Burdened with the obligation of defending officers accused of misdeeds, police unions around the country are working out ways to train police to intervene and in some cases, report, fellow officers who are committing acts that could harm suspects or violate the public trust.

According to CNN, other unions such as the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters and SEIU are helping to adapt programs they have in place to develop “active bystanders” who step in when peers or people senior to them use unsafe tactics.  Trade unions and service groups implemented similar programs over the year to improve safety and practices.

Police unions are not typically part of the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters or SEIU, so they are under no obligation to take up the recommendations made by the three unions.  However, a representative of the largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, said they would consider suggestions. 

There was no insurrection.

The only coup that happened was on November 4th.

— Amy Kremer (@AmyKremer) May 17, 2021

In her quest to regain the Senate seat she lost in a 2021 runoff to Democrat Rafael Warnock, Republican Kelly Loeffler has prepped her campaign by collecting millions of dollars in donations to fund her efforts.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Loeffler has had to refund millions in donations to people who claimed they were victims of a scam that the Trump campaign:  unwitting donors who had a button to opt-in to repeat donations pre-checked.

Loeffler’s organization for the 2022 election, Greater Georgia, used a pre-checked box on its website to collect millions of dollars in donations from donors.  Only after the AJC contacted the organization did the box go unchecked on its webpage.

Voyager 1, a spacecraft launched by NASA in 1977 to study the outer solar system, has sent back information about a faint background hum in interstellar space, likely caused by plasma, Space.com reports.

A groundbreaking mission, Voyager 1 became the first manmade craft to travel past the heliosphere, considered the “border” of our solar system.  Since 2012, with Voyager 1 more than 14 billion miles from Earth, NASA has collected information from an uncharted region of space, even as the vehicle’s plutonium energy source dwindles to less than a decade’s worth of operation power.

The hum, described as like the sound of a light rain, comes from plasma material found throughout the universe.  The constant hum is interrupted by jolts from a burst of solar wind which, as one astronomer put it, hits the spacecraft like a clap of thunder in an otherwise calm space. 

A Republican Kansas state legislator has been arrested on three charges of misdemeanor battery after a stint as a substitute school teacher in which he kneed a male student in the groin after lecturing a class on God, lesbians, sex, masturbation and suicide.

According to the Kansas City Star, 36-year-old state representative Mark Samsel was teaching a high school class in Wellsville, a town of about 2,000 people about 45 miles southwest of Kansas City, two weeks ago.  In one of a series of videos, Samsel goes on a rant about things he depicts as immoral.  In another, he encourages students to kick a fellow classmate in the groin.

At some point off camera, Samsel himself knees a student in the groin.  He was arrested and released on $1,000 bond, with an appearance scheduled for Wednesday morning in Franklin County District Court.

On the right is former Obama campaign aide Marjorie Clifton, who couldn’t help herself from reminding Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner and whatever the chode on the left’s name is about the former guy’s administration’s approach to “the science” of Coronavirus protection with regard to vaccines and masking on Monday. Faulkner didn’t think it was funny. Not one bit.

In an unsealed letter to the federal district court, lawyers for disgraced Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani asked a judge to either toss evidence prosecutors got from searching Giuliani’s iCloud account or give them access to the affidavits presented to obtain the warrants, claiming that the search was illegal and violated the rights of Giuliani and his clients.

According to the letter, reported by CNN, Giuliani’s attorneys state that the warrant claimed the seizure of records needed to be withheld from Giuliani because “if Giuliani were informed of the existence of the warrant, he might destroy evidence or intimidate witnesses.”  Giuliani’s lawyers say that the failure to notify his client resulted in confidential information being obtained and reviewed by prosecutors in the Department of Justice, including information that could compromise his clients, including Donald Trump who was the subject of a DoJ investigation at the time the files were seized.

“After our review, we expect to be able to expand our argument that this unilateral, secret review was illegal,” they wrote, “and should be deterred in the future by suppression of any evidence considered, and also any information obtained as fruit of this poisoned tree.”

America will never be fully safe while this pandemic is raging globally. That’s why today, I’m announcing that over the next six weeks we will send 80 million vaccine doses overseas.

It is the right thing to do. It is the smart thing to do. It is the strong thing to do.

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 17, 2021

“The government has issued a subpoena (the ‘Subpoena’) for ‘[a]ll customer or subscriber account information’ for the Twitter user @NunesAlt (the ‘Account’) from October 1, 2020 to present. Under the First Amendment, the government cannot compel Twitter to produce information related to the Account unless it ‘can show a compelling interest in the sought-after material and a sufficient nexus between the subject matter of the investigation and the information it seek[s].’ While Twitter does not have visibility into the purpose of the Subpoena, Twitter has serious concerns whether the government can meet this standard given the context in which it has received the Subpoena. It appears to Twitter that the Subpoena may be related to Congressman Devin Nunes’s repeated efforts to unmask individuals behind parody accounts critical of him.”

