Finally—Swalwell came out of hiding to engage on Fang Fang (or, more accurately, to distract w/ ad hominems).

Now he can answer the Qs he’s been dodging:

– Did you have sex w/ a Chinese spy?

– What did you tell her?

– How the hell can you serve on the Intelligence Committee? https://t.co/asxoBKS6Oy

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 14, 2021

Washington Post: “While it is possible that New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) will ride out the burgeoning scandal involving multiple complaints of sexual harassment and concealment of nursing home deaths due to covid-19, Democrats are trying their level best to dump him. More than a dozen members of his state’s Democratic delegation, including Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, demanded Friday morning that Cuomo leave office. By the end of the day, New York’s two U.S. senators, Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, had also called on Cuomo to step down. This echoed similar calls from Democratic state legislative leaders.”

“This is what a responsible party does. Its members assess the magnitude of credible evidence of wrongdoing, the severity of the alleged conduct, and the moral and political cost of defending a scoundrel, and then put decency and good governance ahead of tribal loyalty. This is not a weakness; it affords them moral authority and reaffirms the trust that voters place in elected officials. The Republicans time and again have shown that they would never do such a thing. They exonerated disgraced former president Donald Trump twice despite replete evidence of impeachable conduct. They did not demand he leave the race in 2016 after the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape surfaced; they supported him again in 2020 despite learning he had made payoffs to women with whom he allegedly had extramarital affairs and was accused of rape by E. Jean Carroll (Trump denies Carroll’s allegation). The same Republicans who dinged Neera Tanden, President Biden’s withdrawn nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, for spicy tweets excused four years of vile, racist, misogynistic language from the head of the party. And, despite his role in sparking a violent insurrection, Republicans still support him as the leader of their party.”

“Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday he wishes former President Donald Trump would use his popularity among Republicans to persuade his followers to get the COVID-19 vaccine. In a round of interviews on the morning news shows, the government’s top infectious disease expert lamented polling showing that Trump supporters are more likely to refuse to get vaccinated, saying politics needs to be separated from ‘commonsense, no-brainer’ public health measures. Fauci said it would be a ‘game changer’ for the country’s vaccine efforts if the former president used his ‘incredible influence’ among Republicans.”

“If he came out and said, ‘Go and get vaccinated. It’s really important for your health, the health of your family and the health of the country,’ it seems absolutely inevitable that the vast majority of people who are his close followers would listen to him,’ Fauci told ‘Fox News Sunday’. There was no immediate comment from the former president’s office Sunday. Trump has urged people to get vaccinated, doing so again late last month at a conservative political gathering in Florida. But he hasn’t been among former presidents and other public officials who have been vaccinated on camera to encourage others to get the shot. It was revealed only recently that he was vaccinated in private at the White House before leaving office in January” – AP.

Republican women shape so much of our party’s history.
@VoteMarsha explains how important being a woman and a Republican is this #WomensHistoryMonth⬇️ pic.twitter.com/RFAw4vY5bO

— GOP (@GOP) March 14, 2021

Kansas Reflector/Columbia School of Journalism: “In early October, Kris Kobach, Kansas’ former Secretary of State, and Daniel Drake, a Wichita-based venture capitalist-turned-CEO, made a sales pitch to Kansas legislators. The duo wheeled in what looked to lawmakers like a ‘refrigerator’ – a shiny metal box Drake called a ‘revolutionary’ device that would ‘kill COVID’ and bring ‘several hundred jobs back to Wichita.’ ‘This stuff is very cutting-edge,’ Kobach said. The local development of such exciting technology was why, he told lawmakers, he wanted Kansas to get the ‘first bite at the apple.’ During their pitch, Drake explained that his company, MoJack Distributors, had developed a line called ‘Scent Crusher’ that uses aerosolized ozone, a tri-oxygen molecule, to sanitize hunting and sports products, ‘only to realize that we weren’t here today to be able to get hunters or sportsmen to be better athletes or better hunters, but to kill COVID.’ He told lawmakers the sample product next to him was part of a new line called ‘Sarus Systems.'”

“The former, controversial secretary of state and his new business partner made sweeping claims before the Legislature about the efficacy of Sarus System’s products, but experts say the claims were misleading. After a two-month investigation, Columbia Journalism School was unable to verify the vast majority of their statements. There is no evidence Sarus Systems has made material steps toward rehoming hundreds of jobs to Kansas, and shipping records show products are currently being manufactured in China. There is also scant evidence their machines, or ozone in general, can safely eliminate SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. And while the pair have hyped the products’ popularity, claiming a three-month backlog and international interest, we were unable to verify any purchases – from the state of Kansas or otherwise.”

