Failed governor, failed reality television personality, failed vice presidential candidate, failed spouse and failed mother Sarah Palin was caught dining out at a New York City restaurant Wednesday night, days after she requested a delay in her lawsuit because she claimed she tested positive for Covid.  Palin, who claims to be unvaccinated, is not wearing a mask, but the group is seated in an outdoor enclosed area, apparently on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

An angry constituent lays into Congresswoman (and apparent late night deejay at the county’s Romantic Western station WACK, heard from down the hollar to up along Back Mountain) Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA), saying that she’s being childish in not accepting the election of President Joe Biden.  A smirking and giggling Greene doesn’t get the opportunity to respond.

The Mcminn County, Tennessee School board voted 10-0 to ban the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, the Tennessee Holler reports. Maus depicts Art’s father Vladek Spiegelman’s absolutely gut-wrenching experience surviving the Holocaust in comic book form, where the Jews are depicted as mice and the Nazis as cats. There is nothing remotely “woke” about it, unless acknowledging that six million Jews and millions of other ethnic and religious minorities in Europe suffered unbelievable horrors at the hands of fellow human beings – all because of some sick freak holding a grudge after getting rejected from art school is “woke”. At least the ban will have the opposite of its intended effect and encourage people to read Maus.

“He will make his pick based purely on race and gender, and promised only an African-American woman will be selected,” Lego figure and Trump advisor Sean Hannity said on Fox.  “Jonathan Turley, a Democrat, questions the Constitutionality of this criteria.  He wrote this:  ‘Precisely what the Supreme Court declared to be unconstitutional.  Discrimination.’  We’ll have more of his article coming up, and we’ll break Biden’s potentially break it all down his unlawful potential unconstitutional schrattegy.”

Note that the word salad at the end is an accurate transcription of Hannity’s words.  And apparently he would object to Ronald Reagan vowing to name a woman to the court, right?

Every day I thank God I don’t live in commiefornia.

— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) January 26, 2022

Republican Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz was told by his associate, Joel Greenberg, that the girl they had both slept with was underage, nullifying any claim Gaetz could make to claim that he didn’t know the girl was a minor, two people with knowledge of a first-hand witness of the call told The Daily Beast.

“Big Joe” Ellicott, a local radio personality who pleaded guilty earlier Wednesday to various offenses including tax fraud, is cooperating with investigators probing Gaetz.  He told two people that he was in the room with Greenberg when Greenberg called him to tell him one of the girls they had paid to have sex with was under 18 years old.

Ellicott has not been charged in relation to child sex trafficking or any other prostitution-related charges, and Greenberg has already pleaded guilty to one count relating to sex trafficking, among other things, in a plea agreement with authorities.  Gaetz is reportedly under investigation.

An amateur astronomer and space junk expert has calculated that an expended rocket stage from a 2015 launch by Space X will impact on the surface of the moon sometime around March 4th, the Washington Post reports.

The section of the Falcon rocket that will strike the moon’s surface has been on an irregular orbit around the moon since it was part of an early Space X mission to launch a satellite into orbit.

Bill Gray, a self-described orbital dynamics researcher from Maine, had a computer program forecasting the trajectory of various items of space junk, including this rocket section.  His program kept terminating unexpectedly on March 4th predictions.  Gray soon realized it was because the program couldn’t process the impact of the object into the moon.

Just seven hours after the news that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring from the bench at the end of this session, Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn claims that Democrats will be using it as a distraction to the talking points of the GOP.  It’s not like the nominee is having a Rose Garden debut in the middle of a pandemic or nuthin’.

“They’re trying to use this to distract from their what is their failed agenda,” Blackburn declares to the human hybrid with Bert the Muppet.  “The American people are all concerned with inflation and crime and Covid and CRT and the wokeness and the lockdown and the mandates and Russia and Ukraine and now they’re trying to do this.  They do think it’ll gin up their base but it is also going to galvanize conservatives going into the election especially if Joe Biden does what he’s been doing for the district and circuit judges to nominate people that are far to the left, uh, they are outside of the American mainstream.”

