Michael Cohen says Trump will flip on his own children.

Former Trump Organization Vice President Michael Cohen, upon learning of the now-criminal probe, said of the Trump children, “I think Trump is going to flip on them.” While we have no idea what the future will hold, we do know that what this all means is that — if they haven’t already — it’s time for members of the Trump family who served as organization employees to each retain experienced criminal defense lawyers.

Each. Each get her or his own. That means you too, Jared. They have to get their own because they’re all going to try to rat each other out. It will be a most edifying … Read the rest

Ok that one is pretty funny.… Read the rest

The Palmer Report:

The Trump Department of Justice received secret access to several reporters’ phone and email accounts. The content was not available to them but the recipients’ email and phone record of contact was given to them.

The reasons that this is a big deal is that:

1) records were obtained secretly.

2) the person and their organization were not notified within 90 days after the records were obtained.

3) Bill Barr had to have authorized secretly getting these records but didn’t follow required procedures.

4) this is more of the Trump Administration’s vendetta against the free press

One more for the file.… Read the rest

Via Arty Morty, meet “gender therapist” Wallace Wong:

Last month [i.e. March 2019], Justice Gregory Bowden of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada ruled that a 14-year-old girl may begin receiving testosterone injections without parental consent. Bowden’s ruling, hailed as a “massive legal win” by the American LGBTQNation, ensured treatment would proceed without parental influence by declaring that if either of the girl’s parents refer to their daughter as a girl, they will be considered guilty of family violence under the Canadian Family Law Act.

If their daughter decides she’s a giraffe but her parents refer to her as a human will they be considered guilty of family violence under the Canadian Family Law Act? How … Read the rest

James Kirkup sees reasons for optimism.

An example of that came at the weekend when Baroness Falkner, the new chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, told the Times that women should not be penalised or abused if they believe that transgender women do not become female by dint of their professed identity.

‘Someone can believe that people who self-identify as a different sex are not the different sex that they self-identify,’ she said. ‘A lot of people would find this an entirely reasonable belief.’

Does that also mean we can say it, write it, tweet it, underline it, campaign for it?

When I started writing about these issues, it was partly because I was worried that politics

The Washington State ACLU is what???

Important case update! Judge's ruling has confirmed reports that male rapists are being housed with vulnerable women in Washington prisons, and that @ACLU_WA is trying to suppress official complaints of sexual assault by these men from within the prison.https://t.co/5Fs7bCuWrY

— WoLF (@WomensLibFront) May 19, 2021

From the WoLF piece:

The judge has issued a ruling in Andrea Kelly’s motion to intervene against the ACLU’s attempts to prevent the lawful public disclosure of records about male transfers into Washington State female correctional facilities. Judge Thomas Rice, who expressed clear indications from the beginning of the case that he sympathizes with the ACLU’s attempts to protect males transferred into women’s prisons, denied the motion

It turns out Obama doesn’t think much of Trump. Who could have imagined that?

According to a new book, Obama called Trump a “madman”, a “racist, sexist pig”, “that fucking lunatic” and a “corrupt motherfucker”.

Check, check, check, check.

The remarks are reported in Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Donald Trump by Edward-Isaac Dovere, a staff writer at the Atlantic, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy. …

“He’s a madman,” Dovere reports Obama telling “big donors looking to squeeze a reaction out of him in exchange for the big checks they were writing to his foundation”.

“More often: ‘I didn’t think it would be this bad.’ Sometimes: ‘I didn’t

Where did Ireland get the idea for industrial schools? From those go-getting Protestants to the east of them:

The Industrial Schools Act was intended in 1857 to solve problems of juvenile vagrancy in England by removing poor and neglected children from their home environment to a boarding school. The Act allowed magistrates to send disorderly children to a residential industrial school. An 1876 Act led to nonresidential day schools of a similar kind.

There were similar arrangements in Scotland, where the Industrial Schools Act came into force in 1866. The schools cared for neglected children and taught them a trade,^[1] with an emphasis on preventing crime. Glasgow Industrial School for Girls is an example formed in

The reversal of reality aspect is soooooooo gaslighty. Daily Beast asked Stephen King about a falling out with JK Rowling.

King said: “Jo cancelled me. She sorta blocked me and all that. Here’s the thing: She is welcome to her opinion. That’s the way that the world works.

“If she thinks that trans women are dangerous, or that trans women are somehow not women, or whatever problem she has with it – the idea that someone ‘masquerading’ as a woman is going to assault a ‘real’ woman in the toilet – if she believes all those things, she has a right to her opinion.”

This is what I mean by the reversal – this “or that trans women are … Read the rest

Lego is making…lesbian and gay and bi and trans dolls? But how do you do that with Lego dolls? Or any dolls? That’s like saying Lego is making liberal dolls and conservative dolls, or Jewish dolls and Christian dolls, or vegan dolls and keto dolls.

Everyone Is Awesome: Lego to launch first LGBTQ+ set

Can’t you just see little Sophie and Aidan staging a war between the fabulous trans dolls and the monstrous gender critical dolls?

Can you pick out which ones are lesbian and which are gay and which are trans? Are there any non-binary dolls? How about queer? Can you tell?

