Ooohhh, look!  The GOP used the Liberian flag in a tweet celebrating the Fourth of July, American Independence Day!  This is almost as bad as when the Trump campaign used images of Russian military equipment and soldiers in an ad urging people to “Support Our Troops.”  (Come to think of it, they probably were his troops.) Or when the GOP’s “Commitment to America” ad featured Russian children and oil rigs.

But look, we’re not petty.  We’re not going to make a big deal about using a stylized American flag–that just so happens to be stylized into a design more closely resembling the North African nation’s flag on the birthday of our great nation.   (And the imagery of conservatives using, even accidentally, the flag of a nation formed by freed Black slaves being repatriated back to Africa isn’t lost.) But we just ask for consistency:  Will Sean Hannity and other conservatives go apeshit crazy over this like they did when the US Olympic Committee changed a previously-stylized flag on its logo?  Yeah, I don’t think so, and that wasn’t even on Independence Day.

Editor’s note:  The story has been updated to include a screenshot after the GOP deleted the tweet about five hours after posting it.

Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump-appointed judge in the Western Louisiana District, ordered the Biden Administration to stop contacting social media companies about misinformation it identified about a number of topics, saying such contact is an attempt by the government to limit criticism, the New York Times reports.

Doughty mentioned the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services–which oversees the CDC and FDA–specifically in issuing the ban on any contact for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

The ruling–which will be appealed–cuts off any communication on subjects other than providing information on crimes, national security threats or foreign attempts to influence elections.  A common whine among conservatives is that The Government ordered social media companies to remove posts contrary to its authoritarian message–like the election wasn’t stolen or that vaccines work–even though Congressional testimony shows agencies used customer service processes available to verified users of the platforms.

Uniformed Secret Service officers on routine patrol found a white powder in the White House library Monday evening, prompting a brief evacuation of the building, but subsequent tests show the power to have been a form of cocaine, the Washington Post reports.

Around 9 p.m. Friday night, DC firefighters were called to the first floor scene to deal with the powder, and when tested found it to be cocaine hydrochloride.  The White House library is located on the floor below where the Oval Office is located, on the level where the kitchen and other support functions are located.  The amount of cocaine, described as a “yellow bar,” appears to be significantly less than the White House’s British counterparts enjoyed during a pandemic soiree at 10 Downing Street that ultimately led to the downfall of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

A 31-year-old Massachusetts woman reported missing a week ago was found Monday stuck in a mud bog where she had been stranded for at least three days, official say.  Emma Tetewsky went hiking June 26th but did not return home, prompting a search of the Pinewood Pond in Stoughton and Lake Massapoag in Sharon, two areas she was known to hike.

According to CNN, however, Tetewsky went to the Borderland State Park, where hikers on Sunday heard her screaming for help but were unable to locate or reach her:  she was stuck in the mud amid thick underbrush about 50 feet from solid land.  After officers were able to slog through the mud to reach her, state police and other rescuers had to use ATVs to get her out.

As of morning on July 4th, at least three patriots nationwide have expressed their sacred Second Amendment rights and opened fire on targets in Fort Worth, Texas (three dead, eight wounded), Philadelphia (five dead, two wounded), and in Baltimore (two dead, 28 wounded).

Stay tuned for more violently patriotic celebrations. God Bless America.

Calling it “Florida’s latest assault on the right to vote,” an Obama-appointed federal judge blocked a new state law championed by Republican Florida Governor and albino Oompa-Loompa Ron DeSantis that would make it more difficult for advocacy groups to register voters.

Politico reports Chief Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida found many of the provisions in the law were solutions looking for problems.  For example, the law banned non-citizens from handling voter registration forms although there have been no reported issues with any non-citizens who may have handled forms in the past.  The law also bans the organizations running the voter registration drives from keeping any information from the newly-registered voters, a move intended to handcuff groups trying to get people to the polls.  Plus it allowed DeSantis to hide his travel records from public scrutiny.

“When state government power threatens to spread beyond constitutional bounds and reduce individual rights to ashes, the federal judiciary stands as a firewall,” Walker wrote in his opinion.  “The free state of Florida [a phrase DeSantis has used frequently in the run-up to his presidential campaign] is simply not free to exceed the bounds of the United States Constitution.”

Lawyers for three advocacy groups filed a lawsuit against Harvard University on Monday alleging that the school’s practice of giving preferential treatment to relatives of alumni and donors to the school gives an unfair advantage based solely on the family they were born into, the same argument the Supreme Court supported in banning race-based admissions factors at universities in a decision announced last week.