“Defendant Elmer Stewart Rhodes, III (“Defendant”) is charged with violating 18 U.S.C. §2384 (Seditious Conspiracy); 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k) (Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding); 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) (Obstruction of an Official Proceeding and Aiding and Abetting); 18 U.S.C. § 372 (Conspiracy to Prevent an Officer from Discharging any Duties); and 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(1) (Tampering with Documents or Proceedings). The United States moved to detain Defendant pending trial pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 3142(f)(1) and 3142(f)(2). Upon consideration, the Court finds Defendant must be DETAINED” writes US Eastern District of Texas Magistrate Judge Kimberley Priest Johnson in her order denying bail to the one-eyed “patriot” dipshit Stewie Rhodes.

Manhattan Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a letter Tuesday to the New York State legislature with a very detailed US House redistricting plan that would take a total nerd to parse out the political implications and what the state’s delegation would look like next year. Thankfully total nerd and redistricting expert Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report has gamed it out and concluded the proposed changes would kill five of the state’s eight Republican seats and hand them to Dems.

As satisfying as this likely outcome would be in retaliation for such scummy bullshit moves like Republicans carving up Nashville and Salt Lake City into four districts and in Kansas putting a leftist college town 40 miles from Kansas City, Missouri into a massive rural district that stretches all the way to the Colorado border, we’re still of the preference that everybody everywhere be equally unhappy and that all 45 or so states that actually have districts use bipartisan commissions to draw their maps. This was exactly what had been proposed in the For The People Act which the two assholes in the Dem Senate caucus helped block. All that said, Republicans have not been able to fuck Democrats out of seats even remotely as badly as they had hoped during this process, so while it sucks that this decade will be largely the same as the last – with few competitive seats and everything being won on the margins – at least it won’t be any harder for Dems to win majorities.

A 21-year-old man fell to his death while he tried to take a selfie on top of a mountain known as Flatiron at Lost Dutchman State Park early Monday morning, when he slipped off the edge of the mountaintop, Arizona Central reports.

Rescuers found the body of Richard Jacobson 700 feet below the campsite Jacobson and a friend set up the night before.  Jacobson’s companion said that around midnight, Jacobson wanted to take a selfie looking off the edge of the steep mountain, but slipped and fell.

Rescue teams headed out to the site around 12:45 a.m., but did not recover the body until after sunrise.  A helicopter was needed to get the body out of the canyon.

Five and a half foot tall Senator Rand Paul, talking to the one OANN host with disproportionately large nostrils, alleges some kind of conspiracy by the Biden Administration to deny Florida supplies of COVID-19 treatments that don’t actually work against the Omicron variant. Rand believes it’s politically motivated punishment against Red States because “too many Deplorables, too many Republicans are getting sick,” which, in his opinion, “has brought out the worst in people.” Rand then says “I know some people who have died of COVID, and I’ve seen liberals stomping on their graves, and they’re just laughing, hysterically, that a Conservative died from COVID.”

Music streaming giant Spotify has granted Neil Young’s request for his music to be removed from their catalog in protest of their carrying the toxic COVID disinformation bro Joe Rogan’s podcast, the Wall Street Journal reports. Whether this portends an exodus by Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, or even artists not named Neil has yet to be seen, but Eric Clapton, Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, Nicki Minaj, the racist country music guy, and that one idiot pop singer woman who wore the “Trump’s Wall” dress to some awards show are probably safe bets to stick with Spotify.

I take my Constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on a nominee to the Supreme Court very seriously. I look forward to meeting with and evaluating the qualifications of President Biden’s nominee to fill this Supreme Court vacancy.

— Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) January 26, 2022

Obnoxious headline aside, Senator Joe Manchin – along with his fellow foot blister Kyrsten Sinema, plus Republicans Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski – did vote yes to confirm leading Supreme Court candidate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to a seat on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals just seven months ago, so this could be a largely drama-free nomination process.

