No lawyer, even one of TFG's sketchy mouthpieces, would write such a puerile, belligerent letter to the guy who's overseeing the prosecution of his client. What I suspect happened is something like this: TFG calls up the lawyer and says he wants a meeting with Garland. Lawyer says Garland probably won't do it because Jack Smith, the Special Counsel, is managing the case. TFG says he doesn't care, he wants the lawyer to send Garland a letter demanding a meeting, and he dictates the letter to the lawyer, insisting on the wording. And TFG wants a copy of the letter immediately, on the lawyer's letterhead. Lawyer rolls his eyes and has a secretary type it up as dictated and send a copy to TFG. Lawyer then either writes a polite, professional letter to Garland and/or Smith, requesting a conference to discuss the status of the case and does not send TFG a copy of this letter, or else he makes the request by phone so he can truthfully tell his client that he has contacted Garland. He suspects or knows that the letter TFG dictated will be posted on fake Twitter for the purpose of outraging and grifting the MAGAts but he's already sold his soul by agreeing to represent TFG in the first place, so he accepts the resulting humiliation as the cost of doing business. But the letter on TFG's fake Twitter was never sent to Garland at all.

So that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

which is also our history, was the work of many people and institutions. England had had a parliament for centuries; following the house arrest, trial and execution of Charles I by the Parliament in 1649 (obviously he wasn't really in control of things at that point), there was an interregnum during which England, led by Oliver Cromwell, declared itself a republic. During this period Cromwell brutally conquered Ireland and invaded Scotland, then returned to England and dissolved Parliament. A reconstituted Parliament then declared Cromwell "Lord Protector for life." Under Cromwell's rule Britain continued the expansion of its empire. After his death, and notwithstanding his objections to monarchy, Cromwell was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son Richard. Richard had no power base in Parliament or the Army and was forced to resign in May 1659, ending the Protectorate. Concluding that the republic thing hadn't worked out so well after all, Parliament invited Charles II back from exile and restored him to the throne in 1660. He was succeeded by his brother James II, who was basically chased off the throne after constant battles with Parliament in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and replaced by William of Orange and Mary. The Glorious Revolution established the primacy of parliamentary sovereignty.

English history consists of constant battles between forces of the monarchy, the church(es), and elected representatives. England hasn't had an absolute monarch since the early middle ages (if even then), as much as many of them wanted to be one, and to place all the evils of the empire on the shoulders of increasingly weak monarchs is to completely ignore or misunderstand this complex history. I am not advocating for monarchy; it's clearly an antiquated and unnecessary form of government that still survives only as a historical and symbolic relic. The monarchs of Britain and the other European countries that still have them are essentially powerless and ceremonial, serving only as titular heads of state, not heads of government. Any of those countries, all of which are also representative democracies, could abolish their monarchies through acts of their parliaments but so far they have chosen not to do so. It makes no more sense to heap hate on the soap-opera Windsor family that it does to hate the Kardashians.

The US didn't spring out of nothing; it was a bunch of disaffected Brits who didn't like George III's administration and taxation of the colony they were occupying (stolen from the people who already lived there, btw). Our legal system is based almost entirely on hundreds of years of English common law, and the philosophical underpinnings of the Constitution can be found in Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government, in which he rejected the claims of absolute monarchy based on divine right and held that the inalienable rights of individuals form the basis of all rightful governments. The country we have now, good and bad, got its start in the British Empire. If it hadn't been for British colonialism we might not have ever come into existence in the first place, and certainly not as we are now.

A shambling hulk with urine-colored hair
And lumpy, greasy face all orange and saggy
Slithered down his golden moving stair,
Once stood before the world in clothing baggy.

Imaginary concertina playing
As tiny baby hands move through the air.
Nasal bleating, whining, sneering, neighing
Tells us how the Deep State isn’t fair.

“What?” he says, “The D.A. is indictin’?
Since I did nothing wrong, how can that be?
It’s Hillary, or maybe Hunter Biden!
Not a thing could be the fault of me.”

But toadlike there he squats, with face of poker
Since nothing rhymes with orange, we’ll call it ocher.

What I want more than anything is for him just to go the fuck away so I don't have to hear anything he says or see his ugly orange face ever again. If that means death, exile, alien abduction, prison or any other thing that makes him go away, fine.

