“The issue of voting rights will be a momentous test of Democrats’ willingness to keep the filibuster, as Republican-led state legislatures around the country, including Georgia, move to pass a wave of restrictive election laws that experts say will disproportionately hinder Democrats’ access to the ballot. ‘Voting rights is preservative of all other rights. It’s not just one legislative issue alongside others. It is the very basis upon which we get sent here to argue the case for the American people,’ said Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., whose January win in the historically red state put Democrats in the majority. ‘It is urgent. And therefore I think all options have to be on the table, in terms of Senate rules'” reports Sahil Kapur of NBC News.

CNN and The Atlantic contributor Ron Brownstein chimed in: “I think there’s broad consensus [that] a GOP filibuster versus the Voting Rights Act would provide the strongest ground for curtailing the filibuster – but some wonder if Mitch McConnell, for that reason, will chose not to deploy it there – instead counting on John Roberts to kill it again. On the other hand, it’s inconceivable McConnell and GOP won’t filibuster the Senate equivalent of HR1, so that could be where the conflict crystallizes – after early skirmishes on guns, police reform, LGBT equality, maybe minimum wage, Dreamers. List could be long.”

Axios: “The percentage of “thriving” Americans rose to 54% in February, nearly recouping the losses since before the coronavirus pandemic in October 2019, per new Gallup polling. That’s up from 48% in December, the low-point since last April. It partially reflects the resolution of the 2020 election and the recent drop in daily coronavirus cases in the country, according to Gallup.”

“Gallup classifies Americans as ‘thriving,’ ‘struggling’ or ‘suffering’ based on how they rate their present and future lives on a scale numbered from 0 to 10. Those who rate their current life a 7 or higher and their anticipated life in five years an 8 or higher are classified as thriving.”

“Bolivia’s former acting president Jeanine Anez was arrested Saturday on terrorism and sedition charges over what her predecessor and political rival Evo Morales denounced as a ‘coup’ that unseated him. Police were also rounding up former ministers who backed the conservative politician’s caretaker government, which was in place for a year after Morales fled the country in November 2019 amid disputed elections, media reports said.”

“The arrests came months after Morales returned to Bolivia from exile on the back of a fresh election victory in October 2020 for the leftist Movement for Socialism (MAS) party he founded. The presidency and congress are now under the control of MAS. ‘I inform the Bolivian people that Mrs. Jeanine Anez has already been apprehended and is currently in the hands of the police,’ government minister Carlos Eduardo del Castillo wrote on Twitter. Castillo congratulated the police for their ‘great work’ in the ‘historic task of giving justice’ to the Bolivian people” – AFP.

Huffington Post: “A dog rescue charity with links to Lara Trump has spent as much as $1.9 million at former President Donald Trump’s properties over the last seven years and will drop an additional quarter-million at his Mar-a-Lago country club this weekend. According to a permit filed with the town of Palm Beach, Florida, Big Dog Ranch Rescue estimates it will spend $225,000 at the club where Donald Trump has taken up full-time residence since leaving the White House. All the profit from that spending winds up in his pocket.”

“Internal Revenue Service filings show that the group has spent as much as $1,883,160 on fundraising costs at Mar-a-Lago and Trump’s golf course 18 miles north in Jupiter starting in 2014. Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump, started being listed as a chairwoman for charity events in 2018, and the group’s president, Lauren Simmons, visited the White House in 2019 for the signing of a bill addressing animal cruelty. Late Friday night, Simmons issued a statement defending her association with Lara Trump, whom she described as a great advocate of dogs, and her use of Donald Trump’s properties. ‘The quality of service, beauty of the venue and excellent rate provided us as a nonprofit as well as the generosity of supporters who sell-out our event there every year allows us to rescue and home thousands of dogs. Our investment there and at the other venues mentioned in the article has netted more than $12 million over an eight-year period which allows us to continue our mission,’ Simmons said. However, she did not respond to the question of why she was putting money into the pocket of someone who tried to overturn the results of an election he lost and whose incitement led to the deaths of three police officers and injuries to 140 more.”

Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall runs a lot of reader mail in his editor’s blog, the latest writing prompt is about the Coronavirus one year later and when shit first got real for readers. This newest installment (“Your COVID Moments #15”) is behind a paywall, but there’s not much more to it than this absolute shitshow from a parent of a MAGA teen somewhere in the NYC area:

“In 2019, months before the COVID crisis struck, my elderly but still brilliant mother moved from Florida to the NY exurbs to live with my family. Like anyone in their late 80s, my mother had her share of age related health issues but overall was in remarkable shape. When the crisis struck last year, we seemed to be doing all the right things: working and attending school from home, wiping down our groceries, wearing masks, etc. However, I have teenagers, one of whom has been slowly radicalized by sociopaths on YouTube (Ben Shapiro is a favorite.). At some point, my teen decided that COVID was overblown, masks were stupid, and it would be over on election day. (I might be a recovering conservative, but I believe in math and science like some believe in Q or flying saucers.)”

