The Guardian says today’s news about the nuclear secrets is a game-changer.

The reported discovery of information about a foreign nation’s nuclear secrets in materials found at Donald Trump’s private residence is horrifying intelligence experts.

…

Shawn Turner, former director of communications for US national intelligence, was searing in his criticism during an interview Wednesday on CNN’s New Day:

The fact we now know there were highly classified, restricted access documents about another country’s nuclear defense capabilities stored at Mar-a-Lago is a gamechanger with regard to the risk it poses to our national security.
…
The bottom line is others are going to look at this information and determine what we know and don’t know, and they’re going

Among the classified documents Trump stole:

A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.

Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of

California is cooking.

Western states are struggling through one of the hottest and longest September heatwaves on record. Temperatures began soaring last week and the National Weather Service (NWS) warned that dangerous heat could continue through Friday.

California’s state capital of Sacramento on Tuesday hit an all-time high of 116F (46.7C), breaking a 97-year-old record. Six places in the San Francisco Bay Area and central coast set all-time record maximum temperatures, including Santa Rosa, with 115F (46C).

Scary hot. Lethally hot.

[T]he high temperatures fueled wildfires in both northern and southern California. Four deaths were reported over the Labor Day weekend as some 4,400 firefighters battled 14 large fires around the state, with 45 new blazes on Sunday alone,

Just Daily Mail gossip, except there’s a point here.

Eddie Izzard struggles to find romance as a trans woman https://t.co/oOcooWkXC2

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) September 7, 2022

Struggles does he? I wonder why.

Take a gander at the woman next to him in the first photo. Is it just me or does she look significantly younger then he does?

Now take a gander at him in the second photo. What is the demographic group he expects to want to do romance with him? Younger women as in the first photo? But why would most younger women want to do romance with him? The straight ones will be wanting a man and the gay ones will be wanting a lesbian. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on Ask the consultants.

From my experience, most of what they teach us in teacher training is just someone getting a bee in their bonnet and producing idiotic materials that schools eat up…for awhile, until the next idiotic thing comes along and they move to that. I have been “trained” in what color I am (not in the terms of white/black, but in terms of what color of personality – they said I am a green), what sort of shoe I am, what my Myers-Briggs is, and something I can’t remember the name of that was peddled as being “actually scientific”…and it wasn’t.

Then there is the yearly training on Title IX, most of … Read the rest

Ah yes, protesting. That’s what that is.

They were protesting the UK government watchdog's policy on trans rights. https://t.co/YukLJbuQvQ

— VICE (@VICE) September 6, 2022

Why would women want single-sex spaces? Why would we not want men like that in the toilet stall next to us?… Read the rest

Wall Street Journal headline:

How Teachers Are Secretly Taught Critical Race Theory

I bet they’re not. I bet what they’re taught is a mishmash of trendy stuff from people like Robin DiAngelo, some of which is useful and some of which is bullshit. It may be some sort of bastard child of Critical Race Theory but I strongly doubt it’s Critical Race Theory itself, since that’s taught in law school, not third grade.

The Journal’s reporting is not very careful.

Randi Weingarten left no room for doubt. “Critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools,” the American Federation of Teachers president said in a speech last year. Even if that’s true, a Pennsylvania father’s battle with a

Yuh huh.

Lake Manchar has punched through.

The retaining wall of Pakistan’s largest lake burst on Tuesday after months of heavy rains, threatening hundreds more villages downstream and forcing thousands more from their homes.

The Pakistani government engineered two intentional breaches of Lake Manchar’s retaining wall over the weekend in an effort to ease the pressure on the structure, but an irrigation official told The Washington Post that the wall began to crack Tuesday as water levels continued to rise.

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The Pakistani government is already struggling to respond to what has been described as a “catastrophic” crisis, and the Lake Manchar breach is likely to further impede access to those in need. Anger is growing among displaced Pakistanis, hundreds of

The Daily Beast on the “privilege” issue:

[Cannon’s] ruling was widely criticized by former prosecutors and legal scholars on Monday over the way it awkwardly lent credence to the idea that an ex-president can somehow assert “executive privilege” over government documents, even if federal law enforcement agencies operating with the tacit approval of a current president are acting in their capacity as the current executive branch.

Similar to the question I kept squawking yesterday – how does he get to claim “executive privilege” when he’s not the executive any more? What executive privilege? The whole point of it is to enable the actual executive to do the job. When the job is not yours any more you don’t need … Read the rest

To cheer us up a little –

Smart law enforcement actions can domino into unsmart defendant reactions.

After the FBI released the photo of top secret documents placed on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office carpet, Trump posted a response on social media: “The FBI took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet, making it look like a big ‘find’ for them,” he asserted. “They dropped them, not me — Very deceiving.”

Very deceptive, he means. The word is “deceptive,” not “deceiving.”

Trump was again playing his “aggrieved martyr” card to his base — but in the process, he added to prosecutors’ portfolio against him. His own words confirm that he held sensitive national security documents at Mar-a-Lago

More lawyers say this ain’t law.

