“Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Alphabet, Google’s and YouTube’s parent company, demanding documents and communications related to the creation, training, and deployment of its Gemini AI model, an artificial intelligence chatbot technology. The Committee is investigating how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced or colluded with Big Tech and other intermediaries to censor Americans’ speech, and this request falls within the scope of the Committee’s subpoena issued on February 15, 2023.”

“Recent reporting asserts that the Executive Branch, most notably the Biden White House, may have influenced the development of Alphabet’s Gemini AI model. On October 30, 2023, President Biden issued an Executive Order on the ‘Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence,’ which claimed to serve as an overarching guide to how the Biden Administration will approach issues like AI development and deployment. The Executive Order states that its guidelines will purportedly ‘advance equity.’ A report by the Alphabet’s Gemini Team stated that its new AI tool was evaluated by external groups, which were selected based on their alignment with the Biden White House Executive Order and ‘White House Commitments,'” says a House Judiciary Committee press release, and holy shit they’re trying to make Google Gemini a campaign issue, lol.

Donald Trump continues on the campaign trail, stopping in Richmond, Virginia for a rally Saturday afternoon that was like every other Trump rally since 2015:  a fair share of xenophobia and hyperbole, combined with healthy parts of self-glorification and lies.  Instead of subjecting you to hours of the same rhetoric and ear bleeds, we’ve distilled it to the most pertinent 45 seconds.

In The Heartland where conservatives are so scared of the LGBTQ community they’re banning books and passing laws banning millennia-old forms of entertainment, some good old-fashioned American kink made it into an Oklahoma high school fundraiser where students in grades 9 through 12 licked peanut butter off the patrons’ feet in public as part of a philanthropy week, according to the Daily Beast.

And never one to turn away an opportunity to smear a group of people they target, Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik shared the video, claiming it was a stunt put on by transgender people, because it’s never the outwardly straight people who corrupt children, right?

The Republican Caucasians continue to fall in lockstep with the far-right of the GOP, shoving Donald Trump towards the nomination with the fervor of the Traffic Cone Tyrant targeting the Mar-a-Lago omelet station. Per the Washington Post, the Republican caucuses in Missouri and Michigan handing all their respective delegates to Trump, and the Idaho caucus will likely result in Trump getting most, if not all, of their available delegates.

Oh, in case you’re wondering how Michigan is re-allocating delegates after last week’s Michigan primary, the one which spawned the National Zero Housemother:  The Michigan state GOP only allowed voters to allot sixteen delegates, leaving the remaining 39 to go to the hand-picked choice of Party leadership, which went unironically to the guy who said he would dismantle the Swamp.

Trump has bizarre episode of incomprehensible slurring while trying to pronounce Venezuela pic.twitter.com/zkVBthb86C

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 2, 2024

A Trump minion tells Politico that all DC-based lobbyists are commanded to vote in the District’s meaningless upcoming primary if they want access to his future Reich. “The Trump campaign is very cognizant of who makes up the GOP primary voters in DC. The worst thing for them would be not showing up. If you don’t bother voting, don’t bother calling,” the minion said.

While it’s impossible to know whom they voted for, it is very simple to find out whether or not a person cast a ballot in an election and the edict has been issued to the lobbyists.

• Yes, the Trump trial schedule got thrown into the shredder, but deep down inside, you always knew the Republicans on the Supreme Court would intervene to make sure things didn’t get resolved speedily. My surprise comes from how bunglingly obvious the conservatives on the bench made their effort to push back the trial.  So now, we just have to beat him at the ballot box, again.
• May Alexei Navalny one day be seen as Russia’s Patrick Henry.  Rest in peace.
• Through all the frustration with the trial schedules, let Donald Trump’s humiliation at having to admit he couldn’t put up the entire amount of the New York civil judgment lighten the load.  For the first time, he had to publicly acknowledge he did not have the wealth he claimed and he tried to lowball the Court.
• I hope the next GOP Senate leader is as zoomorphic as his predecessor.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLXII”

Mike Parsons, the Republican governor of Missouri, commuted a three-year prison sentence for Super Bowl champion Kansas City NFL team coach Andy Reid’s son, who had been sentenced to a three-year prison term after severely injuring a five-year-old while driving under the influence of alcohol in 2021, per CNN.

