House Oversight Committee chair James Comer requested a complete list of Joe Biden’s emails to Hunter Biden from the National Archives under the guise that there’s something nefarious hidden in them that investigators haven’t yet found after six years.

Comer notes in his letter that an email including a Biden’s schedule mentioning a call with the then-Ukrainian president in 2016 was copied to Hunter Biden using an email address set up for Biden using a pseudonym.  The then-VP used this account to send his son a copy of his schedule.  Insinuating bad acts, Comer only mentions that single occasion of the VP sharing his schedule with his son to make it appear the Bidens were coordinating for the call with Petro Poroshenko; in fact, the VP frequently sent his son his schedule using the email account.

Comer demands copies of all Joe Biden emails for which Hunter, Devon Archer, or Eric Schwerin are cc’d, as well as drafts of the speech Biden delivered in Ukraine in 2015 demanding the removal of the corrupt “diamond prosecutors” which Republicans believe was a corrupt act even though it had been the stated desire of the Obama Administration, a number of Congressional Republicans and virtually every First World democratic government on the planet.

Strapped for cash, sanctioned and expelled from the Trump cabal for supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, former Elite Strike Force Team member Jenna Ellis is attempting to raise funds for her legal defense against her criminal RICO charge in Fulton County, Georgia.

Ellis’s lawyer–apparently concerned about someone else from Trump’s circle not paying her bills–set up a page on Christian-themed crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, where supporters can send prayers in lieu of money.  Since it was set up, the site has raised $48,000 in the four days since the indictments were released.  She’s also amassed nearly 3,800 prayers, but those aren’t likely to count toward the lawyers’ hourly rate.

“This is the OFFICIAL crowdfunding support page for Jenna Ellis, created by her legal team.  Jenna Ellis, former senior legal adviser and personal counsel to President Trump, is being targeted and the government is trying to criminalize the practice of law,” the blurb for the crowdfunding page lies.  “Help her fight back and stand for the truth!

A GOP Georgia state senator demanded Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp call the legislature back immediately for an emergency session to review the Fulton County indictment of the multiply-indicted Donald Trump and the performance of District Attorney Fani Willis, Newsweek reports.

State Senator Colton Moore, citing a clause in the state constitution, said Kemp should convene the special session “an emergency exists in the in the affairs of the state, requiring a special session to be convened under [Article IV, Section II, Paragraph VII(b)], for all purposes, to include, without limitation, the review and response to the actions of Fani Willis.”

However, Kemp looked at the situation in another way, harkening back to 2020 when Georgia Republicans demanded a special session to rage over lies about a videotape from the ballot counting center in Fulton County.  “Where have I heard ‘special session,’ ‘changing decades-old law,’ and ‘overturning constitutional precedent’ before? Oh, right, prior to Republicans losing two Senate runoffs in January of 2021,” Kemp senior advisor Cody Hall said Thursday.

The pilot of a LATAM Airlines red-eye flight from Miami to Santiago, Chile on Monday night died in the plane’s bathroom three hours into the eight-hour flight after complaining of feeling unwell, the Independent reports.  The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with 271 passengers aboard was diverted to Panama City where the co-pilot landed the plane safely.

Captain Ivan Andaur, 56, a veteran pilot with 25 years experience, told his co-pilot he was feeling unwell and went to the plane’s lavatory, where he collapsed.  Crew and passengers attempted unsuccessfully to revive him.  Passengers were rerouted on other flights on Tuesday for their journey to Chile.

Advisors for one of Florida’s multitude of GOP presidential candidates pushed Governor Ron DeSantis to focus his attacks during the upcoming debate on upstart political dilettante Vivek Ramaswamy, who has overtaken DeSantis in some polls, while scrupulously avoiding attacking Donald Trump, the New York Times reports.