Per CNN, the lawyers for Chica Project, the African Community Economic Development of New England, and the Greater Boston Latino Network said the legacy admissions advantage, which can use up to 15% of available slots, unfairly advantages “overwhelmingly white” students.

“This preferential treatment has nothing to do with an applicant’s merit. Instead, it is an unfair and unearned benefit that is conferred solely based on the family that the applicant is born into,” the lawyers said in a statement.  “This custom, pattern, and practice is exclusionary and discriminatory. It severely disadvantages and harms applicants of color.”

Ukrainian intelligence estimates more than 180,000 Russian soldiers are deployed along two battlefront lines as the Kremlin attempts to hold on to the territory it gained in the early days of the invasion, CNN reports.  For comparison:  during peak deployment of American troops in late 2007, the United States had 190,000 military personnel deployed to fight the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than 120,000 Russian troops have been stationed along the line from the cities of Lyman, about 50 miles north of Bakhmut, to Kupyansk, about 70 miles away.  Another 50,000 Russians are holding Bakhmut.  Ukrainians have sustained an attack on Bakhmut, reportedly limiting Russian movements within the city.

Digital World Acquisition, the special-purpose acquisition company established to help fund Donald Trump’s failing foray into social media Toot Slomo Troth Socal Truth Social, has agreed to pay an $18 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the Washington Post, but the planned merger with Trump’s media company may not be a certainty.

The SPAC agreed to an SEC report that it had “violated certain antifraud provisions”–a non-admission admission–in disclosing the timing of its discussions with Trump’s company about funding the social media venture.  The deal still has to be approved by the commission itself.

In the report, DWA said it “expects to work” with Trump in funding Truth Social, but that it was seeking a one-year extension to a September 8th deadline to approve funding.  The SPAC had already extended the deadline, which was first set for 2022.  However, “pursuant to its electronic mail, [Trump Media] believes it is currently only bound under the Merger Agreement through Sept. 8, 2023,” meaning Trump could ditch the hundreds of millions in potential funding, forcing DWA to dissolve and refund the money to investors.  “The Company remains very interested in the transaction with [Trump Media] and is hopeful [the companies] can resolve this interpretative divergence,” said DWA in the filing.

The Federal Aviation Administration approved a research and development license for the first functional flying car, an all-electric vehicle developed by Alef Automotive that can drive on roads and has flight capabilities, CNN reports.

The Alef Model A is a vertical take-off and landing vehicle that can travel more than 100 miles in the air or 200 miles on the road.  The prototype, which the company says already flew in a test flight, currently has a limited top road speed of 25 m.p.h.  The company says the car, which will have a $300,000 price tag, will carry one or two occupants.  The propeller assemblies are fully enclosed, providing safety and reducing noise. Pre-purchase contracts can be made for $150, or for $1,500 for priority placement.

North Dakota Republican Governor Doug Burgum–who, you may not have realized (or cared), threw his hat into the 2024 GOP presidential ring in May–said he would not back a national abortion ban if he were elected, Forbes reports.

Now alienating the anti-choice wing of the base–which is basically all of it–comes on top of ordering masking in the state as a public health precaution and failing to rake the floors of North Dakota, all things that make it likely he won’t maintain 0.3% of the vote he carries in polling now.

One of the various Florida Republicans who supported the January 6th domestic terrorists, Congressman Greg Steube now wants to not only impeach Joe Biden–for what, he can’t say specifically because no one’s brought forth any evidence of impeachable offenses–but also try him for treason, which he says a newly-politicized Justice Department under the next Republican president definitely should do, again without any evidence of treasonous acts and without the underlying fact that the United States is not in the state of war required for a treason charge as set out in Article III of the Constitution.

I 100% believe it rises to the level of treason and I hope, ah, if a Republican, God willing, wins the presidency in 2024, after he is out, whether it’s through impeachment or getting beat at the ballot box in 2024 that they’ll move forward with charges like that, ah, an- and  having control of the DOJ and the FBI from the presidential side in a new administration, a Republican administration is gonna get rid of all these jokers like Jake Sullivan and the like and put people in there who care about our country.

Far right 2022 Illinois gubernatorial loser Darren Bailey, who spent last July 4th telling his fans it was time to move on just a few hours after seven people were massacred in Highland Park by MAGA terrorist Bobby Crimo, is expected to celebrate this one by announcing a primary challenge to far right Congressman Mike Bost in the 12th District, the Washington Examiner Reports.

Bost is one of the 139 House members who objected to fat former President Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, so it’s not clear what Bailey thinks he’s doing. “After Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars to drag Darren Bailey’s corpse across the primary finish line last year, it’s disappointing to see he thinks he belongs in Congress,” one Illinois Republican source told the Examiner.

