Mueller’s team is not happy with what Barr is doing with the report.

Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.

In other words, Barr is doing exactly what everyone expected him to do: he’s following up that unsolicited memo to the White House by withholding the report and misrepresenting what it says. He’s running interference for Trump and sabotaging the efforts of law enforcement to hold Trump to account.

At stake in the dispute — the first

Nice snap.

The Planet Today… Read the rest

About Brunei…

A harsh new criminal law in Brunei — which includes death by stoning for sex between men or for adultery, and amputation of limbs for theft — went into effect on Wednesday, despite an international outcry from other countries, rights groups, celebrities and students.

In other words, Shariah, of the most inflexible kind.

The sultan, 72, is also the prime minister and holds several other titles. He first introduced the draconian version of Shariah in 2013, as part of a long-term project to impose a restrictive form of Islam on his country, which is majority Muslim.

It’s nice to have projects, but that’s not a good one.

International protest delayed its implementation at the time, but

Never mind sexual violence, poverty, racism, corruption, Brexit, rising sea levels, disappearing coral reefs – let’s focus on PRONOUNS.

Schools in Brighton are to give out pronoun stickers to pupils in a bid to support transgender children.

The stickers, which are being handed out to pupils in secondary schools and colleges, are part of Brighton and Hove City Council’s pronoun badges campaign which aims to prevent “misgendering”.

The council’s badges indicate whether people would like to be addressed as “he”, “she” or “they” – and some are left blank to allow people to fill in their own pronouns.

Even if I thought people had a right to order the entire world to address them by a Special set of … Read the rest

You can’t ruin it if it doesn’t exist.

Republican Sen. Rick of Scott, one of the Republican senators President Trump has tasked with devising a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, denounced the “Medicare for all” proposal, warning that the progressive plan endorsed by several 2020 Democratic White House hopefuls would “ruin” the health care system in the U.S.

The what? We don’t have a system. We have a random chaos in which people who have enough money and/or jobs so exceptionally good that they include health insurance are ok, and everybody else is in deep shit. That’s not a system. A system would make sure everyone was covered, and we don’t have that.

The Florida Republican, a freshman

Oh is that what we’re calling it.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. came up in politics as an old-school backslapper whose greatest strength was his ability to connect. He doled out handshakes and hugs to friends and strangers alike, and his tendency to lavish his affections on women and girls was so central to his persona that it became fodder for late-night television jokes.

But the political ground has shifted under Mr. Biden, and his tactile style of retail politicking is no longer a laughing matter in the era of #MeToo.

His “tactile style” is it. I’ve heard that before – creepy guys explaining their creepy guy ways with “I’m a tactile person.” Uh huh, a tactile person with an … Read the rest

Another horror from the recent past:

Belgium’s prime minister, Charles Michel, is to apologise on behalf of the state for the kidnapping of mixed-race children, who were torn from their Congolese mothers at the end of the colonial period.

The “métis” children, the product of relationships between settlers and local women, were forcibly taken to Belgium and fostered by Catholic orders, among other institutions, between 1959 and 1962.

The children, born in the 1940s and 50s, did not automatically receive Belgian nationality and often remained stateless. A majority of the fathers refused to acknowledge paternity of their children.

What? What on earth even for? If most of the fathers pretended they weren’t the fathers, why steal them from their … Read the rest

It’s subpoena time!

The House Judiciary Committee authorized its chairman on Wednesday to use a subpoena to try to force the Justice Department to give Congress a full copy of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report and all of the underlying evidence used to reach his conclusions.

The chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, said he would not immediately issue the subpoena. But the party-line vote won by Democrats who control the committee ratchets up pressure on Attorney General William P. Barr as he decides how much of the nearly 400-page report to share with lawmakers.

…

The committee also approved subpoenas for five former White House aides who Democrats said were relevant to an investigation into possible

Oh good, the Trump administration has thought of an excellent plan to make everything cheaper and more efficient: just turn over all the monitoring duties to local people.

The Trump administration plans to shift much of the power and responsibility for food safety inspections in hog plants to the pork industry as early as May, cutting the number of federal inspectors by about 40 percent and replacing them with plant employees.

See? Great! No federal dollars going to inspection, industry made to do the job itself. Win-win!

Under the proposed new inspection system, the responsibility for identifying diseased and contaminated pork would be shared with plant employees, whose training would be at the discretion of plant owners. There would

Grim:

Canada is warming on average at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, a new scientific report indicates.

The federal government climate report also warns that changes are already evident in many parts of the country and are projected to intensify.

Canada’s Arctic has seen the deepest impact and will continue to warm at more than double the global rate.

The report suggests that many of the effects already seen are probably irreversible.

…

Hotter temperatures could mean more heat waves and a higher risk of wildfires and droughts in some parts of the country.

