pentagon, welcome to the resistance

@GodEmperorDune this Trump's Russian/North Korean inspired ego stroking parade?

@Memor-X yep

@GodEmperorDune I am out to dinner but I came in to loooooool at this

@TimStone that $88 million plate isn't gonna eat itself

> The sensitive documents were saved in a folder called “hacky hack hack,” the report added.

best folder naming standard for 16 year old hackers

@Memor-X "definitely not hacks m8"

All of the above?

@murgatroid99 no, ofcause not, i don't look at porn. the stuff in homework is for sex ed so it's not porn stop going though my private folder mum *close door. applies System Hidden attributes to all folders*

The real trick is to encrypt it, so that even if it's found, it could still be anything

God I hate this man with every fibre of my being

> After eight months of treatment at the Southdown Institute, officials there warned the church that Connor should not be put in a position where he would have responsibility for adolescents. Yet the church seemed to ignore the institute's advice, and would later assign Connor to a parish in Conshohocken, Pa., with a grade school and encourage him to "educate youth."

'clergy rehab'?

@Wipqozn pun intended?

but yeh it's funny how first it was Environment laws, then Environmental Radicals, then Environmental Terrorist and now Canada

probably only blaming canada for it because canada's prime minister didn't call him a wanker so he had no reason to slap more tariffs on them

Jake "just throwing that out there" 🙄

I agree that transparency is best but she wanted to hear from people without them being mobbed by reporters and I'm not sure what the solution is there. Like if she had already been elected or was meeting with people in power that'd be a different story

Mostly just aggravated that Tapper knows exactly what he's doing here

Ah, good, who needs a stable Syria anyway? :|

@Memor-X C:\Biochemistry

Love too reboot ISIS

I'm at a loss on this one tbh

@TimStone jake I'm sorry you didn't get to show up and ask "do you disavow violence against cameras" or whatever the fuck

Initially I read that as "fighting them with napalm"

the most heinous of all crimes, telling a dude with a camera and bright light to get out of your face

@TimStone it's the will of Snake Jesus or Tree Jesus

@GodEmperorDune came here to post that (well, the direct link and not the twitter post)

@TimStone ... natural selection? Best not to interfere

@TimStone the most unbelievable part of this story is that the services can go for 5 hours... who has that kind of time?

People in Kentucky, apparently

When Mitch's cocaine hits you, I guess

@GodEmperorDune Somehow I didn't parse this earlier, what in the sweet hell?

@TimStone yeaaaaaaaaaaah

basically trump took the meeting off on a tangent to argue if the "ride of the valkyries" scene in apocalypse now was dropping napalm or agent orange

I can't wait for the first Gamer president to talk to veterans about Spec Ops: The Line and whatnot

and he polled the room

(unsurprisingly trump was wrong on this)

In case anyone was worried we wouldn't have our cops, man story before noon

Yay good news - the 538 House forecasts

Trump, on security clearances, says Special Counsel Mueller has conflicts

it'll get very interesting if he actually tries to strip Mueller of his security clearance

@puzzlepiece87 lol this is America, of course we will

@Unionhawk oh hey I missed this, thanks hell algorithm Facebook. Charges against the 11 year old have been dropped.

👍

(the Hell Algorithm has promoted this because someone from SA shared it to the Hell Group called Greater Cincinnati Politics and it's got 469 comments)

🙄

(by my estimation it's 460 "I support the police this is a crime I don't care if it's an 11 year old stealing food" and 9 "what the fuck is wrong with y'all")

@TimStone To be fair if you don't want to die from toxic chemical accidents then you should just have more money

> Woman Gets Contact Lens Stuck In Eye For 28 Years (cw: the MRI photos are nightmare fuel, lol)

A.J. Delgado is defending the Catholic church for some reason

You...you work for him?

@TimStone It's almost as if he's a really important person whose decisions have ramifications on the public at large.

@TimStone @Yuuki Liar continues lying, deflecting, news at 11.