A registered Republican resident of The Villages, Florida was sentenced to 12 hours of anger management counseling over his January 2022 arrest for punching an elderly woman in the face during a road rage incident in the crime-riddled senior living complex, Villages-News.com reports.

Ronald Palumberi, 63, originally from the very MAGA eastern Long Island town of Wading River, had been arrested and booked on felony charge of battery on a person over the age of 65 after he cut a woman off in traffic, began brake-checking her, and then got out and slapped her in the face. When the woman tried to flee on foot from the almost certainly a Trump fan Palumberi, he punched her in the face and knocked her down to the curb. She was hospitalized after the assault, but Palumberi’s lawyer last week was able to negotiate a deal for the anger management. The judge did however require Palumberi to take the course in person instead of online, Villages-News notes.

Shitty right wing blog American Greatness writer Roger Kimball got all black-pilled over the weekend while lamenting the lack of progress on the Hunter Biden “scandal,” even to the point of comparing the endless “revelations” that go nowehere to the muddy, never clearly resolved Mueller Investigation in a piece titled “Biden Bribery Wheeze is like the Russia Collusion Delusion.”

“Like many of my acquaintances, I feel alternately despondent and outraged by the unfolding story of the Bidens’ Excellent Bribery Adventure. The despondency comes from the bitter recognition that, notwithstanding the veritable tsunami of commentary that has accompanied the story – a tsunami to which I have contributed myself – we are probably months if not years from getting to the bottom of this fish pond,” Kimball wrote, likely while guzzling cheap vodka and listening to System of a Down.

“Adding to the despondency is the likelihood that, if and when we do get the whole story, it will be too late. Now, at long last, we know, as well as any contingent historical event can be known, what happened with the Russia Collusion Hoax… I am not really sure that this story is ‘unfolding’ in any common sense of that word. These last weeks have seen a breathless cataract of commentary, with whistleblowers named and unnamed vying with a prevaricating US Attorney who either did or did not have ‘ultimate authority’ in the disposition of the case. Someone, probably, is lying or at least economizing expertly on dispensing the truth, but who?” Kimball wrote, coming perilously close to admitting to himself and readers that this is all bullshit and it’s extremely unlikely that the Republicans and MAGA media are ever going to find anything that incriminates Joe Biden himself.

“This should be a wakeup call to those conservatives whose hearts are all aflutter over RFK Jr”

– The current top comment on the PJ Media story “RFK Jr Throws Moms for Liberty Under the Woke School Bus, Touts Pro-LGBTQ Stance,” posted Sunday by some dumbass who evidently realized a little too late that maybe Bobby Jr isn’t actually in on the kayfabe, that he sincerely believes he can be president, isn’t just pretending to run to help Trump get elected again, and is pretty liberal on a lot of issues outside of “vaccine injuries” and Russia attempting to conquer Ukraine.

The above quote was not said by some MSNBC legal analyst on Sunday, but disgraced former President Trump on November 5, 2016, just three days before he lost the popular vote but squeaked out an electoral college victory against Hillary Clinton and dug up by CNN’s KFile on Monday.

Day earlier at another rally Trump warned “If [Hillary] were to win, it would create an unprecedented Constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government. She is likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up – in my opinion – in a criminal trial. I mean, you take a look. Who knows? But it certainly looks that way.”

Glass bottling plants forced to shut down, leaving 600 employees jobless amid Bud Light controversy https://t.co/E1sjNCwckj

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 3, 2023

The Russian arms dealer swapped for American professional basketball player Britney Griner has been selected to be a nominee for a regional legislative seat by a far-right Putin-aligned political group, Reuters reports.

Exchanged last December, Victor Bout will be the nominee for a seat in the Ulyanovsk Oblast in west-central Russia for the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, which despite its name supports neither democracy nor liberal values and is most akin to the Make Russia Great Again movement.

Metropolitan Police in Washington, DC are investigating three explosions set off at three different businesses in Northeast DC, with one of the explosives described as a Molotov cocktail-style device, the Washington Post reports.

The businesses were hit all within around a 15-minute period Sunday morning.  Two of the business were within blocks of one another:  A Truist Bank branch and a Nike store less than a mile from the US Capitol had small explosives set off at their front door around 4:30 a.m.  About ten minutes later, the Molotov cocktail-style device was thrown at a Safeway grocery store about three miles away.  Each of the buildings were damaged by the blasts, and police report the perpetrator fled the scene in a vehicle, although they did not report if it was reported by witnesses or surveillance footage.