Oceans are expected to become more acidic and less oxygenated, which could harm marine life.

Parts of Canada’s Arctic

Trump’s America:

An employee at a South San Jose, Calif., gas station was fired after ranting against a customer who was speaking Spanish in the store and demanding the customer prove she was a U.S. citizen.

According to ABC 7, San Jose resident Grecya Moran was speaking Spanish with an employee who, she said, had greeted her initially in Spanish. The two carried on a conversation in Spanish until another employee demanded that the two speak English, the outlet reported Tuesday.

In the video, Moran can be heard telling the employee, who is white, that she is allowed to speak Spanish before the employee asks for proof that Moran is a U.S. citizen.

It’s not the job … Read the rest

Meanwhile Trump is spraying racist venom at Puerto Rico and Carmen Yulín Cruz.

Trump, who has reportedly said in private that he doesn’t want “another single dollar” going to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, again complained about funding for the island and called San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, a frequent critic, “crazed and incompetent.”

“The Democrats today killed a Bill that would have provided great relief to Farmers and yet more money to Puerto Rico despite the fact that Puerto Rico has already been scheduled to receive more hurricane relief funding than any ‘place’ in history,” Trump tweeted around 11 p.m.

What’s with “place”? What are we supposed to think? That places are only for … Read the rest

The Trump administration has decided it wants less information about domestic terrorism, because hey, who needs to know anything about a trivial thing like that?

Pittsburgh, Charleston, Santa Barbara – no big deal, right?

The Department of Homeland Security has disbanded a group of intelligence analysts who focused on domestic terrorism, The Daily Beast has learned. Numerous current and former DHS officials say they find the development concerning, as the threat of homegrown terrorism—including white supremacist terrorism—is growing.

In the wake of this move, officials said the number of analytic reports produced by DHS about domestic terrorism, including the threat from white supremacists, has dropped significantly. People in and close to the department said this has generated significant concern

Rachel ratchets.

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1112793015934910468

Again: nobody says trans people shouldn’t compete or denies their right to compete. The issue is people with male bodies competing against women. Funny how McKinnon consistently avoids mentioning that in these slogans and T shirt logos.

So what is the merch like?

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1112876621210509312

There’s a second one, I guess for emphasis.

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1112878194686873600

“I’m not touching her, Mom!”

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1113012119392477186

Metaphorically hahahaha not really.

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1113013200310734849

Throw a brick throw a brick throw a brick throw a brick throw a brick throw a brick!

Metaphorically, of course.

Imagine someone tweeted the same thing repeatedly / compulsively with Black Lives Matter substituted for transphobia. What would we think? We would think what we were meant to think: that … Read the rest

Via quixote in a comment, Alessandra Asteriti on the very material reasons women need legal protections:

https://twitter.com/AlessandraAster/status/1111710344836194306

https://twitter.com/AlessandraAster/status/1111711025898967040

https://twitter.com/AlessandraAster/status/1111711750330540033

Let’s pause there. An estimated 830 women a day die in childbirth. Is that cis privilege?

https://twitter.com/AlessandraAster/status/1111712389710430209

https://twitter.com/AlessandraAster/status/1111713135600246784

Meanwhile “activists” like Rachel McKinnon concentrate all their venom and rage on women, as if their discomfort with being male were our fault. When are trans women going to be told to be more intersectional?… Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on Thanks I guess?

If there is no right way to be a woman – or to be a man – then how in the world can anyone know that they “feel like a woman”? That is the main question we are asking. We are not the ones assuming there is a “right” way to be something, and therefore the idea that one who doesn’t “feel” right needs to be the other…CAN THEY NOT EVEN SEE THE ILLOGIC? (sorry, I know the answer to that).

Who counts as a woman black? Is there some set of core experiences distinctive of womanhood blackness, some shared set of adventures and exploits that every woman black person will

Soooo this is horrifying:

A whistle-blower working inside the White House has told a House committee that senior Trump administration officials granted security clearances to at least 25 individuals whose applications had been denied by career employees, the committee’s Democratic staff said Monday.

The whistle-blower, Tricia Newbold, a manager in the White House’s Personnel Security Office, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a private interview last month that the 25 individuals included two current senior White House officials, in addition to contractors and other employees working for the office of the president, the staff said in a memo it released publicly.

…

Ms. Newbold told the committee’s staff members that the clearance applications had been denied

If you look at it as a test of faith / proud defiance of reason in favor of faith, it all fits.

Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Trans rights are human rights. This is not up for debate. #TransDayOfVisibility pic.twitter.com/CaYu0iprpt

— National NOW (@NationalNOW) March 31, 2019

https://twitter.com/marstrina/status/1112672398892036096

https://twitter.com/marstrina/status/1112673326357532673… Read the rest