June 1, 2021

Woman pushes momma bear off a wall to protect her dogs.

https://twitter.com/StrictlyChristo/status/1399810237595410434

May 29, 2021

Bird's eye view of juggling.

https://twitter.com/StrictlyChristo/status/1398698877834784772

May 27, 2021

Are Democrats sleepwalking toward democratic collapse?

So what’s your current level of concern?

David Faris
My current level of concern is exploring countries to move to after 2024. I’m deeply concerned about the direction that the Republican Party has taken, especially over the last year or so. Things were bad in 2018, but the basic problem in 2018 was that we had structural factors working against the Democrats and you had a Republican Party that was fundamentally trying to keep people from voting.

The most destructive thing that Trump did on his way out the door was he took the Republicans’ waning commitment to democracy and he weaponized it, and he made it much worse to the point where I think that a good deal of rank-and-file Republican voters simply don’t believe that Democrats can win a legitimate election. And if Democrats do win an election, it has to be fraudulent.

So 2020 felt like a test run. The plot to overturn the 2020 election never had a real chance of working without some external intervention like a military coup or something like that, which I never thought was particularly likely. But the institutional path that they pursued to steal the election failed because they didn’t control Congress and they didn’t control the right governorships in the right places.

So I worry complacency has set in on the Democratic side and people are lulled into thinking things are normal and fine just because Biden’s approval ratings are good.

Sean Illing
2020 was a “test run” for what, exactly?

David Faris
It was a test run for a way to overturn an election with the veneer of legality. You have to give Trump and Republicans some kind of dark credit for figuring out that this is really conceivable. I think they now know that, even though it would cause a court battle and possibly a civil war, that if they can’t win by suppressing the vote and the election is close enough, they can do this if they control enough state legislatures and the Congress.

If Democrats don’t make some changes to our election laws and if they lose some races that they really need to win in 2022 and 2024, then we’re in real trouble.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22432229/democracy-america-democratic-party-reform

May 26, 2021

Bikers stop for lemonade.

https://twitter.com/StrictlyChristo/status/1397468126506192902

May 24, 2021

January 6, 2025 could be the date American democracy dies. Mark it on your calendar.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/05/23/republicans-could-kill-democracy-if-democrats-lose-house-majority/5191699001/

The 2022 and 2024 House elections are not just political battles over the Biden agenda or the Trump tax cuts. US democracy itself will be on the ballot.
Matt Bennett and Jon Cowan

You can write it down: Jan. 6, 2025, will be a hinge date in history. On that day, American democracy either will live or die. And if we do not take aggressive steps to ensure that Democrats control the House of Representatives when we get there, the prognosis for our republic is grim.

It is rare to have advance notice of a monumental moment. Before Pearl Harbor, no one suspected that Dec. 7 would “live in infamy.” We could not predict years beforehand that we would celebrate our nation’s birth on the Fourth of July or mark 9/11 as a monument to national tragedy and heroism.

Yet it is now clear that the Sixth of January 2025 will join those historic dates. A joint session of the new 120th Congress will meet that day to count the electoral votes from the 2024 election. The House of Representatives should perform its largely symbolic function and certify the will of the voters, naming the winner of 270 or more electoral votes as the president. That is how it should go. But there is a real chance that it will not.

GOP could install its own president
House Republicans are now firmly in the grip of a deeply anti-democratic right-wing populism. Almost all have now essentially pledged to "support and defend" Donald Trump and Trumpism rather than the Constitution of the United States. They no longer are constrained by once inviolate norms or even by observable facts. If these radicals control the House on 1/6/25, and if a Democrat has won the Electoral College vote, it now seems completely possible that Republicans will instead confirm their own choice as president of the United States. If that happens, the world’s greatest democracy will come to an end.

The mechanism would be the same as the one they tried after the 2020 election: invalidating the Electoral College votes of certain states that went for the Democrat, thereby throwing the election to a vote of the House. This gambit failed because Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the majority Democrats blocked it. We will not have that protection in 2025 if the Speaker is Kevin McCarthy. He voted with the insurrectionists last January.

