DL Open Thread: Friday, August 8, 2025

Fascism ON THE MARCH!  Both the ‘Justice’ Department And the FBI have now been weaponized into Fascist institutions.  As in:

FBI To Go After Texas Legislators.  First thing to know is that no laws have been violated by the Democratic lawmakers:

Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on Thursday that FBI Director Kash Patel has granted his request for the federal government to assist with locating Texas House Democrats who fled the state in protest of GOP-led redistricting efforts.

Cornyn’s letter requesting federal help with locating and investigating the state legislators was sent on Tuesday.

“I thank President Trump and Director Patel for supporting and swiftly acting on my call for the federal government to hold these supposed lawmakers accountable for fleeing Texas. We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Cornyn said in a news release.

This, in service to upsetting the supposed once-every-ten-years redistricting because, absent this, Rethugs will lose bigly in the 2026 elections.  BTW, Trump purges the FBI of real FBI agents:

The FBI is forcing out more senior officials, including a former acting director who resisted Trump administration demands to turn over the names of agents who participated in Jan. 6 Capitol riot investigations and the head of the bureau’s Washington field office, according to people familiar with the matter and internal communications seen by The Associated Press.

The basis for the ouster of Brian Driscoll, who led the bureau in the turbulent weeks after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, were not immediately clear, but Driscoll’s final day at the FBI is Friday, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the personnel move by name and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.

In a word, Fascism.

DOJ Becomes Trump’s Weapon Of Revenge:

As Donald Trump’s Department of Justice expands investigations of his foes and ousts dozens of lawyers and staff who worked on cases targeting himself and his allies, scholars and ex-prosecutors say the rule of law is under siege in the US as the department morphs into Trump’s “personal weapon”.

The justice department’s politicization to please Trump was underscored by an announcement on 23 July of a new “ strike force” to investigate unsubstantiated charges that ex-president Barack Obama and top officials conspired to hurt Trump’s 2016 campaign and his presidency with inquiries into Russian influence operations to help Trump win, say critics.

The announcement came the day after Trump dodged queries from reporters about the justice department’s failure to produce long-promised files about the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and pivoted to blast Obama without evidence for “treason”. Trump’s conspiratorial charge echoed dubious claims by his national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, who days before called for a justice department inquiry into a purported “treasonous conspiracy”.

Legal scholars and ex-prosecutors say Trump and his loyal attorney general, Pam Bondi, have turned the justice department into his personal law firm to pursue his political and legal agendas.

“It’s not unprecedented for presidents to deploy their powers for personal ends, but no one including Nixon has done this with the intensity of Trump,” Peter Shane, who teaches constitutional law at New York University, told the Guardian.

Shane added: “DoJ is now being used as a personal weapon on behalf of Trump to a degree that is without precedent. Trump has a team of sycophants and enablers at DoJ. They’re not behaving the way office holders sworn to uphold the constitution are expected to behave.

In a word, Fascism.  So far, our Congressional troika has proven unable or unwilling to take anything resembling a stand on the Fascist takeover of the country.  Silence is complicity.

Which reminds me, Chris Coons remains a ‘pro-starvation’ Senator.  Here, Amy Klobuchar takes a belated baby step against genocide:

Amy Klobuchar, the senior senator from Minnesota, appeared last month in a photograph with Benjamin Netanyahu. Wearing a tight-lipped smile alongside a bipartisan group of senators, she hardly seemed thrilled to be there. But there she was, posing with a man who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court and has been credibly accused of committing genocide in Gaza.

The picture, snapped as alarm was growing over looming famine in Gaza and Israel pursued its pitiless military assault on the enclave, struck me as a maddening but apt illustration of the yawning gulf between the steadfast pro-Israel stance of leading Democratic politicians and their voters. It was, sadly, par for the grisly course.

Then last week Klobuchar did something that genuinely surprised me: She voted in favor of a pair of resolutions put forward by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a leading critic of Israel’s prosecution of the war, that would block the transfer of key offensive weapons to Israel, including 1,000-pound bombs and automatic assault rifles.

She was joined in one of the votes by 24 other Democrats and two independents, a majority of the Democratic caucus. Many were seeking to block weapons for Israel for the first time. And not just any Democrats. The ranking members of crucial committees — Foreign Relations, Appropriations and Armed Services — voted to block the transfers as well. A number of notable moderates joined the vote, including one of the most vulnerable in the 2026 midterms, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff.

LBR voted for Bernie’s resolution.  Granted, a baby step, but a step nonetheless.  Sarah McBride has finally said a couple of critical things about the ongoing genocide.  Not much, I grant you, but at least some movement.  Coons, however remains enamored of the ongoing genocide and supports sending even more weapons to enable Bibi to finish the job.  I’m old enough to remember Coons spouting humanistic religiosity that captivated at least some Delawareans.  Turns out that version of Coons was every bit as phony as the ‘Bearded Marxist’.  He is both an enabler of, and cheerleader for, genocide and the starvation of innocents.  Is there nobody to rid the Senate of this accidental senator, his Gore-Tex fortune, and his support of genocide?

Sad.

Delaware To Fight Back Over Julianne Murray’s Fealty To ICE.  Good.  Looks like everyone’s on board:

The Delaware Department of Labor (DOL) intends to fight back on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) request for payroll information for 15 businesses located within Delaware.

The ensuing legal battle appears to be one of the first known court cases in Delaware over ICE’s ramped up efforts to fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise within his inaugural address to deport “millions and millions” of people.

Gov. Matt Meyer recently signed a slate of bills aimed at protecting civil liberties and undocumented immigrants, including one prohibiting local law-enforcement agencies from entering into agreements with ICE to enforce immigration violations or share immigration enforcement related data.

“Since taking office in January, our administration has consistently prioritized protecting Delawareans from federal overreach that undermines our core values of fairness, dignity, and community trust. The recent federal subpoena directed at the Department of Labor is precisely the kind of government intrusion that we have fought against. Hard-working Delawareans deserve to have their rights and privacy protected. Delaware will continue to uphold the law, protect individual rights, and promote a compassionate and inclusive state for every resident,” Gov. Matt Meyer said in a statement in response to the case.

Attorney General Kathy Jennings agrees with the governor, noting DOJ is “proud” to represent DOL in the case.

“We will continue to work closely with Gov. Meyer and the Department of Labor to defend the rule of law, the rights of businesses and individuals alike to due process, and the Constitution,” Jennings said in a statement.

Kinda makes you (meaning me) wonder what Delaware’s Worst Governor Ever would have done in similar circumstances.  Besides being ‘unavailable for comment’.

A Big Fat Scam Perpetrated By A Delawarean.  He got caught.  Had no defense other than ‘he basically lost his mind’.

What do you want to talk about?