“His efforts to suppress critical speech are as well-publicized as they are unsuccessful. He recently sued Twitter, attempting to hold it liable for speech by the parody Twitter accounts @DevinCow, @DevinNunesMom, @fireDevinNunes, and @DevinGrapes, and asking the court in that case to order Twitter to disclose information identifying those accounts. Each of these accounts were engaged in anonymous political speech critical of Congressman Nunes… Given Congressman Nunes’s numerous attempts to unmask his anonymous critics on Twitter – described in detail herein – Twitter is concerned that this Subpoena is but another mechanism to attack its users’ First Amendment rights. Recent litigation also alleges that Congressman Nunes may be using the government to unmask his critics” – Clip of Twitter’s motion to quash grand jury subpoena and vacate nondisclosure order from March 2021, unsealed on Monday.

One-time child actor (and guy aspiring to be the next Scott Baio) Ricky Schroder followed up on his weekend outburst at a Costco employee who instructed him to put a mask on before entering the store, posting a video “apology” to the worker while ranting about the injustices that happened to white farmers in Rhodesia more than four decades ago and other white nationalist tropes.

Saying that he felt the United States was becoming exactly like Rhodesia in the 1980s, when native Africans overthrew a white-dominated colonial government, Schroder lamented the loss of the “once thriving bread basket of southern Africa,” saying “whites live in fear” there.  Schroder repeated the debunked claim that hundreds of white farmers are killed in Zimbabwe, saying that the African nationalists who overthrew colonial rule used “racial tension to create that disaster.”  (A tweet to a series of videos posted by Schroder is available after the fold.)

While it is true that during the revolution, thousands of white farmers lost their lands, which their ancestors stole from African tribes in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Zimbabwean government has worked to compensate those who lost lands, the latest being a $3.5 billion fund for reparations set up in 2020. 

“You read that right, Chick-fil-A has a sauce shortage. And you want to know why? Because of Joe Biden’s radical liberal policies. Gas stations are having mass shortages, gas prices are soaring, the cost of groceries is through the roof, and now Chick-fil-a has a sauce shortage. And who is paying the price? Everyday Americans. STAND UP FOR EVERYDAY AMERICANS Joe Biden’s policies have REAL WORLD CONSEQUENCES that he doesn’t seem to [sic] tuned [sic] to.”

“Now, the liberals are out to get me. They know am a threat to his socialist agenda and they’re prepared to spend MILLIONS to stop me. STAND UP TO JOE BIDEN $25 STAND UP FOR EVERYDAY AMERICANS $50 Conservative govemors are the absolute last line of defense. We’re fighting to block liberal policies and promote common-sense policies to bring down the price of gas, to lower the cost of groceries, and to make sure Chick-fil-A never has another sauce shortage. We need to know we can count on you to fight BACK and fight FOR everyday Americans” – Actual text of Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt campaign fundraising email.

A puzzling array of symptoms dubbed the “Havana Syndrome” after it impacted a number of US officials at the American consulate in Havana befell two Trump Administration national security officials in 2020 in Washington, DC, CNN reports.

Both officials, who worked with the National Security Council, experienced nervous system irregularities, including headaches, sleepiness and other effects.  One was reportedly struck with a mild case as he traveled across the Capitol Ellipse the day after the 2020 election; the second felt more severe effects a couple weeks later and sought medical attention from the White House medical team.

The condition was identified after more than a dozen employees of the US consulate in Havana reported suddenly experiencing headaches, dizziness, vertigo, nausea and other symptoms while working at the compound.  According to recent reporting by the New York Times, another person suffered a similar incident in the past two weeks, and more than 130 have been reported, both domestically and around the world.

The Rep. Clyde news reminded me of this: 

UNITED STATES – JANUARY 6: Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., second from top left, helps barricade the House chamber door as rioters disrupt the joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote on January 6, 2021. pic.twitter.com/ewizgiuwLn

— Tom Williams (@pennstatetom) May 15, 2021

Roll Call photographer Tom Williams reposted a photograph on Twitter of Georgia Republican Congressman Andrew Clyde assisting others in using furniture to barricade the door to the House chamber during the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol.

Last week, Clyde said, “If you didn’t know that TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”

Donald Trump will make only his second speech since leaving the White House when he address the North Carolina Republican convention June 5th, an event that will be closed to media, the Associated Press reports.