May 21, 2021

When you try to sneak a hit under your shirt and wind up setting yourself on fire.

https://twitter.com/StrictlyChristo/status/1395483195378782210

May 7, 2021

Judge Amy Berman Jackson's Barr rebuke opens the door to DOJ accountability

Judge Amy Berman Jackson's Barr rebuke opens the door to DOJ accountability

There are four possibilities for holding an attorney general accountable if evidence suggests he did abuse his office to protect a president.

Good government requires transparency. It’s why we have a free press, enshrined in the First Amendment. It’s why Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

And it’s why U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s 35-page opinion in Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. U.S. Department of Justice is so important. In a move that drew only passing attention at the time, CREW filed a Freedom of Information Act request in April 2019 seeking guidance documents the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel provided to newly confirmed Attorney General William Barr in connection with Robert Mueller’s investigation. CREW filed its request after Barr told Congress he’d concluded, in consultation with OLC and other DOJ lawyers, that then-President Donald Trump should not be indicted.

The problem here is that the former president wasn't looking for honesty and public service from his appointees, but for loyalty.

Accountability for a Cabinet secretary should come at the hands of the president who appoints them: losing their position. The problem here is that the former president wasn't looking for honesty and public service from his appointees, but for loyalty. He expected Barr to help him stay in power. That’s the role Barr played throughout his tenure as attorney general, and that’s why it’s important to learn the truth. Jackson has opened the door to that possibility.

The FOIA request ended up in litigation. DOJ and CREW both filed briefs in October 2020, while Barr was still attorney general. This week, Jackson ordered the DOJ to turn over a document to CREW that remained in dispute. And from her opinion, the document sounds like a zinger.

Perhaps that’s why DOJ officials went to such lengths to protect it from disclosure. Berman’s sharp rebuke echoed that of U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who had previously criticized Barr for a “lack of candor” concerning his handling of the Mueller report. But Jackson’s frustration is perhaps more telling: She clearly believes there was misconduct serious enough that even with Barr out of office, it needed to be addressed in the strongest terms.
...
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/judge-amy-berman-jackson-s-barr-rebuke-opens-door-doj-n1266692

May 1, 2021

You might think Rudy Giuliani is not taking the case seriously...

https://twitter.com/StrictlyChristo/status/1388367402383990786

April 29, 2021

Dog and chicken having way too much fun.

https://twitter.com/StrictlyChristo/status/1386097636197879808

Martina Navratilova retweeted this one:
https://twitter.com/Martina/status/1386398171329228801
So did Preet Bharara:
https://twitter.com/PreetBharara/status/1386396258768625664
And Joyce White Vance commented (she raises chickens and dogs and they do play):
https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1386431384726634496
Southpaw also retweeted it:
https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1386510995707899905
Pretty cool stuff.

April 23, 2021

Cops Stop Fellow Officer From Punching Handcuffed Woman

This happened recently in Westminster, Orange County, CA, right next to Huntington Beach. The TMZ article was published today.

Orange County is one of the most conservative counties in CA, and known to harbor a lot of racists.

The cop has been placed on administrative leave and is under investigation by the Orange County DA.

https://twitter.com/StrictlyChristo/status/1385405227990274053

https://www.tmz.com/2021/04/22/cops-stop-fellow-officer-punching-handcuffed-woman-derek-chauvin-george-floyd/

COPS STOP FELLOW OFFICER FROM PUNCHING HANDCUFFED WOMAN
Punching Cop Placed On Paid Leave
4:17 PM PT -- The Westminster Police officer seen on video punching a woman has been placed on paid administrative leave pending an internal affairs investigation. The WPD Internal Affairs Division is also in communication with the Orange County DA’s Office, which will evaluate the officer’s use of force and determine if criminal charges are warranted.

As for what brought cops out in the first place. Cops say they got a call about a female Hispanic adult assaulting an adult Asian woman who had tried to rescue a dog running in the street.

Cops say when they showed up the Hispanic adult exhibited signs of being under the influence and, while waiting for paramedics, the woman was not compliant and she became combative with officers. While trying to control her, a WPD Officer “used force and struck [the woman] two times in the face with his first. Two WPD Officers immediately intervened and deescalated the situation.” The woman was taken to a nearby hospital and later booked into Orange County jail.