Friday, September 25, 2025. Lawrence O'Donnell exposes the rot in Chump's trumped up case against Comey, an ICE thug attacks a woman in a court house and it's on camera, his shoving her, his knocking her to the ground, Sarah "Fergie" find that her lies about Epstein are not sticking, turns out Pam daBimbo Bondi wanted press for herself back when she did the binders and said the Epstein client list was on her desk (the administration explained to her back then to shut up about Epstein), Ezra Klein attacks abortion rights (that's what is I'm not in the mood to do a walk through, go back to January 2005 -- our archives -- when we last had to face the Bull Meese and their war on reproductive rights), Americans overwhelming see Chump as the threat to free speech that he truly is, another stupid decision by Tulsi Gabbard puts our country at risk, and much more.
At the start, let's note Lawrence O'Donnell from his MSNBC show last night explaining Chump's illegal targeting of James Comey.
We've got a ton to cover. Space permitting, we'll come back to the topic, otherwise Ruth covered it last night Donald Chump: Convicted Felon and War Criminal"" and you can refer also to THE NEW REPUBLIC's "Transcript: Damning Reports Expose Trump’s Corruption in Comey Fiasco."
Want to see something disgusting? Steam this video at THE NEW YORK TIMES of an ICE agent slamming a woman to the ground. Andy Newman and Luis Ferré-Sadurnà report for the paper:
A federal agent shoved a woman and pushed her to the floor in front of what appeared to be her two young children on Thursday during a confrontation at an immigration courthouse in Manhattan.
A video shows a wrenching encounter in a hallway of 26 Federal Plaza in which the woman and a girl are desperately clinging to the woman’s husband, who is being detained. Agents pull the hair of the woman and the girl to get them away from the man.
After agents pry the family apart and lead the resisting man away, the woman yells, “You guys don’t care about anything!” in Spanish at an agent who is trying to get her to leave and telling her, “Adios, adios.” She puts a hand on his chest, and he shoves her. When she tries to grab onto him, he pushes her down.
This is not America, let's not pretend that it is. It's hell and it's brought you to be the tedious contributions of Convicted Felon Donald Chump and the corrupt Supreme Court.
These are thugs unleashed by Donald Chump who are not bound by laws -- per the Supreme Court -- and who terrorize people daily. And there is no real legal recourse presently, none at all. Federal courts try to do their job and follow the law -- including the Constitution -- and for that Chump attacks them publicly and the Supreme Court nullifies them.
That's why the mid-terms are so important.
I see so much disgusting garbage right now. And I'm not talking about Chump or MAGA for this point. I'm talking about Democrats who don't have spines. They've tried to toss transpeople to the side. It's easier, they think, to abandon trans people than to fight for what's right.
It's probably is very easy for them. They're spineless.
But they'll abandon the trans community first and then they'll move on to --
Wait. They've already moved on. Ezra Klein's saying the Democratic Party has to give up support for reproductive rights (see Rebecca's "ezzie klein the fake democrat who's now attacking reproductive rights").
They're spineless and their cowards.
They're not going to help us win in November 2026. The American people will not reward the Democratic Party for cowardly abandoning principles as the spineless seek a quick fix.
These same people are having a fit over Zohran's campaign. There are reasons to criticize him -- true of any politician. But the spineless are doing nothing to help us turn out votes.
Reproductive freedom is a very popular position with the American public. Republicans realize that which is why they don't like a referendum on reproductive rights at election time.
These Ezra Klein's know nothing. Let's remember what that spineless crap is noted for: Lying.
Journo-List was about lying. That was Klein's baby. It was an attempt to fool the American people. A number of journalists got on this list-serv that Klein started. It was there where they told the truth and it was there where they sought feedback on how to lie.
Katha Pollitt watches Sarah Palin's national debut as John McCain's running mate and she freaks out. She takes it to the private list where she says that Sarah seemed likeable -- the horror! -- and she gets the feedback she needs to write, the very next day, at THE NATION about how awful Sarah Palin is, how uninspiring, how this, how that.
A leftist is a sexist pig nightly on MSNBC. We've never pimped him here so we'll leave him unnamed but I'm sure most will know who I mean -- he's no longer with MSNBC. Do his leftist peers hold him accountable? No. On the private list-serv they talk about how hateful he is towards women. But Scott Horton -- not ANTIWAR.COM's Scott Horton, this is the attorney who got trouble for misrepresenting his credentials -- and I'm oh-so-glad to have been a part of that take down -- Scott could say sure he's a sexist pig but he calls out torture so let's not say anything about his sexism.
