Excerpt: The Court’s three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing that the Court’s decision could wreak havoc on the upcoming elections, which are less than three months away.

“This ruling violates well-established precedents concerning this Court’s equitable discretion and needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections,” she wrote.

… The order directs states to design new envelopes for mail ballots with mandatory barcodes tying the ballot to the voter, submit those envelopes to USPS for approval, and then use them ahead of November’s elections. The printing costs alone will likely run in the millions. Many states start sending mail ballots 45 days ahead of Election Day, in mid-September, which is a few weeks away.

Me again: It’s, again, the Supreme Court acting with no legal or Constitutional justification.

The first sentence is all you need to read

Overview of the situation

Excerpt: More than a decade ago, federal officials built a highly protected bunker, embedded deep underground, that can shelter the president and his top aides in a national security emergency, according to three former officials.

Me again: The bunker Barack Obama built is only large enough to house the President and a few dozen staffers in an emergency. A much larger facility is needed, thank you, to stage troops for their attack on Washington DC if ever comes the day when someone tries to remove Trump from office.

And yes, I’m serious as a shart.

Excerpt: Dozens of former judges accused the Department of Homeland Security’s top lawyer of violating professional conduct rules by posting on social media about the so-called “worst of the worst” judges who’ve ruled against the Trump administration.

DHS general counsel James Percival’s posts “not only constitute serious professional misconduct” but also “threaten the rule of law and increase the risk of violence against judges,” the 128 retired judges alleged in a Tuesday ethics complaint filed with the Florida Bar.

The retired judges cited Florida Bar conduct rules that bar attorneys from “impugning qualifications and integrity of judges or other officers,” and asked the Florida Bar to investigate Percival’s conduct and “take appropriate disciplinary action as soon as possible.”

Me again: Why are only retired and former judges complaining?

Excerpt: On Monday, the judge sided with church groups who successfully sued the government and agreed to hold a hearing next month to determine why the Trump administration “should not be held in contempt for violating the preliminary injunction.” The government must respond by August 28.

Excerpt: “They said if we leave the hotel grounds, they will shoot us and bury us across the street,” said Peta-Gaye Chambers, 35, whose parents brought her to the U.S. from Jamaica when she was 5. A U.S. immigration judge granted Chambers “withholding of removal” to her home country of Jamaica in 2013, agreeing she’d face persecution there.

In June, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported her without notice to Equatorial Guinea, a place where she has no ties. When she and another woman initially refused to board the deportation flight, an ICE officer threatened to put them in full-body straitjackets for the entire 18-hour flight to Africa, both women told the Star.

Equatorial Guinea security officials have also threatened the U.S. deportees held at the hotel, warning they’d soon be returned to their home countries, despite the protections granted all of them by U.S. immigration judges. That’s according to Chambers; Jamaican national Natalie Holmes, 51; and Ahmed Soliman, 30, a Phoenix man who has been imprisoned at Hotel Bamy for more than three months.

… ICE spokesman Fernando X. Burgos has said the agency bears no responsibility for what happens to deportees it sends to third countries.

“Once an alien leaves the United States, ICE is no longer responsible for tracking their location or activities outside the country,” Burgos said in a July 27 emailed statement to the Star. He referred the Star to the U.S. State Department, which signed the secretive agreement to give Equatorial Guinea $7.5 million to receive deportees from the U.S. The State Department did not respond to the Star‘s questions.

Me again: There is no punishment that would be punishment enough for Donald Trump, Markwayne Mullin, Fernando Burgos, et al. And no punishment is what they’ll get, and they know it.

Excerpt: According to family members who spoke with Univision, Calero was still under sedation for pain when agents came to her bedside, asked about her immigration status, and then handcuffed her and walked her out of the building in her hospital gown. Relatives say they asked to see a warrant or asked the agents to identify themselves and got no response. Carriel was taken into custody a short time later.

A relative who filmed the encounter can be heard begging the officers in Spanish to stop, while other patients in the room reacted with visible alarm. The video spread quickly online and drew sharp criticism from immigrant-advocacy groups.

Excerpt: A federal judge in June struck down the Trump administration’s attempt to increase the H-1B visa to $100,000 for foreign workers hired outside the US.

Me again: Above the law, always.

Not sure anyone takes the Log Cabin Republicans seriously, but if you didn’t already know they’re reprehensible and principle-free, well, they’re that and they’re scum.

Excerpt: The Chicago Sky described the incident as “disruptive and dangerous” in a statement, and said those responsible will face lifetime bans.

Me again: Well, yeah — and also prosecutions please?

Excerpt: The United States began a campaign of boat strikes last year in the run-up to the military operation that seized Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. The military has continued the operations in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, killing at least 223 people in 67 strikes that it said were involved in the narcotics trade.

Me again: No evidence of this ‘narcotics trade’ has ever been presented. These are simply war crimes without a war, a hobby for Pete Hegseth. He and all his subordinates, all the way down to the men pulling the triggers, must (but won’t) be prosecuted.

Excerpt: If Calkins’s editors deserve any criticism, it is only for how long it took them to communicate their decision. A column with a thesis as obviously wrong as the one Calkins produced should be spiked without too much consideration. If a writer brings an editor a poorly written or poorly argued column that the editor never asked for, it is the editor’s duty to put it into the trash can as quickly as possible, so that the writer can find a better idea on which to spend their time.

Excerpt: The Washington Post said in its termination letter that Ms. Attiah’s posts about Mr. Kirk had harmed “the integrity” of the organization and violated standards requiring employees to use social media with civility and respect.

Ms. Attiah’s remarks about Mr. Kirk’s assassination, which she posted to the social network Bluesky on Sept. 10, the day he was shot, responded to the outpouring of grief after the shooting. “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is … not the same as violence,” Ms. Attiah wrote in one of the posts.

