The special grand jury collecting testimony and evidence for the Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney’s criminal investigation of disgraced former President Trump and his minions’ attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state has been dissolved. The judge overseeing the dissolution ordered a hearing set for January 24th to determine whether the special grand jury’s final report should be made public. The next steps are unclear, however we were to understand that another grand jury will be impaneled to review the report and make recommendations on charges.

If you believe patriotism is sending a fundraising email every time he voted against McCarthy bc McCarthy wouldn't defend allegations he sex trafficked minors, then our definition of patriotism is very different.

As a rape victim myself, I won't defend the indefensible. https://t.co/FubkelBSgO

— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) January 8, 2023

Well, she’s probably right about that, but she’s a Republican. She’s not supposed to acknowledge that a fellow GOP House member might have kind of brought a minor across state lines to have sex with her. Also weird how she brings up that she’s a rape victim here. While Gaetz did likely commit statutory rape there’s no evidence it was physically forcible – unlike with the credible accusation of rape by writer EJ Carroll toward fat former President Trump. Nancy Mace still loves Donald though.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Monday accused the new far right Israeli regime of trying to topple his government by withholding tax revenues and other sanctions he says amount “to a a new war against the Palestinian people, their capabilities and funds, and a war against the national authority, its survival and its achievements,” the Associated Press reports.

An amendment to Russia’s new “anti-extremism” legislation currently on its way to being passed by the Kremlin’s rubber stamp parliament classifies maps showing the country’s borders without the territory it supposedly annexed from eastern Ukraine are “extremist materials,” Reuters reports.

The bill, which outlaws “cartographic and other documents and images that dispute the territorial integrity of Russia,” also applies to depictions of the disputed Kuril Islands, a remote archipelago off Russia’s far eastern Pacific coast which for decades have also been claimed by Japan.

House GOP speaker fight ‘embarrassed’ the nation, ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent claims https://t.co/jBr07bDhPN

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 9, 2023

Severe weather hitting California over the last week has left twelve people dead and 115,000 customers without power and with the state expecting more heavy storms over the coming days, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has asked for a federal disaster declaration, CBS News reports.

Last week, a so-called “bomb cyclone” formed, hitting California with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains.  Officials in Sacramento County ordered the 5,000 people in the town of Wilton to evacuate now because they fear rising waters will cut off the community and block evacuation routes.

Called “a steady stream of atmospheric river events” by the National Weather Service, the upcoming weather will bring snow and heavy rain to the Bay Area, which could lead to landslides, mudslides and flash floods.

Brazilian officials have stated that they’ve cleared the government buildings in Brasília, arresting at least 200 of the protesters who took over the presidential offices, the National Congress building and the nation’s Supreme Court, the New York Times reports.

Officials have also identified 40 buses that drove protesters to Brasilia, where they overran the government offices Sunday.  Flávio Dino, the nation’s Justice Minister, said the people who contracted for those coaches will be identified and prosecuted.

Using a playbook popularized by Donald Trump and his cabal, conservative former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro called on his supporters to disrupt government functions because he claims recent elections–which he lost to liberal Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October.

Police in Westfield, New Jersey charged a middle school art teacher last week after an incident where the 57-year-old man passed out due to a fentanyl overdose in front of a class of students he was teaching, NBC News reports.

Frank Thompson, an art teacher at Roosevelt Intermediate School, collapsed in November while teaching class.  The school resource officer on site recognized the signs of an overdose and injected Thompson with Narcan, an opioid overdose treatment, which greatly improved his condition until he could be treated by medical personnel arriving on scene.

Following the incident, police searching the scene found a substance they believed to be an illegal drug, as well as drug paraphernalia, in a classroom closet.  The substance was tested and found to be fentanyl.  Thompson is facing drug and child endangerment charges.  A press release from the Westfield Police did not explain why it took more than a month to charge Thompson or if he was still teaching at the school.

The violence in Brazil is not the way to achieve anything, I vehemently condemn the acts of violence and vandalism displayed in Brasilia today.

— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) January 8, 2023

MAGA Congressman George Santos should’ve said he was for this insurrection if he wanted us to think he was against it. Then the headline would’ve been “Santos condemns Brazilian insurrection.”

“Media and police report that an antidemocratic protest has turned violent and is now occupying areas of central Brasilia including the Brazilian National Congress and areas surrounding the Plaza of the Three Powers. Brazilian police forces are responding. US citizens are warned to avoid the area until further notice,” says a US State Department bulletin as shit goes haywire.

Meanwhile the official Dem line appears to be that Bolsonaro needs to be tossed from the US immediately, with at least AOC and Joaquin Castro tweeting as much in response on Sunday.

https://youtu.be/wVvxomUOtYQ

Fans of former far right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro smashed windows and stormed into the country’s Congress building in the capital city of Brasilia on Sunday, with scattered reports that the fuckers also invaded the presidential residence, and the Supreme Federal Court, according to R7 reporter Renato Souza. New Brazilian President Luiz Lula reportedly was not in Brasilia during the attacks. Neither was Bolsonaro, who is currently cooling his heels in Florida. It’s not clear what these fuckers think they’re going to accomplish. Say what you will comparing them to their MAGA brethren in the US, but the January 6th insurrectionists at least had some sort of plan to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as president. They didn’t wait until Donald was already out of office to attack.

Then there’s also that Congress is not in session on Sundays, so no lawmakers are hiding in a bunker under the chamber screaming at each other over who let this shitshow happen.