These people are liars. They are filth. They were paid for their opinions and they didn't share them with you. They did share on the private list-serv and they plotted there how to be 'on point' and how to trick and deceive.
No one needs that but that's all Ezra has to offer.
No Democrat has to endorse Zohran. My personal opinion is you should only endorse in a race you can vote in. You know what race all Americans can vote in? The race for president.
We remember that, right? Last November. The only real choices were Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.
Each month the Michigan Green Party sends an announcement to us. I like them. In the past, for years, I've included everything they've e-mailed.
2024 changed that. Jill Stein had no shot at winning and shouldn't have run to begin with. She ran a lousy campaign in 2012 and we noted that after the campaign. That she would be given a chance in 2016 was bad enough. Again in 2024? Ridiculous. You're not a real party. That's reality. But the other reality? You're not trying to be a real party. First off, a real party doesn't nominate the same person three times. Especially not a third time when the country is getting tired of all the elderly people in elected office and Jill was 74 years old.
There's more. In 2023, Jill and the ethically challenged Chris Hedges tried to make Cornel West the nominee. Cornel eventually caught on that what they were promising couldn't be delivered. They tried to top-down force him on the party. This was after Chris and Cornel were going to be the nominees for whatever that fringe party was. And most people don't even know that to this day. Cornel, early in his People's Party -- that's what it was -- made the mistake of being honest in an interview and talking about how Chris recruited him for the presidential candidate and Chris was going to be his running mate but then at the last moment Chris' wife convinced Chris not to run and blah blah blah.
Why does it matter? Because Chris LIED in interviews and in the written word (online, I don't believe anyone bothers to print that crackpot's nonsense anymore). That's the mind set of the Ezra Klein's in fact.
I have my problems with DSA and I've noted that at this site many, many times oer the years.
Zohran's saying he's a Socialist. That takes care of my biggest problem -- lying to voters.
So while Ezra's trying to trick voters and weaken the party, Zohran's being honest and possibly bringing in voters to the Democratic Party. We'll see with the election.
If someone doesn't want to endorse him, they shouldn't. And people should shut up about Chuck Schumer. If Chuck doesn't want to endorse him, that's fine.
And I'm sure Zohran's fine with it. 2024 was between Kamala and Chump. And Zohran refused to endorse Kamala. Was part of movement to get people to not to vote for Kamala.
If people are bothered by this (see Stan's "Rachel Maddow and Kamala Harris" and Rebecca's "big tent? doesn't work just 1 way"), that is their right.
But, at his best, Zohran is trying to enlarge the party. And there's a great discussion about that now, about how to bring in leftists who aren't Democrats into the party. The way the GOP used to work to bring Libertarians into the party in other decades or the way today's GOP works to bring White Nationalists and KKK into their party.
While Zohran tries to bring leftists into the party, Ezra is working to try to drive leftists out of the party.
If you're a Democrat, whether you support Zohran's run for mayor or not, I hope you can appreciate that he's doing real work on party building whereas bean counter Ezra Klein is doing no work at all and going back to failed strategies that lead to lukewarm turn out and bad elected officials. What's the idiot's name that the Ezras all praised in the '00s. Jim Webb. They loved him. He was what they wanted the party to be -- the newly christened Democrat. Rah Rah Rah!
If you believed their lies.
We didn't I reported on the hearing where he came out against money for Agent Orange victims. We covered it here and other than veterans outlets, no one else did. They all wanted to protect Jimmy. He was and remains a piece of crap. And the Ezras in their haste to sell out to anyone put him in the Senate and he betrayed veterans. The press didn't want to report that. Even when he couldn't run for re-election because veterans and the families of veterans had made it clear that his Agent Orange remarks and position meant they would not vote for him again.
Jim Webb was a Vietnam veteran who was more concerned about the financial cost to the US government of Agent Orange related costs than he was about others who served in Vietnam and whose health destroyed by Agent Orange.
I don't want these fakes brought over to this party. I think we all saw the damage Joe Manchin -- and his evil twin "Green Party" Krysten Sinema -- did in the Senate. (And if you didn't figure out who the no longer with MSNBC sexist was -- Krysten dated him -- which was another reason people should have known not to trust her.)
Offline, when I'm offered something, I'll consider it in many cases. I'm okay with working with people I don't know. I'm okay working with people you can work with -- meaning, I've worked with them before and they might be great fun or might not be but they get the work done. But if I've worked with you and you made the experience hell? No, I'm not going back into a situation like that. You've burned that bridge.