Kellyanne Conway probably said Obama 5,000,000 times too during the campaign so 🤷

Or to put it more clearly, "person who will say anything for their team/job continues to do exactly that", yawn

lol

Just incredible

Is that about the NC Supreme Court or the US Supreme Court?

NC Supreme Court

isn't that the state party that had a gofundme or something like that to rebuild one of their offices or is that another state

That the Dems donated to yes everything is dumb

The most important news of the day, yall

@TimStone Oh, state constitutional amendments?

Yeah, the General Assembly is up to its usual shenanigans

So the GOP is claiming that the Supreme Court could cause a constitutional crisis due to amendments that they passed?

🤔

Well the amendments are going to a public vote

In November

But the wording of all of the amendments is pretty vague and structured as to allow the GOP to retain control regardless of who the governor is

lol

Obviously all of the concerns are largely hypothetical since we can't know what people might try following the passage of them, but again that's not much reason to go "mmm let's try and see!"

@TimStone Is this the legislature that kicked out all of their justices already for corruption?

No that was West Virginia, lol

Oh whoops

@Unionhawk holy shit no way lol

"What I meant...was the opposite of what I said"

@TimStone I'm not even sure who the intended audience is here

Like the right is just convinced he's lying now, and the left is annoyed that "America isn't great for a lot of people" is controversial in any way

So like

Why

Right? After you've already been bashed by Trump it's not like he's going to take it back, so why even bother? lol

You complete dunce

You're lucky new york is set up to keep incumbents in

@Unionhawk we’re getting word that Cynthia Nixon has gone up 420% and is now leading by 69 points

@GodEmperorDune hue

> PETA asks Nashville church to stop using cougars and lions during sermons

@TimStone 420plsdon'tblazeit

blinks

closes Twitter

@TimStone Like... as metaphors or is this church bringing actual live cougars and lions to their sermons?

@TimStone all of the cool people are on Mastodon now anyway

I refuse to toot I'm sorry

What the hell is mastodon?

Idk

mmm I guess this is a wording you could use. I mean, I wouldn't, but I'm also not Bill Donohue, so

(to be clear here the Catholic League is not a church body but has some pretty close ties)

lol shocking the dude from the think tank with Kissinger on the board of trustees wants MOAR SPACE WAR

Man with "at least one gun" at an airport checkpoint

@TimStone Man I'm so glad we pack as many unscreened people into as small a space as possible

rubs temples

MSNBC: What can we do to make this worse? Maybe...Have Erik Prince on? Yes, let's do that

@TimStone I don't understand why the Dem donation to rebuilding the offices nor standing against removal of constitutional amendments is dumb. Is there something I'm missing?

The offices were trashed, so it was a nice goodwill gesture I thought. And assuming NC Supreme Court works the way US does, it's the NC Supreme Court job to uphold the constitution including amendments.

So I'm just confused where the bad is here, but I'm probably missing details.

There is no value in showing good will to people who will 100% turn around and spit in your face, imo, which is exactly what happened

@TimStone The snakes can take care of themselves?

The part about the amendments is that they're trying to introduce new amendments to consolidate their power

And they're saying "The state Supreme Court better let us get away with this!"

@puzzlepiece87 I'm mostly not convinced that they didn't torch the place themselves, given how the NC GOP behaves regularly

I'm probably being too go with the flow

But it seems to me at this moment that the court not abiding by constitutional amendments would cause more problems than it solves

Sorry, let me clarify the issue

I mean, everything is fucked, but I prefer to at least pretend there is some future where we could go back to that not being the case

The governor is challenging the acceptability of putting the amendments on the ballot

Because the amendments are an attempt to consolidate power

Oh

And the GOP response is that the court shouldn't get in the way of them tricking voters into voting for the amendments

Got it, thanks! I understand much better now

turns the outrage knob up

(context story)

Thanks @TimStone

The whole office debacle is even dumber when you consider that the office was almost definitely insured

And if not then well that sounds like a failure of personal responsibility

Agreed

That said, I thought it was a nice gesture

I mean, we talk about irresponsible people inciting violence

Donating to repair a trashed office is the opposite of inciting violence

So I'm happy with it regardless

The two amendments that are up for debate even though they're all actually pretty dumb have ballot language as follows:

> Constitutional amendment to implement a nonpartisan merit-based system that relies on professional qualifications instead of political influence when nominating Justices and judges to be selected to fill vacancies that occur between judicial elections.

