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This evening's music features r&b singer and saxophone player Bull Moose Jackson. Enjoy!

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”

-- Robert A. Heinlein

News and Opinion

Could Brazil Return to a Dictatorship? Glenn Greenwald on Possible Election of Far-Right Demagogue

Glenn Greenwald on the right wing tidal wave in Brazil:

Brazil’s Bolsonaro-Led Far Right Wins a Victory Far More Sweeping and Dangerous Than Anyone Predicted. Its Lessons Are Global.

For the past thirty years, Congressman Jair Bolsonaro was a fringe extremist in Brazilian politics, known mostly for outlandish, deliberately inflammatory quotes in which he paid homage to the most notorious torturers of the 1964-1985 military regime, constantly heralded the 1964 coup as a “defense of democracy,” told a female socialist colleague in Congress that she was too ugly to “deserve” his rape, announced that he’d rather learn that his son died in a car accident than was gay, and said he conceived a daughter after having four sons only due to a “moment of weakness.” (Last September, he used Google to translate a Brazilian epithet for LGBTs to, in essence, call me a faggot on Twitter). His policy prescriptions were even more deranged. Western media has often referred to him as “Brazil’s Trump” but that is wildly inaccurate, understating the case by many magnitudes. In temperament, ideology, and personal history, Bolsonaro – a former Army Captain during Brazil’s notorious 21-year military dictatorship – is far closer to Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte or Egyptian dictator General Abdel El-Sisi than Trump. ...

As a result of last night’s truly stunning national election in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has been instantly transformed from marginalized clown into the overwhelmingly dominant force in the country’s political life. Bolsonaro himself fell just short of winning the 50% needed to win the presidency without a run-off. But given the margin of victory, he is the overwhelming favorite to win on October 28 against the second-place candidate, ex-São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad. Haddad is the previously unknown, hand-picked successor anointed by Lula, the ex-two-term President who had been leading all polls until he was convicted on dubious corruption charges and quickly imprisoned so as to bar his candidacy, then silenced by Brazil’s right-wing judiciary with a series of remarkable prior restraint censorship orders barring all media outlets from interviewing him. ...

To be sure – as is true of Trump, Brexit, and the rise of right-wing extremism throughout Europe – some substantial minority of Bolsonaro voters are motivated by classic bigotry, racism, anti-LGBT animus, resentment toward the indigenous population, and just a general tribal anger that seeks scapegoats for their plight. But many, probably most, are none of those things. Many, instead, are motivated by legitimate grievances toward an establishment ruling class that has failed them on all levels, that expresses indifference if not outright contempt for their suffering and loss of hope, that they blame, often with good reason, for enacting policies that have destroyed their futures while refusing to accept any responsibility for it. And once that framework is adopted, any perceived enemy of that ruling class becomes their friend, or at least someone whose vows of destruction become more appealing than vows to preserve the system they justifiably despise (the reality is that Bolsonaro (like Trump), with his Chicago-trained neoliberal economic guru, will serve the economic interests of the establishment with great devotion at the expense of his working-class voters, but the perception of his anti-establishment animus is what matters).

The standard establishment reaction in the face of rising demagogues like Bolsonaro is to denounce those who support them, to call them names, to heap scorn on them, to sanctimoniously lecture them that their choices are primitive, retrograde, ignorant and illegitimate. That only serves further to exacerbate the dynamic. As I wrote after the enactment of Brexit, and then again after Trump’s victory, unless and until the establishment classes of the world’s democracies begin to cease blaming everyone else and instead engage in serious self-critique, we’re going to have far more Brexits and Trumps – and far worse ones.

Forgiveness Is Overrated

In response to the latest wave of sex scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, “masses of forgiveness” were held in August as a way to help the faithful in “healing” their distrust of the institution which has upheld itself as the highest moral authority in the world for two thousand years. “I beg forgiveness for these sins and for the scandal and betrayal felt by so many others in God’s family,” said Pope Francis at a Marian shrine in Ireland in response to the degradation and abuse inflicted upon the people of that nation by trusted Church officials.

