pete hegseth is so bad at his job that we're like one tick away from the gray zone being like "actually, pete hegseth is good, because he effectively stands against american imperialism"

Why not a paralegal?

Over just five days, the justices had decided the issue. Even as they debated the Obama plan’s possible burden on the power industry, in the entire chain of correspondence obtained by The Times, not a single justice, conservative or liberal, mentioned the dangers of a warming planet as one of the possible harms the court should consider.

Another data point in “originalism is a fraud.” So much for the law is the law we can’t think about the impact. They rail against “results oriented judging” in public but when their corporate clients make requests they know exactly what to do. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

I am not turning on Stickey Keys!! I am not turning on Stickey Keys!! I am not turning on Stickey Keys!! I am not turning on Stickey Keys! I am not turning on Stickey Keys!! I am not turning on Stickey Keys!! I am not turning on Stickey Keys!! I am not turning on Stickey Keys!! I am not turning on S

Children ‘low-hanging fruit’ in fight to end trans care, official at pro-Trump thinktank says America First Policy Institute, which boasts close ties to president, discussed transgender policy ‘reform’ at DC event

Once again, the right is openly admitting that the entire focus on trans youth is to ultimately ban all gender affirming care for adults.

All the credulous reporters and institutions that helped launder this right wing project are responsible.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I’m so bummed about the cancellations - it’s not just so many shows I liked ending, it’s so many jobs lost for people who were excited to work on Star Trek and so many beloved characters brought back to us in new ways - and, also, we might ultimately prefer no Star Trek to the Ellisons’ Star Trek

Truly why I rarely use AI. It can never do the tasks I want to offload.

Repeating "Oh no. Toilet" to myself all day.

Are the rich allowed to be happy FINALLY? Can they FINALLY enjoy their wealth instead of sitting on it in a cave, guarding it jealously, never emerging except for once-annual glimpses of the sun? Can we just allow them to bring a dubloon to CVS for a pack of gum? Have we no decency, fellow poors?

Feel like the headline from the event is BERNIE TO BILLIONAIRES: GO TO HELL

Believe women. End of sentence.

I wanna point out something serious. The admin has been complaining about Iran winning the information war.

This same administration shut down Voice of America, and other information operations the US govt does.

It’s a self goal. Actions have consequences

As I’ve said: We elected the one person in the whole world who is NOT interested in reading the President’s Daily Brief.

But most Southern volunteers believed they were fighting for liberty as well as slavery. “Our cause,” wrote one in words repeated almost verbatim by many “is the sacred one of Liberty, and God is on our side.” A farmer who enlisted in the 26th Tennessee insisted that “life liberty and property [i.e., slaves] are at stake” and therefore “any man in the South would rather die battling for civil and political liberty, than submit to the base usurpations of a northern tyrant.”17 One of three brothers who enlisted in a South Carolina artillery battery believed that “a stand must be made for African slavery or it is forever lost.” The Confederate states were united by the institution of “slavery[,] a bond of union stronger than any which holds the north together,” wrote the second brother. Therefore, added the third, the Souths “glorious cause of Liberty” was sure to triumph. A wealthy planter who married one of Mary Todd Lincoln’s sisters became an officer in the 4th Alabama to fight for “Liberty and Independence.” “What would we be,” he asked his wife, “without our liberty? . . . [We] would prefer Death a thousand times to recognizing once a Black Republican ruler . . . altho’ he is my brother in law.”18 Southern recruits waxed more eloquent about their intention to fight against slavery than for it—that is, against their own enslavement by the North. “Sooner than submit to Northern slavery I prefer death,” wrote a slaveowning officer in the 20th South Carolina. The son of a Mississippi planter dashed off a letter to his father as he rushed to enlist: “No alternative is left but war or slavery.” Subjugation was the favorite word of Confederate recruits to describe their fate if the South remained in the Union or was forced back into it. “If we should suffer ourselves to be subjugated by the tyrannical government of the North,” wrote a private in the 56th Virginia to his wife, “our property would all be confuscated ... & our people reduced to the most abject bondage & ut…

