Radley Balko

in the latest example of how we're governed by the Make a Wish Administration, Melania Trump is presiding over a UN meeting

Greg Bovino, other federal agents investigated for Operation Metro Surge actions Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said her office is already investigating 17 incidents involving potential unlawful conduct by federal agents.

The DA in Minneapolis is investigating Bovino and others.

I hope the firms that capitulated are feeling good and ashamed right about now.

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. JUSTICE KAGAN would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE JACKSON joins, dissenting from denial of certiorari. This case asks whether federal law prohibits the poorest prisoners from splitting the $350 fee required to file a federal lawsuit when it allows everyone else to do so. The answer statutorily appears to be no. Because the decision below held otherwise and deepened a split among the Courts of Appeals, the Court should grant the petition for a writ of certiorari.

Petitioners Topaz Johnson and Ian Henderson were incarcerated at High Desert State Prison in California when they filed this lawsuit in federal court. According to their complaint, corrections officers forced them and a third prisoner to stand in filthy cages that reeked of urine and measured 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet. They alleged that the officers forced them to stand in those cages for nearly nine hours with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

By a 6–3 vote, SCOTUS refuses to review a judge-made rule that bars indigent prisoners from splitting the filing fee among themselves when filing a federal suit—even though everyone else is allowed to split that fee. These defendants were allegedly tortured. www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...

"After all, why not... why shouldn't I keep it?"

Trump Administration Moves to Allow Intelligence Agencies Easier Access to Law Enforcement Files “None of this has been thought through very carefully,” one official said of the plans, which upend long-standing restrictions meant to protect Americans’ privacy.

“None of this has been thought through very carefully,” one intelligence official said of plans to share criminal case information with intelligence agencies. “There are a lot of privacy concerns out there, and nobody really wants to deal with them.”

You cannot talk like this about any other minority in America.

And if it was any other president’s adviser who said something like this about any other minority, it’d be the instant end of their presidency.

Only 21% of Americans Support the United States Initiating an Attack on Iran

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/u...

Apparently Pearl Harbor wasn’t an invasion.

Like the neocons, Trump’s neo-neocons repeatedly invoke the West’s complacency and unwillingness to defend its own values, a frailty that can be rectified only through the ritual use of military force against weaker targets. The conservative writer Jonah Goldberg once articulated what he called the “Ledeen Doctrine,” after the neoconservative Michael Ledeen, which was: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Despite Trump’s rejection of George W. Bush, MAGA bears many similarities to the right-wing politics of that era—a fetishization of violence and torture, the treatment of opposition as treasonous, a disdain for due process, and an anti-Muslim bigotry at odds with fundamental American principles.

Pundits loved telling you about Trump's "anti-interventionism" because it seemed contrarian and interesting, but he always represented neoconservatism's worst impulses shorn of any moral pretense or concern www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

In case you haven't been following: The Texas Ag Commissioner is rapidly devolving into a knife fight, with incumbent Sid Miller, fresh off endorsements by Trump and a weightlifter named Tiny Meeker, attacking his opponent Nate Sheets over his alleged porn addiction and whether his honey is organic.

who made this

It's so telling that these people are rushing to condemn "the campus left" at this moment
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/o...

Remembering the time a dog followed me home once and the name on the collar said "Pettrace".
I spent an *entire afternoon* going "here Pettrace" and "good boy Pettrace!" (Pronouncing it "Petras") before I could get through to the number on the collar and they answered "Hello. Pet Trace."

These guys were selling t-shirts until they needed a war to cover up the intentional damage they did to the economy and the president's involvement in a pedophilia scandal.

It's all so goddamned predictable.

Tulsi Gabbard released a fundraising video in 2019 titled "Trump's Path To War With Iran"

"We've gotta stop Donald Trump from starting a war with Iran."

