Republican Texas Congressman and human roll-on deodorant Chip Roy:  “The simple reality is, as we are all, y’know, looking at what’s happening in Ukraine, our hearts go out and we’re tryin’ to help out–I was on the phone all day today helping people, orphanages, people that are dealing with the ravages of what Putin is doing to those people.  The fact of the matter is, we’re looking at that and we’re talking about war crimes.  I want to talk about the crimes against humanity that has been perpetrated by Anthony Fauci, the CDC, and the federal government against the American people.”

A Trump-appointed federal judge has determined that the clause in the Constitution referenced by plaintiffs in a lawsuit to challenge the eligibility for North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn for office is no longer valid, and he has tossed the case, WTVD ABC-11 in Raleigh reports.

Richard Myers II, who Trump appointed  to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, ruled that a 1872 amnesty law passed by Congress essentially negated Section Three of the 14th Amendment which bars people who at any point took an oath to the Constitution but participated in an insurrection against the Constitution from holding civil or military office.  No other jurisdiction or legislative body has made a similar interpretation.

The plaintiffs have argued that Cawthorn’s stated support of the domestic terrorists who attacked Congress on January 6th qualified as a circumstance to exclude Cawthorn from candidacy.

Italian federal authorities seized the comparatively paltry 213-foot luxury yacht “Lady M Yacht” owned by Russia’s richest oligarch Alexei Mordashov while it was docked in Imperia, the Washington Post reports.  Mordashov, who has a reported net value of $29.1 billion, likely won’t miss the yacht, valued at $71 million.

A 68-year-old logger from the small city of Nampa, Idaho who participated the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol received a 51-month prison sentence Friday on charges of including assaulting a police officer with a pipe, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell testified that due to the attack by Duke Edward Wilson, he had to have a bone in his foot fused and he’s had multiple surgeries to repair his shoulder.  He will likely need additional shoulder surgeries.

“Both my hands were bleeding at that time from blocking,” Gonnell said. “He insisted on continuing to fight me to prevent us from closing that door, that would enable him and his fellow insurrectionists to advance in the tunnel and the Capitol as members of Congress and the Senate were being evacuated from the very same route.”

The Biden Administration have invited the entire US Senate to join a Zoom call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday morning, Fox News reports.

This is Trump’s feed on Truth Social as of 4:29 PM EST on Friday, March 4th, 2022 – just minutes after his minion Liz Harrington tweeted another one of his ridiculous statements ripping Bill Barr because of his new book and whatever else the fat Orange man is angry about these days.

Harrington has tweeted dozens of Donald’s statements since his first and so far only “Truth” on February 21st, which kind of begs the question of why he would go through all the trouble to build an entire social network if he was just going to continue to tweet by proxy anyway. It’s not even like these statements are being posted to his Truth Social account too – something he could delegate easily that would take seconds to do. Almost like he was bored with it before it even really started.

Authorities in Poland have arrested a Spanish journalist who was traveling along the country’s border with Ukraine and charged him with spying for Russia during the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Identified as Pablo Gonzalez, the journalist was arrested in the town of Przemysl, near the Poland-Ukraine border, and charged with being an agent of Russia’s GRU.  Gonzalez has worked as a freelancer for many Spanish media outlets; including online newspaper Publico and TV station La Sexta confirm Gonzalez has worked for them.

… but sure, we’re not even supposed to consider the claim that Trump wouldn’t take classified documents or discuss Top Secret information because he’s *so secure* with state secrets.

“The congressional defendants have responded to Dr. Eastman’s claims of attorney client and work product privilege by invoking the crime fraud exception. The defendants have accused Dr. Eastman, former President Donald J. Trump and others of committing serious federal crimes. Effectively, the defendants have unveiled an entire criminal case under the auspices of a filing on an evidentiary privilege issue. These are serious accusations which have already made international headlines.” ”

They require careful consideration by the Court. Were this Court to sustain the defendants’ claims, it may be the first formal finding of Presidential criminality by a federal court in United States history. In responding to these claims, plaintiff is effectively forced into the position of acting as a pseudo-defense attorney for the former President. If the former President had himself been charged with these alleged crimes, it could easily be years before an ultimate decision was reached by a judge or jury. Yet plaintiff is now faced with responding to these claims in time for a decision by this Court on March 8″ writes MAGA lawyer John Eastman in a motion filed Friday, evidently kind of freaking the fuck out that he needs to pretend he was acting as Trump’s lawyer when Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy against the United States of America.

