NYT: “The Justice Department sought the email records of three Washington Post reporters the day before William P. Barr stepped down as attorney general in a last-ditch effort to identify who had told the newspaper about conversations between Trump campaign officials and the Russian ambassador, newly unsealed court documents show. The Dec. 22 request, one of Mr. Barr’s last acts in office, was part of a major escalation by the Trump administration during its final weeks in power of a yearslong campaign to crack down on leaks of classified information to the news media. The Trump Justice Department also sought New York Times reporters’ records in that period.”

“The Biden Justice Department had disclosed the effort – which also included seizing the reporters’ phone records – last month, leading to the unsealing of the Post docket. The files shed new light on what happened, including listing the day prosecutors applied for the email records order and identifying three Post articles that were the subject of a leak investigation. Those articles, identified only by their dates of publication, apparently included one in May 2017 that reported that President Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had discussed with Russia’s ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, the possibility of using Russian diplomatic facilities as a communication back channel during the transition. They also included a June 2017 article about the Obama administration’s struggles to deal with Russian election interference the previous year, and a July 2017 article reporting that Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, had discussed campaign issues with Mr. Kislyak when Mr. Sessions was a senator and a Trump campaign surrogate the previous year. All three articles were written by Adam Entous, Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima, the reporters whose communications records investigators were seeking to secretly seize. While the Justice Department has disclosed that it did obtain their phone logs – which do not require court orders – it never succeeded in obtaining their email logs.”

Perhaps because no radiologists were available, Fox News was left to talk with Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist from Baylor, who commented that the available vaccines are “only 60-70% effective” against all the variants based on foreign studies.  “There’s no reason right now, no clinical reason to go get vaccinated,” McCullough preaches.

But then, there’s this headline from CBS News:

“Senate Democrats announced a top line budget number late Tuesday that will propel their plan to enact the full array of President Joe Biden’s social welfare and family aid promises without Republican votes.

“The proposal sets an overall limit of $3.5 trillion for the spate of Democratic policy ambitions that won’t make it into a bipartisan infrastructure deal, if Congress can reach one. Formal text of the Senate’s budget resolution has yet to be released. If that measure can clear both chambers with lockstep party support, it will unleash the power to circumvent a GOP filibuster using budget reconciliation, the same move that Democrats used to pass the president’s $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package in March.” –Politico

Ken Starr, the former independent counsel who conducted a four-year investigation into the business, political and personal life of former president Bill Clinton, reportedly pushed the Department of Justice under George W. Bush to drop all child sex trafficking charges against pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, according to a new book by Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown.

As reported in the Guardian, Starr used his friends, acquaintances and professional relationships with Republicans in the Justice Department to push it to drop an investigation into Epstein.  Joining Alan Dershowitz on Epstein’s legal team in 2007, Starr sent letters and emails to prosecutors and other officials.

Among the connections he leveraged, Starr wrote an eight-page letter to Mark Filip, who had just been confirmed as deputy US attorney general, on behalf of Epstein seeking the DOJ to drop the case.  Filip had been a partner with Starr at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis.

Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman jumped out of his car during a rain-storm earlier today to help other drivers clear a tree from the road. Fetterman’s wife caught the act on her phone and posted it to her Twitter feed. One thing’s for certain: you’ll never see a grifting jackass like Pennsylvania GOP chair Lawrence Tabas or raging coke-fiend Don Jr do something like that.

From the video clip, it appears that Fetterman just walks over, picks up the tree trunk (with another guy on the end even though a leviathan like Fetterman didn’t really need the help, but he was nice and let the guy feel like he was pitching in) and just pulled the whole thing over to the side of the road, then tossed it into the ditch. That is the definition of being a public servant and watching out for your constituents.

Democratic Texas state legislator James Talarico, one of the state representatives who are in DC to prevent a vote on a Texas voter suppression act sponsored by the GOP, challenged Fox News host (and guy who thought he was a much better high school tight end than college coaches gave him credit for) Pete Hegseth’s reality when he pushed Hegseth to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the November 2020 election.