The concept of forgiveness is a recurring theme in any abusive relationship, and necessarily so, because without extensive value being placed upon that concept there wouldn’t be a relationship. You wouldn’t have a battered wife, you’d have a story about how a woman’s boyfriend hit her one time and she grabbed all her stuff and split. You wouldn’t have a brainwashed and exploited cult member, you’d have a story about how someone met a group of people and left when things got weird. You wouldn’t have a major world religion consistently embroiled in horrifying scandals, you’d have people dismissing that religion and placing their energy and attention elsewhere. You wouldn’t have a society that constantly allows itself to be manipulated into consenting to abuse and exploitation by an aristocratic class, you’d have a people’s uprising in which the vastly outnumbered elites are shrugged off and replaced with a system which benefits humanity. Forgiveness is overrated. There are only two types of people who consistently promulgate the importance of forgiveness: abusers and their codependents. The abuse can range from pedophilia and battery to war and ecocide, and the codependency can range from a wife saying she fell down the stairs again to a newscaster demanding to know when the mother of a son just gunned down by police will forgive his murderer, but the formula remains the same in each instance. Anyone who goes around around telling everyone else how important it is to forgive is either an abuser or one of their brainwashed Stockholm syndrome victims. ...

One major way that sociopaths differ from normal people is that they don’t think about things in terms of feeling bad or feeling good about doing something, they just think about the consequences. If you don’t feel guilt, you don’t worry about feeling guilty. It literally doesn’t factor into your decision-making process. “Oh, I won’t do that again because I sure do feel bad about that million people I helped kill” is not a thought that ever goes through their head. If the consequences of Iraq were a buttload of profit and a regular spot on CNN with absolutely no downside whatsoever, no uncomfortable trip to the Hague, no endless prison sentence, no stripping of wealth, status and power, then of course they want to do it again and again and again and again and again. They will do it until they are stopped. So America’s new aristocracy must be stopped, and the only way they can be stopped is to be held to account, right here, on earth, as soon as humanly possible. Allowing them to go on for even one more day is acknowledging that there are no consequences for evil, and when there are no consequences for evil, evil will reign.

And that’s where we are right now. Evil reigns, but it’s a simple matter of restoring justice to the earth by the people taking their power back and standing in judgement of these pricks and making sure they do not do this again. Passing judgement on someone is an idea that makes good people feel uneasy, and that’s deliberate. From the Pope down, we’ve been anesthetized with this mind-virus that in order to be good people we just put our head down, work hard, die poor, and let God do the judging. How convenient for power is that story? A little too convenient. Sold to us by the same people who rape children and sit on a throne of stolen riches.

Sen. Susan Collins and Brett Kavanaugh Are Both in the Bush Family Inner Circle. That Helps Explain Her Vote.

The announcement Friday by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that she would vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was about family. Namely, the Bush family. George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush have both been welcomed into the ranks of the resistance to President Donald Trump, but their most consequential action since his election has been to help lift Kavanaugh into the Supreme Court. Collins is an honorary member of the Bush family. She got her start in politics as a congressional aide to Rep.-turned-Sen. William Cohen. The Maine Republican was close to George H.W. Bush, who has long maintained a presence in the state. At the end of the first Bush administration, Collins was appointed New England regional director of the Small Business Administration. In 1996, she was elected to the Senate to replace her mentor, Cohen.

Kavanaugh, too, has longstanding ties to the Bush family. He served as an attorney for George W. Bush’s campaign, playing a major role in the legal battle between Bush and Al Gore. He then served as staff secretary in the Bush White House, a position of intimate influence — the staff secretary attends most Oval Office meetings and is a trusted sounding board for the president.

Bush nominated Kavanaugh to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003 and Democrats put up a serious fight, arguing that he was far too partisan to be within striking distance of the Supreme Court. The pushback dragged the confirmation process out for three years, and he wasn’t confirmed until 2006. Bush stuck by him throughout it, and Kavanaugh refused to withdraw. In 2004, while his nomination languished, Kavanaugh married Ashley Estes, who had been George W. Bush’s personal secretary dating back to his days as Texas governor. They had met in the Oval Office, and the Bushes attended the wedding.

Fast-forward to Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. In the weeks after Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault during his high school and college years, Bush personally called wavering senators, lobbying on the nominee’s behalf. Collins, who had said she would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade, was one of those wavering senators. In August, HuffPost reported, citing a source close to Collins’s staff, that Collins had assured the White House that she would support Kavanaugh if he were nominated. (She has denied that.)