> Constitutional amendment to establish a bipartisan Board of Ethics and Elections to administer ethics and election laws, to clarify the appointment authority of the Legislative and the Judicial Branches, and to prohibit legislators from serving on boards and commissions exercising executive or judicial authority.

And it's like "Hmm this seems reasonable when I read it" if you ignore the fact that it gives the legislature control over these things and the GOP is entrenched there 🤷

Right now these powers fall to the governor, where party affiliation is less guaranteed

and, indeed, changing iirc

or did that already occur

The current governor is a Democrat, yes

The second amendment includes the language about the Judicial branch because the legislature Republicans are angry they were told they had to redraw the maps

Ah yes they do appear quite reasonable actually.

So they basically want to remove the governor's authority to decide the composition of the boards and tell the judiciary "We'll rig the game if we want to"

They're also trying to cap income tax at 7%, "protect the right of people to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife", which I guess is just a "lol protected species" thing, photo voter ID, and strengthen "protections for victims of crime; to establish certain absolute basic rights for victims; and to ensure the enforcement of these rights"

That last one like the two in question is worded to make you feel like an asshole for voting no even though it's not clear what the consequence of the changes they're making is

Like the provision already exists in the NC constitution, they're just added this fluff language

lmao it looks like our favorite billionaire boy tweeted his way into an 8% loss on the day

still up on the month, down on the year, up on the 5 year

lmfao @ the baseball crank going hard on "Aretha Franklin was great but she's no Kelly Clarkson" take

'MURICA

(see also)

Ah well this is healthy

> didn't anticipate the level of attention this trial would receive

Are we sure this guy has a law degree?

It's not impossible that he thought Trump would disavow Manafort and it would seem less consequential, I guess. idk

But also don't read the replies to that tweet because they are also cancer

@TimStone I think I have to mention that at least some the evidence he's being accused of destroying is the videos and social media posts that YouTube, Facebook, and others deleted when they banned him

Ahhh PA

ah this is actually the origin of the "get in the sea" phrasing

@murgatroid99 Is it? I thought it was only about the Twitter content he deleted on his own

@TimStone The exact quotes from the article:

> Mr. Jones has been protesting an unprecedented effort this month by Apple, Facebook, YouTube and other services to remove Infowars content from their platforms for violating policies on hate speech, child endangerment and inciting violence.

> At least some of the deleted content was considered evidence in the Sandy Hook cases, and Mr. Jones had been informed in writing in April that he was obligated by law to preserve all relevant material, according to the court filing in District Court in Travis County in Austin.

> Mr. Jones said on his broadcast last week that he had told his staff to delete material after CNN cited Infowars content that violated Twitter’s policies, according to the motion filed on Friday.

looks like a whynotboth.gif

> Most important, the material that was destroyed could be presumed by the court as supporting Mr. Heslin’s claims against Mr. Jones, bolstering his case.

IANAL so i don't get how that works

@murgatroid99 IT's probably all part of the conspiracy

is there like a evidence meter that fills up for this?

It might be preserved on apple etc's end but idk

it's also likely they don't have a requirement to preserve user submitted content in this manner

@GodEmperorDune Presumably if it violated the site policies then it wasn't "just news" or whatever the defense is

@TimStone no but how does one "presume it supports the case" without the actual evidence?

There's not likely a reasonable basis that he shouldn't have made copies to comply with the order too, tbh

@GodEmperorDune The argument is that he shouldn't have posted that stuff because it was harmful and it was deleted for being harmful

i feel i am not wording this correctly

like in a murder trial they might have the murder weapon in a bag or whatever and the fingerprints and stuff on it in a fancy chart

is this the digital equivalent of "imagine we had this stuff but we don't"?

