Keep your eye on this one.  This is a strong case with all kinds of cubby holes, sharp right turns, and enough gall to strangle Miss Manners.  It will fascinate you as it unfolds.

And you might want to get over there as quickly as you can before it “disappears.”

You can read it all but here’s the background …

This story tells you all the gritty and the actual lawsuit is at the bottom of the story or you can click here.

Mark is answering questions on Twitter (X) right now.

UPDATE:

Starts at 1:04:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04STEVT-WUI

Sam Seder interview

As you are reading this, you know that we have somehow avoided a shutdown until November. We know how this will go. The jackasses in Congress will do nothing for 40 or 41 days and then will make up a new crisis to explain why they are holding a gun to the country’s head. It’s as infuriating as it is predictable. I get the fatigue. I really do.

I’ve been called a number of things here. Neville Chamberlain is one of them. You can call me whatever name you want. I really don’t care all that much. The pushback is not on that level. People have been calling me names since I was in first grade. It really is nothing new and the intellectual level of namecalling is not really much beyond that of the first grader.

The question at hand was essentially how we should handle these brinkmanship moments we always seem to find ourselves in. It has been suggested that we play matador and let them win a round. Then, the people would see what a shutdown or default would do to the economy and those folks would never win another election again. If it only it were that easy.

This is very simple. There are three reasons why I disagree with this tactic. First, I know people that would be affected by furloughs. Sure, they end up getting paid following a shutdown, but that doesn’t ease their pain during the furlough. They are often scared and depending on how long they’ve been a civil servant they may not have enough of a nest egg to keep them afloat if a shutdown lasts more than a few weeks.

Real people will get hurt. This point can’t be repeated often enough. Of course, none of us are literally in position to prevent that or not, but from a collective point of view I don’t want to have that on my conscience. I don’t want to watch people suffer and think, “I could have prevented that, but chose not to.” To me that’s not really a choice at all.

We could call that two different reasons. There are the people you know that will suffer and also the people you don’t know. However, that may not be the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that the whole strategy rests on the belief that people will see who did this and remember on election day. Yet, the same assholes that did this back in 2018 are still there. They are the ones doing it again and they are the ones that conservative voters are cheering for.

Again, this can be one or two reasons based on how you interpret it. There are people now that simply will not see who is responsible even when it is plain in front of their face. There are others that will be angry in the moment and still somehow still vote for those sons of bitches anyway. So, in effect you are letting them burn it down for nothing. Some of these irrational voters will vote for the irrational actors that lie the match. These irrational voters will watch them throw gasoline on the fire and still think it is the fire fighter’s fault. In that world you have to keep fighting. You hope you sway just enough voters to keep fighting. It’s incredibly depressing. It’s incredibly exhausting. It’s incredibly frustrating. Unfortunately, the alternative is really no alternative at all.

Oh, y’all.

Accidentally?  I think not.

Maybe the best part is that nobody told him.

Well folks, we’re there.  Let’s just let it happen.  Republicans are now the party of fascism and stupidity, and they’re showing it in spades with this latest assault on the US government.  Yes, they’ve been hostage takers for the last quarter century, holding a gun to the heads of the economy, everyone not white, veterans, active duty military, children, Dream kids, LGBT identified, and everyone else who happens to disagree with them.  Until TFG took over, though, we all knew that most of it was Kabuki play, threatening to wreck everyone’s lives to gain some kind of political gain which was almost always either destructive or pointless.  The unspoken feature of that hostage taking was they weren’t really serious.  They knew that adults in the room would win out, pull us off of the brink and extract some political ransom for doing so.

Watching the catastrophe of today makes the recent past look quaint.  Today’s Republicans, now controlled by a small group of political terrorists, have thrown out that historical tactic.  Led by idiots like Matt Gaetz, Paul Gaza, MTG, and Lauren Gropert, all those rules are out the window.  The Insurrectionist Wing of the GOP really do want to wreck the government to impose their will on 330 Americans whether they want it or not.  They’ve been elected to lead our constitutional democracy when their goal is to destroy it.  Kevin McCarthy, who’s proven to be a shithead in all things, really doesn’t want to destroy the government, but he sold his soul to the Insurrectionists just so he could fondle the Speaker’s gavel if just for a minute.  We’re less than 40 hours from a government shutdown, and the terrorists have also stated their goal to next defund the government by refusing to raise the debt limit their favorite hostage.