Chris Hedges in Eugene Oregon, Oct. 3, 2018

Sen. Lisa Murkowski Admits That the Reasonable Doubt Standard Doesn’t Apply to Brett Kavanaugh’s Confirmation

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska admitted on Friday what no other Republican senator would: The standard for joining the elite ranks of the Supreme Court is higher than “he probably didn’t attempt to rape that 15-year-old.” For the past week, conservatives have argued that if Democrats can’t prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, he should be appointed to the Supreme Court. But of course, this is not a trial, and it is not appropriate to apply the level of proof meant to protect criminal defendants from having their life or liberty stripped to a judicial confirmation process.

In fact, the appropriate standard isn’t even the lesser preponderance of the evidence or the “more likely than not” standard that Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she relied on in deciding to confirm Kavanaugh. That civil standard is lower because less is at stake in civil matters — one’s property can be taken away, but not one’s liberty. But even that standard is too high. ...

Regardless of whether you agree that the stakes here are ultimately comparable to a (very important) job interview, as many, including myself, have argued, it is undeniable that neither Kavanaugh’s personal liberty nor property is at risk. Although his own behavior during last week’s hearing might put his reputation in jeopardy — the American Bar Association is revisiting its positive evaluation of Kavanaugh based on “new information of a material nature regarding temperament” — if Kavanaugh’s confirmation were to have failed, he would lose nothing tangible that he already had. Like Merrick Garland, whose nomination was stalled for months until former President Barack Obama was no longer in office, he would simply go back to being a judge on the second most powerful court in the country.

That being the case, it was refreshing to hear a conservative acknowledge that the Supreme Court is an institution whose members should engender a high level of respect, rather than merely meet a low bar. During her remarks Friday night, Murkowski seemed to acknowledge that the burden was not on Democrats to conclusively prove Kavanaugh was a sexual predator, but on Kavanaugh to demonstrate that he was qualified for a position that only 113 Americans have ever held — a position that has the power not only to influence the lives of millions, but also to provide an important check on the other branches of our government, and establish confidence in our political system.

“I have a very high bar for any nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States,” she began. Unlike other conservatives, who appropriated criminal law standards that were self-servingly lofty, Murkowski relied on the only truly relevant standard: the Code of Conduct for United States Judges — the nonpartisan benchmark set by the legislature — the standards to which all the senators in the chamber have implicitly signed on. “The code of judicial conduct,” she read, “states that ‘a judge should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary,’ and shall ‘avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.’”

Women aren't united against Kavanaugh. That's a dangerous myth

After all was said and done in the Senate hearings for US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, before the vote decided the fate of Roe v Wade and many other progressive agendas, my friends kept putting their faith in female senators. Yes, the Republicans control the Senate and this is Trump’s nominee, but they have six women serving as senators, and how could any woman not be moved by the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford? How could the senators not feel a stronger solidarity with their gender than their party? Surely they will keep his appointment from happening. My friends were not alone. In the lead-up to the vote, Vox.com was one of many outlets to breathlessly report on swing vote Maine Republican senator Susan Collins’s history of maverick behavior, calling her a “progressive icon”. “Collins cares deeply about women,” they reported a colleague saying. And when she inevitably chose to confirm Kavanaugh and vote in line with her Republican brethren, women expressed shock and disappointment. A New York Times op-ed called her a “gender traitor.” New York Magazine accused her of “betraying women”. ...

In fact, the idea that women will somehow ultimately vote for what is best for women (as if there is a set of positions on specific issues that will improve the lives of all women) has proven false repeatedly, and yet the idea refuses to die. The rhetoric around Collins echoed the rhetoric around women voters after the revelation of Trump’s Access Hollywood video. Surely women could not vote for such a man. And yet he won 41% of women’s votes. Allegations of pederasty and predatory behavior with teenage girls did not prevent Roy Moore from receiving the majority of white women’s votes in the Alabama Senate election. And now #MeToo is actively being used in women’s campaign ads, with some candidates spending more time relaying their personal stories than their political positions, hoping that will capture votes.

Believing, then, that women are a singular demographic, with shared experiences and shared interpretations of those experiences, shared values and priorities, and a shared vision for the world is becoming increasingly dangerous. Not all women were against Kavanaugh. That’s because not all women line up with the vision of how a certain segment of centrist-to-liberal women commentators want other women to be: progressive, idealistic, fair-minded. Not all women support abortion rights, or gay and trans rights, or believe that Black Lives Matter. A large number of Republican women want a pro-life, pro-Wall Street, pro-Christian white man on the supreme court. (Nor is this a problem merely with white women; women, like men, tend to vote in their personal interest, and what that is will vary due to a more complex array of factors than just gender or race. Class and marital status appear to matter just as much.)