“We made it safely through Election Day, but COVID was still a thing. We made it safely through January 6th, but COVID was still a thing. The day after the inauguration, my teen’s lack of belief brought COVID into our house, and two weeks later, my mother died from it… after nearly a year of keeping her safe, two days before her vaccine appointment, and a week shy of her 89th birthday. The conundrum in my life – my COVID moment – is realizing that our story is far from unique. Lots of people died from this, and unfortunately lots more will. But in many families, our story will play out over years or even generations. No one deliberately set out to kill their beloved grandmother or grandfather, but nonetheless they’re dead, and many families (thousands of families?) will be dealing with the guilt, shame, and intrafamily blame for years to come.”

ProPublica: “The federal government is seeking to collect nearly $3.2 million in fines from coal companies owned by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice after the firms violated the terms of a major water pollution settlement, according to documents filed Thursday in federal court. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys said in their filing that Southern Coal Corp. and two related companies failed to renew required water pollution permits, leading to unauthorized discharges at three mining sites in Tennessee and one in Alabama. Those permits are required so regulators can limit the runoff of everything from mud to toxic metals from coal operations.”

“The companies’ actions triggered fines under the terms of a 2016 settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency. As part of the deal, the governor’s companies had agreed to resolve more than 23,000 water pollution violations by paying a $900,000 fine, spending millions of dollars on new pollution controls, and covering automatic penalty amounts – known as ‘stipulated penalties’ – for any future violations. The DOJ’s new court filing indicated Justice’s companies have so far paid nearly $2.9 million in stipulated penalties, but the firms have repeatedly failed to honor the other terms of the settlement, either delivering late or not at all on site improvements and fines, continuing what federal attorneys called a ‘long history’ of environmental violations.”

“A U.S. Army reservist who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was widely known as a white supremacist and regularly discussed his hatred of Jews while working at a New Jersey-based naval facility, according to new evidence revealed by federal prosecutors late Friday. The reservist, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who worked as a security contractor at Naval Weapons Station Earle and held a secret-level security clearance, was arrested and charged Jan. 15 for allegedly breaching the Capitol. At the time, prosecutors described him as an ‘avowed white supremacist’ and Nazi sympathizer, a determination based in part on evidence provided by a confidential source to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and a YouTube channel in which Hale-Cusanelli expressed those views. But Friday’s filing – a bid to keep Hale-Cusanelli jailed while awaiting trial – included newly revealed results of an extensive NCIS investigation following Hale-Cusanelli’s arrest.”

“That investigation included interviews with 44 colleagues at NWS Earle conducted on Jan. 20 and 21. Of those interviewed, 34 agreed Hale-Cusanelli held ‘extremist or radical views pertaining to the Jewish people, minorities, and women.’ One contractor colleague said he discussed his dislike for Jews every day. A supervisor told investigators she had to admonish him for sporting a ‘Hitler’ mustache (images of which prosecutors extracted from Hale-Cusanelli’s phone). “A Navy Petty Officer stated that Defendant talked constantly about Jewish people and remembered Defendant saying ‘Hitler should have finished the job,’’ according to prosecutors’ summary of the report. The newly disclosed interview results are the latest evidence that the Jan. 6 insurrection, when a mob of thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election results, included a contingent of white supremacists – in addition to extremist militia and paramilitary groups who used the cover of the mob to breach the Capitol” – Politico.

“Every member of Congress knows who murdered this unarmed woman, yet says and does NOTHING” – The current top comment on The Gateway Pundit article “Ashli Babbitt’s Legal Team Discusses Case On Tucker Carlson” posted late Friday.

Reuters: “Russian police detained around 150 people at a meeting of independent and opposition politicians in Moscow on Saturday, accusing them of links to an ‘undesirable organisation’, a monitoring group and a TV station said. The detentions come amid a crackdown on anti-Kremlin sentiment, following the arrest and imprisonment of opposition politician Alexei Navalny who returned to Russia in January after recovering from a nerve agent poisoning in Siberia.”

“The forum, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, was a gathering of municipal deputies from all over the country, Andrei Pivovarov, the event’s organiser and executive director of Open Russia, a British-based group founded by exiled former oil tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, told radio station Echo Moskvy. As the forum got underway, police entered the building and began detaining attendees and taking them to police vans waiting outside, video footage from TV Rain and Russian news agencies showed. OVD-Info, which monitors the detention of political protesters and activists, published a list of more than 150 people it said had been detained. ‘The police came to the forum of municipal deputies in Moscow. There are 150 people here from all over the country. Everyone is being detained. I mean, everyone,’ opposition politician Ilea Yasmin wrote on Twitter.”

