DL Open Thread Saturday, April 13, 2024

People who thought Ron DeSantis might stop acting like a tinhorn dictator after his presidential-race embarrassment can abandon that hope. He signed a bill that turns police oversight boards over to the police.

In what’s now a running gag, Truth Social’s stock price fell again. It would make a better reality show than the one that got Trump a star in a Hollywood sidewalk. BTW, Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, the guy who you’ve read has a “position” in the company, doesn’t much care what direction the stock goes in – he makes money either way, unless it goes bankrupt. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Joe DiStefano explains how: Basically, he buys a bunch of stock and shorts it at the same time, making a profit when he sells to people buying in either direction.

There’s word that Biden “is considering”dropping charges against Julian Assange. Talk, especially from Biden, is cheap. Is this a feeler for a sop to the left angry about genocide in Palestine?

A lot of people think the Russians are paying lawmakers and influencers to push Putin’s agenda in Ukraine. As this ex-CIA author notes, it’s happening in Europe, and it seems the likeliest explanation for the anti-Ukraine fervor in some quarters of Congress.

Those gift cards you see hanging in racks at the grocery store and other retailers have become targets for fraudsters.

Card draining is when criminals remove gift cards from a store display, open them in a separate location, and either record the card numbers and PINs or replace them with a new barcode. The crooks then repair the packaging, return to a store and place the cards back on a rack. When a customer unwittingly selects and loads money onto a tampered card, the criminal is able to access the card online and steal the balance.

The feds are investigating, and Pro Publica reports that Chinese organized crime appears to be behind it.

Speaking of organized crime, Leonard Leo, the Man Who Sold the Courts, is defying a Senate subpoena, demonstrating the consistency of his position: He wants the courts he stacked to be the supreme rulers of the land. He doesn’t have to listen to the elected representatives of the people. As Republicans like to remind us, this isn’t a democracy.

The floor’s yours.