Where Does #MeToo Go from Here? Women Are “On Fire” with Rage as Kavanaugh Joins Supreme Court

The Kavanaugh case revealed a system rigged against women

“The arc of the moral universe is long,” said Martin Luther King Jr, “but it bends towards justice.” It is hard to keep faith with that right now. A woman with everything to lose took on the might of the US political establishment, only to see the man she accused of sexually assaulting her appointed to the highest court in the land, following a hasty smokescreen of an investigation. Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the supreme court on Saturday was not just a defeat for sexual assault victims, it was also a clear reaffirmation of an entrenched, patriarchal hierarchy. It was a reminder to all women that there was more important business to be done; there were ideological agendas that needed to be advanced and political careers that needed to be protected. The perfunctory way the Republicans endorsed a shoddy FBI probe, the result of which was a foregone conclusion, sent a clear message that many women are familiar with: this is bigger than you. ...

So who today wants to hear nonsense about long arcs bending towards justice? Can anyone find comfort in empty aphorisms about how we shall prevail? This surely is a time to look defeat right in the eye and make peace with it. To allow anger and try to figure out what to do with it. To acknowledge that women marched and said, “Me too”, and were told: “So what?” And it is true that there appear to be no silver linings. In fact, there is only the possibility of more setbacks, as the balance of the supreme court shifts to the right, and the nightmare of Roe v Wade being overturned, leading to a rollback of abortion rights, becomes reality. A man accused of sexual assault and of exposing himself to another woman will preside over the reproductive rights of women until the end of his natural life, if he so chooses. ...

This dirty business was all conducted in language and ritual designed to vaunt the liberal greatness of the US, even while liberal values were undermined. We saw the self-conscious show of “respect for due process”, the charade of “moderate” Republicans in solemn deliberation, and the pantomime of supposed bipartisanship. Those at the sharp end of US foreign policy are familiar with this con, which advances cynical interests and atrocities abroad, but always with a supposedly heavy heart as it accepts the burden of living up to its values. The con has now been perpetrated on American women, told in tortured rhetoric by their representatives that a difficult moral decision has been made in the best interests of the nation. The language of aspiration, of hope in a better future, has been hijacked. ...

Right now, it looks like Ford’s efforts were for nothing, and the collective emotional investment of women from all over the world paid out no dividend in justice. But fighting for a cause is about the mundane hollowness of repetition. ... We just have to show up and keep showing up. There is no other choice.

Alleged Saudi Murder of Washington Post Columnist Prompts Calls to Halt U.S. Relations with Regime

Key Senators Say Disappearance of Washington Post Columnist Should End U.S. “Blank Check” to Saudi Arabia

The Saudi government's apparent arrest of dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi is “absolutely unacceptable” and “outrageous,” according to two influential Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On Tuesday, Khashoggi, a Saudi national and Washington Post columnist, entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to pick up documentation to get married. His fiancee, who was waiting outside, told the New York Times that he had not emerged hours later, and he has not been seen since.

Khashoggi, an former insider who became a staunch critic of Saudi Arabia’s new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has been living in self-imposed exile over concerns that he would be arrested during the prince’s crackdown on dissent. Saudi authorities have denied detaining him, but the Turkish government said earlier this week that he was still in the building.

“The administration really needs to step up and protect journalists and freedom of the press. This is outrageous that he’s been somehow disappeared,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told The Intercept. “The administration needs to demand his release.” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who is also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the move called into question the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States. “If he has been taken by the Saudi government, it’s absolutely unacceptable and a further sign that this crackdown on free speech is getting more serious.”

He added that it is “another reason why we should probably be rethinking the political and military blank check we’ve been giving the Saudis.”

Turkish officials: Saudi dissident was killed, dismembered and removed from the embassy in boxes

Turkish authorities suspect Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the Kingdom’s embassy in Istanbul, according to multiple reports over the weekend. His body was then removed from the consulate in small boxes, an official claimed Sunday. “The initial assessment of the Turkish police is that Mr. Khashoggi has been killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul,” a Turkish official told Reuters. “We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate,” they added.

Another official claimed a group of 15 Saudi nationals arrived in Istanbul on two planes and entered the consulate on the same day as Khashoggi, and later left the country.