I will not be running for reelection due to a recent, exciting change to my personal life, and I look forward to spending more time with my family. pic.twitter.com/IL2CpKOCFS

— Brian Kelsey (@BrianKelsey) March 4, 2022

Meet Republican Tennessee state senator Brian Kelsey.  He’s sending this tweet to tell you he’s leaving political life to go back to being a lawyer to fight against the dastardly vaccine mandate (that didn’t happen) and other injustices wrought by the evil Biden Administration.  And he’ll probably spend time with his apparently lovely wife and rosy-cheeked daughter.

He doesn’t bother to tell you that he’s facing federal charges for corruption and campaign finance violations and his trial was just pushed back to 2023.

The school principal and a school security officer were allegedly shot by a high school student, who was also shot.  The adults are expected to survive. There has been no report if the student was shot by someone else or if it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, nor is the student’s condition known. This is reportedly the eleventh school shooting in the United States this year, according to Education Week.

Several dozen 18-wheelers and a few hundred passengers cars of the “Freedom Convoy” right wing clustertruck protest have mustered at their staging point in Hagerstown, Maryland on Friday, readying for their final push into Washington, DC on Saturday, NBC News reports.

The Russian media regulatory agency Roskomnadzor said it has “limited access”–Putinspeak for banning–at least ten Western websites from being accessed in Russia in an effort to prevent people from learning unbiased news about the war in Ukraine, Radio Free Europe reports.

Besides the Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty sites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the BBC, German news outlet Deutsche Welle, and the Apple and Google app stores were all blocked from access by residents of Russia, as reported by web monitor group GlobalCheck.  The total extent of the censorship is unknown.

“Putin is feeding Russians a steady diet of lies about the scope and costs of the war in Ukraine,” RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said Friday. “RFE/RL refuses to censor our content at this critical moment for our Russian audiences. They deserve the truth and we will continue to provide them with factual information about their government’s actions and the consequences that they must now endure.”

I just woke up but have been accused of treason twice and sent threats of my execution. Stop. Most are part of paid troll farms @TwitterSafety come pick up the trash please. My OpEd described this exact harassment.
So much for MeToo progress in America. pic.twitter.com/YyDpN8NmaS

— Tara Reade 🐎 (@ReadeAlexandra) March 4, 2022

Former Biden Senate aide and sexual assault accuser Tara Reade, who in 2018 wrote “President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image projects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity” while Trump fanboys found absolutely nothing suspicious about that whatsoever, ended up becoming a paid contributor to RT, which the fanboys did not find suspicious at all either, is upset that her podcast was removed from Spotify over her association with the Putin regime and she’s been laid off along with all of the other domestic propagandists for the now-defunct English-language website.

The Kansas Supreme Court roundly rejected a motion by the state’s Republican administration to dismiss three lawsuits challenging the GOP legislature’s redistricting maps, election lawyer Marc Elias’s Democracy Docket announced.

Republican Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt falsely claimed that Kansas courts did not have the authority to determine the fairness of redistricting maps. “Neither that provision nor Kansas law gives courts any role in the lawmaking process by which congressional maps are drawn,” the state’s motion claimed.

The court acknowledged that the “validity of a legislatively enacted congressional reapportionment scheme is a matter of great public concern and statewide importance” and time “is of the essence in resolving the issues presented in this case as the 2022 election cycle is fast approaching.”

President Biden is seeing his job approval ratings improve in reaction to his handling of the Ukraine crisis and a downtick in COVID-19 infections, as a PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll puts him at 52% approval on Ukraine and 47% overall. Just two weeks ago, prior to Russia’s invasion, only a third had supported his handling of Ukraine and 39% had approved of his job in office overall.

After the Trump Administration kept them secret for years, the National Archives have turned over the White House visitor logs to the House Select Committee on the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, Reuters reports.

“Yesterday, the Select Committee received additional production of records from the National Archives,” a House of Representatives Select Committee aide said. “This included records that the former President attempted to keep hidden behind claims of privilege.”

The Archives gave the committee the logs for both the White House and for Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump loyalists attempted to get to reject the Electoral College slates of electors from key swing states.

Senator Lindsey Graham no longer calling for a disillusioned Russian military officer to blow up Vladimir Putin with a suitcase bomb, instead just saying he needs to be imprisoned for war crimes on Friday morning. Meanwhile on Friday, Daily Beast reporter Justin Baragona reached out to Twitter to ask if Graham was violating any rules with his tweet, they said no.

The US economy added a higher-than-expected 678,000 jobs in February, with an additional 92,000 jobs added in revisions to the previous two months’ jobs reports, according to the monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Employment in the leisure and hospitality; professional and business services; health care; and construction saw the largest growth with more than 60,000 new jobs in each sector.  Hourly wages held steady at $31.58.

In the first 13 months of the Biden Administration, the nation has gained more than 7.3 million jobs, more than the entire amount of jobs created by Presidents Trump, GW Bush, GHW Bush, Ford and Eisenhower combined (Total:  6.5 million).