Britt Reid, a former assistant coach for the Chiefs, was put on administrative leave after his arrest and not re-signed when his contract expired.  “Mr. Reid has completed his alcohol abuse treatment program and has served more prison time than most individuals convicted of similar offenses. Mr. Reid will be under house arrest until October 31, 2025, with strict conditions of probation, including weekly meetings with a parole officer, weekly behavioral counseling attendance, weekly meetings with a peer support sponsor, and stringent community service and employment requirements,” the governor’s office said in a statement, without noting if this was a thank you for the Lombardi Trophy.

“The hypocrisy is rich here because they’re doing it all in the name of saving democracy,” former someone Tulsi Gabbard smirks.  “A-a-and the, the bigger underlyin–sure the other other underlying issue here, is that they’re not only doing this here.  Look at their foreign policy, the Democratic elite. President Biden’s pillar of his foreign policy is going around the world and protecting and spreading democracy and using that as an excuse to go in and oftentimes wage these regime change wars, spending our taxpayer dollars and oftentimes sending our men and women, their lives on the lives in doing so.”

Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski endorsed the presumed second-place finisher in the Republican presidential delegate race Nikki Haley, eschewing the favor of frontrunner Donald Trump, Politico reports.  “America needs someone with the right values, vigor, and judgment to serve as our next President — and in this race, there is no one better than her,” Murkowski said in a statement.

Two underwater photographers unintentionally dropped in on an intimate encounter between two whales off the Hawaiian island of Maui, only to realize the humping humpbacks were two males making the photos the pair took of the cetic sex not just the first photos of humpbacks humping, but the first of homosexual humpbacks humping.  Per People, photographers Lyle Krannichfeld and Brandi Romano boated out to deep water when the two whales started circling the vessel before one mounted the other.

A right wing guest billed as “James Lee” who appeared on Jesse Watters’ show Wednesday to scream about “migrant crime” is in fact named James DePaola, a change Fox News probably made to hide that he was once arrested for screaming at his wife and ripping the phone out of the wall to prevent her from calling the cops to the house simply because she had made him a grilled cheese with three slices of cheese instead of two like he had asked, Media Matters reports.

DePaola, of Athens, Georgia, was booked on the show after he loudly interrupted a police press conference over the murder of Laken Riley by a Venezuelan migrant earlier that day. Obviously he’s concerned over violence towards women because, per his 2016 arrest report over what cops called the “grilled cheese incident,” DePaola has a history of “abusive behavior,” and was”excessively critical and controlling of day to day things in life.” DePaola was charged with obstruction of a 911 call and criminal trespass/property damage for that incident and was subsequently arrested in 2020 and 2023 for driving without a license and without insurance, respectively.

Tapping the brake on the far-right’s demonization of anything they feel slights their beliefs, Republican Florida Governor and Napoleon of the Culture Wars Ron DeSantis vetoed a bill pushed through the legislature banning children under the age of 16 from using social media, the WFSU reports.  DeSantis plans to reintroduce the legislation after adding a provision allowing 14- and 15-year-old children to get a social media account with parental permission.

Is the Gemini fallout a 'Bud Light moment' for Google? https://t.co/veT1MA9KYW

— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) March 1, 2024

A registered Republican Oregon man turned himself in to cops Thursday after he was hit with nine felony charges stemming from an incident last August in which he drugged three 12 year-old girls who had been staying over with his daughter for a slumber party, People.com reports.

