This is an interesting point – by claiming executive privilege he’s confessed.

Lawyers are laughing at Trump’s filing.

It might be tempting to scrutinize the filing as if it were a serious legal document, submitted in a credible way. That would be a mistake. Orin Kerr, a conservative law professor at UC Berkeley, noted overnight that many actual lawyers “are giggling at Trump’s motion, and how poorly it was done.”

Go on, just say it. Badly. The word is “badly.” There’s no need to soften it with “poorly.” Trump isn’t poor, he’s bad.

Among the many problems is the fact that it’s oddly late. The FBI executed its search warrant on Monday, Aug. 8. At that point, federal law enforcement officials reclaimed classified materials the former president brought to his glorified

It never ceases to amaze me the way “inclusive” is for trans people but never ever for women. I still say I was never given the option to agree or disagree with the proposition “women are no longer an oppressed group in any way.”

While they are mainly used by customers of that gender, as an inclusive retailer and in line with most other retailers, we allow customers the choice of fitting room. Thanks 2/2

— M&S (@marksandspencer) August 23, 2022

See by giving customers a choice of male or female changing rooms they’re not being “an inclusive retailer,” because they’re excluding female people who don’t want to risk being spied on or assaulted while they try on a bra. … Read the rest

What an interesting claim:

Regarding Julia Mason and Leor Sapir’s op-ed “The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Dubious Transgender Science” (Aug. 18): In its recommendations for caring for transgender and gender-diverse young people, the AAP advises pediatricians to offer developmentally appropriate care that is oriented toward understanding and appreciating the youth’s gender experience. This care is nonjudgmental, includes families and allows questions and concerns to be raised in a supportive environment. This is what it means to “affirm” a child or teen; it means destigmatizing gender variance and promoting a child’s self-worth. Gender-affirming care can be lifesaving. It doesn’t push medical treatments or surgery; for the vast majority of children, it recommends the opposite.

That’s what “gender-affirming care” … Read the rest

Law-mavens are following the Maralago adventures with keen interest. [Updating to add: the bit about not having a lawyer turns out to be a mistake. H/t Screechy]

The lawful search at Mar-a-Lago came after Trump's lawyer falsely signed a statement saying all classified materials were returned. The legality is not even a question.

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 23, 2022

BREAKING: Trump is representing HIMSELF, with no lawyer at all, in his case against the United States regarding the search of Mar-a-Lago and recovery of government records.

The legal term is “pro se” – for himself.

He could not find anyone to represent him.

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) August 22, 2022

BREAKING: Trump took over 300 classified documents to

The NY Times on Trump’s lavish archive of classified documents:

The initial batch of documents retrieved by the National Archives from former President Donald J. Trump in January included more than 150 marked as classified, a number that ignited intense concern at the Justice Department and helped trigger the criminal investigation that led F.B.I. agents to swoop into Mar-a-Lago this month seeking to recover more, multiple people briefed on the matter said.

There are levels here. He wasn’t supposed to have any documents: they were never his to keep. Multiply that by a very big number for classified documents. Multiply again for the huge number of them.

In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified

The Society of Authors has advice for us.

A lot of authors I follow are annoyed by the condescension of “play nicely.” I read some of the thing we were told to have a peep at, and was struck by a certain omission.

The Society of Authors is committed to promoting professional behaviour throughout all its activities, and to tackling and preventing bullying, harassment and racism in all their forms.

Why racism only? Why not sexism? (There are others, too – classism, xenophobia, etc – but women are half of everyone, so we’re a particularly big item to ignore.)

Bullying, harassment and racism have no place on our premises, in our communications, or in any other environment in

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Steve’s nails.

Does Steve think that the only way to rebel against gender stereotypes is to pretend that sex isn’t binary? Does Steve not understand that gender stereotypes aren’t the same as biological sexes? Does Steve think it’s impossible for him to wear nail polish if males and females are in any way different sexes? Does Steve think that by declaring himself neither male nor female he’s on the path to convincing us all that male and female literally don’t exist? Or is it not a matter of whether sex differences do or don’t exist, but whether they should or shoudn’t exist?

None of this makes any sense for more than a … Read the rest

Brendan on the narcissism of I don’t even have to say whose narcissism it is.

In his new book None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary, nonbinary writer Travis Alabanza cites this dilemma [to paint the nails or not to paint the nails] as proof of the ‘oppression [of] the gender binary’. He introduces us to Steve, a man who had ‘wanted to paint his nails for years’. But he didn’t because, like the rest of us cis squares, he’d been conditioned into ‘upholding the gender binary’ which says men don’t do that.

But then he saw Alabanza on stage and was EmPowered to paint those mofos.

Alabanza is moved by this brave strike against the

Idiots.

Notice anything missing? Of course: what’s always missing.

It’s not our bodily autonomy, i.e. everyone’s. It’s specifically women’s bodily autonomy. Women are not allowed to be entirely free because women have the responsibility of making the new humans. It is women who are dominated and pushed around by laws against abortion, and it’s yet another insult to women when political campaigns pretend it’s all of us.

The whole post by MoveOn which doesn’t mention women once:

The GOP thought they could strip away our bodily autonomy without facing any consequences. But the recent election in Kansas, one of the country’s most conservative states, proved them WRONG.

