And another day of many Republicans asking for pardons, expanding gun rights, limiting the ability to enforce Miranda rights, Senate passing gun safety legislation, Covid subvariants, vaping products, and male sex dolls comes to a close:
“So, as I understand the Supreme Court, the government can arrest and jail you without Miranda rights, execute you even if your lawyer screws up, force you to have a baby, and use tax dollars to support religion. But it can't protect your right to vote or keep you safe from guns.” — Keith Boykin
“The bookend to the coming decision on Roe: GOP SCOTUS majority restricts ability of blue states to regulate guns & will likely expand the ability of red states to restrict abortion. Issue isn't states' rights: it's imposing conservative priorities across red & blue states.” -- Ronald Brownstein
“Stop voting for Republicans. They do not care about you.” — PoliticsGirl (Check out the tweet she made the comment about.)
Deaths
US: 1,040,236
World: 6,347,567
Cases
US: 88,566,961
World: 547,386,723
The Jan. 6 committee displayed a bombshell email revealing that Rep. Mo Brooks emailed the White House 5 days after the attack on the Capitol asking for a pardon for himself and all 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election.
Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz among those who requested to be let off after attempting to overturn election results
5 takeaways from the fifth day of January 6 hearings. The January 6 select committee's latest public hearing on Thursday shed considerable new light on former President Donald Trump's attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of his plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power. The hearing kicked off mere hours after federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, who was one of the key Justice Department figures who was involved in Trump's schemes. He has denied any wrongdoing related to January 6. Three Trump appointees testified in-person on Thursday, joining a growing list of Republicans who have gone under oath to provide damning information about Trump's post-election shenanigans. The witnesses were former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, and Steven Engel, who led the department's Office of Legal Counsel. Here are takeaways from Thursday's hearing.
Republicans Are Defining The Jan. 6 Hearings. But after the first few sessions of the hearings, the committee’s audience is clear, as is its strategy to change minds. These are hearings for Republicans, by Republicans. Despite the GOP leadership’s boycott of the committee, it has relied almost exclusively on testimony from Republicans, conservatives and members of then-President Donald Trump’s inner circle to detail the attack and the events leading up to it. For Republicans who are following these hearings, the call is coming from inside the house.
When it comes to January 6, Republicans are entirely divorced from reality. The January 6 hearings are damning. But Republicans don’t care and Trump’s attempted coup continues unabated.
Feds search Trump-era official’s home, subpoena GOP leaders. Federal agents searched a former top Justice Department official’s home and seized records from key Republicans in at least five states linked to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, in what were clear signs that authorities are ramping up their investigation of associates of the former president.
Supreme Court strikes down N.Y. law that restricts concealed carrying of guns. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion, ruled that New York's restrictions on the concealed carry of firearms in public violates the Second Amendment. The opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, invalidates the state's requirement for people to show "proper cause" to get public carry licenses.
“It's difficult to overstate how devastating Thomas' opinion is for gun control laws. This goes so, so far beyond concealed carry. The Supreme Court has effectively rendered gun restrictions presumptively unconstitutional. This is a revolution in Second Amendment law.” -- Mark Joseph Stern
“How tone-deaf to America’s very real gun violence epidemic can the majority in the Supreme Court be?” -- Ana Navarro-Cardenas
“Seriously, people on the right need to shut the fuck up about states' rights.” -- The Rude Pundit
“Pretty easy to be radically pro gun when you just had your security increased by congress I guess.” -- Schooley
Supreme Court limits the ability to enforce Miranda rights. The Supreme Court limited the ability to enforce Miranda rights in a ruling Thursday that said that suspects who are not warned about their right to remain silent cannot sue a police officer for damages under federal civil rights law even if the evidence was ultimately used against them in their criminal trial. The court’s ruling will cut back on an individual’s protections against self-incrimination by barring the potential to obtain damages. It also means that the failure to administer the warning will not expose a law enforcement officer to potential damages in a civil lawsuit. It will not impact, however, the exclusion of such evidence at a criminal trial. The court clarified that while the Miranda warning protects a constitutional right, the warning itself is not a right that would trigger the ability to bring a civil lawsuit.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s most outspoken liberal, accused the court’s six-member conservative majority of eroding the barrier between church and state on Tuesday by striking down a Maine policy that barred religious schools from receiving taxpayer-funded tuition aid. “This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build,” Sotomayor wrote, dissenting from the 6-3 decision that broke along ideological lines.
