All entries by this author

The tool of a tyrant

Jul 17th, 2025 11:27 am | By

Revenge is a dish best served cold, yeah?

Maurene Comey, a career federal prosecutor who worked on the Jeffrey Epstein case and was abruptly fired by the Trump administration this week, warned her colleagues Thursday about the chilling effect such firings could have on their work.

“If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain,” she wrote in an email that was circulated to her colleagues within the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan. “Do not let that happen.”

She called fear “the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought.”

Ms. Comey, who is the daughter of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director and an adversary

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Maybe she’s a frog?

Jul 17th, 2025 9:59 am | By

Nice title.

I can’t even be sure of my own sex, equalities officer tells tribunal

An equalities officer who advised that a transgender doctor should be allowed to use a hospital’s female changing room has said she cannot be sure of her own biological sex.

Isla Bumba told an employment tribunal that the definition of biological sex was “far more complex” than whether someone had a male or female body.

She is very young, she is NHS Fife’s equality and human rights lead officer, and she is paid far more than Sandie Peggie is.

Ms Bumba also told the tribunal, brought by nurse Sandie Peggie, that she did not need to “know anything” about the body of Dr Beth

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John and Ted and Donny and Alice

Jul 17th, 2025 8:53 am | By

If you’re going to tell silly braggy lies about yourself and your relatives, at least don’t include details that make the fictionality obvious.

On Tuesday, Trump conjured an especially odd imaginary tale – that linked his uncle with the late terrorist Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber.

Trump was speaking at a Pennsylvania event about energy and innovation when he said he had to “brag just for a second” about his uncle’s intelligence. After wrongly saying his uncle was “the longest-serving professor in the history of MIT” (he was one of the longest-serving but not the very longest) and wrongly saying his uncle’s three university degrees were “in nuclear, chemical, and math” (two were

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Not a peep

Jul 16th, 2025 6:12 pm | By

Wait, there’s a thing here.

From the hearing today:

Ms Peggie’s lawyer Naomi Cunningham later quizzed Ms Bumba over whether she had stated in guidance to NHS Fife that the nurse had the right to be gender critical.

She said she was “100% certain” she had done this.

The lawyer said Ms Bumba’s advice was inclusive of trans people but not women who would not want to share changing facilities with them, citing women who had been sexually assaulted or had religious beliefs.

And hey you know what? We just don’t want to, for a host of reasons, derived from a lifetime of being seen and treated as inferior in some way, by the media and the entertainment … Read the rest



Admit nothing

Jul 16th, 2025 4:57 pm | By

Fake official.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Sunday that reports that she’d kneecapped FEMA’s response to the deadly flooding in Texas were “fake news.”

During an appearance on NBC News’s Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker asked Noem to respond to a New York Times report that found thousands of calls for assistance from flood victims to FEMA call centers went unanswered because the secretary had failed to renew contracts to keep call center employees in place until nearly a week later.

“Why did it take so long to extend those contracts?” Welker asked.

“It’s just false. Those contracts were in place. Nobody—no employees were off of work. Every one of them were answering calls. So false

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True to its values

Jul 16th, 2025 4:13 pm | By

But you don’t. You say you do but you don’t.

A chief constable’s decision to allow uniformed police officers to take part in a Pride march was unlawful, a judge has ruled.

A case was brought against Northumbria Police Chief Constable Vanessa Jardine by Lindsey Smith, from Newcastle, who describes herself as “gender critical”. Ms Smith argued Mrs Jardine and her officers’ participation in Newcastle Pride last year meant they would have been unable to remain impartial if a dispute between those with similar beliefs and trans rights supporters had occurred.

The force said it would work through the ruling to understand the implications but would remain true to its values of “fairness, visibility, and support for all”.

But those … Read the rest



Tantrum

Jul 16th, 2025 11:36 am | By

Trump is such a difficult guest/roommate/colleague/friend.

Trump is accusing some of his onetime supporters of being “weaklings” who are falling prey to Democratic “bullshit” about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — concluding that he no longer wants their support.

The message was the clearest sign yet of the cracks emerging in the president’s coalition, many of whom are loudly demanding more information about the disgraced financier, who has been subject to myriad conspiracies since his death by suicide in 2019. And some of his allies don’t appear to be listening, with Republicans in Congress taking steps Wednesday morning to potentially force the Justice Department to release more documents.

How is this possible when the dictator specifically told them not … Read the rest



His dignity, not hers

Jul 16th, 2025 11:15 am | By

Sigh.

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Guest post: Typical transperbole

Jul 16th, 2025 10:05 am | By

Originally a comment by maddog on A lemon by any other name.

Where to begin?

1. He talks with his hands. They never stop moving. He must be very distracting, not to say annoying, in a courtroom setting.

2. What is he wearing? A blazer over his undershirt?

3. “The UK Supreme Court ruled that the term ‘sex’ in the Equality Act must mean biological sex, even though ‘bioligical’ is not written into the Act.”

Well, duh. Statutory construction, how does it work? Of course, if the Act had made that clear in the first place, we wouldn’t have had all the silliness of men taking over everything from women under the johnny-come-lately doctrine of “transgenderism.” It wasn’t made … Read the rest



No mention of them

Jul 16th, 2025 9:45 am | By

A bit more on the two people who idennify as an institute:

https://twitter.com/yatakalam/status/1655847228664168448

Their Ukraine project sounds decent enough, but it’s still at least deceptive for one or two people to idennify as an institute.