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, one of only seven Republicans to vote to convict disgraced former President Trump at his second impeachment trial, resigned from the Senate effective noon Sunday, heading to Bath Salts-Land to take the job as Chancellor at the University of Florida.

Newly inaugurated Republican Nebraska Gov Jim Pillen will appoint a replacement to fill the seat ahead of a special election. It’s widely expected Pillen’s predecessor, former Gov Pete Ricketts will get the nod. Unless of course Pillen pulls a Blagojevich and tries to sell the appointment.

More than two-thirds of the over 16,000 mail-in ballots disqualified in Pennsylvania’s 2022 elections for missing the date and/or signature from the outer “secrecy envelope” were from Democratic voters, the Associated Press reports on new data from the state’s election agency.

The disparity in the cancelations stems from two key points: That Dem voters were far more likely to vote by mail and as such would make up a higher proportion of those disqualified, and that it’s on the counties to contact voters and allow them to cure problematic ballots… which a lot of Republican-run counties are not wont to do since they obviously despise mail-in voting.

MAGA Congressman Scott Perry seems almost offended that George Stephanopoulos asks him if he really should be serving on Jim Jordan’s new MAGA select subcommittee when Perry is almost certainly the target of a federal criminal investigation after his phone was seized by the FBI last year.

Six journalists who filmed and circulated footage of 71-year-old South Sudan President Salva Kiir pissing his pants while he was singing the national anthem at a road opening last month have been arrested, CNN reports. The journalists have been held for at least a day without charges.

In what would be the biggest international prank since Andy Kaufman took the oath of office in January 2017, old-school terrorist group al Qaeda is planning to announce its leader has died of a sudden ailment.  As The Daily Beast points out, the problem is, Ayman al Zawahiri was actually killed in a US airstrike last July, julienned by a six-bladed Hellfire R9X in an upscale Kabul neighborhood.

Al Qaeda, like Kevin McCarthy desperately trying to stay relevant in a changing political environment, reportedly made an agreement with the Taliban running Afghanistan to keep Zawahiri’s death a secret:  the Taliban had promised the Trump Administration that they would not assist al Qaeda.  However, they were continuing to shelter the group’s leader past the signing of the Doha Agreements, where Trump promised to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan by May 2021.

Ukrainian intelligence reportedly has gathered information that Moscow is planning a new round of civilian conscripts, inducting half a million men into the military ranks to fill slots on the front lines of the Ukraine invasion, Politico Europe reports.

The Kremlin will target this drive for fodder in key urban industrial areas, the Main Military Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry reports, indicating the Russians are desperate for troops because these are likely workers.  The drive will start January 15th, with a likely goal of starting a Spring offensive, the Ukrainian intelligence official said.

One of the lawyers currently representing Proud Boy Joseph Biggs in his federal seditious conspiracy trial in Washington, DC had his law license suspended for six months by the Connecticut court system for leaking confidential information while he defended conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a Sandy Hook defamation trial, USA Today reports.

Norman Pattis said he will continue to serve on Biggs’ legal team, but he would not make statements or arguments until he learns how the Connecticut suspension impacts his ability to practice law in other jurisdictions, including the District of Columbia.

Pattis is accused of leaking the medical records of some of the family members of Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre victims, as well as two years of Jones’s text messages.  Apparently Pattis was unaware that he had given the victims’ families’ attorneys the text messages until one of the lawyers questioning Jones in court told him.

With the filing of the wrongful death lawsuit filed against Donald Trump by the partner of deceased Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after holding the line with other officers against the Republican-led domestic terrorists attacking Congress January 6th, I thought it would be helpful to take a look at the various legal cases pending against the 2024 presidential candidate and one-time resident of the White House.  Using sources like Just Security, Law360 and Wikipedia, here’s a run down on cases that appear to be ongoing and summaries of those well-known ones that have closed.  These do not generally include cases Trump is a part of as his one-time position as President of the United States and deal only with personal legal problems.  

CRIMINAL CASES

Jack Smith special counsel investigation/J6 Committee referral:  The Big Kahuna.  The overall Department of Justice probe into Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including the various attempts Trump led, directed or took direct part in.

DOJ classified documents probe:  There are a number of legal issues here for Trump, from obstruction to mishandling of classified documents to potential Espionage Act violations.  

This year marks two decades since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, a bloody conquest of a rogue state that more people should be honest about saying they “were for it before they were against it,” both on the left and right. It was peak Boomer: Bush and his conservative ultra-patriotic bullshit sending American millennials to die in battle against Middle Eastern millennials, Michael Moore and the insufferable latte libtards backseat driving with their simplistic everybody hold hands and sing bullshit, very nearly horseshoeing to outright sympathy for Islamic terrorists.

The attack on Iraq was a product of its time and the public’s raw bloodthirst, a year and a half after 9/11, with Afghanistan not being enough to sate it. Damn all the experts’ warnings that deposing Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party regime would cause a “power vacuum,” destabilizing the region and breaking it into a “quagmire,” a patchwork ruled by an unending series of warlords in constant conflict with each other and Americans caught in between with no “exit strategy” in sight.

This isn’t about Iraq though. This is about the Iraq that exists here in America: A rogue state sliding toward failed one we call the Republican Party. The parallels are eerie. Both Trump and Hussein were demented asshole dictators who nevertheless managed control over a vast geography populated by religious fanatics. Hussein’s two oldest sons were named Uday and Qusay. Trump’s two oldest sons were nicknamed Uday and Qusay. Both Trump and Hussein were deposed by pro-democracy coalitions of the willing. Their removals both came with bloodshed.