A groomer in the Marine Corps who hid a 14-year-old runaway girl in his barracks at Camp Pendleton for more than two weeks has been charged with sexual assault of a minor and violating liberty restriction from a prior unrelated case, NBC News reports.

The unnamed Marine was arrested June 28th after the also-unnamed teenager was found in his barracks.  The girl had been reported missing by her custodial grandmother who lives in San Diego County on June 13th, four days after she reportedly ran away.

A three-year-old migrant girl who showed signs of distress during a Greg Abbott-demanded bus journey from Texas to Chicago died during a GOP-sponsored publicity stunt where the Texas Republican governor ships migrants to cities around the country to “own the libs,” the Texas Tribune reports.

The child was with family members, who advised the bus driver of the child’s difficulties.  The bus pulled over and waited for an ambulance as it neared Chicago, but the child died before the ambulance could reach a hospital.  A spokesman for the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which is producing Abbott’s political stunt, shunned all blame, saying the migrants were screened by federal immigration officials before boarding the bus–Texas officials claim voluntarily because they signed a waiver, but many migrants don’t speak or read English, so the claim that they understood where they were going is dubious–and that the bus was stocked with food and water.

Deranged substance abuser MAGA Congressman Ronny Jackson threatened to assault a state trooper as he was briefly detained during an altercation late last month outside of a rodeo show where he attempted to intervene in some sort of medical emergency, the Texas Tribune reports.

“I’m going to beat that mother fuckers’ ass!” Jackson screamed while pointing at a Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper as a Carson County Sheriff’s deputy pushed Jackson back from the crowd as a teenage girl had a seizure. Jackson was cuffed and led away from the scene, after which he demanded that Carson County Sheriff Tam Terry call him. Terry did, only to be warned that Jackson would “bury [Terry] in the next election,” if he didn’t fire the deputies involved.

“Congressman Jackson was not drinking and was prevented from giving medical care in a potentially life-threatening situation due to overly aggressive and incompetent actions by the local authorities present at the time of the incident,” said a Jackson spokeswoman in a statement, who had to start it off by emphasizing that the notoriously intemperate Republican was not drinking at the time.

Weiss appointment as Hunter Biden special counsel violates DOJ regulations, experts warn | Just The News https://t.co/YWNjr8cd2c

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) August 12, 2023

Continuing the MAGA media universe’s meltdown over Delaware US Attorney David Weiss being appointed special counsel to sort out the Hunter Biden shitshow, disgraced former Hill opinion columnist John Solomon’s shitty website on Saturday printed the DOJ regulations for special counsels: “An individual named as Special Counsel shall be a lawyer with a reputation for integrity and impartial decision making, and with appropriate experience to ensure both that the investigation will be conducted ably, expeditiously and thoroughly, and that investigative and prosecutorial decisions will be supported by an informed understanding of the criminal law and Department of Justice policies. The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government.”

The last part was emphasized by Jeffrey Epstein pal Alan Dershowitz in the “expert” interview Solomon cites and he was very far from alone in bringing it up in the MAGA circlejerk. The problem – and there’s always a problem in these tantrums – is that no one on the right to our knowledge said the same about now former US Attorney for Connecticut and “Obamagate” investigator John Durham, who was appointed to special counsel for the same matter by Attorney General Bill Barr in October 2020 and continued to serve in both roles simultaneously until late February 2021. No sense in posing any obnoxious rhetorical questions asking why it’s only an issue now. We all know why.

This story from the Kansas Reflector is fucked up and complicated so we’ll try to lay it out chronologically: Reporters from the Marion County Record recently found themselves very much unceremoniously booted from an event for Republican Kansas Congressman Jake LaTurner by the owner of an unnamed restaurant where it was being held. The Record said as much in an article, naming the owner, Kari Newell, as having ordered her staff to show them the door. Shortly thereafter an anonymous source sent the Record evidence that Newell had been convicted of DWI and was still driving around without a license – something that could jeopardize her business’s liquor license.

Publisher Eric Meyer thought that it was kind of fishy given that Newell is in the midst of a contentious divorce and didn’t like the idea of being a pawn in a game between her and her soon-to-be-ex spouse, even though a search of public records indicated that the restauranteur did in fact have a DWI rap. “We thought we were being set up,” Meyer told the Reflector. They went to the police instead of reporting it and, since no good deed goes unpunished, Newell then complained to the Marion City Council, which then for some fucking reason turned into a search warrant being executed on both the Record’s office and Meyers home on Friday, with computers and phones seized in a criminal investigation of potential identity theft and unlawful use of a computer charges.

