express opinions contrary to Party dicta will be removed.  And Farage means it, so he dropped York Central Parliament candidate Tommy Carkwell from the Party because Carkwell has been too lazy in campaigning, the York Press reports.

According to a spokesman, the Party officially notified Carkwell and another candidate they were being dropped on April 9th because they weren’t in touch with their voters, doing campaign events, and failing to keep in communication with Party leaders.  “We can’t afford to have people doing nothing in an election year,” the spokesperson said.  “They were inactive candidates and we need candidates who are active to give people the candidates they deserve.”

Efforts to reach Carkwell for comment on the Reform Party abandoning him were unsuccessful because Carkwell died on February 9th.  “Reform was not aware that Mr. Cawkwell had passed away,” Reform UK spokesperson Gawain Towler said. “Naturally I am mortified that through ignorance I did not realize the reason for his inactivity. It must have been ghastly for his family to read about it in the way it was presented in the press.”

Why didn’t Gilligan think of this?  Three men whose fishing boat lost power on March 31st were just rescued more than a week later from an uninhabited, 31-acre island in the Pacific after rescuers spotted the word “HELP” spelled out in palm fronds on the beach, CNN reports.  The men lived off coconut meat and fresh water from a well built by fishermen in the area who sometimes stopped on the islet.

The island where the fisherman were found, Piklelot, an island on the outer reaches of Micronesia after a search that covered more than 100,000 square miles.  “This act of ingenuity was pivotal in guiding rescue efforts directly to their location,” the coordinator of the US Coast Guard effort to find the men commented.