In terms of politics, I'm fine with trying something news. I'm fine with someone like Zohran trying to bring new voters in. I am never fine with people picking up failed policies of the past and trying to pass them off as something new. There is nothing new about Ezra Klein's proposals and they do not increase turnout and they kill off enthusiasm.
In 2024, Zohran didn't endorse Kamala. It would be wonderful if he could admit that was a mistake. Because it was. But whether he admits it or not, we have got to win in the mid-terms.
That woman thrown down by ICE -- abused by a so-called officer of the law?
That woman being slammed down the hall and then shoved to the ground by that repugnant piece of trash who thinks he has the right to abuse people? She is all of us. We stand up now or we say we consent to that treatment. The easiest way to stand up to it now is to register to vote if you aren't already registered and then come November 2026 we turn out and we turn out for Democrats. We put power of the House and the Senate into Democratic hands.
Back to the NYT article:
Brad Lander, the city comptroller, a Democrat and frequent ICE critic who was arrested in June while trying to escort a migrant whom agents were trying to arrest, denounced the agent who manhandled the woman. Mr. Lander was arrested again last week, along with other Democratic elected officials, at 26 Federal Plaza after the officials demanded access to cells used by ICE to detain migrants.
“An ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids,” he wrote on social media. He added: “She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital.” On the video, the woman can be seen standing up from her fall, and agents lead her and the children away. Mr. Lander said the agents who detained the man did not show a warrant or give lawful grounds for detention.
This is not a time to play. This is our country and we have got to protect it. Voting is essential in the mid-terms. Speaking out right now is essential. Those who are able to should participate in the No Kings October 18th rallies.
The Republicans in Congress -- and Chump in the White House -- appear to want a shut down right now and are trying to force it into being. As Ed Kilgore (INTELLIGENCER) noted yesterday:
We’re now five days from a government shutdown, with no negotiations between the two parties in sight. At one point, President Trump agreed to meet with Democratic congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, but then called the meeting off, saying their “unserious and ridiculous demands” meant it wouldn’t accomplish anything. You’d still think that for the sake of appearances, the Republican leaders who control Congress would keep their troops in town in case of a last-minute deal to avoid a shutdown or to get stuff done before it happens. Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson is keeping the House in recess.
Punchbowl News has the official GOP rationalization:
,
Johnson doesn’t want Republicans back in Washington next week with nothing to do. The House Republican leadership feels as if they’ve already done their job by passing a CR. Calling members back is a concession they have more work to do, GOP sources said.
,
Okay, maybe. But there’s another reason Johnson might want the House floor inactive in the days just ahead. Democrat Adelita Grijalva’s special-election victory in Arizona on Tuesday to fill the seat left vacant by her father’s death means there will be 214 Democrats in the House once she’s sworn in. She’s indicated she will instantly sign the discharge petition sponsored by Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which would require the Justice Department to release everything it has on that explosive scandal. Three other Republicans, all of whom have been outspoken in various ways about pedophilia and sexual abuse, have signed the petition as well: Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Nancy Mace. Grijalva is likely to provide the 218th signature, the last needed to put the Epstein Act before the House. This is very much not what Johnson wants; he’s been ordered by the White House to let the president and Pam Bondi handle the Epstein matter without any messy and potentially disastrous public disclosures.
Moving over to VARIETY, this morning Alex Ritman reports:
Natalie Dormer has said she won’t promote ITV and Britbox‘s upcoming drama series “The Lady,” in which she plays Sarah Ferguson, following revelations over the Duchess of York’s connections to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Brit actress has also said she has donated her entire salary from the show to charities focused on child abuse.
The news comes after a leaked email from 2011 was recently published appearing to show Ferguson, the former wife of Prince Andrew, apologizing to Epstein having publicly rejected him years after he was jailed for sex offenses in 2008.
If you've been following this story you know that Sarah and her staff have been anonymously leaking to the press to try to create sympathy for Sarah. They've tried the she-was-afraid-he-would-sue-her. Now they're trying to convince people that she was afraid he would harm her children. A low estimate of the British royal family's wealth is $24 billion -- a high estimate takes them to almost $100 billion. They are protected twenty-four seven. That Sarah and her lackeys are trying to insult people's intelligence goes to just how desperate Sarah is to try to convince people what happened didn't really happen. Maia Davies, and Matt Spivey (BBC NEWS) report:
The family of Virginia Giuffre has called for the Duchess of York to be stripped of her courtesy royal title after she called sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a "supreme friend" in a 2011 email.