Michael Meyden, 57, who probably voted for Trump, was “unusually” involved in the girls’ sleepover plans and continually checked in on them throughout the night before giving them “mango smoothies with white chunks in them” that later turned out to be benzodiazepine. The MAGA pedophile’s plans for sick enjoyment were foiled when one of the girls dumped the drink and pretended to be asleep. She then watched as Meyden crept up and touched another one’s nose as if checking if she was knocked out by the date rape drug. That girl then texted her mom, begging her to “please pick me up and say I had a family emergency. I don’t feel safe. I might not respond but please come get me 😭, Please. Please pick up. Please. PLEASE!!” at 1:43 AM that night.

Luckily the mom got the message and called the other parents to the house, finding Meyden insisting that the parents come back in the morning and telling her the girls were still asleep. They ignored him and grabbed the girls, taking the other two to the hospital. One of them “walked slowly and used the assistance of her mother for balance, her eyelids were heavy, and she spoke slowly,” per the arrest warrant for Meyden, who’s now out on $50,000 bail as he awaits trial.

Scumbag New Jersey businessman Jose Uribe pleaded guilty Friday to seven charges, including conspiracy to commit bribery, honest services wire fraud, obstruction of justice and tax evasion, months after getting indicted alongside scumbag Dem Senator Bob Menendez for bribing him with a Mercedes Uribe gave to Menendez’s wife, the Associated Press reports. Uribe has agreed to testify against the Menendezes so yeah, they’re probably pretty fucked.

Fat former President Trump and his minions’ lawyers make their closing arguments in their case within a case attempting to disqualify Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis ahead of the trial over their failed post-2020 election coup attempt in the Peach State.

“On February 14, 2024, Special Counsel David Weiss indicted Alexander Smirnov – a longtime confidential human source (CHS) for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – on allegations of making false statements to federal authorities. Prior to the indictment, the FBI allowed Mr. Smirnov to serve as a CHS for over 14 years and earn a six-figure income, while maintaining ‘extensive and extremely recent’ foreign intelligence contacts. Until very recently, the FBI held Mr Smirnov out as a ‘highly credible’ source whose outing could endanger national security. Only after Mr Smirnov reported that President Joe Biden accepted a bribe from a Ukrainian energy company in exchange for using his official position to oust the Ukrainian Prosecutor General did the FBI apparently take a hard look at this CHS. The Judiciary Committee has been examining the FBI’s CHS program in the wake of recent high-profile blunders, but this new information raises even greater concerns about abuse and mismanagement in the FBI’s CHS program,” writes spandex-wearing grapple freak Jim Jordan and his dumbass yokel buddy James Comer in a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray.

During a Friday scheduling hearing to determine when fat former President Trump’s trial on charges stemming from his theft of classified documents from the White House and defiance of a lawful subpoena for their return from the Mar-a-Lago bathroom, MAGA federal Judge Aileen Cannon called Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s proposed July 8th start date “unrealistic,” but did not otherwise hint at when she would like jury selection to start, Lawfare’s Anna Bower reports.

The orange asshole’s legal team asked for it to be pushed back until after the election, which at this point why the hell not. There’s no way a verdict could be reached before November 5th and the calendar should be kept clear for either the DC or, less likely, the Atlanta trial. The hearing will continue into the afternoon but it’s unclear if Cannon will set a new date or leave it TBD.

For those who keep asking this question: Jack Smith’s team explicitly took the position that the so-called “60 day rule” on political cases does NOT apply when a crime’s already been charged.

“House Republicans again commend Subcommittee Chairman Loudermilk and the entire Committee on House Administration for their ongoing commitment to ensuring that there is full transparency surrounding the events of January 6. This ongoing work is especially necessary considering the deeply flawed prior investigation conducted by the partisan January 6 select committee, which instead of delivering transparency, has contributed to defendants, public interest groups, and the media having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials.”

“Additionally, upon extensive further consultation with the Committee, and at my direction, the Committee will no longer plan to blur the faces of individuals in the footage given the significant logistic hurdles involved and the importance of getting this work completed as responsibly and efficiently as possible,” says Jesus dork Speaker of The House Mike Johnson in a statement.

So yeah just ignore all that shit he said a few months ago about how he didn’t want to make it easier for any of the remaining still-unidentified insurrectionists to be prosecuted.