Legal scholars called Cannon’s ruling unprecedented, in the sense that it goes against decades of court precedent — especially expanding the special master role to include executive privilege potentially claimed by a former president over the executive branch, for government-owned documents the Justice Department argues Trump had no right to take or keep.

Surely to god “executive privilege” applies to current executives, not ones who have been booted out. Surely Trump doesn’t have any claim to “executive privilege” now – all the more so since on his way out he incited an insurrection.

This was “an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national

Some lawyery opinions.

This judge basically did Trump’s lawyers’ work for them, making arguments under the 4-part Richey test which Trump did not brief or argue, making executive privilege arguments that Trump did not press fully in the hearing, and granting an injunction when one wasn’t requested https://t.co/qD0aWUiNys

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) September 5, 2022

https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1566827402910732292

Exactly right. Cannon’s order will go down as part of the judicial anticannon — the body of decisions, like Dred Scott or Korematsu, that lawyers use for generations to teach students how NOT to wield the judicial power. https://t.co/8wHC4jVSWe

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 5, 2022

This item is especially creepy – she’s like a robot they created especially for the purpose of shielding … Read the rest

I don’t really understand why this isn’t End of Story:

The Justice Department has staunchly resisted Trump’s request, saying he cannot claim executive privilege because the records do not belong to him; they belong to the government.

“He is no longer the president,” Jay Bratt, the department’s top counterintelligence lawyer, told Cannon at a Sept. 1 hearing. “And because he is no longer president, he did not have a right to take those documents.”

Why isn’t that all there is to it? They’re not his; that’s the whole point; so how does he get to demand a special master to check them all for executive privilege blah blah blah when they’re not his?

I suppose the only answer … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Fake confusion.

The truth is that sex and gender aren’t so easily divided.

Sure they are. Sex is real, gender is bullshit. But if you’re being paid by the word, succinctness is a liability. Stirring the pot and feigning bafflement is more lucrative.

One appears to be grounded in hard biological facts, while the other rests on the seemingly slippery notion of identity.

One is grounded in hard biological facts, and the other on social structures intended to restrict the sexes (particularly women) in what they may or may not do. It might very well be true that most, if not all cultures have had socially enforced sexual divisions of … Read the rest

This is ludicrous:

Federal judge grants Trump’s special master request to review Mar-a-Lago materials

Psssst oh by the way the judge who grants Trump’s request was appointed by Trump.

Ludicrous, fucked up, shaming, disgusting. Lifelong criminal appoints judges who then protect him from consequences of his lifelong crimes. This country doesn’t work.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has granted former President Donald Trump’s request for a special master to review documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago last month, temporarily stopping federal prosecutors from using those documents in their investigation into obstruction and mishandling of government secrets.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon who was appointed U.S. District Judge by Trump – that should be in every sentence about the subject, … Read the rest

Also Arianne Shahvisi:

The new @LRB has 21,000 words on the overturning of Roe v. Wade and reproductive justice, featuring some of my favourite writers. I'm honoured to have my words alongside theirs. My piece explores what it means when we refuse to trust pregnant people https://t.co/H4C4V62asI

— Arianne Shahvisi (@ArianneShahvisi) July 13, 2022

Pregnant people. Even when talking about the overturning of Roe v Wade, an epic disaster for US women, she says “pregnant people.”

She’s an academic at…wait for it…Sussex.… Read the rest

The great mysterious question again – what exactly is a woman and how can we possibly know? Arianne Shahvisi in the LRB is stumped.

The truth is that sex and gender aren’t so easily divided. One appears to be grounded in hard biological facts, while the other rests on the seemingly slippery notion of identity. Yet most of us have a much firmer grip on gender than we do on sex. Gender is an observable part of our everyday world, while the decisiveness of sex is mostly taken on trust.

Is it? Is it really? Mostly? Are we really mostly guessing who is which?

I think not. I think we mostly know who is which, and ambiguities are rare.… Read the rest

He actually does. He actually does say, with stentorian emphasis, “LAST WEEK weirdo – he’s a weirdo – Mark Zuckerberg came to the White House, kissed my ass.”

Trump says Mark Zuckerberg came to the White House last week and kissed his ass pic.twitter.com/QT7zBHjedy

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 4, 2022

After that he does his annoying dialogue routine, where he plays first the sycophant kissing his ass calling him sir over and over then himself then the sycophant some more.

LAST WEEK weirdo Zuckerberg came to the White House and kissed Trump’s ass.… Read the rest

Well now what’s the problem with this? Just a harmless bit of fun isn’t it? Exaggeration for comic effect?

A sign from this weekend’s Dresden Pride…

This kind of sexually aggressive nonsense is precisely why so many gay men and lesbians now reject Pride. It no longer stands for them.

If you think gender ideologues are on “the right side of history”, you haven’t read much history. pic.twitter.com/ce70TOi5tc

— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) September 4, 2022

No. Why? Because the threat is of a type that is not exaggerated or fictional. Whether the people who display the banner mean it or not, the words are all too familiar to women. Sexual violence is a tool to punish, dominate, control women. Forcing … Read the rest