Senate passes first major federal gun safety legislation in decades. The bipartisan gun deal includes millions of dollars for mental health, school safety, crisis intervention programs and incentives for states to include juvenile records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
Fears for US woman's life as abortion denied in Malta. Andrea and Jay never thought they'd be in this situation: praying that their baby daughter's heart stops beating before Andrea develops a deadly infection. The couple, from the US, were on holiday in Malta when Andrea Prudente, who's 16-weeks pregnant, started losing blood. Doctors told her the placenta was partly detached and her pregnancy was no longer viable. But the baby's heart was still beating - and in Malta this means that by law doctors cannot end the pregnancy…The island has some of the strictest laws in Europe when it comes to abortion: terminating a pregnancy is completely illegal, including when the foetus has no chances of survival…"This procedure could have been done in two hours, without putting Andrea at risk, and allowing us to grieve," he says. — Coming soon to a US state near you.
New coronavirus subvariants escape antibodies from vaccination and prior Omicron infection, studies suggest. Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 appear to escape antibody responses among both people who had previous Covid-19 infection and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted, according to new data from researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, of Harvard Medical School. However, Covid-19 vaccination is still expected to provide substantial protection against severe disease, and vaccine makers are working on updated shots that might elicit a stronger immune response against the variants.
Uvalde school district places police Chief Pete Arredondo on administrative leave, superintendent announces.
The primary school in Uvalde, Texas where a gunman wielding a semi-automatic rifle fatally shot 19 students and two teachers will be demolished, the city’s mayor says.
Biden calls for 3-month suspension of gas and diesel taxes. President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on Congress to suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes for three months — an election-year move meant to ease financial pressures that was greeted with doubts by many lawmakers.
Afghanistan quake kills 1,000 people, deadliest in decades. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes and killing at least 1,000 people. The disaster posed a new test for Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and relief agencies already struggling with the country’s multiple humanitarian crises.
CDC panel recommends US seniors get souped-up flu vaccines. Americans 65 and older should get newer, souped-up flu vaccines because regular shots don’t provide them enough protection, a federal advisory panel said Wednesday.
FDA orders Juul e-cigarettes and vaping products to be taken off the market in US. After hitting the market in the mid-2010s, Juul became the most popular brand of e-cigarettes available, in large part due to its wide variety of flavors, including creme, mango and mint. Politicians and anti-tobacco advocates have accused the company of using these flavors -- along with a sleek design resembling a USB flash drive -- to market vaping to U.S. children and teenagers.
Amazon's Alexa will soon be able to speak to you in the voice of your grandmother. The company says Alexa's new capability will "enable lasting personal relationships." For example, if someone asks Alexa to read a story in their grandmother's voice, she can. Using a short recording of someone's voice, Alexa can learn to mimic it.
Male Sex Dolls. They’re Not Just For Sex, Actually. Sex toys are a $10.9 billion market in the US, according to IBIS Worldwide, but what proportion consists of sex dolls is unknown. It’s also difficult to ascertain how many women own sex dolls. A 2016 study found that 2% of German women and 9% of the surveyed people had used a sex doll in their lifetime...Unlike the broader sex toy industry, in which most products are designed for and bought by women, the sex doll industry caters almost exclusively to men. But in a 2017 survey of nearly 300 female American undergraduates, 8% said they were “open to the idea of having a sex doll for personal use.” In a 2018 YouGov survey conducted in Italy, 20% of the women surveyed said they would like to try a sex doll. A 2020 article in the Journal of Medical Internet Research argued that “with aging societies and a persistent gender gap in life expectancy, we will see a surplus of millions of widows and single older females in developed countries — perhaps another target group for sex dolls.”...Many people who own dolls think they already help make many people feel calmer, happier, and less alone.
Florida team hauls in 18-foot, 215-pound Burmese python. The female python weighed in at 215 pounds (98 kilograms), was nearly 18 feet long (5 meters) and had 122 developing eggs, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida said in a news release.
World’s biggest bacterium found in Caribbean mangrove swamp. Scientists have discovered the world’s largest bacterium in a Caribbean mangrove swamp. Most bacteria are microscopic, but this one is so big it can be seen with the naked eye.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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