Once again, a famous person who held distasteful political beliefs has passed away, and the grave-dancing has commenced. This time it was Kirstie Alley, an actress famous mostly for her long-standing role on Cheers. She was also an avowed conservative (although she withdrew her support for TFG in 2020 and announced she wouldn't vote for either candidate), and a Scientologist. Accordingly, some seem to think it's OK to celebrate her death because she's an "enemy."

Really?

My own criteria for acceptable grave-dancing (YMMV) upon the death of someone whose politics we deplore require considering the following factors:

1. Was the person currently causing a significant amount of social discord, suffering, or other trouble such that their demise will make a noticeable difference in people's lives? Or were they old adversaries who were no longer involved in any kind of public life; or people whose impact was merely annoying, but insignificant?

2. Did they have family, friends and/or associates who genuinely loved them, or were they so disagreeable or toxic that they won't be missed by anyone?

3. Did they ever do anything good or useful, irrespective of their politics; i.e., did they support good causes, donate generously to charities, or provide entertainment through their art, music, acting, etc.? Were they kind to children and animals? Or were they consistently greedy, uncharitable, mean, disinclined to help people or do anything to make their lives easier?

4. Did they contribute negatively or positively to public discourse; that is to say, did they express their opinions, however wrong-headed they might have seemed, courteously and rationally, or as insulting, hateful trolls?

Applying these criteria, I can't think of any reason to dance on Kirstie Alley's grave. She was just an actress with political opinions contrary to mine. I also didn't dance on the graves of John McCain, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, or Bob Dole. I didn't agree with them but I didn't hate them. In fact, the only graves I can anticipate dancing on, and might even do so with pleasure, would be Trump's and Putin's. They meet all of my negative criteria. As to other "enemies," I offer the wise words of Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, written following the Civil War.

After TFG was defeated in 2020 I thought, Finally we'll be rid of that toxic lunatic and things will get back to normal again. But then there was all that election fraud nonsense and crazy Rudy saying mad things in the parking lot of a landscape company and 60+ lawsuits and 1/6, and pretty soon it looked like TFG was going to be the political equivalent of long covid - you survived and sort of recovered but the unpleasant after-effects just won't go away and you don't know when they will, if ever.

So we hope for the best but expect the worst, and the outcome probably will be something in-between and in varying degrees of awful, depending on where you live. We'll have to carry on but we won't know for awhile what the final picture will be - probably not Nazi Germany but maybe some kind of "soft" fascism or something like The Troubles of Northern Ireland, or maybe just protracted struggles in the courts. The best case scenario is that Biden vetos everything coming out of a GOP-dominated Congress, but even that is just a stalemate. And what might happen in 2024 is anybody's guess. It's the uncertainty and the sense that something really bad could happen that makes me feel like the character in the Li'l Abner cartoon with the storm cloud over his head. I'm old but given my ancestors' tendency toward longevity I could be around for another 20 years or so, and right now I'm just hoping those last years don't suck too much.

in every law school in the country. I believe one of TFG's Lawyer Barbies, Alina Habba, was responsible for the dog's breakfast of a complaint, and she was righteously whacked upside the head. Even TFG's other incompetent lawyers think Habba is incompetent. https://www.thedailybeast.com/alina-habba-the-trump-lawyer-the-rest-of-trumps-legal-team-loathes

A few gems from the opinion:

























https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157.267.0.pdf



If any lawyer ever deserved crushing Rule 11 sanctions it's Alina Habba. Wadda maroon.

after watching the 1/6 hearings so far and reading the recent opinions of a no-longer-legitimate Supreme Court, as off this evening I'm kind of like, "FUCK IT! BURN IT ALL DOWN!" We don't have the country we thought we had, or even could have had, because too goddamn many people in power suck and too many other people like it that the people in power suck, and the system just does not fucking work. Maybe this country is just too big and complicated for the original system to work, or maybe it never really did but for 200 ears wheezed along just well enough for us to think we were the Shining Fucking City On The Shining Fucking Hill and didn't notice the rot in the basement. Or chose not to notice it.

So the gaping holes in the system allowed TFG to crash through the guard rails that were really only made of toilet paper straight from Mitch McConnell's bathroom, and 2/3 of the Supreme Court just stood there and said, Hell, yeah, as the car rolled down the embankment.

The founders knew it was all an experiment anyhow, and I guess the lab just blew up.