In the “spraying room” at Lego HQ, tiny figurines are layered with bright, glossy paint before being placed on

Here’s a surprise – the House did approve the January 6 commission because 35 Republicans voted for it.

The House of Representatives voted 252-175 on Wednesday to pass a bill to set up a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

Why it matters: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy andGOP leadership oppose the commission, but 35 House Republicans voted in support of the bill, underscoring the fault lines within the party in the aftermath of the insurrection.

The amount of Republican support makes it far more difficult for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to try and dismiss the commission outright as a partisan effort.

Interesting.… Read the rest

It’s sad when you think you have a gotcha and everybody just laughs at you.

BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Multiple sources confirm AOC owns a Tesla, parked it illegally in front of the Whole Foods connected to her luxury apartment buildinghttps://t.co/39RmcnZMHG pic.twitter.com/iAgI0oKCW6

— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) May 19, 2021

Cue shocked intake of breath – she has a car? And an apartment? And shops for groceries? And committed a parking error?

pic.twitter.com/I8a3JlGQsc

— Aaron Meyers (@AaronMeyers) May 19, 2021

… Read the rest

Here’s a good cause if you’re in a donating frame of mind:

Help Kato Mukasa help Humanists in Uganda

My name is Kato Mukasa . I am the founding Chairperson of the Humanist Association for Leadership Equity and Accountability ( HALEA) in 2007 and its current Legal Director. I am the chair of Uganda Humanist Association ( UHASSO) the oldest Humanist organization in Africa, registered in 1996. 

I am also the Executive Director of Legal Relief Frontiers LTD, a non governmental organization that was recently registered to provide Legal Relief services to the poor in Uganda.

And a lawyer working with Mukasa Lugalambi Advocates and Solicitors.

Along side all the incredible work I have been being doing I am keen

McConnell is breaking the knees of the proposed commission to look into that little insurrection the other month.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that he will oppose legislation to create a commission tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — a signal that the legislation will not have the votes to get through the Senate.

“After careful consideration, I’ve made the decision to oppose the House Democrats slanted and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of January the 6th,” he said on the Senate floor.

The bipartisan commission would have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, five on each side.

Right, so that’s slanted and unbalanced. It should be nine … Read the rest

The glorious cause – refusing to wear masks during a pandemic. Our ancestors died for the cause! Salute the flag! Allons enfants de la patrie! Etc.

A group of House Republicans revolted over their chamber’s mask rules on Tuesday, the latest sign of tensions boiling over as Congress wrestles with how and when to return to pre-pandemic routines.

Around a dozen Republicans refused to wear masks during the evening vote series and strategically stood at the well of the chamber, which appears on the C-SPAN cameras, and seemed to encourage other members to join in.

…

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) snapped a selfie with a few other maskless members and posted it to social media. Taking pictures on

A friend on Facebook posted an image that prompted me to look up the painter to learn more.

In Shame and Prejudice, Kent Monkman paints missing Indigenous images into history

As UBC’s Museum of Anthropology gets used to welcoming visitors again, it’s opening a major new show—one that shakes up the very foundations of Canada.

On the final stop of a cross-country tour that kicked off in 2017, Cree artist Kent Monkman’s provocative Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience finally arrives in Vancouver.

The painting in question:

“This was an opportunity to ask Canadians to think about what 150 years have meant to Indigenous people, and reframe it through my own lens,” the artist says, speaking to the Straight

Headlines – another person comes out as self-obsessed and expecting us to be interested in xir self-obsession.

Demi Lovato has announced they have a non-binary gender identity.

This is of no interest. There is no need for people to make “announcements” about themselves this way. It doesn’t matter. It’s not significant. People’s custom-built Selves are of no interest.

Says it all, doesn’t it – “I’m so happy to share more of my life with you all.” No, don’t be happy to do that – recoil from it with scorn and loathing. Don’t look ever more into the self, look away from the self, at everything there is out there to explore and think about. Also don’t be “proud” … Read the rest

Oh no, not mocking his faith. The horror.

THE BBC has been accused of “taking the mickey” out of the newly elected leader of the DUP over his religious beliefs.

Ian Paisley, the party’s MP for North Antrim, said the broadcaster had “lambasted” Edwin Poots because he is “a man of faith”.

The BBC says no we didn’t.

During the introduction to the programme, Mr Poots was described as “a creationist from the party’s Free Presbyterian roots, who once banned donations of blood from gay men”.

Just the facts ma’am.

“I would say absolute cobblers to your programme so far,” Mr Paisley told presenter Faisal Islam. “I’m reminded of the Frank Skinner line, you can be anything in Britain

Not just civil.

The New York attorney general’s office said Tuesday that it is pursuing a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization, in addition to the ongoing civil probe.

“We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature. We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA. We have no additional comment at this time,” Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the office, said in a statement.

Closing in.… Read the rest

No they don’t.

Many trans women have to be hospitalized because of how bad their period cramps get, your assumption that trans women are physically the same as cis men is simply ignorant.

Please stop trying to take basic human rights away from me until you know wtf you're talking about.

— Broken Doll (@AnnHertzz) May 19, 2021

Hospitalization for cramps is not a thing, and if it were, it would not be a thing that happens to men. Men don’t get cramps.

There are many basic biology lessons in the replies.… Read the rest