“It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues [and] a chilling effect on people giving us information,” Meyer told the Reflector. It’s also a violation of federal law prohibiting searching and seizing materials from journalists, requiring subpoenas instead. So yeah what’s a bad day for the fourth estate is probably going to end up becoming a bad year for the piece of shit right wing judge who signed the warrant as well as the cops and sheriff’s deputies who executed it.

A new survey by Pew Research finds that 37 percent of Republican respondents say that efforts to advance racial equality for all Americans have gone “too far,” Yahoo News reports on a quantification of the endless squirming by MAGA losers over “diversity” being imposed on them by society at large.

Officials in Maui County, Hawaii updated the death toll of the devastating Thursday wildfire that destroyed the historic community of Lahaina on the island to 80, with many more still missing after the wind-driven flames consumed the former royal capital of Hawaii, the New York Times reports.

• DeSantis “resets” are becoming as frequent as Trump’s “Infrastructure Weeks” and just as meaningless.
• Everybody has the right to a fair trial, including the public.  Attempting to taint the jury pool and intimidate witnesses are serious crimes because they deny society an honest application of justice, not just the defendant and not just the victims.
• The world owes a big thank you to DJ Kool Herc.  The last half-century wouldn’t have been the same without you.
• I welcome Hunter’s Special Counsel.  Find the evidence of a crime and present it.  The Special Counsel statute requires a public report to be made at the end of it all.  This puts these sham hearings hosted by Republicans into focus:  they keep claiming they have damning evidence, and now they’ll be forced to release it or admit they have nothing.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXXXIII”

A man who appeared on a 2020 episode of the game show “Family Feud”–answering the question “Name the worst mistake you made at your wedding,” with the response, “Saying I do”–was sentenced to life in prison Friday after being found guilty of murdering his wife, NBC News reports.  (His now-late wife did not appear in the episode.)

According to court documents, Timothy Bliefnick broke into the home of his estranged wife on February 23rd and shot her fourteen times, which the survey says is overkill.

Asked by human blobfish Eric Bolling if he saw signs of Joe Biden’s obvious corruption when they served together in the Senate, South Carolina’s spineless vertebrate Lindsey Graham claims he was completely gobsmacked:

To be honest with ya, he was a friend.  I traveled the world with him.  I knew him well. …didn’t know Hunter that well, knew Beau, his son who’s deceased was a fine fella.  All this stuff blows me away about what his brother did and about the Hunter Biden stuff, so no this is a side I didn’t know much about.

We don’t want to remind people about how a heartfelt Lindsey Graham fought back tears talking about what a good man Joe Biden is during the 2016 election.  (That’s the same period when Lindsey said if Republicans nominate Trump they get destroyed.)

As brushfires swept rapidly across Maui, the state emergency siren system did not blow, a failure of an alert system that left scores of people trapped as flames spread, NBC News reports.  Warnings were made via traditional radio and television alert systems as well as a text message system, although some cell phone signals may have been disrupted due to the fire damaging towers.  The sirens are the same ones used for tsunami warnings, alerting residents to check television, radio or online for emergency notifications.

Officials also announced that the official death toll has risen to 67, with authorities saying more fatalities are expected when teams can access areas cut off by the fire, which is still burning uncontrolled.

Politics party with elephant in team mascot logo mad, they say justice guys too nice to crackhead who paint nice pictures. They really upset with Democracy party over rainbows and condescension toward people who eat horse paste. Elephant party also extra mad because agent guys with guns and badges come and put big holes in chest and face of angry man who write mean words and threaten to hurt president on computer. “BLAM BLAM!” the guns went and angry man dead forever.

Elephant politics party think justice man with glasses being unfair to their Orange Jesus, who don’t look like Jesus from Bible, but more like fat Roman toga guy who feed Christians to lions. “NOT FAIR!” they yell on computer and on TV channels with US flags in graphics and lots of commercials for gold bar retirement plans and special medicines that help make wieners stay hard. The elephant politics party really think they deserve special rules in big contest against democracy people like in sports for people in wheelchairs. “ELECTION INTERFERENCE” the Orange Jesus yell a lot because he in big trouble with law and have to go to court a lot during big contest or go to jail for a long time.

