Peter Hurley

I think the worst case I can imagine in that regard is that the current Congress uses the "judge of elections" power to falsely declare final winners in a bunch of races to flip the balance before Jan 3.

I'm all for aggressive towing, but it's not easy when a really large portion of the cars need towing. Trucks and secure impound space are limited, and the scofflaws will make it hard (a favorite tactic are fraudulently obtained but facially valid temporary plates from other states).

The main issue is one I saw a lot around 2020-2023 in NY which is plate fraud. People were using fake plates like crazy when the city suspended most towing operations during the pandemic. Once you get a critical mass of people who aren't even registered / insured it becomes a really huge problem.

That process is insane though and requires you to pay taxes for ten years *after* renunciation.

They're real and they're spectacular!

Fromage is a good light-to-medium weight game that is basically four pretty simple mini games on a rotating board. Not included but necessary is a cheese board of your own for snacking while playing.

I'm not saying to ask chatgpt, just mostly complaining about hiding the info that 95% users are actually looking for from the label.

This is usually true, but I have seen a lot of OTC medicine bottles hide the dosing info in a fold-and-peel tab of the label that's often tricky to access. They put the warnings on the outside for liability reasons, but the dosing requires you to peel the label apart.

Also Wyoming gets into the Fun Zone fast if Liz Cheney (I) runs there.

Yeah, it's really hard to fathom how huge a blowout 30 point swings get you. I think the last time you saw anything on that scale would be 1932. Even Reagan wasn't that biga swing, though he won more states than FDR.

There's like 500 reasons you can't just extrapolate small special elections into the midterms, but a 30+ swing to Dems gets you sweeping ~every senate seat and a majority big enough to remove Trump and Vance.

The government is afforded process according to law, but lacks a constitutional right to it. The constitutional right to due process is afforded to people, not the government.

Is there a crime/fraud exemption question that is worth considering in this? Genuinely curious just because I don't know what the dynamic is in a contempt context.

The government is kind of unique actually and there is a decent case for not having atty client privilege for the government. The government doesn't have a right to due process or counsel (or any other rights). Protecting those rights is why the privilege is maintained.

Yeah I've had a pretty big switch on this also. I used to play poker semi professionally and while I'm not for total Hawaii-style prohibition, I really can't believe how corrosive all-the-time access to gambling is. At minimum I think all bets need to be placed in person at a regulated casino.

Also like, if you were able to get hired by DoJ before the current administration, you have a really good resume. AUSA positions were historically really competitive.

In the Good Old Days, One Fourth of Income Went to Food

cepr.net/publications...

This has a good chart. The story of the post WWII era is that the cost of stuff (food, clothes, furniture, other mfgd goods) has plummeted and the relative price of services and land rent has skyrocketed.

U.S. citizen injured by federal agents in Salem who demanded to see “papers,” union says - Salem Reporter A home care worker and union worker was pulled from her car and injured by federal agents Thursday according to a statement by SEIU 503. To comment on this story, use the form at the end of the repor...

4 federal agents pull over an elderly US citizen for the suspected crime of being brown, break her car window, throw her to the ground, then drive off after they find her US Passport in her purse. The Salem Police, when called, say there’s nothing they can do. www.salemreporter.com/2026/01/31/u...

The thread started with my remark about how incompetently the DoJ had gone about this, since they failed to do the basic things (like citing literally any evidence) that are necessary to even get to the substance of their case.

The Department identified one source of evidence, Attachment A, for the judge’s statement and for the setting in which it occurred. The complaint, however, did not include the attachment. The D.C. Circuit contacted the Department about the missing attachment and explained that, if it failed to submit the attachment, the circuit would consider the complaint as submitted. The Department did not supply the attachment.

No, they clearly missed it. Failing to upload the attachment you cite in the brief and then missing the "hey, where's the attachment you mentioned" notice from the court is just incompetence.

I also think they're catastrophically understaffed for goons in Main Justice right now. They seem to have completely missed a notice from the circuit court hearing the Boasberg ethics complaint and therefore failed to submit their evidentiary attachment, which is just bush league shit.

My thought is they're kinda likely to try something like having ICE do voter intimidation and it's likely to backfire spectacularly. Both in terms of optics, and in terms of voter motivations. Median D is willing to walk across broken glass to vote these guys out. Median R is milquetoast at best.

Yeah I don't think it's plausible we are currently at D+30 or anything that close. I think there are two possible things that lead to it:

1. Market crash & bad recession.

2. Trump does some weird move to try to cancel the election or aggressively intimidate people from voting.

Assuming senate = prez, that would put Ds at 65 seats, assuming OK and ID stayed R.

I am not saying the move to make a frivolous ethics complaint against Judge Boasberg was good! I am just saying there is nothing about failing to file the evidence attachment that in any way helps DoJ in this case or in general as to being intimidating. It's pure incompetence on their part.

Do you mean Fani Willis? And in any case, failing to attach key documents (this was like notes of his remarks, not some grand bombshell) makes the threat of spurious prosecution less, not more. If cases get tossed because DoJ can't do paperwork, DoJ's intimidation factor goes down, not up.

If that's their means of making a threat it's an incredibly stupid one. "We will make obvious unforced errors that kill our cases against our opponents" makes you less scary, not more.

The bit where DoJ forgot the attachment and ignored the reminder to include the attachment (meaning they presented literally no evidence) is the icing on the cake for me.

The incompetence by DoJ in this one is staggering. They forgot the attachment of the alleged remarks by Boasberg, then when contacted to supply it, didn't. So they never actually give any evidence.

I love the corporate disclosure statement lol

For the things the Rs actually want out of the Senate, the tools Ds have to obstruct have mostly already been killed.