User Chris: What was the core difference why you think the DoW accepted OpenAI but not Anthropic Sam Altman: I can't speak for them, but to speculate with the best understanding of the situation. *First, I saw reporting that they were extremely close on a deal, and for much of the time both sides really wanted to reach one. I have seen what happens in tense negotiations when things get stressed and deteriorate super fast, and I could believe that was a large part of what happened here. *We believe in a layered approach to safety--building a safety stack, deploying FDEs and having our safety and alignment researcher involved, deploying via cloud, working directly with the DoW. Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract, rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with. We feel that it it's very important to build safe system, and although documents are also important, I'd clearly rather rely on technical safeguards if I only had to pick one. *We and the DoW got comfortable with the contractual language, but I can understand other people would have a different opinion here. *I think Anthropic may have wanted more operational control than we did

I saw some folks asking what the difference was between what OpenAI signed with the DoD and what Anthropic said they wanted, and Sam more or less admits here the key point: OpenAI's deal requires them to trust the NSA. Anthropic's contract had real safeguards.

Civil rights stories removed from Border Patrol’s website during Black History Month Historical accounts of women, Black men, and the agency’s deployment against segregationists in the sixties have disappeared from the official Customs and Border Protection (CBP) website.

NEW: As Black History Month comes to a close, CBP appears to have scrubbed stories about Black people and marginalized groups' contributions to the history of the agency from an official page.

Archived versions show the changes happened the first week of February:

Got a cab near the Department of Education. Hadn’t seen the Charlie Kirk banner before.

These assholes are really gonna go with “war is peace, actually.”

Peace is war. War is peace.

Two photos. The first shows Catturd tweeting: Name one US inspired regime change that hasn't ended in absolute disaster The next tweet shows him posting an AI illustration of Khamenei turned into a pile of dust. It says "I'm eliminated."

Two tweets. The first shows Laura Loomer promoting her show, where she says "A message has been sent that we are not interested in going back to the way politics were prior to Donald Trump, prior to 2016. We don't want warhawks. We don't want any more Neocons. We want American First. Period. End of discussion." The next tweet says: Today is a great day. Our military is amazing. @PeteHegseth is an absolute killer. Now you see why the Deep State worked so hard against him. It’s great having a Sec War who has Infidel literally tattooed on his body. He actually gets it. God bless him.

Two tweets. The first shows Will Chamberlain tweeting: The Republican Party is no longer the party of regime change and endless wars. If you want to be its standard-bearer that is a non-negotiable position. The next tweet shows him posting "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead." The tweet has a USA flag attached.

Two tweets. The first shows Gunther Eagleman tweeting: "Warmonger Lindsey Graham just rushed to Fox to advocate for U.S. involvement as soon as he could. He is also pushing for a US-backed regime change in Iran. I would like to renominate Graham to get a one-way ticket to the frontlines of every war he wants America involved in." There's an attached video of Graham speaking. The next shows Eagleman tweeting: UST IN! President Trump is HARD AT WORK all weekend after the massive strikes on Iran! He’s already on the phone with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte! Trump is a machine!" There's an attached video of a news segment about the war in Iran.

manufacturing consent through lowly paid influencers

Senator Mullin that guy died in 1989

If you were at work today and you got a phone call from your wife that France just blew up your kid's school, your lifelong opinion of France is probably not going to be anything other than "Death to France"

So, it was Iran? Not China? Not Venezuela? Not the radical left?

We are living inside the minute-by-minute delusions of a madman.

(American bombing stops.)

Trump: I stopped NINE wars

Exclusive: Prior to Iran attacks, CIA assessed Khamenei would be replaced by hardline IRGC elements if killed, sources say In the run-up to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Saturday, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency assessed that even if Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the operation, he would likely be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), two sources briefed on the intelligence said.

Exclusive: Prior to Iran attacks, CIA assessed Khamenei would be replaced by hardline IRGC elements if killed, sources say reut.rs/4l9SCAs

Hennepin County Attorney’s Office blasts DOJ over closed civil rights investigation The Justice Department announced it had ended an investigation into Mary Moriarty’s office over a policy considering race in charging decisions. Her office called the investigation a “stunt.”

"This was a political attack from the beginning. Their lawyers committed to defending actual civil rights have left."

www.startribune.com/doj-civil-ri...