Blonde lady from Elephant party who really upset all the time and hate Jews and Black people even though they never did anything to her and have sex with men who aren’t husband before husband leave her was really super extra upset. “Joe Biden must be impeached. Merrick Garland must be impeached. David Weiss must be impeached. Jack Smith must be impeached,” she write on computer on Friday after justice man with glasses make change she not happy with. News article not end happy because elephant party not happy right now. They really mad with democracy party.

In a unanimous decision, the Republican-majority Ohio Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch effort by GOP legislators to keep a proposed amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution off the November ballot, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

The Republican lawsuit was filed within a week of the amendment effort getting enough signatures to get on the ballot.  It was paired with the failed effort to raise the percentage of votes needed to pass an amendment as ways conservatives would kill the democratic process.  Republicans argued that the amendment would nullify current Ohio statutes, and therefore those laws need to be listed in the new pro-choice amendment.

“The fair and natural reading of (Ohio law) does not require a petition proposing a constitutional amendment to include the text of an existing statute,” according to the court’s opinion.  Republican Justice Pat Fischer noted that the Republicans filing the complaint hadn’t been able to specify which part of Ohio law the new amendment would nullify.

Oh, how we hope to use that headline again, but in this case the fake billionaire we’re talking about is crypto scam artist Sam Bankman-Fried, who was taken into custody after prosecutors in his fraud case told the court he was violating conditions of his $250 million bail, NPR reports.

With the trial scheduled to start October 2nd, prosecutors say Bankman-Fried contacted witnesses scheduled to testify for the prosecution trying to intimidate or influence them.  He’s also alleged to have used a VPN to circumvent court-ordered monitoring of his internet usage.

Part of the intimidation campaign involved Bankman-Fried giving the New York Times copies of pages from his former girlfriend’s diary; his former girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, led a hedge fund Bankman-Fried co-founded.  She’s pleaded guilty to fraud herself and is awaiting sentencing.

Viet Dinh, Fox Corporation’s general counsel since 2018 and a former assistant attorney general under George W. Bush, has resigned his position with the conservative propaganda network, the New York Times reports.  Dinh led the legal team in the Dominion Voting Machine defamation lawsuit that ended with Fox agreeing to a $787.5 million settlement, perhaps the largest such payment in US history.  The move comes as Fox faces additional similar defamation lawsuits from Smartmatic and Ray Epps that may cost the company billions.

Great visit at Adams State University for a meeting with President David Tandberg.

Adams State provides a first-class education. The college has helped foster economic development and cultural enrichment in the San Luis Valley.

I look forward to future efforts and interactions… pic.twitter.com/gHnwiKZ4IN

— Rep. Lauren Boebert (@RepBoebert) August 11, 2023

Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s “little bitch” Lauren Boebert (LB²) finally made it to college!  The second-term Republican Congresswoman from Colorado, famous for dropping out of high school after getting impregnated by a 24-year-old sex offender who flashed his penis to her classmates in a bowling alley, finally got into a college classroom, but only as a visitor to Adams State University in her district.  Because LB² did not finish high school, did not score well on standardized entry exams, and did not qualify as a legacy,

Fighting a little-known Florida law that frequently prevents lawsuits by relatives of patients who die due to a doctor’s negligence because either the patient or the distressed survivor was over the age of 25, patient rights activists are working to overturn the 30-year-old law that’s become known as the “free kill” bill, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

The 1990 law prevents lawsuits from survivors over the age of 25 from suing a doctor if a relative dies of malpractice, and it greatly limits the number of people eligible to sue for pain and suffering due to the premature death of a loved one.  The law prevents anyone over 25 from suing doctors for pain and loss judgments in malpractice lawsuits over the death of a parent if the parent were divorced or unmarried, but it allows a spouse or a minor child to sue.

“Our current laws don’t reflect that families come in all shapes and sizes,” said Florida Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book, who is planning to introduce legislation to revoke the statute. “No matter who you leave behind — it should protect families equally in cases of wrongful death.”

In his nearly five-hour interview with Jack Smith’s office earlier this week, Rudy Giuliani henchman Bernie Kerik gave prosecutors significant information incriminating election fraudster Sidney “The Kraken” Powell for her efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election, Rolling Stone reports.

“Based on the contents of their questions, and my understanding of criminal law, the main individual who was discussed who Mr. Kerik gave any information that could be incriminating would be Sidney,” Tim Parlatore, a former Trump attorney, told Rolling Stone, adding Kerik testified “[t]hat there was no back-up for anything she said, that when she was asked to provide proof she didn’t produce anything, and when she was cut loose, how she kept trying to push her way in.”