Trump narrowly carried the state in the 2020 election, winning by just 1.4 percentage points with a vote margin of 73,500, versus a 2016 margin of victory of 3.7 percentage point victory when he won by 163,000 votes.

After being banned on popular social media platforms, Trump’s public presence has been quashed and he’s been relegated to a blog that has had connectivity difficulties.  His appearance in the state is thought to be an effort to help his daughter-in-law, former entertainment television producer Lara Trump, in her planned 2022 Senate run in the state.

“President Trump delivered real results for North Carolina by rebuilding the military, standing strong against China and unleashing the American Economy,” state chairman Michael Whatley said in a news release. “We are honored to welcome President Trump to our convention as the Republican Party launches our campaign to retake Congress and the Senate in the 2022 midterms.”

Joel Greenberg, the now-admitted child sex trafficker and associate of Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, formally entered his guilty plea to six counts in federal court in Orlando Monday morning, CNN reports.

Dubbed by Gaetz as his “wingman,” Greenberg faced 33 federal charges ranging from sex trafficking to identify theft to bribery.  He pleaded down to six charges which have a minimum jail sentence of 12 years.

Shackled and wearing a grey prison jumpsuit, Greenberg is committed to fully cooperating with federal prosecutors investigating a group of men, reportedly including Gaetz, who participating in prostitution and child sex trafficking.  In his plea agreement, Greenberg said that he introduced a “group of men” to teenage girls and arranged for payments to those girls for having sex with the men.  One of the girls involved in the ring was reportedly 17-years-old.

Screencap from Vox’s Aaron Rupar, who says Hurt told Fox News he’d gotten into some accident involving a horse. Kind of begs the question of what was so important that he had to go on camera instead of waiting a week or two for the bruising to subside.

Bloomberg: “Former President Donald Trump and House Democrats said in a court filing Monday that they are close to a deal resolving issues surrounding congressional subpoenas of his financial records from Deutsche Bank. The parties are ‘continuing to engage in negotiations intended to narrow or resolve their disputes and believe they are close to an agreement,’ the filing said. They asked a federal judge in New York for another 30 days to continue negotiations.”

“The House Financial Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in 2019, seeking years of the president’s personal and business records. Trump challenged the subpoenas as an intrusion on his powers as president. Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last summer that Congress had the power to seek evidence from the president, it said a lower appeals court failed to adequately consider Trump’s claims the demands were unnecessary and too intrusive. The subpoenas expired with the last congressional term, but the House has said it intends to issue new ones. A deal on Trump’s Deutsche Bank records could forestall that. Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the filing. The bank has taken no position on the enforceability of the subpoenas and has said it will follow the law. House Democrats also engaged in a lengthy court battle with Trump over a subpoena of his tax records. Though Joe Biden’s Treasury Department could comply with congressional requests for the former president’s tax returns, it has repeatedly asked for more time to decide on whether to turn them over.”

Patrick Montgomery of Littleton, Colorado, was arrested January 17th for his participation in the January 6th domestic terrorism attack on the US Capitol.  As part of his bail agreement, he was barred from possessing any guns.  That shouldn’t have been an issue for him, given that he’s barred in the state from owning weapons because he’s a convicted felon, having been convicted of felony robbery.

According to the Washington Post, however, he flouted those restrictions, and he proved it by–of course–posting photos on social media.  Last month, the 48-year-old posted a photo of him holding the corpse of a 170-pound mountain lion he allegedly killed with a .357 Magnum handgun after a pack of hunting dogs treed the big cat.

Now, prosecutors want to revise the terms of Montgomery’s release, limiting him to house arrest and wearing an GPS ankle monitor. 

“I came home early from work on Friday to the unexpected sound of the vacuum cleaner running in my 12-year-old son’s room. Thinking that perhaps this was a sign of the apocalypse – my son cleaning his room without major nagging on my part – I burst in there and caught him with his pants down and the hose attachment attached to his, well, you know. He froze like a deer in the headlights and, after picking my jaw up off the floor, I mumbled something stupid like ‘excuse me’ and turned around and walked out and hid in my room. He left to go to his dad’s for the weekend shortly thereafter. He will be home tomorrow night after school and I don’t know what to say to him. Actually, do I have to say anything to him or can I just act as though this never happened and not say anything about it at all? (I much prefer option two, by the way.) What do you think?” – Actual featured question sent to Slate.com’s Dear Prudence advice column.

“Supreme Court takes up major abortion case, to decide whether all pre-viability restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional” reports the Washington Post’s Robert Barnes.