The American anti-abortion lobby continues to display all of the moral integritude you would expect of a movement that is permanently tied to Donald Trump: Tapper: If Trump wins and you keep the majority, will you bring the national abortion ban up for a vote? Johnson: I don't even know what you're talking about Tapper: The Life at Conception Act bans abortion nationwide, you are a cosponsor of that pic.twitter.com/Zbec66Rbfn — Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 17, 2024 WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT THIS UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION! IT’S SETTLED LAW! BENGHAZI EMAILS! As always, pay attentio ..read more

Let this non-political sports-based open thread be your place to talk about tonight’s games. I cannot think of a more consequential play-in game in the brief history of this idea than the Heat-Sixers game tonight. The Sixers are only here because Embiid was hurt yet again. He’s now back and on a tear. So is the team. Meanwhile, the Heat have been pretty up and down all year, but they are built for the playoffs and were up and down last year before winning in the play in and then running all the way to the finals. Moreover, the winner of this game gets the 7 seed, which means avoiding Boston ..read more

I suspect that unfortunately we’re talking tip of the iceberg stuff here: The NBA issued a lifetime ban to Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter on Wednesday for violating league gambling rules. The league’s investigation found Porter guilty of “disclosing confidential information to sports bettors, limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes, and betting on NBA games.” The league’s probe is ongoing, but it was initially launched due to irregularities surrounding prop bets based on his statistics.  The brewing scandal is the lat ..read more

Bill Barr has spent the last three years pretending that he was outraged by Donald Trump. But do you think that will get in the way of Barr voting for Trump again? Ha ha ha ha ha ha, no. Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Wednesday he will vote for the “Republican ticket” in the November presidential election. “I think it’s my duty to pick the person I think would do the least harm to the country,” Barr said on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.” “And in my mind, that’s — I will vote the Republican ticket.” Naturally having a coup leader as president will do less harm t ..read more

Here is the relevant clause of the statute that has been used to convict dozens of 1/6 insurrectionists for their material efforts to obstruct official business: The actions of the 1/6 insurrectionists who were trying to stop the certification of the presidential election clearly fall into the plain language of section 2. The Supreme Court’s “textualists,” however, appear to be poised to hold that when Congress said “or” it actually meant “and.” I wish I was joking about this: What all six justices seemed tempted to do was rip up Section 1552(c) because it happens to include another sen ..read more

Something possessed me — probably something that needs to be bound, rebuked, and cast out, in roughly that order — to look at Dr. Naomi Wolf’s Twitter. Whoa Nellie. Highlights include: Wolf is now engaged in biblical exegesis, using a Greek/English dictionary. She’s doing her own research on a criminally under-investigated topic in the history of Western civilization, i.e., the meaning of the sacred texts of the Jewish and Christian religions. Guess what, everybody has gotten it all wrong because of mistranslations! An fulsome apology on her Substack to conservatives everywhere. A mash note t ..read more

If Al Gore had selected Bob Graham in 2000 instead of pandering to right-wing “moral voters” by picking Joe Lieberman, he almost certainly wins Florida and thus the election. Good job Al! But hey, both parties are the same and the 2000 election isn’t really that important. Just ask Old Man Ralph! The post Bob Graham, RIP appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money ..read more

I am just shocked that these tremendously moral people are liars and hypocrites… Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s (D) office has charged former state representative Lee Chatfield (R) — who was speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives in 2019 and 2020 — with 13 felonies after a lengthy investigation. Local news site MLive reported that Chatfield and his wife, Stephanie, have both been charged with embezzlement, conducting a criminal enterprise and various other financial crimes. Nessel said the charges were filed as the result of a years-long investigation that began ..read more

This interview with Ralph Nader in Mother Jones made me rather sad. Among other things, it made me think of the parallels between Nader and Donald Trump. Now these days pretty much everything makes me think of the parallels between it and Donald Trump, including this list of the still-living Brooklyn Dodgers (Carl Erskine of The Boys of Summer fame died yesterday): Bob Aspromonte, born June 19, 1938 Tommy Brown, born December 6, 1927 Jim Gentile, born June 3, 1934 Fred Kipp, born October 1, 1931 Sandy Koufax, born December 30, 1935 Similarly for the New York Giants: Joey Amalfitano, January ..read more

As I’ve said before, organizing southern auto is critical to the future of the United Auto Workers. It cannot continue as a major force in American life with just the dwindling legacy plants in the North. It must organize the masses of auto workers in the South. Shawn Fain knows this and he has engaged in a smart strategy to force the union activists in those plants to effectively organized themselves before the UAW comes in, creating much more serious buy-in than in previous and failed attempts to organize the plants. Well, today voting starts today in the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga tha ..read more