The woke @MLB prioritized virtue signaling over the truth when they pulled the #AllStarGame out of Atlanta and moved it to Denver.

That decision took $100 million out of the pockets of small businesses and workers in Atlanta. https://t.co/LXmY0P01DM

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) July 13, 2021

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit former Louisiana judge Roy Moore filed against entertainer Sasha Baron Cohen claiming that Cohen duped Moore into an unflattering appearance on the performer’s “Who is America?” show, the Associated Press reports.  Moore had sought $95 million in damages.

Moore, who twice served as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, had signed a comprehensive disclosure agreement before filming, negating any future claims.  “The court agrees that Judge Moore’s claims are barred by the unambiguous contractual language, which precludes the very causes of action he now brings,” Judge John Cronan wrote.

The segment in which Moore appeared featured Cohen as a faux counterterrorism instructor “Col. Erran Morad” demonstrating fake new military technology to Moore.  One of the items was a “pedophile detector” that beeped when it got near Moore, who has been credible accused to dating minor girls. 

Just a story to brighten your day. Walkin’ Pets, a pet mobility company based out of New Hampshire has provided mobility devices for the tortoise and the hair. The Tortoise is 11 year old Sulcata Tortoise George Bailey, and the hare is Hudson, a three legged pet rabbit. Walkin’ Pets normally does wheelchairs for dogs who have lost the normal use of their legs due to arthritis or hip dysplasia, but also does custom rigs for other animals, as seen above.

“Last month, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new budget, which included the funds needed – $1.3 million – to get deadly drift gillnets out of the water. For years, the nets used off the coast of California have killed more dolphins than all other observed U.S. West Coast and Alaska fisheries combined,” reports Oceana.org.

Conservative network Newsmax distanced itself from a pro-pandemic statement made by Rob Schmitt, one of the channel’s prime time hosts, who stated that deadly viruses shouldn’t be stopped because they’re the way the planet culls the population.

“Newsmax as a network strongly supports President Biden’s efforts to widely distribute the COVID vaccine. It is important for the safety of all and especially those at high risk, such as the elderly,” a spokesperson told The Washington Post on Tuesday.

In an interview with Texas A&M School of Medicine professor Peter A. McCullough, Schmitt said, “I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature. Like, I mean, if there is some disease out there — maybe there’s just an ebb and flow to life where something’s supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people, and that’s just kind of the way evolution goes. Vaccines kind of stand in the way of that.”

Miami Herald: “Gov. DeSantis should have just laid it on the line when a reporter asked about the hundreds upon hundreds of Cuban-American demonstrators and their supporters who shut down a portion of the Palmetto Expressway in Miami-Dade County. Instead, he deflected, talking about protesters in Cuba. Implicit in the question, however, was whether the governor’s vaunted anti-riot law – created in the wake of George Floyd demonstrations – would apply in the case of the demonstrators blocking streets and an expressway in Miami-Dade. Their cause is righteous, of course – bringing down Cuba’s oppressive and regressive regime. The law explicitly makes blocking a highway a felony offense. Worse, it gives civil legal immunity to people who drive through protesters who are blocking a road – basically, encouraging haters to do just that.”

“Demonstrators shut down State Road 826 in both directions Tuesday in solidarity with their counterparts in Cuba. Police obliged and redirected traffic. Mercifully, no one roared through the crowd in a vehicle. Everything was as it should be in a country that has a high tolerance for free expression. But, unfortunately, for the governor, the reporter’s question trapped him in the hypocrisy of his law, likely to be arbitrarily enforced. Honestly, we would have been more impressed if he had just responded: ‘Nah, the Miami-Dade demonstrators seeking human rights in Cuba have nothing to fear from my anti-riot law. We created it to subdue Black folks seeking human rights in the United States.'”

As the Delta variant sweeps across the country, Arkansas has reported its highest daily number of new cases in more than six months with 1,476 infections reported Tuesday, the AP reports.