I'm not sure I follow

ok, so in the court room where they are doing the trial

The content was exhibits in the plaintiff's case against Jones, where they would have argued the content was objectionable. If the content is deleted, it's suggested the sites hosting it found it objectionable too, which might imply less burden on Heslin to show it was objectionable

@TimStone ah that makes more sense

thanks

Yeah, because they have to overcome the free speech barrier to suggest that the material was actively harmful. Obviously the sites taking action themselves doesn't automatically mean that it violates free speech tests since they aren't obligated to uphold those, but it provides a certain framing

@TimStone So in essence, the deletion of the evidence for being objectionable supports the claim that the evidence is objectionable

Right, which is potentially useful for his case but not like a slam dunk or anything

@murgatroid99 They're only concerned about the Twitter content he intentionally deleted, per the motion

The article just inserted that aside without realising it confuses the matter

@TimStone NYTimes muddying the waters? well i never

lol, I think it was just accidental framing

So, par for the course for the current administration

pretty much

At this point, I don't know if there is any scandal that I can confidently say the Republicans wouldn't accept to push their agenda.

I mean, par for the course of this administration but Kavanaugh is not up for a position in this administration.

@Yuuki this is also a fair point

@Yuuki But he is getting appointed by the Trump administration and confirmed by a Republican congress that pretty consistently rolls over for him

Hmm... not sure if I'm parsing my point correctly.

Eh, at the end of the day, I think we're in agreement.

@GodEmperorDune lol is this why Grassley was trying to restrict stuff to only the committee? Fantastic

@TimStone its probably why mcconnell didn't want him nominated

Who did McConnell want nominated?

iirc someone who didn't have bush admin baggage

Kethledge would have been a still-problematic but better choice IMO

Since the Manafort jury is going home for the weekend can you imagine how many tweets Trump is going to fire off? Good times, good times

@TimStone not that I'm an expert in the US justice system, but I don't understand why they're not sequestered. It's easily the most publicized trial in recent history.

It's a very good question, honestly. I've seen several people ask about that today and not seen a compelling response

Mostly because all of the responses are claiming the judge is corrupt or some nonsense

I'm not a fan of the entire jury system anyway

@MadScientist It's tough, on the one hand you can't get a theoretically more impartial sample than a bunch of apathetic people who don't want to be there, on the other hand they're a bunch of apathetic people who don't want to be there, and definitely have their own closet biases

we have regular people acting as co-judges in Germany, but they're acting not for a single trial but for a longer time. And it's something like two regular people and one judge for a trial, and not for every kind of trial

Hmm, interesting

@TimStone goddammit

@TimStone hue

lol

@GodEmperorDune Part of it is that if he was destroying data he was ordered to preserve, there was probably a reason he didn't want people to see it, probably because it would hurt his case. From a legal standpoint, there's also the fact that the punishment for destroying evidence is probably less than the punishment for losing his case, so it would still be in his favor to destroy the evidence.

Assuming that the destroyed evidence supports the case against him removes any benefit from destroying the evidence

@SaintWacko yeah i get the WHY, it's more of the logistics of the HOW

@GodEmperorDune Oh

Yeah, I'm not sure. Probably the jury is just instructed to make their decisions as though evidence had been presented showing that there was malicious intent

lmao Omarosa supposedly has video too

@TimStone please be named Mitch

Awww, cocaine Daniel doesn’t have the same ring to it

TIL that witches are based on badass ladies that brewed beer and pissed off the patriarchy/catholic church

@GodEmperorDune Tweet does not exist

They deleted the tweet but here is the story

autostraddle.com/…

of course the only way the parade would cost money is because of corruption in DC

(the thread has the official DC response showing that most of the cost is NOT from DC)

in more fun news

back to cops, man

status-bydesign

relatedly, portland police chief was going on about how they won the fight that was police vs us, which is Extremely Cool

glad to know that's what you see your job as

yeeeeeeeeeah :/

we're coming for the police unions now