H/t Piglet for the Bellingcat tip.… Read the rest



Using the Lemkin name

Jul 16th, 2025 9:25 am | By

From last November, The Algemeiner on the trickery of the bogus “Lemkin Institute”:

Members of the family of Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and pushed for the passage of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, say they are outraged that a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit organization is using the Lemkin name to pursue an agenda of extreme anti-Israel activism.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention was initially registered as a Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation on Aug. 19, 2021, and won US federal tax-exempt recognition in September 2023. In recent months, it has veered into strident anti-Israel political advocacy, supporting anti-Israel campus protests and reaching millions of viewers with social media posts that falsely

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The temple totters

Jul 16th, 2025 2:57 am | By

And that’s not even the end of it.

Two topples in one day!… Read the rest



Cleared of all charges

Jul 16th, 2025 2:42 am | By

For once I’m glad to have woken up in the middle of the night.

Sandie Peggie cleared of gross misconduct allegations

NHS Fife has cleared the nurse at the centre of a high-profile tribunal case of all disciplinary charges.

Sandie Peggie was being investigated by the health board after Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman doctor, accused her of a “hate incident” and patient safety breaches following a confrontation in a changing room at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.

News of the outcome of the internal investigation came just hours before Ms Peggie’s Employment Tribunal against the health board and Dr Upton is due to resume.

In a statement, Ms Peggie’s solicitor, Margaret Gribbon, said: “On Tuesday July 14, the

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A lemon by any other name

Jul 15th, 2025 5:46 pm | By

Yet another buffoon yammering about the “Lemkin Institute” as if it were Amnesty International. It’s a guy with a laptop. That’s it. It has no significance.

Oscar prattles away about being nonbyenuree as if anyone cared. If you need a barrister, don’t pick him. … Read the rest



No new fondness

Jul 15th, 2025 10:30 am | By
No new fondness

Ok now Trump is pissed off. He thought he and Volodya were buddies. Of course he did: being both vain and stupid made it inevitable.

Trump did not develop a new fondness for Ukraine or its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He did not abruptly become a believer in the traditional transatlantic alliances prized by his predecessors as a counterweight to Moscow. Rather, Trump got insulted.

By ignoring Trump’s pleas to end the war and instead ratcheting up the fighting, Putin has made Trump look like the junior partner in the relationship. The Russian leader has “really overplayed his hand,” one of the officials told me. “The president has given him chance after chance, but enough is enough.”

Yeah! Pretty soon … Read the rest



It’s always the woman who says no

Jul 15th, 2025 8:35 am | By

Suzanne Moore on the Sandie Peggie tribunal:

[Dr “Beth”] Upton had begun transitioning in 2022 but claimed to be both “distressed” and “afraid”. If you’ve ever been physically assaulted or intimidated, you’ll know what it’s like to truly feel that way. But Peggie is small – and Upton is certainly not.

I have been, and I do know. Peggie is small and Upton is huge, plus he has the Trans Army behind him. I don’t believe for a second that he felt distressed or afraid. My bet is on sadistic glee.

Nevertheless, Peggie was suspended by her managers and faced a disciplinary hearing. Somehow, in these cases, it’s always the woman who says no who ends up

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Guest post: Shop from home

Jul 14th, 2025 3:47 pm | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Two gowns on his shoulder.

I’m guessing that Zara also fails to provide changing rooms based on astrological sign, or the colour of one’s aura.

A non-binary shopper said they felt ‘dehumanised’ and accused a fashion brand of being ‘transphobic’ after they were refused entry to a women’s changing room.

No, there’s no such thing as a “non-binary shopper.” Someone might claim to be “non-binary”, but that declaration does not change their sex, or remove it altogether. They might, at most, be “gender nonconforming”. But, being a beardy bloke, he should not be trying to access women’s changing rooms.

A clothing store specializing in women’s clothing can’t be expected to … Read the rest



Two gowns on his shoulder

Jul 14th, 2025 10:29 am | By

Oh goody, an opportunity to hassle the workers at a clothing store. Always fun.

A non-binary shopper said they felt ‘dehumanised’ and accused a fashion brand of being ‘transphobic’ after they were refused entry to a women’s changing room.

That’s just silly. Humans are the only ones who pretend to be the opposite sex and make a big fuss on social meeja if no one believes them.

Giorgio Firico, 21, tried to go to the ladies changing room at Zara in Oxford when the female assistant told them it was against the rules and refused to give them a number for the clothing.

Giorgio, who studies in the US and is in Oxford visiting a friend, said: “I was wearing

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Trans pregnant

Jul 14th, 2025 9:07 am | By

But…but…but…

Good Law Project aka Jolyon Maugham exclaims Trans people must be allowed to have children.

But sir, trans people have had their child-making bits removed or rendered nugatory.

The Gender Recognition Panel is refusing to legally recognise trans people’s affirmed gender if they’re trying to conceive children. But that breaches their human rights.

Does it? How? Is legal recognition of “affirmed” aka fake “gender” a human right? It seems a good deal too niche to be a right. It may be a right according to the Jolyons of the world, but that’s not really definitive.

Good Law Project has appeared at the High Court to support a man who has been denied his gender recognition certificate. The Gender

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But no burial records

Jul 14th, 2025 8:16 am | By

The full horrors of Tuam are about to be dug up.

The full excavation of a mass grave of babies and young children at Tuam in County Galway is under way. The exhumations will be carried out at the site of an institution for unmarried mothers, which operated between 1925 and 1961.

The story came to international attention 11 years ago, after amateur historian Catherine Corless discovered there were death certificates for 796 babies and children who were in the institution, but no burial records. In 2017, investigators found what they described as “significant quantities of human remains” at the site.

What the BBC carefully does not spell out is that 706 dead babies and children is a … Read the rest