Well, there’s an update on the Alex Jones case our Mark filed against Alex Jones on behalf of some of the Sandy Hook parents.

About three weeks ago, there was a hearing in Austin over the fact that Alex Jones has screwed around on this case and has refused to comply with court orders or produce items required under the rules of discovery.  Jones is on his seventh lawyer. He waits until the night before hearings, replaces his lawyer, and then wants to reset the clock.  He’s been repeatedly fined and chastised by the court.

Nothing seems to work. The first judge on the case retired and a newly elected district court judge, The Honorable Maya Guerra Gamble, put the hammer down.  It’s called “the death penalty” in civil cases and is extremely rare.

Oddly enough, Jones’ lawyer promised in the hearing that he would file answers to the pending discovery issues in two weeks.  He didn’t do it.

In the filings, Gamble eviscerated Jones and reasoned that default judgments should be ordered because “an escalating series of judicial admonishments, monetary penalties, and non-dispositive sanctions have all been ineffective at deterring the abuse,” caused by Jones’ unwillingness to turn over documents related to the cases, the Texas judge ruled.

One of Mark’s partners, Bill Ogden, is handling press inquiries because Mark is in North Carolina taping a pilot for A&E.  Bill is a young lawyer, smart as the dickens, and, the ladies might want to know, he’s also mighty easy on the eyes.

Next, they will seat a jury and let them decide a proper punishment for Jones.

Here’s a story about the original hearing.

Here is a PDF of the judge’s order.

Also, she ordered Jones to pay Mark’s legal fees.

The UK is suffering a deep gasoline shortage, with panic buying, long lines and even violence at gas stations breaking out all over the country.  Oh, there’s plenty of gasoline, but it can’t get to gas stations.  Why, you ask?  No truck drivers.  No truck drivers? Where did they go?  The answer? Back to their homes in Eastern Europe.  When isolationist conservatives in the country managed to pull off the almost impossible task of pulling out of the European Union, all free immigration between member countries and the UK came to a screeching halt.  So, not only did EU trade agreements end with Brexit, so did immigration.  So, the jobs that Brits don’t want, wait staff, dishwashers, slaughterhouse workers, housekeepers, and yes, truck drivers, have gone unfilled because of the isolationist policies of conservatives who push the same policies pushed by Trumpist Republicans in the US.  Boris Johnson has just put the British army on standby to put them into trucks to move gasoline from the ports to gas stations.

If you’re looking for how Trump’s plan to stop immigration would work out, you only need to look at the UK. Trying to wall off the country doesn’t work, has never worked, and will never work.  Countries’ economic prosperity is dependent on being a member of a global society which includes global markets and the ability of people to move to where the jobs exist.  That’s not what we’re seeing the in the UK, and conservatives in the US are trying to run us over the same cliff.

I’m wondering …

Why do we call it an audit?  Holy cow, how hard is it to use accurate language when describing a coup attempt?

 I’ve also decided — The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?  Pestilence, Famine, War, and Republican Governors.

Theologians tell us that God forgives and forgives absolutely. It has taken a lifetime to understand that what they are talking about is really redemption and not forgiveness. Forgiveness is really a human condition. It means we simply drop those negative feelings and move on. That has always been the secret. Forgiveness is more about us than it is about them. We don’t allow that anger and pain to consume us. Yet, it doesn’t mean that the relationship returns to normal or even at all.

Redemption, on the other hand, is a return of the relationship. That’s what the theologians call forgiveness from God. The slate is wiped clean and all transgressions are forgotten. Most of us aren’t capable of that. We have to protect our psyche and someone that repeatedly runs roughshod over our psyche cannot return to the previous condition. We can leave the pain behind and refuse to allow that person’s actions to occupy our thoughts. We can’t treat them the same way as before though.

This is where racism, xenophobia, sexism, and homophobia comes in. It is where the Q nonsense comes in. It is where the anti-vax nonsense comes in. This topic is the one topic that ties it all together. Yesterday, we looked at conservative social media and whether they could have a safe space to spew their hatred. There’s a reason why they want and need that safe space. When we shun that kind of thought we don’t get rid of it. We just drive it underground where it can’t readily be seen.

The question comes on whether someone can let their hate flag fly and then later live to regret it. If they do then is there a path back to redemption for them? We have seen numerous people recant their feelings on the vaccine once they’ve landed in the hospital. Should they survive, can they be forgiven and can they be redeemed? They can be forgiven relatively easily, but that doesn’t mean they are redeemed.