“Democratic lawmakers are each drawing their own lines, and some are finding that it means there are colleagues whom they once worked with to craft bipartisan legislation but with whom they now are unable, or unwilling, to collaborate. The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol set off an impeachment proceeding and hundreds of criminal cases, but it’s also having a lasting impact on Congress to get even some of the most basic and mundane tasks completed. The public tends to pay close attention when Congress does things like pass $2 trillion spending bills. But it’s the day-to-day activities that get little attention and keep the place buzzing. Democrats say, for the time being, it’s about Republicans not sharing a fundamental belief in democracy and elections” – NBC News.

https://twitter.com/soledadobrien/status/1370997930010812417

NBC News: “The power was out, the temperature was in the low 20s and the roads bordered on impassable when Vince Gordon lost water at his south Jackson home in mid-February. His family hunkered down with a generator, and the reserve of water they’d bought in preparation for the winter storm. By the end of the week, the ice had thawed. But when they checked the faucet, nothing came out. For much of the city, it stayed that way for three weeks. And although Jackson announced Friday that most of the city’s water service had been restored, the crisis isn’t over.”

“At the Global Connection Learning Center, a day care serving 59 children, there’s still tape over the sinks to make sure children don’t use them, as much of Jackson remains under a boil-water notice. Staff members wash the toddlers’ hands and the center’s dishes with bottled water instead. Nancy Sylvester, the center’s director, takes bibs and cot covers to her home in nearby Clinton to launder them. At the height of the crisis, at least 40,000 residents in Jackson and neighboring Byram were estimated to have lost water service. While locals are no longer melting snow or collecting rainwater in buckets to have the ability to flush toilets, officials have not yet been able to prove that most of the city’s water is safe to drink. For many residents, frequenting water giveaways has become a part of their daily routine. Life these days is about ‘just getting water and trying to make it work,’ said south Jackson resident Alonzo Mabry, who has been scouring the city for free bottled water for his 94-year-old mother, who is bedridden.”

“Jorge Aaron Riley, the Republican activist who is one of three Sacramento-area residents facing charges in the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol, was honored this week by the Sacramento Republican Assembly for his long service on the group’s board. Riley, who won his release from custody last month in Washington, D.C., is featured in a Facebook post saying he was ‘honored by the Sacramento Republican Assembly (SRA) for serving 11 years on the executive board including being elected to 6 terms as president!’ ‘Jorge is the first SRA president to tie the previous record set by SRA Founding President Greg Hardcastle,’ the post states. ‘Local SRA and California Republican Assembly (CRA) leaders gathered to pay tribute to Jorge for both his service on the SRA as well as the CRA board of directors.’ Riley is pictured in the post by California Republican Assembly national committeeman Bill Cardoza holding a trophy and standing alongside other Republican activists at a meeting Tuesday evening at Perko’s Cafe Bradshaw” – Sacramento Bee.

Politico: “He backed away from creating a third party and has soured on the costly prospect of launching his own TV empire or social media startup. His vow to target disloyal Republicans with personally-recruited primary challengers has taken a backseat to conventional endorsements of senators who refused to indulge his quest to overturn the 2020 election. And though he was supposed to build a massive political apparatus to keep his MAGA movement afloat, it’s unclear to Republicans what his PAC is actually doing, beyond entangling itself in disputes with Republican icons and the party’s fundraising arms. Ex-president Donald Trump finds himself adrift while in political exile. And Republicans, and even some allies, say he is disorganized, torn between playing the role of antagonist and party leader.”

“‘There is no apparatus, no structure and part of that is due to a lack of political understanding on Trump’s behalf,’ said a person close to the former president, noting that Trump has struggled to learn the ropes of post-presidential politicking. ‘It’s like political phantom limbs. He doesn’t have the same political infrastructure he did three months ago as president,’ added GOP strategist Matt Gorman, who previously served as communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. The version of Trump that has emerged in the month and a half since he left office is far from the political godzilla many expected him to be. He was supposed to unleash hell on a party apparatus that recoiled when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and declined to fiercely defend him during his second impeachment. Instead, Trump has maintained close ties to GOP officials who have committed to supporting incumbents, stayed almost entirely out of the spotlight, delivered fairly anodyne remarks the one time he emerged, and offered only sparse criticism of his successor, Joe Biden.”

An Ohio man who was an ardent participant in the live-action role playing game Dagorhir built a pipe bomb and delivered it to his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend in Maryland, where it exploded and seriously wounded the victim, NBC News reports.

Clayton Alexander McCoy, a 30-year-old resident of Chesterland, Ohio was arrested and charged Thursday with transporting an explosive device with intent to injure and using a destructive device in a violent crime, according to a federal criminal complaint outlining the October 30th attack.

McCoy’s ex-girlfriend “has known McCoy for approximately seven years, since McCoy became a member of the Dagorhir community,” according to Dawn Machon, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Using the Telegram app to encrypt messages, Guy Reffitt of Wylie, Texas told two acquaintances that he had set up a phony security company so that he could access law enforcement-grade weaponry, and he bragged to friends that many of the domestic terrorists at the January 6th coup attempt were carrying weapons, Politico reports.

