Usually, it’s the other way around, but this time, the convict became the politician.  For the first time in history, a former prisoner in New York’s prison system was elected to serve in its legislature, Reuters reports.

Fifty-three-year-old Eddie Gibbs was sworn in as a representative in the state legislature, about thirty years after he was released from prison after serving about three years on a manslaughter conviction.

When Gibbs was 17, he was attacked by a man in an elevator in the apartment building where he and his family lived.  The man forced Gibbs to open a safe in the family’s apartment, but the only item in the safe was a gun, which Gibbs used to shoot and kill the man.  Gibbs immediately turned himself in to police; he was later tried and convicted.

With people talking about the possibility of war in Ukraine, cue former Democratic (?) Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to appear on Special Hungarian Emissary for Disinformation and Tourism Tucker Carlson to kowtow to Russia.  Echoing the frozen food heir, Gabbard claims that President Joe Biden is forcing war on Russia for… reasons.

Steven Carrillo, 33, a member of the Boogaloo Boys, changed his plea to guilty in the murder of a federal guard at a building outside Oakland, the Associated Press reports.  The plea change came after he agreed to a deal in which prosecutors took the death penalty off the table.

A former Air Force sergeant, Carrillo killed David Patrick Underwood and wounded another security guard in April 2020 at the federal courthouse in Oakland.  He reportedly posted multiple times on Facebook asking if people “wanted to boog.”

Carrillo fired 17 rounds at the courthouse, killing Underwood, as his accomplice drove a white van during protests in the city.  Carrillo is also indicted in the ambush murder of one Santa Cruz County sheriff deputy and the wounding of another in an incident that happened one week after the courthouse killing.

A CNN chyron (but unfortunately not CNN.com yet, of this writing) says “Source: Document turnover ‘has not been fully resolved,’ Trump still in possession of documents Archives wants.”

A judge on the Ontario Supreme Court ruled that protesters blocking access to border crossing, including the Ambassador Bridge from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, Michigan, must vacate the border area by Friday night or face consequences, the Washington Post reports.

Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz’s ruling goes into effect at 7 p.m. local time, giving protesters enough time to disperse and send the scores of trucks home.  Ottawa’s premier, Doug Ford, announced that anyone violating an emergency order he signed, requiring the bridge be cleared, will face penalties up to $100,000 in fines and a year in prison.

President Joe Biden will talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin late Saturday afternoon in the latest attempt to reduce tensions with 130,000 Russian troops amassed at the country’s border with Ukraine, the Washington Post reports.

The White House responded to a request from the Kremlin to have a call on Monday and suggest they move the timing up to Saturday.  The White House has urged Americans in Ukraine to leave the country in the next 48 hours, and they’ve said the US military will not be sent to rescue stragglers.

Biden also deployed 3,000 troops to Poland as a deterrent to Russian aggression in the region.  The White House has said Russia could launch an invasion of Ukraine before the end of the Olympics in a week.

An investigation by Grid.news found the two largest pro-Ottawa trucker protest groups on Facebook were launched by a Bangladeshi marketing firm founded by a man named Jakir Saikot. The pages, each with hundreds of thousands of followers, were later deactivated by Facebook after Grid contacted them with the evidence. Grid were able to reach Saikot on a video call, who confirmed he was indeed behind the pages, but gave some bullshit denial. “It was my own choice because I believe in freedom,” Saikot said. “We have a right to talk freely… The big reason is freedom, and otherwise nothing. No one paid us.” Grid also found that a single Bangladeshi administrator was behind the “Convoy to Canberra” Australian pro-clustertruck page.

A draft version of the Mueller report obtained by Buzzfeed reveals the Russia investigation special counsel declined to charge Donald Trump Jr with a misdemeanor for accessing a website using a password published by Wikileaks. Exactly which website was not specified in Buzzfeed’s article.

President Biden will deploy 3,000 more American soldiers to Poland, joining the 1,700 sent a few weeks ago, as a deterrence to Russian and Belarusian aggression against Ukraine, the AP reports.

Meanwhile, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gave a very stark warning to Americans living in Ukraine:  leave the country within the next 48 hours or be stranded because the US will not launch an evacuation plan, Yahoo News reports. “We encourage all American citizens who remain in Ukraine to depart immediately,” Sullivan said Friday. “We want to be crystal clear on this point: Any American in Ukraine should leave as soon as possible, and in any event in the next 24 to 48 hours.”

Officials have warned that Russia may launch an invasion of Ukraine by the end of the Olympics, which run for nine more days and have the world’s attention.  Russia has more than 100,000 troops amassed along Ukraine borders with Russia itself, as well as in Belarus, and the small breakaway territory of Transnistria. There are an estimated 6,500 Americans currently in Ukraine.