Me again: I love a piece of good news. In the interim, though, the Post‘s billionaire asswipe owner Jeff Bezos has remade the editorial page so it’s only and always about “personal liberties and free markets,” and kind to the Trump regime. Not sure where Karen Attiah fits in, so they’ll probably send her away with a cash settlement instead of actually publishing anything worth reading.

Also, it must be mentioned because it’s true: Charlie Kirk was a shit human, and the world is a better place with him dead.

I’ve been listening to Democracy Now for, srsly, almost as long as I can remember, but I wouldn’t have guessed Amy Goodman has a sense of humor!

This is a well-written article, always within the silly bounds of “impartial journalism” while being dryly and tragically hilarious.

Excerpt: It has been a fun summer in Washington for Mr. Trump. In June, he hosted a cage fight on the South Lawn of the White House for his 80th birthday. In July, he appeared as the headliner at the rally in front of the Washington Monument on the Fourth. Now he was being driven around a racetrack.

“We’re going to make a little circle in a nice, secure car, slightly slower than the ones we’re going to witness,” he told a reporter from Fox Sports. “But we’re going to have fun.”

Excerpt: The reason the Harp story has caught fire is that it is salacious — the elderly president spends nearly all of his waking hours with a young, attractive aide — but the reason it matters is that it is further confirmation of one essential fact of the Trump White House: that the president exists in a degraded, chaotic information environment.

He rejects information that is gathered and collected for the purpose of informing him and is highly reliant, instead, on counsel from people who have no incentive to contradict him and every incentive to tell him what he wants to hear or what they want him to hear. Trump has dismantled every institutional structure designed to curb the worst aspects of the presidency — a tendency toward isolation and groupthink — and has instead sunk deeper into his own propaganda and invented reality.

Harp, it appears, is a key part of that. A total devotee, she shapes his world. The result is a chief executive who is detached from the information he needs to avoid disaster, much less successfully govern the country. Accordingly, Trump has neither avoided disaster nor managed to put the country on stable footing. Instead, he is carelessly careening toward catastrophe. So far, it’s only been a matter of luck that we haven’t crashed.

Excerpt: Through aides, neither man would comment on the session, which was described by one person with knowledge of it as a broad conversation on a range of topics. Still, its timing underscored that those around Mr. Trump were well aware of the likelihood of a Democratic-led House, and trying to foster as much of a working relationship as possible before any change. Mr. Jeffries is in line to be the speaker, were Democrats to win the majority.

Me again: A secret meeting with Kushner — rich, excruciatingly Republican, a Trump by marriage, and on Saudi Arabia’s payroll — is proof again that Dems like Jeffries are useless at best, co-conspirators at worst. If a zero like Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker of the House, there’s no point in having a Democratic majority.

Excerpt: A gray banker — and not just any banker but one of the leading bankers in the world — has stood up and said that there’s more to life than a little bit of money. The power of that recognition alone, at this moment in history, cannot be overstated. Mr. Trump’s world, a world of transaction and submission, is not the only world we all have to live in.

Me again: Until he gets World War III underway, making an enemy of frickin’ Canada will remain Trump’s most remarkable accomplishment.

Excerpt: In an era before widespread tracking technology followed everyone’s consumption habits around the internet, Columbia House was remarkably easy to scam back. People signed up their pets, used aliases and played games with mailing addresses to bilk the company out of new releases for less than the cost of a penny.

Me again: The statute of limitations has passed, right?

Washington man sued local governments over Flock records. He’s won $300K.

Excerpt: China’s decision not to adopt Windows 11 is a strong statement about the OS’s intrusiveness and how much privacy it actually promises.

China has gradually been distancing itself from American companies on all fronts: software, hardware, media, etc. Most countries have expressed concerns about the reliability of privacy promises from US-based software and services.

Excerpt: The move could prevent residents from raising concerns about — or even learning about — data centers before permits are approved and construction starts.

Combative Díaz-Canel says Cuba won’t make concessions to Trump, talks are ‘very stalled’

Cuba was never ‘next’: The United States is betting on a slow suffocation of the Castro regime by 2029

Excerpt: Police in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, accused Cody Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13.

Investigators, according to WKRC-TV in Cincinnati, identified Morelock after obtaining surveillance footage from other cameras near the scene as well as information linked to a credit card and a customer rewards account. Police estimated the damage at more than $1,000. Morelock posted a $10,000 bond and was released from custody shortly after his arrest.

A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict Morelock, and the charges were dismissed.

Mr Lang seems the opposite of ‘supreme’.

Excerpt: A man dressed in a tight-fitting Spider Man suit wasted no time by climbing on top of the truck within a minute of its appearance and lunged at Lang, hitting him multiple times in the face before being pulled over the top by one of the six whose face was concealed under a camouflage balaclava, pulling him overboard head-first onto the concrete.

Private security guards dressed in eclectic military-style gear that included black hardhats and GoPro cameras exited the white SUV and wildly hosed the crowd down with pepper spray, not even sparing Lang and his entourage, who were still being pelted with whatever protesters could get their hands on.

Excerpt: “This is a risk for the whole world,” said Col. Serhiy Minaiev, the commander of air defenses in Zaporizhzhia. “In a few years, we will be living in a ‘Terminator’ movie. It’s no joke. Machines are making decisions to strike.”

Excerpt: Sohn’s vehicle had no dashboard camera, investigators said. His body-worn camera footage, activated when he turned his siren lights on, has never been released.

Virtually all American police officers are racist, even or especially black officers.

A pretty good overview of the end, albeit brief by necessity.