Let’s just say the quiet part out loud: there is no dumber man in America than this loser. https://t.co/KC3Az86ezt

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) March 13, 2021

• Welcome, Mediaite migrants.  Please report to the delousing station on your right.
• Biden’s national address Thursday, on the first anniversary of the declaration of a coronavirus pandemic, struck the right tone of hopefulness and caution.  Unfortunately, the people who need to hear the warnings about continuing to mask up and wash hands won’t watch his message because they’re watching counter-reality.
• In another example of a complete lack of self-awareness, Tucker Carlson displayed a chyron saying “We Don’t Care About The Royals” as he spent an entire segment of his show talking about The Royals.  
• If you have enough time to use the Calm app on your phone, you don’t really need the Calm app.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume X”

The federal agency responsible for ensuring on-the-job safety announced Friday that it will re-examine several coronavirus-related investigations that were done during the Trump administration, Reuters reports.

The effort will look into whether the employers practiced correct safety guidelines during the pandemic, or if workers who got sick with the virus were unduly exposed on the job.  It goes to a wider agency directive to hold employers accountable for increasing risk of exposure to the coronavirus, as well as those companies that retaliate against employees who reported risks to regulators.

One such case was an outbreak of coronavirus at a UPS distribution center in Arizona.  A manager died of the illness, but company officials failed to implement sufficient safety precautions because, they said, it wasn’t certain the employees got the virus at work.

If the Republican-led state senators of Kentucky have any say in it, you could end up in jail for 90 days for insulting a police officer in the city, the Washington Post reports.

The bill would allow police to charge you if you taunt or insult a police officer “that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person.”

In the state of Kentucky, it’s already illegal to promote violence, as well as to specifically promote violence against a police officer.  However, the bill passed by the Kentucky senate Thursday would also allow police to determine what speech, directed at police, would constitute a crime because it apparently make police mad.

I literally can’t think of something more ridiculous than the moronic speech Joe Biden stumbled through last night. Watch this for my thoughts and the truth!!! https://t.co/bo1C4qaQBL

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 13, 2021

A federal judge ordered one of the Oath Keepers released from jail pending his trial as he hinted that the evidence of a conspiracy among the group to enter the Capitol was sketchy, CNN reports.

Judge Amit Mehta of the DC District Court ordered 65-year-old Thomas Caldwell due to health concerns, but ordered Caldwell to remain under house arrest with GPS monitoring and to keep off electronic devices.  Caldwell had been detained for several weeks after his arrest, with the Department of Justice alleging he was too dangerous to release.

Mehta noted Caldwell’s deteriorating health and commented about the strength of the evidence against him.  “There is an absence of direct evidence of planning by Mr. Caldwell to enter the Capitol building,” Mehta said. “There are no text messages, communications by him, that speak to entering a building or trying to enter the building. And ultimately, he did not enter the building.”

Washington Post: “The Defense Department’s internal watchdog has concluded a long-delayed investigation into Michael Flynn, defense officials said Friday, sending its findings to the Army in a case that could bring tens of thousands of dollars in financial penalties for former president Donald Trump’s first national security adviser. The investigation focuses on Flynn’s acceptance of money from Russian and Turkish interests before joining the Trump administration, a potential violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. With few exceptions, U.S. officials, including retired service members like Flynn, are prohibited from accepting money or gifts from foreign governments. Flynn retired from the Army as a three-star general in 2014.”

“The inspector general’s investigation, opened in April 2017, was put on hold for more than three years amid a broader scandal that included a criminal investigation of Flynn by the Justice Department – part of what would become the investigation of Trump’s first presidential campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election led by former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III. Flynn was fired by the Trump administration for lying to then-Vice President Mike Pence about the case, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, later attempted to take back his plea, and ultimately was pardoned last November by Trump. After Trump’s pardon, the Justice Department gave approval for the Defense Department inspector general’s office to resume its investigation, said Dwrena K. Allen, a spokeswoman for acting inspector general Sean O’Donnell. The watchdog’s office closed its investigation one week after the Biden administration took office and forwarded its findings to the Army.”

InfoWars host, conspiracy propagator and muscle protein pitchman Alex Jones reportedly threatened to throw one of the organizers of the January 6th “Stop the Steal” rally from the stage when he became enraged, CNN reports.

Kylie Jane Kremer, executive director of the organization Women for America First and a fervent supporter of Donald Trump, said “someone” made the threat prior to a December 12th rally in Washington, according to a police report.  Four people familiar with the exchange report that the person who threatened Kremer was Jones.

The pair got into disagreement on December 11th in front of the Willard Hotel, two blocks from the White House.  The following day, Kremer’s group was hosting a “Stop the Steal” event at Freedom Plaza, where a variety of speakers promoted debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud.

The two US Senators from New York, both Democrats, have joined their House counterparts and many state-level representatives in calling for Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign amid mounting sexual harassment allegations, CNN reports.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer joined Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who earlier Friday called for Cuomo to resign as no fewer than five women have come forward to claim Cuomo touched them inappropriately or made sexually suggestive remarks to them.

“Confronting and overcoming the Covid crisis requires sure and steady leadership. We commend the brave actions of the individuals who have come forward with serious allegations of abuse and misconduct,” Schumer and Gillibrand said in a joint statement. “Due to the multiple, credible sexual harassment and misconduct allegations, it is clear that Governor Cuomo has lost the confidence of his governing partners and the people of New York. Governor Cuomo should resign.”