New— Nazis with giant swastika flags marched in downtown Indianapolis on Saturday with two police escorts. They shouted “white power” and said to the woman who took this video (reshared here with her permission) “fuck you, n***** bitch.”

Police did not intervene. I cannot find local news coverage.

Gee, wasn't CBS News the outfit that stood behind Ed Murrow when Joe McCarthy attacked him? How things have changed. Good night, and good luck.

YouTube video by The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel America’s Constitutional Crisis (w/ Katherine Franke) | The Chris Hedges Report

Chris Hedges interview with Columbia Prof. Katherine Franke, effectively fired for speaking out in defense of Palestinians. Chilling. Informative. Factual. Recommended for anyone interested in how power works in the academic world .
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgx2...

What we learned from the Trump Jan. 6 report by special counsel Jack Smith Special counsel Jack Smith’s report gives new insights into the investigative process, challenges his team faced and the reasoning that guided their decisions.

apropos of nothing in particular, here's an unlocked report on Special Counsel Jack Smith's final reckoning: wapo.st/4gVE1Vl

Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose and

MAGA world has opposed nationwide history & civics standards, b/c "better left to the States." But now in power, the MAGA-ites want to compel "patriotic education" and forbid vaguely defined "anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies" nationwide.
www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Elon Musk says German's shouldn't feel guilty about the past His comments come after the 53-year-old was accused of sympathising with Nazis as he touched his heart then threw his arm out to the side.

The administration appears to be all-in for the far-right AfD. Elon Musk appeared via satellite at their party convention, told them they worry too much about the past, and has praised them as Germany's only hope going forward. www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/elo...

The message is clear: Vance snubs the German Chancellor and meets instead with the AfD's Alice Weidel, weeks before the German election. www.msn.com/en-ph/politi...

Vance criticizes established German political parties' boycott of neo-nazi AfD and barely mentions Ukraine in his speech to Munich Security Conference. thehill.com/policy/inter...

and for NYT to use a photo-op from Dachau after Vance has told the Germans to stop worrying so much about the past ...

Peter Thiel's pre-Nazi Germany comparison to US resurfaces Thiel said liberalism and democracy are "exhausted," and said, "We have to ask some questions very far outside the Overton window."

Vance's patron Peter Thiel makes the connections between MAGA and Schmitt explicit: Liberalism is exhausted, one suspects that democracy, whatever that means, is exhausted." www.newsweek.com/peter-thiel-...

Vance cites Adrian Vermeule, whose model is Carl Schmitt, the “crown jurist of the Third Reich.” When these people talk about a “strong executive," that’s where they’re going, IMHO.

The NYT, tho, takes this all at face value.

Vance Says ‘Judges Aren’t Allowed to Control’ Trump’s ‘Legitimate Power’ (Gift Article) The declaration by the vice president came as court orders have temporarily blocked parts of the Trump administration’s agenda.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/u...

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/o...
How a German Thinker (and Nazi Jurist) Explains MAGA Morality

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Uncivil Religion: Long Videos Extended videos of events before, during, and after January 6, 2021

The Smithsonian/Uncivil Religion collection contains enough information to keep researchers busy for years, including thi selection of long-term videos, including a 13 minute excerpt of the 3 hrs of NewYorker video, militia insignia etc uncivilreligion.org/home/long-vi...

Smithsonian's "Uncivil Religion" photo/video collection. Look for the crucifixes. uncivilreligion.org/home/media-g...

YouTube video by Mother Jones FULL: 13-minute Capitol Insurrection Video from Trump's Second Impeachment

JANUARY 6, 2021 was a dividing line. Let's not forget, even as Trump gives them a get out of jail free card - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe4P...

A very modest bill that would allocate (in passthroughs to the states) a fraction of what the Germans spend on civic education has languished in Congress for several years and couldn't even garner a committee hearing, much less a vote. civxnow.org/our-work/fed...

Federal Agency for Civic Education The Federal Agency for Civic Education is a federal public authority providing citizenship education and information on political issues for all people in Germany.

If you believe, as I do, that "civic education really matters," you might want to check out the German civic education system, anchored by Centers for Civic Education at the federal and state level. www.bpb.de/die-bpb/uebe...

"We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

FDR, 1936

Text reads: The group, whose supporters include Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Mozilla Foundation president Mark Surman, aims to raise US$30 million over three years to back Bluesky’s open-source mission, even in the event Bluesky doesn’t. The money will be used to establish a public-interest foundation to support the platform’s open source software and build independent infrastructure to ensure users have access to and control over their data, regardless of Bluesky’s corporate decisions. Nabiha Syed, executive director of the open-source Mozilla Foundation, is helping lead the collective. Actor Mark Ruffalo is also a supporter. Montreal tech entrepreneur Philippe Beaudoin is one of nine Free Our Feeds custodians charged with setting up the non-profit foundation within six months of the close of the fund.

New story from @thelogic.co by @patriquin.bsky.social that has a lot of good news for BlueSky users, I think. Paywalled, but the up shot is that it's becoming something like a public benefit corporation to make it "billionaire proof".

thelogic.co/news/quebec-...

I wrote an article trying to explain this distinction. One that AT&T, Verizion, and Comcast would prefer you not understand. The TL/dr: "It's the wires, stupid.” digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol55/is...

This post comes to you over wire (and radio) transmission, like freight on rails. No transmission, no BlueSky.

It seemed unable/unwilling to distinguish the pipe from the cat videos delivered over the pipe. Or, as Justice Scalia put it, the pizza delivery service from the pizza.

The FCC’s decision addressed only the transmission piece, but never mind. The Court wants to focus on all this other stuff in order to claim the FCC had no authority to do what it did.

This week's net neutrality decision reads, as one critic put it, "like a Verizon press release." The Court buys industry obfuscation hook line and sinker: “Data transmission is only one component of the broader package of services offered to consumers.”

digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol55/is...

Verizon press release, cont'd: “Data transmission is only one component of the broader package of services offered to consumers.” So let's just forget about the transmission piece?

or (apropos monopolies) an article that mentions the physical networks on which the Internet rides, expensive to build and subject to abuse, the sort of thing that public utilities commissions have always regulated. digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol55/is...

now you can follow the masses