The number reported is the highest the state has seen since it reported 1,824 cases on February 5th.  Hospitalizations in the state rose by 41 to 606.  Throughout the state, 94% of the intensive care beds are filled, and only 22% of standard care beds are available.  Ninety-eight of those hospitalized with coronavirus in the state are currently on ventilators.

Arkansas has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the United States, at just 35% of the population fully vaccinated versus 48.3% nationally.  According to Asa Hutchinson, the state’s Republican governor, 98.3% of those hospitalized in the state since January were unvaccinated.

“International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach referred to Japanese citizens as ‘Chinese’ Tuesday morning in his first public comments since arriving in Tokyo and completing quarantine. The news conference gaffe drew criticism, with some people saying online they feel it’s indicative of a lack of respect for the locals being put at risk by the games. Bach’s speech at the headquarters of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee was meant to assuage concerns that the Olympics would be a superspreader event as delta variant Covid-19 cases go up around the world. ‘Our common target is safe and secure games,’ Bach said at the start of the meeting.”

“He made the mistake as he emphasized the security and preparedness of the city. ‘For everybody – for the athletes, for all the delegations and most importantly also for the Chinese people – Japanese people,’ he said. Though interpreters at the event didn’t translate the error from English to Japanese with the rest of the speech, Japanese publications reported the incident” – NBC News.

In a 2-1 decision, a federal appeals court has thrown out a 1968 law that set the minimum age for purchasing a handgun at 21-years-old, saying that it relegates 18- to 20-year-olds as “second class citizens,” the Washington Post reports.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond overturned a lower court’s ruling, with a judge appointed by George W. Bush joining an appointee of Donald Trump combining for the majority.  “(W)e refuse to relegate either the Second Amendment or 18- to 20-year-olds to a second-class status,” Judge Julius Richardson, the Trump appointee, wrote in the majority opinion.   Richardson cited the Heller decision in justifying his ruling.

The dissenting judge, James Wynn, an Obama appointee, accused his colleagues of breaking “new ground by invalidating a modest and long-established effort to control gun violence.  But the majority’s decision to grant the gun lobby a victory in a fight it lost on Capitol Hill more than fifty years ago is not compelled by law.”

JTA: “Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner and father-in-law of Ivanka Trump, hosted a fundraising event for Nikki Haley and speculated about the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador becoming president. If Haley declares, and Donald Trump, Jared Kushner’s father-in-law, says he wants another shot at the White House, things could get interesting at the Kushner family seder. Vanity Fair reported Monday that the day before, as Trump was on Fox hinting that he is likely to run again, Charles Kushner was hosting a brunch for Haley in New Jersey.”

“The elder Kushner predicted Haley would be ‘the first woman president’ and guests donated to her political action committee. Haley has said she will announce her decision about whether to run in 2024 early in 2023. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump did not attend the event; they were in Aspen, Colorado, Vanity Fair said. But they have lunched with Haley since Donald Trump left office and Trump reportedly blames his loss of the presidency last year in part on Jared Kushner, who effectively managed the reelection campaign. Of those who are closest to Trump, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have been notably silent about Trump’s claims that the election was rigged. In December, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, a Jewish businessman and philanthropist, for his 2005 conviction for fraud, tax evasion and witness tampering. Kushner’s crime, for which he served 14 months in prison, generated national headlines because it included paying a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law. Haley is among the more popular potential Republican candidates among pro-Israel Jews. She visited Israel last month with pro-Israel Christian evangelists and, according to Vanity Fair, spoke on Sunday night to a Chabad-Lubavitch event on Long Island.”

Washington Post: “A war of words broke out Tuesday among former senior Justice Department officials over Pennsylvania politics and the aftermath of the 2020 election, fueled by former president Donald Trump’s release of a letter by a former appointee who is seeking Trump’s backing as he considers a run for governor. The debate about how Trump’s Justice Department did or did not pursue allegations of election fraud last year has been a divisive issue in Republican primaries, with some candidates and prospective candidates embracing Trump’s unfounded claims. In Pennsylvania, a hotly contested battleground state where Trump’s allies sought to reverse Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory, the latest dispute is between former attorney general Bill Barr and William McSwain, a former U.S. attorney for Philadelphia. McSwain is one of several Pennsylvania Republicans interested in running for governor in 2022 vying for Trump’s endorsement.”