Seven charities have cut ties with Sarah Ferguson since the email - in which she also appeared to apologise for her public criticism of Epstein after claiming to have broken off contact - emerged last Sunday.
On Thursday, Ms Giuffre's sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts, told BBC Newsnight: "If you are not safeguarding the most vulnerable people in your community, why should you hold those positions of power?"
Harry Thompson (DAILY BEAST) reports, "Most Americans fear for the safety of free speech under President Donald Trump, a new poll has revealed. New data from Quinnipiac University showed 53 percent feel “pessimistic” about the sanctity of the right granted by the First Amendment despite Trump running on a promise to protect free speech." Of course they do. And of course they should.
We've got a nit wit as Attorney General. Pam daBimbo Bondi. She's threatened to crack down on those Americans who dare to practice their First Amendment rights. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) notes:
We get it: not everyone is a free-speech expert. A huge part of our job at FIRE is educating the public about their First Amendment rights, the scope of free-speech law, and the foundational principles that make free expression so important.
Most people don’t have the time to get in the weeds like we do, so it’s understandable for the average American to sometimes get things wrong about free speech. But when you’re the attorney general of the United States, like Pam Bondi, you really should know better.
While discussing the assassination of Charlie Kirk and campus antisemitism on the Katie Miller Podcast, Bondi said the Justice Department would investigate and prosecute incidents of “hate speech.” While she’s trying to go into damage-control mode and walk back some of her mistakes, it’s important to correct our nation’s chief law enforcement officer on what is and isn’t protected expression.
“There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — [for that] in our society.”
This is, to put it bluntly, absolutely false — so-called “hate speech” is free speech.
The idea that “hate speech” is a separate and unprotected category of expression is one that we, unfortunately, have had to debunk time and time again. The fact is there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, and there can’t be. The Supreme Court has rejected the notion on multiple occasions, and the reasons for this should be obvious to someone in Bondi’s position.
What constitutes “hate speech” is inherently subjective, so it’s
impossible to narrowly define it in a way that passes constitutional
muster — let alone in a way that doesn’t empower the government to
target speech it disfavors.
As Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote in 1971’s Cohen v. California, “one man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric.” Or as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in Matal v. Tam almost
four decades later, “the proudest boast of our free speech
jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought
that we hate.’” In that case, the Court unanimously found that the
government couldn’t deny a trademark to an Asian-American band called
the Slants because it found the name disparaging.
Some consider criticism of Israel or Black Lives Matter to be hate speech. Others believe criticizing LGBTQ+ advocacy or Christian conservatism fits the description. And some, like President Trump, want to push the idea that even critical news coverage of an elected official — namely, him — can be a form of hate speech.
Apart from the inescapably subjective sentiment that “hate speech is any speech I hate,” the only thing on which proponents of treating hate speech as unprotected agree is the desire to punish it. This apparently includes Pam Bondi:
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
This
is absolutely chilling. It’s why carving out a “hate speech” exception
to the First Amendment is so dangerous. It grants the government the
power not only to decide what constitutes hateful speech, but to punish
it. And that dual empowerment inevitably facilitates attacks on the
right to dissent, criticize, and hold accountable whoever is in power.
Nothing is more antithetical to what America stands for than enabling
federal speech police.
At the Libertarian CATO Institute, Thomas A. Berry denounced daBimbo Bondi's 'understanding' of the First Amendment. Free speech goes across political lines, support for it does. When the government attempted to get ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel last week, US Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican joined other Americans in denouncing this assault on free speech and he wasn't worried about party lines. Left, right and center most of us in this country value the First Amendment, grasp how important it is to democracy and consider it to be one of the finest rights we have.
Americans don't trust Chump or his administration because they can't.
Chump said he would release ll The Epstein files. And didn't. Pam daBimbo Bondi said that Epstein's client list was on her desk and would be released shortly. And then she said it didn't exist.
There's the person vendetta way Chump conducts himself going after one person after another.
Let's do a story -- and I'm rushing this morning so my apologies to my friend taking my dictation and to anyone who struggles to follow the leaps as I rush through this -- Jane Fonda got arrested at an airport coming back into the United States from Canada while Tricky Dick was president
She was carrying vitamins. They tried to say it was drugs. She was held for hours and hours and she was having her period and they would not let her go to the restroom because they did not have a female police officer. Again, hours and hours. Jane was then accused of kicking the police officer. If she did, good for her. You try being on your period and waiting forever because some asshole won't call in to get a female police officer to show up at the airport so you can go to the bathroom.