The memo by Axiom Consultants, one in a series of “debate research” papers prepared by the company focusing on DeSantis’s strategy toward individual candidates, says DeSantis must stress “four basic must-dos” in the debate, scheduled for next Wednesday:  “1. Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times. 2. State GRD’s [Governor Ron DeSantis] positive vision 2-3 times. 3. Hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response. 4. Defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.”

The goal, apparently, is to avoid attacking Trump directly:  instead of going after the frontrunner directly, the advisors say DeSantis should be more smarmy to Trump, who is not scheduled to attend the debate and is instead anticipated to turn himself into Fulton County, Georgia officials on RICO charges.

President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he is directing the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to reopen its offices in Havana, Cuba to help facilitate the reunification of separated families, the Miami Herald reports.

Donald Trump ordered the closure of the offices and ceased a number of programs implemented in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations designed to normalize relations with Cuba and provide more open communication for Cubans living in the United States, like Ted Cruz, to communicate and aid long-lost family members in Cuba.  (There’s no evidence Cruz has helped anyone but himself, let alone long-lost Cuban family members.)

“This administration is taking steps to reduce unlawful entries, deny resources to ruthless smuggling organizations, and streamline access to lawful, safe, and orderly pathways for those seeking humanitarian relief. Reopening the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office in Havana helps us do just that,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas, whose family fled Cuba when he was an infant. “Cubans like my own family, who nearly 63 years ago fled the communist takeover, deserve the same opportunity to follow legal pathways to build a new life in the United States.”

The man picked by Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to head the largely impotent board overseeing the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, a created regulatory agency DeSantis will use to extort and terrorize the state’s largest private employer, cannot serve on the board until he resigns as DeSantis’s top ethics officer, the state ethics committee general counsel determined.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Glen Gilzean cannot serve as chair of the state ethics commission which issued the opinion and as chair of DeSantis’s Disney harassment effort. Steven Zuilkowski, the ethics commission’s general counsel, announced that state law prevents a state employee from sitting on the state ethics commission.  As chair of the oversight district, Gilzean was awarded a $400,000 per year salary, and the ethics committee members are volunteers, so one can imagine which position the DeSantis sycophant will choose.

CNN reports Donald Trump’s lawyers are in negotiations with Fulton County, Georgia authorities regarding surrendering himself to face 13 counts relating to his 2020 coup attempt, possibly as early as Wednesday of next week, prior to the August 25th deadline to report to the county jail.

Trump’s lawyers likely want to negotiate conditions that would not subject Trump to the same processing every criminal defendant must go through in the state.  Sheriff Pat Labat has insisted Trump will be treated like any other detainee, including having his fingerprints and mug shot taken.  Local officials must coordinate with Secret Service to ensure the former president gets special treatment to accommodate security needs.

Hours after Fulton County, Georgia Fani Willis announced indictments against him and 18 of his closest co-conspirators on RICO charges, disgraced indicted felon Donald Trump announced he would hold a press conference Monday in which he would present “[a] Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.  According to ABC News, his lawyers were less than thrilled with the prospect of Trump rambling on about his case, believing Trump would, of course, make things worse for Trump by casually admitting to various elements of the crime.

Various pundits have pointed out that anything Trump says publicly regarding his various legal quandaries can come back to bite him because prosecutors can use his own words to undermine his claims made under oath.  During various speeches, Trump’s vomitous volume of statements typically discloses new evidence prosecutors can use to convict him.

It’s never been said that Republicans make sense:  GOP presidential candidate and political dilettante Vivek Ramaswamy came out against DEI policies again because, he claims, having a native Hawaiian sitting on Hawaii’s water management commission contributed to the damage caused by the wildfires.

“That request went unanswered for hours, withholding critical aid to islanders,” the self-important blowhard declared on Twitter.  “Now we’re learning that the official who delayed the approval is an Obama Foundation ‘Asia Pacific Leader’ & a climate activist who believes water should be ‘revered’ first and foremost.”