Some Confederate volunteers did indeed avow the defense of slavery as a motive for enlisting. A young Virginia schoolteacher who joined the cavalry could not understand why his father, a substantial farmer and slaveowner, held out so long for preservation of the Union when reports in Southern newspapers made it clear that the Lincoln administration would “use its utmost endeavors for the abolishment of slavery.” After all, Lincoln himself “has declared that one of the peculiar institutions of the South, which involves the value of four billions . . . is ‘a moral evil.’ “ No true Southerner could hesitate. “Better, far better! endure all the horrors of civil war than to see the dusky sons of Ham leading the fair daughters of the South to the altar.” A slave-owning farmer enlisted in the 13th Georgia because “our homes our firesides our land and negroes and even the virtue of our fair ones is at stake,” while a young Kentucky physician told his slaveholding relatives that he would join the Confederate forces “who are battling for their rights and for an institution in which Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee are [as] interested” as the lower South. “The vandals of the North . . . are determined to destroy slavery . . . We must all fight, and I choose to fight for southern rights and southern liberty.”

Why'd the Confederates fight? They told us

A WHOLE CIVILIZATION WILL DIE TONIGHT My son needs lunch, and I have to put his backpack together, but a whole civilization will die tonight, so I'm wondering if they've closed their schools. Like, a snow day, maybe, except instead of snow it's "keep your children home so if you die, you die together" — instead of "well open back up once the plows have cleared" it's "we don't know if we'll be here tomorrow, hold your babies tight." It's just "talk" I'm told, which I've been told before. "It's how the president makes his deals." But I've never heard anyone talk about other human beings this way, and I'm not certain I can look my son in the eyes if we all agree to stomach it one more time. A civilization will die tonight, but as I zip up his backpack and kiss him off to school I think: if this is what we call leadership then I'm not entirely sure ours isn't already dead. @michaelfdubois Mukad A QuBoy @michacifdubois

Brutal.

I do think one of the biggest ideological shifts I've experienced since Trump's second inauguration is the increasing conviction that - at least as our nation is currently constructed - we simply shouldn't have a president. the office itself doesn't feel salvageable. who will ever trust one again?

Screenshot of Floor Summary for April 6, 2026 https://clerk.house.gov/FloorSummary

Screenshot of House Rules for the 119th Congress https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48449

*Yesterday

The next pro forma session is on Thursday. Instead of just posting about how Congress needs to convene: get on a plane and be there to force the issue through Motions to Suspend the Rules via unanimous consent. Strike a deal with 8 GOP members to vacate the Speakership. Go. Do something.

would love to hear this from more portland electeds 👇

I'm rapidly coming around to the idea that they should grind all governmental action to a halt and impeach him on new grounds every day.

His list of crimes is so long, they would never run out of. It would be political theater, but perhaps the good and needed kind.

the fuck am i supposed to say in therapy today lol

Congress is on vacation

My spice cabinet is worth more than the whole of the British Empire at its peak.

My parents and I recently discussed what happened to my faith almost 20 years after I left it behind and this interview brought me to tears. I really appreciate how much you’ve talked about this topic over the years.

A friend at another college gave me an mp3 of “Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings” by Sunset Rubdown and almost 20 years later they’re still one of my favorite bands.

gowron billboard above a he is risen sign

Not one dime for a tyrant is what Congress could and should do, including it's what Democrats should do when they take one or both chambers.

Even if you shrug off impeachment as impossible (you shouldn't), it's not like 25th Amendment is easier. It's harder. If you're going to talk about what should happen, stop treating impeachment like it's an unspeakable third rail while fantasizing about how it's somebody else's job to do something.

The biggest story in the world right now is that the president of the United States is a demented old man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing people and is committing crimes with impunity. And yet most legacy media outlets are too cowardly to tell it like it is.

He is RZA.

I'm a bit of a broken record on this, but usurping the power of the purse isn't just one constitutional violation among all the many others. It is, uniquely and singularly, the death of constitutional government altogether. Game over, end of story, you now live in an autocracy.