After years of worry and stress over this constant barrage of political and economic attacks, I say let’s let them do it.  Shut down the government; throw the economy into chaos; destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of Americans’ value.  Hell, while we’re at it, defund the US government and default on the debt.  The destruction, which is indescribable, will hopefully be enough to jolt US voters out of their collective coma to relegate these fascists to the dustbin of history, at least for another 5 or 6 decades.

Nothing else has worked or will work until these ignoramuses get what they want.  They won’t like it when they do, and it will hurt millions of people, but I have concluded that the only way we rid ourselves of these goons is to let them destroy themselves, then get them replaced with more normal people, and then our laws and regulations strengthened to make it harder to do this the next time they want to try it.  We’ll have to pick up the pieces, rebuild, and then move forward.

The solution to this relentless siege on our democracy will only happen by taking back local, state, and federal governments, arresting, charging, and jailing all insurrectionists and passing laws to keep other terrorists away from the levers of power when they crawl out from under their rock and try it again.

So, let’s do it.

Okay, okay, After trial, a federal judge declares Texas’s anti-drag law, SB12, unconstitutional and issues a permanent injunction barring — through AG Paxton — all state officials from enforcing it.

But, that’s not even the best part …

The best part is that Judge Hittner is one of the most conservative judges in Texas.  Nobody expected this.

I’m sorry I didn’t get this posted yesterday when it happened but to be honest, maybe it’s even better marinating in its own sauce for a day.

It could seem that in political circles, courage has almost become its own cottage industry. Cassidy Hutchinson is just the latest to capitalize on her fifteen minutes of courage. Obviously, her testimony took a lot longer than fifteen minutes and I’m sure the decision to testify was an agonizing one. Yet, her courage is a lot more inspiring than that of Mitt Romney.

Testifying and simply telling the truth seems ordinary and I suppose in some points of our history it might have been. One of the considerations here is in describing what Hutchinson is giving up. She is 27 years old. She had a bright future in GOP politics. How many people are capable of being the chief aide to the White House chief of staff in their mid twenties?

So, while the book and the accompanying tour on MSNBC might seem craven and self-interested, we have to remember that her lot in life has been cast. Maybe she lands with MSNBC or another center-left outlet, but in the meantime she is a pariah in GOP circles. This doesn’t even mention that everyone knows her face and we can’t calculate what kind of effect this will have on her personal life.

The personal accounts of what both Rudy Giuliani and Matt Gaetz did to her are disgusting and yet completely believable. We have to remember, she was willing to tell the truth while everyone else was scurrying for the exit. This plays into the little things we don’t think about when someone like her is willing to simply speak the truth about their collective experience.

This is wholly different than Romney and most politicians are like Romney. He is retiring from the senate. He is retiring from public life. His book is essentially his mic drop moment. Everyone of us has that fantasy in our head about who we would tell off and exactly what we would say on retirement day. Most of us don’t follow through. After all, what’s the point? However, he is throwing his hat on sideways, yelling “deuces” and exiting stage left. Sure, he is telling the truth and in a party dominated by liars, but who are we really trying to kid here?

Anyone that is 27 is a kid to me. I’ve taught people that are now 40 years old. I’m trying to imagine any of them in Hutchinson’s shoes. I’ve had some ex-students do some pretty remarkable things. Some are lawyers. Some our doctors. I even have one or two that went into movies and the music industry. I don’t know how many would have the courage to do what Hutchinson did.

I don’t think they would have lied. They would likely have done their civic duty and testified behind closed doors, but this was a story America needed to hear for themselves. This is a story that will take her path in life and throw it on a completely new track. Why shouldn’t see make a few dollars along the way? It will help cushion the blow as she does a hard reset on her life.