But the thing about the Chumps is they're idiots. And worse, they are greedy idiots.
Jane was actually detained because she was on Nixon's enemies list. It was an actual list. Her mail was to be opened, she was to be harassed when going through customs, her calls were to be tapped, etc, etc. Supposedly, the only agency that refused to follow upon Nixon's illegal requests was the IRS.
The case against Jane was dropped. Nixon was a crook but he wasn't greed driven the way Chump is.
Or the way the police officer was. He wasn't on duty at the time, he was moonlighting as a security officer at the airport. And he was kicked!!! Kicked!!!
And he was greedy.
So he decided to profit from the incident. He sued.
That was wonderful because it meant that discovery would expose the list -- that Jane and her attorney Mark Lane felt existed (they were right but I'm not using "knew" here because they suspected it, no one outside Nixon's circle knew it existed).
Rather than reveal the existence of the enemies list in court proceedings (from the civil case the greedy officer brought), Nixon had the entire matter dropped. Because it's illegal.
And Chump doesn't care that it's illegal. He's quite open about the people he's targeting. Stupid and greedy.
And that further erodes trust Americans might have otherwise had in him.
Steven Benen (MADDOW BLOG, MSNBC) notes:
If Donald Trump’s public comments are any indication, the president has been preoccupied with George Soros lately, repeatedly referencing the Hungarian American philanthropist in multiple Fox News appearances.
The Republican also recently targeted Soros online, posting an item to his social media platform that said the wealthy progressive donor should face racketeering charges after supporting “violent protests.”
The baseless accusations were ridiculous
— there’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest the Soros family or the
Open Society Foundations have financed “violent protests” — but the
remarks were also largely overlooked as pointless presidential palaver.
As I noted in a post, Trump’s weird rants against Soros are easy to shrug off unless the Justice Department starts acting on them.
So it’s significant that The New York Times reported a senior Justice Department official has “instructed more than a half dozen U.S. attorneys’ offices to draft plans to investigate” a Soros-backed group.
Or take the effort on the part of the administration to go after an FBI agent. Andrew Goudsward (REUTERS) reports:
A U.S. Justice Department official on Wednesday retracted a demand for information from an FBI agent who testified against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a defamation case that resulted in a $1.3 billion verdict for spreading lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting.
The request came days after Ed Martin, the head of a Justice Department effort to remedy instances of alleged weaponization of the U.S. government against President Donald Trump and his supporters, sent a letter to the FBI agent’s lawyer seeking information about whether the agent received a financial benefit from his participation in the case.
FBI Special Agent William Aldenberg, a plaintiff in the case, testified at Jones’ civil trial in 2022 about responding to the scene at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 students and six staff members were slain.
Chump is the enemy of free speech. Even some of his one-time supporters are starting to recognize that reality. It's as plain as the Hitler mustache on racist Megyn Kelly's best friend Alex Jones.
We need to be winding down but this morning, Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
Every four years U.S. intelligence officials have published Global Trends, a public document that predicts what challenges the United States — and the world — will face in the coming decades.
With the intelligence community often focused on immediate issues, the Global Trends report has taken a longer-term look. Past editions warned of threats and shifts that came to pass, including climate change challenges, new immigration patterns and the risk of a pandemic.
But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Tulsi Gabbard, is eliminating the group that compiles the report.
Some of the warnings, most notably on climate change, had become politically inconvenient, according to former officials.
[. . .]
The elimination of the office last month was little noticed because it came amid a flurry of activity by Ms. Gabbard, including the closure of the National Intelligence University and sharp cutbacks of officers working on foreign malign influence and election threats.
The idiot Tulsi should never have been made Director of National Intelligence to begin with. As a cult member, her first alleigence will always be to "Guru Chris" -- her own personal savior. That's why you don't staff governments with cult members. But she also lacks experience and holding that position she puts the nation at risk due to her stupidity alone. Closing down that work group leaves us all at risk.
As we note every time the idiot pulls another stupid move, if we get attacked, it's on her head and on Chump's. She's not qualified. She was never qualified.
Let's wind down with this from THE BLACK COMMENTATOR:
Our email address is BlackCommentator@gmail.com
Our voicemail number is 856.823.1739
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