An Arab government official told The New York Times that Khashoggi’s body was dismembered, and a Turkish official told NBC his body parts were removed from the consulate in multiple boxes.

Turan Kislakci, a friend of Khashoggi and the head of the Turkish-Arab Media Association, told Associated Press that he had spoken to Turkish officials and they told him: “He was killed, make your funeral preparations.” Kislakci said Sunday that Turkish police have evidence of the grisly crime that will be revealed in the next few days.

Baltimore cops charged in Freddie Gray’s death want the Supreme Court to hear their case

Five of the six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray are fighting to take down the Maryland state attorney who announced the charges – and they want to take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

In 2016, two officers were acquitted, another’s trial resulted in a hung jury, and prosecutors dropped charges against the remaining three officers. It was an emotional end to the case that had gripped the city of Baltimore ever since April 2015 when Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died from a spinal injury he suffered in the back of a police van, and the death was ruled a homicide.

After the state charges were dropped, five of the exonerated officers tried to sue state attorney Marilyn Mosby for malicious prosecution, defamation and invasion of privacy. But the Virginia appellate court handling the suit found that Mosby, who took office in 2015, was protected by prosecutorial immunity. Prosecutorial immunity is meant to shield prosecutors from being sued for their actions in a case. Now, the officers want the Supreme Court to reconsider the application of that immunity. ...

In addition to the suit filed by five Baltimore officers, a George Washington University law professor filed an ethics complaint against Mosby in 2016 with the Maryland Attorney Grievance Commission, calling her a “runaway prosecutor” and saying she proceeded with criminal charges against the officers without probable cause.

World leaders told they must act over climate change 'cliff-edge'

Political leaders have been urged to act on the landmark special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has warned that strong efforts would be required to prevent disastrous consequences from dangerous levels of climate change. Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief who led the historic Paris agreement of 2015, said: “There is nothing opaque about this new data. The illustrations of mounting impacts, the fast-approaching and irreversible tipping points are visceral versions of a future that no policy-maker could wish to usher in or be responsible for.”

Figueres said the need for urgent action was clear: “Emissions reductions today are much more important than emissions reductions tomorrow. The sooner we bend the curve of global emissions, the more options we will have on the table for safely reaching the necessary, desirable and achievable carbon neutrality by 2050.” The decisions taken in the next few years will be crucial because the investment cycle for power plants and transport systems is at least 10 years. Infastructure built now will continue to burn up carbon for decades to come if it is not re-engineered.

“This is the decisive decade,” said Johan Rockström, chief scientist at Conservation International and co-author of the recent Hothouse Earth report, which warned of a domino-like cascade of melting ice, warming seas, shifting currents and dying forests beyond which human efforts to reduce emissions will be increasingly futile. “Any investment in energy has a 10-year lifecycle. Even a family car: 1.5C has become real.” “Climate change is occurring earlier and more rapidly than expected. Even at the current level of 1C warming, it is painful,” he told the Guardian. “This report is really important. It has a scientific robustness that shows 1.5C is not just a political concession. There is a growing recognition that 2C is dangerous.”

Politicians are expected to respond later this year, when governments meet in Poland in December to flesh out the ways of meeting the goals set out in the Paris agreement. Progress on this step of implementing the agreement has been slow so far, the UN has warned. Although all of the world’s functioning governments are signed up to the Paris goals, the US under President Trump has begun its withdrawal, making it harder for supporters of the agreement to move forward in the talks.

Saving the world from catastrophic climate change will not be cheap

The earth is barreling towards a catastrophic future of extreme weather events, food shortages, wildfires and the extinction of all coral reef by 2040, according to a report published Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And the only solution is to spend a lot of money. The IPCC argues that governments must invest at least 2.5 percent of global GDP in order to limit the rise of temperatures on earth to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The report calls for an investment of $2.4 trillion per year in clean energy solutions until 2035, while at the same time reducing emissions from coal-fired power stations to almost zero by 2050. Scientists claim that “there are costs and benefits” to weigh up and that cutting emissions hard in the short term may cost a lot of money but it is still cheaper than paying for carbon dioxide removal later this century.

"The report also talks about the benefits as there is higher economic growth at 1.5 degrees than there is at 2 degrees, and you don't have the higher risk of catastrophic impacts at 1.5 that you do at 2,” Dr. Stephen Cornelius, a former U.K. IPCC negotiator, said.