“Democratic lawmakers who left Texas to block restrictive voting law plead with Congress to act In a June 9 letter to Trump made public Monday night, McSwain said his office ‘received various allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities.’ The letter seemed to blame Barr for not allowing McSwain to fully pursue and publicize them. ‘As part of my responsibilities as U.S. Attorney, I wanted to be transparent with the public and, of course, investigate fully any allegations,’ McSwain wrote. ‘Attorney General Barr, however, instructed me not to make any public statements or put out any press releases regarding possible election irregularities.’ In an interview, Barr disputed McSwain’s characterizations of his actions, and said McSwain told him he wrote the letter in a bid to win Trump’s endorsement – or at least stave off attacks. ‘Any suggestion that McSwain was told to stand down from investigating allegations of election fraud is false. It’s just false,’ Barr said, adding that the assertions ‘appeared to have been made to mollify President Trump to gain his support for McSwain’s planned run for governor.’ Barr said he called McSwain on Monday to complain about the letter, which he heard about before it became public. McSwain defended his missive as technically accurate while asserting, ‘I can’t have Trump attacking me,’ Barr said. McSwain, he added, told him that ‘he was in a tough spot because he wanted to run and he needed Trump’s at least neutrality, if not support.'”

“President Joe Biden intends to nominate former Sen. Jeff Flake as ambassador to Turkey, putting the Arizona Republican on the front lines diplomatically with a traditional ally at a time when relations have strained in an authoritarian era” the Arizona Republic reports.

“Flake’s nomination will require confirmation by the Democratic-controlled Senate, where he knows most of the members from his six years in the chamber, which ended in 2019. The nomination is one of the most visible posts yet for a Republican in the Biden White House. Many expected Flake, of Mesa, to play some role in the administration after he enthusiastically supported Biden over former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election. Jeff Flake, who served a single term in the Senate, crossed party lines to back Joe Biden for president over Donald Trump. A diplomatic post is hardly surprising for Flake, a former member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His longstanding interest in international affairs is coupled with a political outlook that called on the Trump administration to work cooperatively with America’s traditional allies.”

“Right-wing commentator and Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a likely candidate for governor and one of the state’s most visible 2020 election conspiracy theorists, sent more than 50 tweets with the QAnon hashtag before entering office. In those newly uncovered tweets, Mastriano also promoted Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory that, like QAnon, has resulted in violence. Mastriano is a Republican who has been in office since June 2019. He is leading an effort in Pennsylvania to conduct a supposed ‘forensic investigation’ of the state’s election results. The plan comes in the wake of the fraudulent ‘audit’ that’s being done in Arizona by Republicans and championed by right-wing media. Mastriano is also a frequent guest on OAN, Newsmax, and Steve Bannon’s program.”

“Media Matters previously documented that he’s used his Facebook page to share false anti-vaccines claims and that he repeatedly used violent rhetoric on right-wing programming ahead of the January 6 Capitol insurrection. (Mastriano himself was at the insurrection.) He has also associated himself with the QAnon movement, including appearing on QAnon programs. A QAnon-affiliated conference listed Mastriano as an attendee, but a spokesperson later claimed to The Philadelphia Inquirer that he ‘never committed to speak at this event.’ The spokesperson also said that Mastriano ‘strongly condemns the ‘Q anon’ conspiracy theory.’ Mastriano was even more involved with the movement: In 2018, Mastriano posted at least 51 tweets with the hashtag ‘QAnon,’ according to a Media Matters search. Those posts were about a variety of topics, including two Ben Garrison cartoons that promote the Pizzagate conspiracy theory by picturing former Clinton adviser John Podesta with a slice of pizza. He also attached the QAnon-affiliated slogan ‘The Great Awakening” to several posts. Additionally, Mastriano tweeted the QAnon slogan ‘WWG1WGA’ (‘where we go one, we go all’) at least once” – Media Matters.