The “British Royal Mint” announced it’ll be producing a limited run of scam collector’s coins celebrating the “Platinum Jubilee” or whatever of some old lady they think is a living God. It’s kind of like those stupid Trump collector’s coins except these are actual legal tender that can be exchanged for goods and services in the United Kingdom, the Independent reports.

Jon Ralston of the Nevada Independent reports former Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid has died.  He was 82.

Legendary NFL coach, broadcaster, and namesake to video gaming John Madden has died at the age of 85, the NFL has announced. Madden’s playing career with the Philadelphia Eagles ended before it began in 1958 due to a knee injury, and two years later he entered the college football coaching world, before returning to the NFL as the Oakland Raiders linebacker coach in 1967. Two years later Madden was named the team’s head coach, and in 1977 led the Raiders to their first ever Super Bowl victory. Madden retired in 1979 and took to the broadcast booth for CBS that same year, his broadcast career taking him from CBS to Fox in 1993, then to ABC in 2002, and finally at NBC between 2005 and 2009, after which he retired. Starting in 1988, Madden lent his name and expertise to the annual Madden NFL video game series and – starting in the mid-90s when technology was finally good enough to play recorded voice samples on gaming consoles – his voice commentary as well, until 2009 when he retired. The game series has sold more than a quarter billion copies in the 32 years since its first publication by Electronic Arts.

Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen announced that registered Republican Lyndon McLeod, 47, of Denver, Colorado is the gunman who killed four people and injured several others before being shot dead by cops himself, KDVR reports. Police, who described McLeod as harboring “extremist views” would not identify a motive for the attacks other than to say that the victims were “targeted”. That the victims were all shot at tattoo parlors and Mcleod himself once owned a tattoo shop would seem to suggest some sort of business-related vendetta.

Reuters video of some good old fashioned legislating. Notably absent is the sound of a speaker slamming the gavel and screaming at the combatants to sit the fuck down. This could be that the speaker was the one beating the shit out of the guy or merely found the bedlam entertaining and sat at his podium to watch while it unfolded. The old man with the purple tie seemed to enjoy it too.

When asked by UMass Amherst pollsters “On January 6th, a large group of individuals forced their way into the U.S. Capitol building. Looking back on this event, from the following list, who do you hold most responsible for the violence that occurred at the Capitol building?” 30% of Trump voters blamed Dems, 24% the Capitol police, 21% Antifa, and 8% Biden, while the rest were normal and variously blamed Trump, Republicans, and White Nationalists. 1% blamed Mike Pence. Read more.

January 6th Ellipse rally organizers Amy and Kylie Kremer, leaders of Women for America First (formerly Women for Trump), had planned a second MAGA protest outside the US Supreme Court that afternoon, a plan that was derailed by the Capitol riot, Talking Points Memo reports.

Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil has filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against Fox News, former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, and MAGA lawyer Sidney “Kraken” Powell over lies the two clowns told wrongfully tying Khalil to voting technology company Smartmatic and an also fake 2020 election rigging conspiracy, Yahoo News reports. Khalil, who has never had any connection whatsoever to Smartmatic – itself a plaintiff in multiple lawsuits against right wing conspiracy freaks – Fox, Dobbs, and Kraken included – filed the suit in New York State court early this month, though Fox News successfully had it moved to Manhattan’s federal court district. Dobbs called Khalil the Venezuelan election rigging plot’s “liaison with Hezbollah,” among other vicious lies.

“DaVinci Code” author Dan Brown and his ex-wife Blythe Brown have settled a lawsuit in which Blythe alleged that Dan had led a “secret life”, the Associated Press reports. The “secret”? Dan was hiding millions of dollars from Blythe and banging other women on the side. There was no conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of the Vatican’s power structure, or symbols hidden in a Renaissance painting depicting Jesus’s life, just some nerd who married a woman in his age and in his league when he was middle class dude and suddenly decided he can fuck around on the side after making tens of millions in royalties from the sales of his lame books. Mystery solved.

I had a black friend. I liked her and I think she liked me, too. But now she is hostile and unpleasant. I am sure I didn't do anything to her, except be white. Is that what teachers and our political leaders really want for our society? Divide us because of our skin color? #CRT

— Patricia Morgan (@repmorgan) December 28, 2021

On Sunday, Morgan also tweeted “Antiracism is religion. As such, its adherents have no business being the final arbiters on our school curricula. Because Establishment Clause states public schools may not teach religion. The dogma of antiracism is nothing other than ‘church’ that has no place in ‘state'” which, well there’s that pesky inescapable binary that if one is opposed to Antiracism then it’s kind of hard to conclude anything other than that they’re Pro-racism.

