Andy Craig

It's such a feature of the French system that the standard name for it is a sex joke.

I don't know about continental Europe on this, but in Canada minority governments are common because the norm is to do that instead of forming a coalition.

In any event, pretty rich for the guy governing on a plurality of the vote to attack systems where parties can govern on a plurality.

Only 8 of the 30 European NATO members (plus Canada) currently have minority governments, and in most of those it's not unusual. Confidence and supply agreements provide a kind of half-in half-out option for a smaller party in systems where multiparty coalition governments are the norm.

Which isn't to say the substance of the GOP hasn't radically changed, it has. But its voter base mostly hasn't.

I think you can plausibly argue there was a distinct party system ~ 1964 through the end of the 90s, but there's remarkably little discontinuity between 2000 and today.

2024 counties election map

2004 counties election map

We might get one soon-ish, but I don't think the Trump era yet counts as a major realignment to a new era / party system. The parties and their respective coalitions are effectively unchanged with only slight shifts around the margins. The substance has changed, but the voter patterns barely at all.

Publishing all the other boat murder videos but refusing to release the one of the two survivors being killed is an admission they know exactly how bad it looks. There's no other distinction to draw there, no reason to publish the others while withholding that one.

There are only two 20th C. conflicts for which it is acceptable to cheer for the British, and that's one.

Trump’s Pardons Cover Every Conceivable Form of Corruption He is doling them to crooks, cronies, campaign contributors, violent insurrectionists, child sex offenders, convicted drug dealers, and others

Trump's transformation of the presidential pardon power into an all-purpose instrument for his most depraved and corrupt instincts is truly horrifying.

@tracinski.bsky.social lays it all out in his latest for @theunpopulist.net

Read this and weep

Double-tap is very misleading here, it implies strikes in quick succession. They scratched their loathsome chins about it for 41 minutes, watching these two guys struggle to overturn their wrecked boat, before deciding nah, hit 'em again

Extrajudicial killing as fan service.

You don't spend 41 minutes debating what to do if there was nobody objecting.

This isn't just striking down a protection for minority voters, it is overtly granting a special privilege to white voters.

Another way of putting it is the DOJ told TX you aren't allowed to have districts where white voters, and only white voters in particular, are a plurality but not a majority.

The explicit rationale DOJ told TX to use, which Abbot & co. then did, is that you can have a district where white + black voters, or white + Hispanic voters, or white/black/Hispanic on their own, constitute a majority, but not a black + Hispanic majority. That's how facially discriminatory it is.

The dripping contempt the right wing SCOTUS majority holds for district judges is truly a sight to behold every time. When they deign to give actual reasons for their shadow docket holdings, it’s “look at the absolute idiots who keep getting everything wrong!”

The language about “related to events at or near the Capitol on Jan 6” would be broad enough to cover the pipe bomber, but the specification of who is covered by the pardon doesn’t.

The proclamation only pardons those who were already convicted, and the handful of named individuals who instead got commutations, and directs DOJ to seek dismissal of any pending cases. Only hook would be arguing the latter applies to a new case. Probably not, and still wouldn’t be pardon as such.

Grand juries suddenly becoming a real live check on abuse of power and politically motivated prosecutions is like constitutional Rip Van Winkle.

Entirely possible they've botched it or will in some other way. But seems reasonably likely they got the right guy. The litany of purchases isn't just generic parts, it's many particular items that were used with high specificity. Plus they have him at the location by cell + car. That's pretty bad.

Americans will tolerate their government doing all kinds of bad things, but do tend to get more squeamish when they have to actually see it over and over again because the "ha ha watch us kill these people" videos are plastered all over every bit of news coverage.

Generally speaking, it's not a great plan for getting away with war crimes to proudly share gruesome videos of your war crimes.

They made a mistake from the beginning, not just morally but tactically, in gleefully releasing all their boat murder snuff films and blasting them out wall-to-wall so everyone sees them a million times. Can hardly plead now 'no, this one would be too gruesome, we don't release that kind of stuff.'

This was a war crime in the age of sail.

You can't get any farther from a hostile combatant than somebody who is literally asking for your help.

At least one other boat, the one with the Colombian fisherman, was adrift and displaying a distress signal with its engine out of the water. To attack a disabled vessel in distress and signaling for assistance is basically in the same category as killing shipwrecked survivors clinging to wreckage.

"who these people are" = they're cartel members, pinky swear. They don't even have names, much less any evidence a particular person was involved in criminal activity.

"who these people are" is deliberately weasel-worded to dance around saying they know actual individual identities, which they obviously don't

If that litany of so many specific purchases plus the cell phone location records are all true, I don't have much doubt they got the right guy. Though you're right it may well have been rushed.

rand paul is the vote that put Hegseth in office.

it's good that he's flipped now, but god damn it.