As you can imagine, the situation is not as cut-and-dry as Ramaswamy depicts, but to claim “DEI” or the Obama Foundation is responsible for the lack of water in fighting the Maui wildfires is, frankly, irresponsible and ignorant, and it demonstrates Rama-swarmy‘s craven adoption of targeting civil servants for conservative ire with few facts.

Lunar vehicles from India and Russia had established satellites in orbit around the Moon, bringing to four the number of nations currently with lunar orbiters, as the two space programs prepare their respective landing craft ready for the next steps, Al Jazeera reports.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 completed the separation of its lunar lander Wednesday, which is scheduled to reach the Moon’s surface on Wednesday, August 23rd.  While the lander conducts experiments on the lunar surface, the orbiting module will stay aloft and collect data about exoplanets and conduct a spectroscopic study of the Earth’s atmosphere.

In its first lunar mission in nearly half a century, Russia’s Luna-25 craft reached lunar orbit Wednesday morning.  It will orbit the Moon for five days before attempting a landing on Monday, August 21st.  This is an early step in Russia’s plan to establish a Moon base by 2040.

Florida has become a cesspool of disease, skyrocketing inflation, fleeing populations, natural disasters, and eponymous Florida Men (and Women).  Per the Washington Post, along with outbreaks of leprosy and mosquito-borne malaria, the Sunshine State is now hosting an outbreak of Dengue fever, a different mosquito-borne illness that is enjoying a spike is infections thanks to climate change and globally higher temperatures.

Five patients with mosquito-infected Dengue fever have been identified in Florida, but many more infected people could exist because the disease is asymptomatic in many patients.  Between 2010 and 2020, nearly all of the 33,000 US cases of Dengue fever, which can only be transferred via mosquito bite, were found in Puerto Rico.

Maybe this is what happens when you import Joseph Lapado, a research-denying doctor from California to be your state’s Surgeon General, solely because he supports your anti-science, anti-vaccine culture war and not because he had any expertise in virology or public health.

Two brothers who own a massive fruit and nut farming operation in California have sued besieged former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani for $300,000, saying $1 million they provided to fund a 2020 election fraud film went into the suspended lawyer’s pockets, Business Insider reports.

In 2019, while Giuliani was blabbering about a Ukraine scandal he imagined involving the Bidens, Baldev and Kewel Munger wrote a check for the money to fund a film proposed by GOP operative Tim Yale, donor George Dickson III and Giuliani they promised would the dagger that brought down the Bidens.  The film was never made, and the brothers claim Giuliani used $300,000 of the money for his personal expenses.

GLOVES ARE OFF: Donald Trump Jr. slams latest indictment of his father. pic.twitter.com/8fkuHkkDL5

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 17, 2023

Normal-ish Conservative State Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn majority concurrence in Clarke v Wisconsin Elections Commission: “Our standard approach when receiving a petition for original action is to allow the parties an opportunity to be heard. Doing so here should give us a fuller picture of the issues in this case and from there we can determine how best to proceed.”

MAGA Conservative State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley minority dissent in Clarke v Wisconsin Elections Commission: “The outcome of this original action has been predetermined. Nevertheless, the majority forces the parties to expend considerable resources -including taxpayer money – to respond to a petition everyone knows will be granted by Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky, and Janet Protasiewicz. Despite receiving nearly $10 million from the Democrat Party of Wisconsin and declaring the maps ‘rigged,’ Protasiewicz has not recused herself from the case. These four justices will adopt new maps to shift power away from Republicans and bestow an electoral advantage for Democrat candidates, fulfilling one of Protasiewicz’s many promises to the principal funder of her campaign” and blah blah blah this crazy woman goes on freaking out about the case that seems all but certain to annihilate the GOP-rigged state legislative maps.

New liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz is making the former Conservative majority’s lives pretty miserable and Assembly Republicans already want to impeach her for not recusing from the case.

After an advocacy group had its first petition rejected because it didn’t have enough valid signatures, the Ohio Secretary of State confirmed that a referendum to legalize recreational marijuana in the state will be on the November ballot, the Associated Press reports.