A Bexar County, Texas Sheriff’s Deputy has lost her arbitration appeal to overturn her firing after she was canned over her participation in the Capitol riot on January 6th, KSAT reports. Lt. Roxanne Mathai, 47, was originally fired in June by Sheriff Javier Salazar over her presence in DC at the riot. “Not gonna lie…..aside from my kids, this was, indeed, the best day of my life. And it’s not over yet,” Mathai posted on Facebook from outside the Capitol during the insurrection.

It is unknown if Mathai actually entered the Capitol during the riot and to date she has not been charged with any crime related to it. Mathai had already been on administrative leave from the department for several months prior to January 6th over an alleged “inappropriate relationship with an inmate incarcerated at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center.”

An awful shooting spree took place last night in Denver. My heart goes out to the victims & their families.

I remain grateful to our men & women in blue & grateful they are not defunded, allowing them to hire officers & have the right equipment to respond to tragedies like this.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) December 28, 2021

Now would be a good time to point out that police budgets were boosted nationally by the American Rescue Plan Act, a bill that Boebert and the rest of her white nationalist “Law and Order” pals voted against. So she should be grateful to Dems for making sure cops weren’t defunded.

“According to Defendants, Section 1512(c)(2) does not apply here because Congress’s certification was not an ‘official proceeding,’ and the phrase ‘otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes’ is limited to conduct like the destruction or alteration of documents and other records. In addition, if the statute is not read as they propose, Defendants argue that it is vague as applied; contravenes the rule of lenity; conflicts with the novel-construction principle; and violates the First Amendment.”

“None of these arguments succeeds. Defendants are not, as they argue, charged with anything like burning flags, wearing black armbands, or participating in mere sit-ins or protests… Moreover, even if the charged conduct had some expressive aspect, it lost whatever First Amendment protection it may have had” – Highlights from DC District Judge Timothy Kelly in his opinion on Proud Boys Ethan Nordean, Joseph R. Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Charles Donohoe’s lame attempt to say their reasons for being present at the Capitol on January 6th was constitutionally protected free speech.

The four assholes were indicted on conspiracy charges on May 15th, adding to the trouble they were already in over their original charges from the Capitol riot. Nordean was a particularly unhappy camper on Inauguration Day, crying “FUCK TRUMP! Fuck him more than Biden. I’ve followed this guy for 4 years and given everything and lost it all. Yes he woke us up, but he led us to believe some great justice was upon us… and it never happened, now I’ve got some of my good friends and myself facing jail time cuz we followed this guys lead and never questioned it. We are now and always have been on our own. so glad he was able to pardon a bunch of degenerates as his last move and shit on us on the way out” per court docs from May.

On Tuesday, the Ohio State Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Adams et al. v. Gov. DeWine et al, a complaint brought by Ohio voter Regina Adams and co-plaintiffs “to challenge the constitutionality of Ohio’s congressional reapportionment plan under Article XIX of the Ohio Constitution, which sets forth strict anti-gerrymandering requirements for congressional maps that, like this one, were passed without bipartisan support,” which sounds like a pretty important matter.

And guess what? One of the seven justices of the Ohio Supreme Court, Patrick DeWine, is the son of the defendant, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine! Isn’t that special that both dad and son have made it so far in their political careers that they could both be involved in such a pivotal case in interpreting the state constitution. There’s no recusing from the special bond between a dad and his boy.

“A federal court permanently enjoined a New Jersey entity and its principals from distributing unapproved and misbranded drugs touted as a treatment for COVID-19. In a complaint filed on Nov. 13, 2020, the United States alleged that Natural Solutions Foundation, along with trustees Ralph Fucetola and Dr. Rima Laibow, violated the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) by distributing a ‘nano silver’ product that they claimed would prevent, treat or cure COVID-19.”