Justice Department: “A South Carolina man was sentenced today to 44 months in prison for assaulting law enforcement with a dangerous weapon during the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress that was in the process of ascertaining and counting the electoral votes related to the presidential election. According to court documents, Nicholas Languerand, 26, of Little River, South Carolina, was among rioters standing near the archway leading from the Lower West Terrace to the interior of the Capitol. Between 4:50 and 5 p.m., he threw various objects at officers with the U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department, including an orange traffic barrier and two stick-like objects.”

“The officers were protecting the Lower West Terrace entrance. Based on the size and weight of the objects, as well as the speed and force with which Languerand threw them, the items were capable of inflicting serious bodily injury. Additionally, at about 5 p.m., Languerand took possession of a police riot shield, struck it against the ground, and then held it in front of him as he confronted police.At the time of the Capitol breach, Languerand was residing in Wolcott, Vermont. He later moved to South Carolina, where he was arrested on April 15. He pleaded guilty on Nov. 3, in the District of Columbia, to assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon. In addition to the prison term, Judge John D. Bates ordered Languerand to pay $2,000 in restitution. He also must serve a period of two years of supervised release following completion of his prison term. He additionally was ordered to perform 60 hours of community service.”

The United States told Russia to go fuck themselves on the “security demand” that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO, but offered a “diplomatic path” out of the crisis Russia created for itself by being all snowflakey about having a semi-functioning democracy on its border, AFP reports. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who so far has not lived up to his name while staring in face of Russian hostility, told reporters “It sets out a serious diplomatic path forward should Russia choose it,” and that he plans to meet with Putin’s dog Sergei Lavrov in Geneva within the next few days.

Fox personality Harris Faulkner speculated that President Joe Biden will fill the newly-announced open seat on the Supreme Court with Kamala Harris because the hostess doesn’t know there is more than one capable Black woman in the Democratic corner.  Likely projecting the GOP’s dearth of diversity in its caucus, which has only had one Black female member of Congress in history, Faulkner and former Trump spokesmodel Binder Barbie discussed the possibility of Biden nominating Harris to the Supreme Court because they “don’t know what to do with her.”

After declaring Biden will nominate a young Black woman for the seat, Faulkner opined, “I can’t be the only person who is seeing this,” to which Kelly McEnerny states, “I think it’s a theory that could be credible.”

US-backed Syria-based Kurdish forces, once abandoned by the Trump administration, wrested control of a prison that had been assaulted by ISIS, a group Donald Trump claimed to have defeated, the Associated Press reports.

More than 3,000 prisoners and fighters have surrendered at the prison in the last two days as coalition forces made their way bloc-by-bloc through the Gweiran prison complex, which houses 3,000 prisoners and about 600 minor detainees.  Since they attacked the complex Thursday, IS and prisoners have used the children held in the prison as shields against attack.

“The whole prison is now under control,” said Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. “The operation today was on the cells of the child detainees. We were able to surround a number of terrorists who had taken them as shields and we killed them.”

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced Wednesday that he is retiring from the bench, giving President Joe Biden his first opportunity to appoint a jurist to the top court in the nation, NBC News reports.

One of the three consistent liberals on the Supreme Court, the 83-year-old Breyer is the oldest justice on the court.  Breyer’s retirement should give Biden a clear path to appoint a justice because Democrats hold the majority in the Senate and Mitch McConnell has no opportunity to obstruct a nomination like he did with the vacancy created when Antonin Scalia died in January 2016, when Barack Obama was president.

Liberal activists have pushed for the appointment of a Black woman to the Supreme Court, which would likely be the first time the conservative members of the court will have to deal with a Black female peer in their entire professional lives.

Florida radio host “Big Joe” Ellicott, a close friend of Matt Gaetz’s friend Joel Greenberg, pleaded guilty in federal court this week to charges in a scheme to “pay bribes and kickbacks” to a public official and selling Adderall (which is kind of weird for a federal crime, but whatever), Yahoo News reports. Ellicott reportedly has “intimate knowledge” of the underage sex trafficking crimes Greenberg and Gaetz were involved with and is cooperating with federal prosecutors, the latest in a series of signs that an indictment of the MAGA Congressman Gaetz may be imminent.