The anti-abortion measure on the ballot was defeated in every congressional district in

Let’s insult women some more.

This week on #QandA, we tackle the complex issue of ethics in sport. If you're in Melbourne and would like to help shape the discussion, register to join the audience via the website now: https://t.co/hdvdP5XcUy pic.twitter.com/vuYUQjliRS

— QandA (@QandA) August 22, 2022

“Hannah” Mouncey is an enormous man. The one woman on this panel is a friend of Mouncey’s. … Read the rest

Putin is aggrieved.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has sent his condolences to the family of Darya Dugina, describing the daughter of the ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin as a “patriot of Russia”.

In a statement published on the Kremlin website, the Russian leader described Dugina’s killing as a “despicable, cruel crime”.

No doubt it was, but what does Putin suppose it was when he launched a war? Was it not a despicable, cruel crime to kill all these Ukrainians?… Read the rest

Trump is insulting his own creatures again.

Donald Trump launched a new line of attack against Mitch McConnell over the weekend, calling the Republican Senate minority leader a “broken down hack politician” for what he believes is a lack of support for the GOP’s 2022 midterm candidates.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump also insulted McConnell’s wife, former Trump administration official Elaine Chao, calling her “crazy.”

So why did he lean so heavily on both of them for such a long time?

“Why do Republican Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard-working Republican candidates for the United States Senate?” Trump wrote on his social media platform Saturday. “This is such

I guess UNICEF is a terf.

Ensuring no child is excluded on the basis of gender is a priority identified in UNICEF’s new Education Strategy. To reach this goal, a commitment to strong intersectoral work is paramount. To understand what this means in practice, this blog outlines how Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) plays a significant role in girls’ access to education and could help unlock the future for millions of girls around the world.

WASH is fundamental for girls’ education

Every child – including every girl – has the right to a quality education, enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child 30 years ago…

For girls, appropriate WASH facilities are a particularly important part

One of these again.

It really doesn’t take that much thought to see the problem. The authors of this harangue can’t have made any effort at all.

What about the privacy of the person – let’s say, just to pick one at random, the woman – who “feels like” the man she sees in the women’s toilet is in the wrong toilet? Why doesn’t her privacy matter at least as much as his? Why is he in the women’s toilet? Why can’t he use the men’s? Why is it her job to respect his privacy but not his job to respect hers? Why is it her job to protect him from harm when he could be there to do … Read the rest

Misleading if not just plain dishonest.

Nobody is trying to “exclude LGBTQ+ students” from sports or healthcare or education. I’m sure there are way too many religious fanatics trying to convince lesbian and gay students to go straight, and they should stop, but mass exclusion is a different matter. People who aren’t delusional are trying to exclude male students from female sports, because including them is grossly unfair to the female athletes, and endorsement of cheating by the male students.

There are people who consider “gender-affirming” surgeries and hormones not health care but tragic mutilation at the behest of a fad. The NEA should not be supporting the mutilators. … Read the rest

Astrophysics n Mai Gender Idenninny:

It was by pure chance that I wandered into a bookstore and saw Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design on the front table. I cannot tell you what inspired me to pick up a book on cosmology. But I did, and in a few short minutes I had discovered a doorway into a new kind of physics—the kind of physics that doesn’t have all the answers, the kind of physics that disagrees with itself, the kind of physics that is messy and chaotic and, God forbid, fun. I changed my major to astrophysics the next week.

Over the following years, I learned about relativity, and how in the right circumstances time itself can slow.

The Guardian interviews Rusty Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona house of representatives. He’s the one who refused to help Trump steal the election, and has now lost an election to a Trump attack-dog.

From the beginning, conservatism and the Republican party were interchangeable for Bowers. “Belief in God, that you should be held accountable for how you treat other people, those were very conservative thoughts and the bedrock of my politics.”

Wait. Being accountable for how you treat other people is a conservative value? I beg to differ. For one thing I think it’s a universal value, and for another thing it’s definitely a progressive or liberal or lefty value. Conservatism, at least in the US, endorses … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Me [that is, “Me” the commenter] on Gearing up.

Just some random observations: Maybe the “T” got blended with the “GLB” because some homosexual males became (for one reason or another) transwomen. The kind who would try to get picked up by straight guys, or who prostituted themselves to “straight” guys. And sometimes these straight or “straight” guys would become enraged with them and beat or kill them.

Since most women are attracted to men, and since sexual attraction isn’t a “lifestyle choice,” I know that I was perfectly able to entertain the possibility that there was a “gender” switch that these “AMAB” people had that made them at least nominally “female.” [I admit to … Read the rest

God is not optional.

Civil rights advocates are ringing alarm bells about officials distributing “In God We Trust” posters in Texas schools after a state law took effect requiring public campuses to display any donated items bearing that phrase.

“These posters demonstrate the more casual ways a state can impose religion on the public,” Sophie Ellman-Golan of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) told the Guardian. “Alone, they’re a basic violation of the separation of church and state. But in the broader context, it’s hard not to see them as part of the larger Christian nationalist project.”

Christian nationalist or just plain theocratic. Jews and Muslims also have a God.

While the phrase doesn’t explicitly mention any specific