“According to the complaint, which was filed at the request of the Food and Drug Administration, Natural Solutions operated various websites to market ‘Dr. Rima Recommends Nano Silver,’ a product that purportedly contained silver particles in a solution. The complaint further alleged that nano silver is not generally recognized by qualified experts as safe and effective to prevent, treat or cure COVID-19, and that the defendants’ claims were not supported by credible scientific evidence or studies. Additionally, the complaint alleged that the defendants’ nano silver products were misbranded drugs, because their labeling failed to bear adequate directions for use, as required by the FDCA” – Department of Justice Press Release

A friend of California QAnon fan Matthew Taylor Coleman, currently awaiting trial for driving his two young children into Mexico and murdering them with a spearfishing gun in August, told People Magazine that Coleman is “really despondent and hopeless,” and “alone with his thoughts 24/7. He’s reflecting on the mistakes he made in life and wondering if there’s any chance for redemption.”

“He poured out his heart,” the unnamed friend says of the sick asshole who killed his own toddler boy and infant girl because he was “enlightened by QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories” and thought the children had “alien reptilian DNA” from his wife’s family bloodline, per the FBI criminal complaint. “He begged for forgiveness, but says that he’s now where he deserves to be.” Coleman faces the death penalty for two federal counts of foreign murder of a US national.

New York Magazine political reporter Olivia Nuzzi (who probably gets paid a lot, but whatever it is, it still isn’t enough for her spectacular work) reached Lisa Oz, wife of New Jersey Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Doctor Mehmet Oz, and was abruptly hung up on. Or so Lisa thought, as detailed in Nuzzi’s Tuesday piece “The Political Life of Dr. Oz“.

Nuzzi was able to listen in on four minutes of heated conversation between the Ozes, as rather than hanging up, the phone apparently connected to their car’s audio system, unbeknownst to them. Mehmet Oz became angry over his wife’s friend, Michelle Bouchard having spoken to “that fucking girl reporter,” (Nuzzi) ranting “[Bouchard] said things she shouldn’t have fucking said… She shouldn’t have fucking said – She said shit she shouldn’t have said! That I was going to be the next leader of the Republican Party.” “No, she didn’t say that,” said Lisa Oz, to which Mehmet said “You were the one who told me that!. You told me that’s what she said!”

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows should find himself indicted sometime next week if the timeframe is anything like that of Steve Bannon’s from the time that the House voted to send the criminal referral and when the Justice Department announced the indictment.

Bannon was referred by the House on October 21st, and indicted 22 days later on November 12. Given that Meadows was referred criminally by the House late on the night of December 14th, 22 days later would be on January 5th, 2022 – if he is to be indicted. One major difference between the two Trump minions is that, unlike Bannon, Meadows was White House employee at the time in question and has an least partial claim to executive privilege, which could make the case more complicated for a grand jury to sort out. Given that the Garland DOJ has been a pretty frustrating black box this is about all we have to work with on speculating when Meadows faces justice.

Mentally insane MAGA lawyer Lin Wood revealed on Saturday that “Frog News Network” host and anti-vaxxer Doug Kuzuma was put on a ventilator Saturday morning following the “anthrax attack” at the Dallas ReAwaken America tour event the weekend of December 11th. Wood himself actually says “Doug is suffering from Covid after returning from a recent Patriot conference,” making it clear not even he believes the “anthrax” bullshit. Yet still another attendee, “Stop the Steal” assclown Jovan Pulitzer still thinks it was an attack, tweeting “To my friends tried to keep this underwraps until we knew what we were dealing with but Evidence suggest that several of us were targeted by biological agents at an event This has wreaked havoc on my system w all of the most dangerous symptoms appearing Scary to say the least” as he ailed last Wednesday. Thoughts and prayers.

Russia’s Supreme Court ordered rights group Memorial International shut down on Tuesday, Deutsche Welle reports. The shutdown order comes one day after Gulag historian and Memorial International leader Yury Dmitriev’s prison sentence for bullshit charges of sexually abusing his own adopted daughter was extended another two years on top of the 13 he was already in for. Prosecutors had charged that Memorial was receiving funding from sources outside Russia, and by not clearly marking their literature as issued by a “foreign agent”, the NGO was subject to closure.

But the Putin regime’s real issue with the group was made plain in prosecutor Alexei Zhafyarov’s arguments to the bench. “It is obvious that Memorial creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state by speculating on the topic of political repression of the 20th century,” Zhafyarov said. Dozens protested outside the court as the verdict was rendered, shouting “SHAME! SHAME!” over the court’s ruling. Several protestors were carried away by cops to jail cells unknown.