The January 6th released a 51 page report last night, including references to emails and texts to and from Mark Meadows, who’s likely to be charged with Contempt of Congress today for defying a committee subpoena.  What did one January 5th email say?  It said that the National Guard was on standby to, “Protect Trump people.”  That’s right, apparently Meadows was involved in trying to use the National Guard to help Trump overturn the election.  That explains, more than any other explanation, why the Pentagon and National Guard leadership took hours to respond.  They were on standby to defend the wrong side, and when the violent mob stormed the Capitol Building, someone in leadership likely balked at helping them.

Now let’s think about this.  Just the previous summer Trump used the National Guard to violently clear Lafayette Square for a political stunt that included a photo op while holding and upside down Bible in front of St. John’s church.  Then he wanted to use that same force to overturn the election.  Luckily, he didn’t succeed, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try it again.  The truth will come out.  Tick, Tick, Tick…

Gavin Newsome has announced he’s going to use the Texas vigilante anti-abortion bill as a model against assault weapon ownership in California.  He’s introducing legislation that empowers individuals to sue those who traffic in assault weapons and ghost guns.  Great minds think alike, yes?

Justice Sonia Sotomayor couldn’t have said it better.  Trump’s and McConnell’s packing of the SCOTUS has now successfully destroyed all hope of the judicial branch protecting our Constitution and the rights it enshrines for all Americans.  Yesterday, the court inexplicably allowed Texas’ game playing with legislation to, as Sotomayor accurately described it,

“…the Court’s dangerous departure from its precedents, which establish that federal courts can and should issue relief when a State enacts a law that chills the exercise of a constitutional right and aims to evade judicial review.” and “…the Court effectively invites other States to refine S.B. 8’s model for nullifying federal rights.”

The court left the law in effect, denying a Constitutionally protected personal right for all women in Texas to control what happens to their own bodies.  Gorsuch’s ruling was so badly constructed by his concocted rationalizations that states have now been provided a roadmap for nullifying any Constitutional right they don’t like.

With the court’s ruling, it’s time to now to test this rewriting of US law by turning the tables by legislating private enforcement against other constitutional rights.  How about a law against individual gun ownership?  Example: anyone caught carrying a firearm, whether licensed or not, can be sued by any individual with a minimum $10,000 award to the plaintiff.  How about a law that bans wearing of MAGA hats?  How about personal enforcement by lawsuits against those who discriminate against minorities like LGBTQ individuals, African Americans, and other racial minorities?  The list is endless where states can simply nullify any federally protected individual right by delegating enforcement of laws against those rights to individuals.  Vigilantism can now displace our entire constitutional judicial system and over 200 years of case law that protects it.

The US is inexorably sliding into a post-democracy era where governments are ineffective at protecting personal rights, allowing one class of Americans to force their belief system onto everyone else.  With compromise no longer possible in our political system, aided by the complete disassembly of our court system, the exclusive right to make policy will fall to the party in control.  Texas is the perfect example of this warping of our political system where the governor, aided by the courts and a single party controlled legislature, is now simply a dictator, nullifying local government’s efforts to protect its own citizens through his arbitrary orders while hiding in the governor’s mansion.  He’s now protected not only by non-existence of corruption laws, but by the SCOTUS itself.

Our only hope of blunting this nullification of individual rights is for states like California, New York, Delaware, and others to take advantage of this activist court’s new legislation from the bench by hitting the very people trying to take away our rights by taking away theirs.  How about a law that allows individuals to sue Fox News every time Tucker Carlson tells a lie?  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Let’s hit ’em where it hurts.

These screeds usually come out in the morning, but I couldn’t do it this morning. I was administering a STAAR test. For those out of state, that is the acronym for our state testing. We take five of those tests throughout high school and students are expected to pass them all in order to graduate.

Except they don’t have to pass them all. Special education students can be excused from taking them after making several attempts. Other students can have an alternative packet they fill out in order to get the same credit. Still others can simply graduate with a different diploma as long as they pass three of them. Are you sufficiently confused?

The students are smart enough to see through our bluff. They have friends that have managed to walk without passing it. These tests are normally done in the spring, but retesters have to take it in December as well. I always administer the English test. Students are given five hours (or more) to answer around 50 multiple choice questions asking them to comprehend reading passages, edit reading passages, and revise reading passages. Then, they have to write either an expository or persuasive essay.

The students taking these tests again run the gamut. Some of them are great kids that just don’t have the skills necessary to make it. Unlike all of the other STAAR tests, the English tests are skills based. You can’t study for them. You either know how to read and correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation or you don’t. You either know how to write or you don’t.

The rest fall under two categories. Either they know they don’t have to pass and don’t care or they cannot keep themselves awake through the five hours. At some point you start to wonder what exactly we’re measuring. You have the poor girl  =asking questions every few minutes and I can’t answer any of them. You have the little turd who announces loudly that he is done with the test after 13 minutes.

Then you have the three or four boys that somehow take apart their chair and throw the pieces at each other. They wait to do this when I am waking up the same three or four girls for the 20th time. Citizens of the state are paying billions of dollars to large corporations so they can write these tests and we can torture these children. Ultimately that is all we are accomplishing.

That’s the whole point. When you fail the test in the spring, you take it again in the summer and then again in December if you don’t pass. Then you go back to the top of the slide and do it again in the spring if you don’t pass it that time. Some students take the same test up to seven times before they are seniors in high school. No wonder they sleep. No wonder they act like 12 year olds. No wonder they just fill it out in 15 minutes. They know the process will start over no matter what. Asking a child to take a test seven or eight times is child abuse. It’s sadism wrapped up in fake accountability.

Okay, one year my beloved puppy Truman knocked over my 8 foot Christmas tree and broke about half of my treasured ornaments. By the next day, I had it cleaned up and went on with my life. I did not call Truman a bad puppy or accuse him of killing sweet baby Jesus and trying to destroy all people of faith, even like Hindi and such.

But then I am not Fox News with a cheesy Christmas tree. Because, you know, nothing represents worldwide religion like a Christmas tree.

Ainsley Earhardt on the Fox Christmas tree: "It's a tree that unites us. It brings us together. It's about the Christmas spirit. It is about the holiday season. It's about Jesus. It's about Hanukkah. It is about everything that we stand for as a country." pic.twitter.com/fV8Hg2juHI

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) December 8, 2021

You just gotta listen to this. I like the part where she says Fox’s Christmas tree is for hanukkah and freedom and so “we can worship the way we want to.”  A mentally disturbed man burned down a Christmas tree and they act Fox-Christians about it – they become outraged.

And El Jefe wins the beauty shop golden hairbrush for Santifa.

My local newspaper. Front page above the fold.

Click it to see full size. It’s just a great story.