The report was published in South Korea following a week of negotiations between the scientists who authored the report and 195 representatives from governments around the world. The document sets out the stark choice, saying exceeding 1.5 degrees would be playing with the livability of the planet. According to the data collected over the last three years, the earth is on course to be 3 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100, which is double the target set out in the 2015 Paris Accord, signed by 200 nations — though the U.S. recently withdrew from the agreement.

State Court Silences Climate Experts Set to Testify in Valve Turners' Necessity Defense Trial

In an eleventh hour decision, a Minnesota court "eviscerated" the defense of three activists—whose landmark trial began Monday for their 2016 multi-state #ShutItDown action that temporarily disabled tar sands pipelines crossing the U.S.-Canada border—by barring experts from testifying that their civil disobedience was necessary because fossil fuels are driving the global climate crisis.

"The court barred testimony from defense experts on the barriers to effective political action for addressing climate change, the efficacy of civil disobedience historically, and the imminence of climate change," according to the group Climate Direct Action.

While all charges against Steve Liptay, who filmed the Minnesota action, have been dropped, valve turners Emily Nesbitt Johnston and Annette Klapstein, along with their support person, Benjamin Joldersma, are still facing felony charges under Minnesota state law. Their legal team will now have to present their "necessity defense" without the slate of experts who had agreed to explain the climate crisis and the impact of civil disobedience to the jury.

This "stunning" reversal came after an appeals court ruled in April that they could present a necessity defense, a decision upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court in June. The rulings were celebrated by climate activists and experts nationwide as courts in Washington, North Dakota, and Montana blocked requests from fellow valve turners' on trial for the 2016 action to present such a defense.

"We were looking forward to entrusting this case to a Minnesota jury of our peers to decide after hearing expert scientists and social scientists discuss the facts of climate change and public policy," said Klapstein, a retired attorney. "By requiring us to establish the necessity defense, without allowing us to use our planned expert testimony to do so, the court has placed an overwhelming burden on us," she added. "I'm baffled by the surreal nature of this court's decision and timing."

"Four days before trial, for no apparent reason, the court eviscerated our defense, and essentially overruled itself," said Johnston. "It is impossible for us to properly defend ourselves without expert testimony."

Hurricane Michael: storm upgraded as Florida braces for 'dangerous' event

Tropical storm Michael has become a hurricane and is moving towards the Gulf of Mexico and is still likely to hit Florida’s northern Gulf coast, forecasts say. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami say Michael will now move over very warm waters and could strengthen into a major hurricane with winds topping 111 mph (178 kph) by Tuesday night.

Michael was lashing western Cuba late Monday morning with heavy rains and strong winds. According to the hurricane center, Michael’s top sustained winds were around 75 mph (120 kph).

Governor Rick Scott of Florida issued an order for a state of emergency for 26 counties to rush preparations in the Florida Panhandle and the Big Bend area, freeing up resources and activating 500 members of the Florida national guard before Michael. ...

Michael is the 13th named storm of the 2018 hurricane season.

Last week, I ran a story about Marcus Mitchell, a Standing Rock DAPL water protector who was shot in the face at close range by police thugs and severely injured. Those injuries notwithstanding, prosecution against him continued and he was sentenced to 3 years in prison. Some folks expressed interest in contributing to his cause in the comments and when I ran across his GoFundMe page this weekend I figured that I'd post the link here.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

At Secretive Retreat, Evangelicals Celebrate Brett Kavanaugh’s Confirmation

Sens. Susan Collins and Jeff Flake Are Frauds, Plain and Simple. Their Kavanaugh Votes Show It.

Pledging to Unseat Collins, Mainers Challenge Senator's "Infuriating and Completely False" Narrative on Response to Kavanaugh Vote

Here's "Something Bold" Democrats Can Do: Conduct the Kavanaugh Probe White House and GOP Refused to Have

A Little Night Music

Bull Moose Jackson - Watch My Signals

Bull Moose Jackson - Why Don't You Haul Off And Love Me

Bull Moose Jackson - I Want A Bowlegged Woman

Bull Moose Jackson - Cherokee Boogie

Bullmoose Jackson - Memphis Gal

Bull Moose Jackson & his Buffalo Bearcats - We Can Talk Some Trash

Bullmoose Jackson - Heavyweight Baby

Bullmoose Jackson - Bearcat Blues

Bullmoose Jackson - Bootsie