After the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol added an additional 4,400 signatures to the 123,000 validated signatures previously submitted, moving the measure past the required level.  After the first petition count submitted in July fell short of a preliminary count, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose gave the group ten days to make up the difference.

With pot legalization and abortion rights on the ballot in November, Ohio may have a significant turnout, giving both measures a greater chance of success.

Sixteen people who survived, uninjured, the racially-motivated shooting at Topps Supermarket in Buffalo, New York in May 2022 have filed a lawsuit against members of gun industry, social media companies, and the gunman’s parents, claiming they all facilitated, enabled or failed to prevent the shooting, the Washington Post reports.

While the plaintiffs were all in the supermarket or its adjacent parking lot during the shooting, none were physically harmed.  The lawsuit, however, bases the case on the psychological trauma and mental anguish the plaintiffs experience having witnessed the event.

Speaking during a Twitter Spaces panel on Monday, Republican Florida Congressman and man who shockingly has not been indicted for anything yet Matt Gaetz admitted that the GOP House Caucus evidence-free effort to impeach President Joe Biden for something won’t succeed, but is necessary to stoke doubts among voters to help the Republican challenger in the 2024 Presidential election.

“The purpose of that impeachment, from my standpoint, is not to force a vote that loses,” Gaetz said according to reporting by the New Republic.  “It’s to put on a trial in the Senate, and by the way, not for the sake of conviction. … There’s no conviction and removal of Joe Biden coming on impeachment. I know that. You know that.”

“If we had the Senate as the stage and the platform for [Republican House Oversight Chair] James Comer to put on his evidence and advance this impeachment, it will not result in a conviction,” Gaetz added.  “But the true verdict can still be rendered by the American people.”

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs on Tuesday told KTAR that disgraced former President Trump should face charges in the Grand Canyon State following his indictment, along with 18 of his minions, in Georgia on an array of RICO-related charges. “Absolutely. I have been an advocate for holding folks involved in trying to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election accountable and this is part of that process,” said Hobbs at an event in Phoenix. Last month Dem Attorney General Kris Mayes’s office announced a criminal investigation into the twice-impeached and four-times-indicted loser and the fascist assholes who signed fake electoral college votes for him in December 2020 after her Republican predecessor Mark Brnovich did jack shit for two years. Just days later Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel unsealed indictments against all 16 fake Trump 2020 electors in her state.

Now of course this news isn’t particularly surprising given that Hobbs was Secretary of State during the 2020 election and put up with all sorts of bullshit from the fanboys and conspiracy freaks, not least of which were actual death threats. So that she approves of the investigation wouldn’t really merit an article if not for some leftist jerkoff’s tweet claiming “FOX News reports Arizona Gov Katie Hobbs has approved the State Attorney General’s election fraud case which will be the 5th indictment for former president Donald J Trump” that’s been going around more than we can ignore.

Hobbs obviously personally approves of the investigation. It’s likely at some point it’ll get in front of a grand jury. Hobbs will probably testify as a witness and we would imagine she’s looking forward to doing so. Trump and his asshole friends will probably eventually get indicted in a case similar to the one in Georgia. That doesn’t fucking mean that Hobbs had to officially or statutorily approve an investigatory step by the duly elected attorney general in her state. Mayes is not subordinate to her.

Former Trump White House speechwriter Stephen Miller on Wednesday took Democrats to the woodshed for their completely blatant enjoyment of the political suffering and personal humiliation being visited upon the former president and his allies in multiple criminal cases coming in the middle of Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign. “They are giddy about it. They are gleeful. They are excited. Their goal is to pull up Trumpist populism by root and branch from this country,” Miller said during an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, absolutely blasting Democrats and media for their elation over the prospect of Trump going to prison. “It’s openly political. It’s an open vendetta,” Miller added, warning starkly that Democrats may use the cases to their advantage in an election year.