Reffitt also attempted to recruit at least two fellow rioters to join the Texas Three Percenters, a group of anti-government nationalists fixed on starting a civil war “take back our country.”

“I have a new security business to circumvent the 2nd Amendment issue,” Reffitt told the pair. “Website is under construction but business is licensed with Secretary of State, Texas DPS, and Texas Board of Private Security. We can get ammo and weapons available to law enforcement. We have an interior certified training officer. Join us and lets [sic] take back our country. The fight has only just begun.”

A Galveston, Texas woman was arrested after refusing to put on a mask when she went to a local bank that required masks be worn by all employees and customers, despite Texas’s governor lifting mask mandates two weeks ago, the Washington Post reports.

Terry Wright was at a branch of Bank of America when she was asked by an employee to put on a mask.  Wright refused, and the employee told her she could be face criminal consequences.  She still refused, so a bank official called police.

Officers told the 65-year-old Wright that if she didn’t put on a mask as the bank personnel requested, she would have to leave.  Wright smirked to a responding police officer, “What are you gonna do, arrest me?”  They did.

https://youtu.be/lEpy7HvM6mQ

Kenneth Walker, the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor who was killed by police one year ago Saturday, filed a lawsuit against the Louisville city government and police claiming that false statements were used to obtain a search warrant that ultimately led to Taylor’s homicide, the Washington Post reports.

In a 38-page-lawsuit, Walker alleges that Taylor’s death was preventable and that systemic problems within the city government and police department led to the series of events that resulted in the homicide.

Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was killed one year ago when police executed a warrant, originally a no-knock warrant, in the middle of the night.  Walker claims police didn’t announce themselves, and he responded to police breaking down by firing a weapon at them once, hitting an officer in the leg.  Officers returned fire, killing Taylor.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an amazing 4.6 million doses of coronavirus vaccine administered, which would be quite an achievement, if it were true.  It’s not, though:  it’s a statistical aberration.

According to Bloomberg, the extraordinarily high number is due to a scheduling issue with when the CDC pulled the data from the various states.  Typically, the agency collects the data from the states at 6 p.m. ET, but because of a software update, the information was collected much later in the day Saturday.

The report of the number of doses from the CDC is based on the number reported by the states, not directly reporting the number of doses given, so a number of states who post their daily totals early in the day, from the previous 24 hours, may have been reported in the massive Saturday haul.

The Alabama state house voted 73-25 to overturn the state’s nearly three decade old ban on teaching yoga in schools in the state, a move undertaken by conservatives in the early 1990s who feared the exercise practice would give a footing to recruit children to Hinduism, the Washington Post reports.

While yoga was founded on Hindu principles, it is adapted by many non-Hindus as an exercise and mental wellness practice.  The practice of yoga is adopted by many elderly because the exercise routines do not involve actions that adversely impact joints.

“I had to think about the long game and bigger picture and what am I trying to do here,” Democratic state delegate Jeremy Gray, the sponsor of the bill, said. “I’m trying to make yoga accessible to children in K-12 public schools.”

A pair of spacewalking astronauts were exposed to toxic ammonia while performing maintenance on the exterior of the International Space Station, requiring the crew to take extraordinary precautions to ensure the chemical didn’t contaminate the interior of the craft, the Associated Press reports.

During a seven-hour job performing replacement and checks on exterior systems, Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins replaced a hose that contained ammonia, used in the station’s cooling system.  As they uncoupled one end of the hose, ammonia crystals discharged and possibly hitting the astronauts.

“Oh yeah, look at that go. Did you see that?” Hopkins asked flight controllers as the ammonia, which immediate froze in the vacuum of space, dispersed. “There’s more than I thought.”

Arizona Republic: “Just when you think the quest to uncover the Great Arizona Election Conspiracy can’t get any weirder, a weekend dumpster dive turns up a bag of supposedly shredded ballots and a legislative leader warns those ballots will ‘evaporate’ if given to Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Senate Majority Whip Sonny Borrelli repeatedly advised Staci Burk – a Pinal County woman who posted pictures of the shredded ballots over the weekend – that she is in danger because she held the ‘domino’ that would overturn the results of the presidential election.”

Don’t trust anyone, he said, while urging her to give him the ballots. ‘This is the domino. This is the one domino (that) Arizona knocks over and we expose this corruption then the other states fall, too,’ Borrelli told Burk and another unidentified woman, during a phone call on Sunday. ‘This is so high level, people, that they want this to go away… They can try to silence you, you’re a private citizen. They can’t do anything to me. They can bully me all they want but they know they can’t take me out …(unless) they whack me or I have a suicide.'”