“The Unselect Committee and Nancy Pelosi are completely out of control, harassing innocent people, seizing private phone and bank records, and using the Capitol Police to spy on members of Congress. The RINOs, who were recently given support by Mitch McConnell, are trying to give legitimacy to a totally illegitimate and Marxist exercise. All the real questions about January 6 are being ignored, like why they are hiding 14,000 hours of video footage, and why Nancy Pelosi left the Capitol completely unsecured and denied up to 20,000 National Guard troops as requested by me. They should be looking at the massive evidence of Voter Fraud” and blah blah blah, the Orange Fat Bastard says in yet another statement about the Capitol riot.

We’re not sure this has been examined much elsewhere, but the claim that Nancy Pelosi somehow was in charge of the military in early January 2021 and decided not to deploy troops to protect the Capitol has appeared again and again in these statements. Have any right wingers really tried to defend this, ever? How was the Speaker of the House in charge of decisions on that scale? What is the actual evidence supporting this claim? Do any Trump fanboys realize how fucking stupid it sounds? It’s not the kind of situation that’s subject to interpretation like, say, the origins of COVID-19 and how badly the Trump White House botched the federal government’s response to the pandemic versus how much of it was going to go badly no matter who was in charge.

There was really only one person in charge of the military on January 6th, 2021, and if he wanted troops deployed there he could have ordered it, even despite some quite possibly very much justified pushback and foot dragging from the Pentagon for reasons not widely appreciated or understood. But forget that and ask this question the next time you see some right wing asshole claim Nancy Pelosi was somehow responsible for letting the “legitimate political discourse” occur at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021: What is the evidence to back up that claim?

Michigan QAnon fan Troy Burke has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the January 27th, 2021 shooting death of his wife Jessica, whom he believed was secretly President Joe Biden’s son who had a sex change prior to their marriage, the Mount Pleasant Morning Sun reports. Two separate court-ordered psychiatric examinations have determined Burke is unfit to stand trial in the killing which Burke claimed was encouraged by other QAnon fans who had told him his wife was a CIA-affiliated sex trafficker. “He also said that (President) Joe Biden had twins, a daughter and a son, and that the son had a sex change and that’s who his wife was,” said Gratiot County Prosecutor Keith Kushion. A judge has ordered one more test to determine if Burke will be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric institution.

US and NATO intel indicates a Russian assault on Ukraine could come just prior to the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics, in contrast to earlier assessments, CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reports, adding the Biden Administration is likely to declassify some of this intel as early as Friday.

The premier of Ontario declared a state of emergency for the entire province ahead of a weekend when law enforcement officials expect thousands of people to join the renegade truckers paralyzing the Canadian and American economies, the New York Times reports.

Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, said that the move will provide additional law enforcement to the scene, where police have been preventing the truckers from resupplying or bringing in replacement protestors for those that had to leave.

“Some guys had to go back to work, and the police wouldn’t let us refill those spots,” said Johnny Neufeld, 39, a long-haul trucker from Windsor.  The truckers have not received any support from Canadian groups, with the Teamsters denouncing the protest, saying it “hurt workers and negatively impact our economy.”

The Lyon County, Nevada courthouse in Yerington, Nevada was renamed to the “Donald J. Trump Justice Complex” in a ceremony attended by about 50 people Saturday, the AP reports.

Five police officers and a female civilian were shot during a standoff in Phoenix overnight.  The suspect barricaded himself in a house and opened fire on officers as they arrived at the scene.  The woman is in critical condition; the conditions of the officers were not released.

According to ABC News, police say the situation has ended and there is no further risk to the public.

During the halftime break of Sunday’s most important sporting event, new White House German Shepard Commander Biden will make a special appearance with First Lady Jill Biden, the AP reports. It is unclear if Commander will make any product endorsements, though if he indicates a preference for any specific brand of canned dog food it would not be the first such instance of a first family member doing so after Ivanka Trump shilled for Goya in 2020.

Republican candidate for Minnesota Attorney General Lynne Torgerson tells an event crowd that “at least two people on my staff were participants in January 6,” and “It seemed… that the election of Joe Biden was somewhat of a coup and that the person who won was President Trump.”

“The 2-year frenzy over emails was a political Rorschach test, where everyone saw something different in what was ultimately nothing. Call it sexism, Republican depravity, ratings-hungry media, it’s time we acknowledge it was bullshit, and write that into the history books”

– Unnamed Hillary Clinton rep’s response to request to comment for the story Republicans Who Railed About Clinton Emails Are Quiet on Trump’s Records. The Times didn’t put in the article.