Week of
Epstein Dump, MAGA Racism, Spin On ICE
Names named, Children as hostages, Attacks on protests, Proposed limited limits, Weird Trump threats, Weird Fox coverage, Journalism while Black, Super Bowl Half

So it turns out to be a reference in someone else’s email about still someone’s else’s article that mentions something that John Scalzi wrote. Still, John has an opinion:

…reignites the nation’s love of reading.

Tommy Christopher has the bizarre response as Trump, rather than answering with concern for the child rape victims…

…attacks CNN and scolds the reporter for not smiling as she asks about child rape.

Notable, at least to me, is the lack of response from other reporters, who obediently go on to other topics.

Tommy brings us two of several later exceptions:

He sees ICE, Epstein, measles, Don Lemon arrested for Journalism while Black, and Russian agent Tulsi Gabbard performing mysterious things with election ballots.
All in one weekend!

One problem often associated with Trump:
The statue is currently stored in the creator’s workshop, because the people who commissioned it haven’t paid for it.

Key strategy:
Arguing that a building cannot undergo construction while people are still in it, Trump revealed that he had spent the past year ensuring that no one would set foot inside the performing arts center for the foreseeable future.

She brings us remarkable examples just for February 1^st.

…Republican support for ethnic cleansing and Constitutional rights violations.

Separately, Jack goes to the core of MAGA racial beliefs: extraordinary Trump lies about minorities, protests, and the ICE campaign against both.

…MAGA definitions of journalist and criminal.

You may prefer a complete transcript (PDF)

But now Lupita Nyongo apparently fails a new immigration standard:

Right Wing Watch brings us social media personality and self‑described racist Lilly Gaddis

with this:
If I can’t pronounce your name, what are you doing here?

tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has special election results from Texas as a Democrat wins where a Democrat has not won since 1991.

Latest reasoning:
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is in on the game. In 2024 he told reporters, “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”

Yeah. It’s intuition. Johnson goes on to say he has no actual evidence, but everyone knows.

The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.

Decades ago (okay, so I’m old) I noticed in the Nixon tapes an incident taking a few seconds that said a lot about the Watergate mindset.

As news came in that George Wallace had been shot and was near death, Nixon ordered aides to plant evidence suggesting that the assassination attempt had been carried out by one or more prominent Democrats. (They didn’t actually carry through)

His reasoning: We know they do it to us, so we should do it to them.

It wasn’t true, of course. There was never evidence to support that reasoning, except Nixon’s intuition.

Julian Sanchez points to a pattern by now familiar about Trump accusations:

He couldn’t have been rejected. It had to be a trick! It just HAD to be!

Key subheadline:
Putting all eggs in the basket of winning elections is a dangerous decision, when Trump’s plan is to cheat in those elections.

Infidel753 predicts overwhelming rejection of the Democratic Party in future post‑Trump politics if the party does not reject standards imposed by its own extreme fringe.

Infidel quotes NY Times columnist Thomas Edsall:
…the basic unit of moral concern is the individual; that institutions should be governed by general, neutral rules; and that rights and due process are core to justice. The illiberal ideas I’m critiquing, on the other hand, treat groups — particularly racial, gender and sexual identities — as the real subjects of politics, see “neutral” rules as a cover for domination by whites and men, and redefine justice as rebalancing power between groups rather than protecting the freedoms and rights of all individuals.

Infidel sees a basic disconnect, not only with much of the American electorate, but with the American ideal itself of individual rights, responsibility, and judgment. The elevation of the trivial, when even issues of correct vocabulary are given major status, is only part of a rigid ideology.

Infidel has a winning alternative:
Become the party of economic populism and redistribution of wealth back to the workers who create it, instead of the party of identity politics and coddling Islam and men in women’s sports and prisons, and they will easily become the overwhelmingly dominant party. But not otherwise.

Surprisingly (to some), it turns out hostage taking is usually the province of criminals and thugs.

A cartoonist sends a special message of art to young Liam Ramos as the youngster awaits hoped for release.

Separately, Hackwhackers beings us excerpts from the scathing court order releasing the youngster and his dad.

Repetitive deadly tactic:
If you look at the video in the story, you will see that one of those pseudo-cops steps in front of her car, presumably to try and get justification to murder another American citizen.

Seems somehow familiar.

Disaffected and it Feels So Good documents efforts by ICE, by DHS which employs ICE, and by the Trump administration which employs DHS to stretch that provision into threats of arrest aimed at…

…those who follow ICE agents or record violence and intimidation.

Turns out the backlog was caused largely by illegal ICE kidnappings.

Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson is among those who object with vehement scorn:

Forget Jeffrey Epstein! The real victims, at least in Minnesota, are valiant ICE and Border Patrol agents facing protests composed of hordes of secret Chinese Communist financed sleeper cells disguised as ordinary citizens.

More detailed information is presented by Juliet in an hour long entertaining podcast.

Most Americans don’t like the way the Trump administration is handling immigration.

Decisive majorities support 5 specific restrictions on ICE agents.

Most want violent criminals deported but not most other immigrants.

Amanda notices the eighth demand Senator Chuck Schumer thought to include. It could actually solve the enforcement problem:

Okay, so that is kind of weird.

Trump, posting on Truth Social
I have instructed Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, that under no circumstances are we going to participate in various poorly run Democrat Cities with regard to their Protests and/or Riots unless, and until, they ask us for help.

Yeah!
Take that, Democrat Cities!

…who explains the harsh views of Jesus toward immigrants.

Trump officials are aggressively promoting ICE violence while wearing the cross.
It is not a coincidence.

Official piety:
Cabinet members hop into public view with conspicuous crosses around their necks, invoking “the Lord” as if they are not government officials but apostles with badges. They speak in mythical terms about destiny and divine favor. They sanctify policy decisions as if they were ordained rather than debated.

Key result:
When federal agents arrive in a city with that mindset, it should not surprise anyone that confrontation follows. When the commander in chief frames dissent as godlessness and opposition as insurrection, it should surprise no one that people are treated as enemies. When policy is driven by ideology rather than law, such consequences are inevitable.

Key headline:
When Jesus Kills–A Moral Mutation

How do we reconcile a loving, beneficent and all‑powerful God with evil and suffering in the world?

In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce hears an answer:

Bruce seems more than a little skeptical.

What’s it like to spend half a week in Mexico?

Fortunately Dave Barry is here to provide an update:

Among the many sights:
You might see people rehearsing a traditional Mexican folk dance in which a man pretends he’s about to sever a woman’s foot with a machete on a basketball court.