It comes down to recognizing windows of opportunity. Hundreds if not thousands of anti-vaxxers and Q devotees are realizing that they backed the wrong horse. They realize they were lied to. They realize they were duped. The question comes on whether we are capable of extending the olive branch to welcome them back to normal society.

The same is true of racists, homophobes, sexists, and xenophobes. There is that key moment where everything comes tumbling down. I say this because I’ve experienced it myself. Those feelings were more private because I knew they were wrong. I was able to cast them aside and be welcomed in. However, I have to admit that I had not gone out on a limb to make an ass out of myself either.

That’s how I know there are a lot of these folks out there. They feel the way they do, but they are too polite and even too ashamed to be publicly outed. Without a path to redemption they have to stay in that space. They exist in the shadows between everything we know that is good and everything we know that isn’t. It’s the main reason why we are left wondering how some of our elected officials get where they are in the first place.

There is something within ourselves that doesn’t allow us to redeem. In ourselves it is obvious that shame overwhelms us. In others, it is anger and jealousy of a former scourge getting credit for their conversion. For others, it is a lack of trust that the conversion is real. We’ve been burned before. We have to take that chance. Otherwise, it will always be us versus them.

Well, the results of the AZ GOP led Fraudit are in, and guess what?  Biden won again, but by a wider margin.  What is this, like 6 times?  By my last count of counts, recounts, hand recounts, audits, and now fraudits, Biden has won something like 720 electoral votes.  Of course, The Former Guy is not letting up, now convincing Mini Me Greg Abbott to “audit” Texas (where he WON, BTW) grasping at any little straw to throw to his base, which is starving for more lies so they’ll go buy more cheap Made-in-China TFG flags to add to the already overflown collection on their trucks.

Trump will never give up, and short of his major health problem or felony conviction, he’s the candidate for 2024.  Come On, Cyrus Vance.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” — First Amendment

Lately it seems that we get to complain about obvious things. I enjoy discussing things that aren’t that obvious. It stretches the brain to have to consider multiple points of the view. The recent breach of the conservative social network Epik brings this kind of debate to life.

This kind of discussion always begins with the first amendment. I included the verbiage above because it is one of the most misunderstood amendments in the constitution. Too many people seem to think it means you get to say whatever you want without consequences. That has never been the case and the folks discovered in the Epik breach are learning this the hard way.

In particular, this story came to a head when a Florida realtor was fired because of his social media presence. In essence he had set up numerous domains with controversial content. The end result is a classic case pitting someone’s misunderstood free speech rights against a business’s rights to have people they want to represent their product.

All that being said, the bolded portion of the first amendment is the key part in this case. The whole idea behind sites like Parlor and Epik was that people wanted a “safe space” to air their grievances. They knew they couldn’t regurgitate their bile in public, so they were seeking a private place where they wouldn’t get in trouble.

The operative word there is the right to PEACEABLY assemble. The trouble with these right wing sites is that they don’t seem to peaceably do anything. Sites like these are where a lot of the January 6th actors coordinated their efforts. Again, they are mistaking the nature of the freedom. Congress cannot outlaw people from meeting in groups as long as the meeting itself is not against the law or that those groups break the law during their meeting.

A classic example of this scenario might involve NAMBLA. As most people know, this is an organization of pedophiles. If they describe their love for pedophilia they technically aren’t breaking any laws at the meeting itself. If they exchange pictures or any other materials then they would be. The question is whether the government has the right to identify who is at this gathering in the first place.

These are all interesting questions given that all of these groups know full well that the majority of the population does not accept the validity of their point of view. So, individuals avoid voicing unpopular opinions because they understand the fallout. They join private groups in the hopes that they can voice their true feelings without facing direct consequences.

The difficulty here is that these are not groups just idly sitting around and talking about how much they hate black people (or any other group). Such a group would be reprehensible, but basically harmless. What creates this issue is that some people in the group (or even most in some cases) are using the assumed anonymity to plan actions that are obviously dangerous and against the law.

Moreover, while we have the right to free speech, we do not have the right to social media. We do not have the right to amplification. Anyone is free to set up social media with their own terms of service, but we can also be judged for what happens on those forums. It’s not cut and dried and it’s never easy. I can sympathize with someone hoping to keep their views private, but if a group is planning the next insurrection then that right to privacy should go out the window.