DL Open Thread: Saturday, March 14, 2026

A Charade Is A Charade Is A Charade:

Republican politicians don’t have much of a chance in Wilmington elections.

Residents of Delaware’s largest city, where Democrats hold a nearly 9-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans, haven’t elected a mayor or treasurer from the GOP for more than 50 years.

Republicans have only held that one Council seat, however, because of a provision in the city charter.

The charter stipulates that each party can only nominate three members for the four Council at-large seats in the city of 73,000 people. At-large members represent the whole city, as opposed to specific districts.

Since only three Democrats can be on the general election ballot, one Republican has always won the fourth at-large seat.

Since 2020, that Republican has been James Spadola, a former Newark police officer.

But in October, citing his disenchantment with President Trump’s second term, Councilman Spadola became a Democrat — leaving the GOP without any of Wilmington’s 15 elective offices.

So now we have Trippi Congo and Spadola engaging in a Theatre Of The Absurd:

Congo urged Spadola to rejoin the GOP by Feb. 16, but “should the matter remain unresolved after that date, we will consider next steps, including declaring your seat vacant.”

Spadola ignored the request and hired a lawyer. In recent days, he took to social media to denounce Congo’s position.

“It’s very clear what the charter intended, to have some representation from a minority party and that’s always been the Republican Party,’’ Congo said. “It could be the Green Party, it could be the independent Party, it could be any party.”(It should be The Working Families Party of Delaware.)

Congo reveals his charge is bullshit:

Congo agreed the charter doesn’t address changing parties, but said Spadola should not have done so after running as a Republican to win the GOP’s only seat.

“He exploited a loophole. I just don’t think that’s right,’’ Congo said. “You know, I saw a saying a few weeks ago that says, ‘Just because you might have the right to do something, doesn’t mean that it’s right to do it.’”

Game. Set. Match.  Except to point out that Spadola’s flip had nothing to do with Trump–it’s about his political ambition.  Bottom line: He’s just another tool (with a capital ‘T’) in Cassandra Marshall’s shrinking toolkit.

Hegseth Killed Those Iranian Kids–Because It Was Too Woke Not To:

Top military officials warned the Pentagon unsuccessfully last year not to gut oversight offices that limit risk to civilian casualties and investigate responsibility for their deaths, such as the recent strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed hundreds of children.

Then-Central Command chief Erik Kurilla and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown pushed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth not to slash the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence and other similar initiatives at American command posts, according to Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments and two other people familiar with the matter.

The high level of opposition to the cuts, which has not been previously reported, hints at the tension between top military officials and their civilian leader over the rules of engagement in combat, which the Pentagon chief has called “stupid.” It also comes as preliminary reports suggest the U.S. may have accidentally targeted the elementary school, which killed more than 170 students and is the largest U.S.-led killing of civilians in decades.

The revelation of previous backlash also follows Hegseth’s announcement this week that he would further cut the lawyers who advise commanders of an operation’s legality, known as judge advocate generals. He already fired many of those Army, Navy, and Air Force lawyers in the first days of the administration.

Just curious:  Has Hegseth arranged for ‘the smell of napalm’ to waft through his office?  You know, for inspiration?

‘Can’t Anyone Here Play This Game?’:

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice spent weeks emailing its request for Oklahoma’s voter rolls to the wrong email address. Then it sued Oklahoma for not complying. 

It began in December, when Department of Justice officials wrote a letter demanding that Oklahoma Secretary of State Paul Ziriax turn over the state’s voter registration lists, Democracy Docket reported Thursday.

There was already a problem: Paul Ziriax isn’t Oklahoma’s secretary of state, and never has been. He is actually the secretary of Oklahoma’s State Election Board. And somehow, that isn’t even the DOJ’s biggest blunder in this tale.

The agency didn’t hear back, so it sent another email, and then another. Nothing.

In late January, DOJ officials finally got a response from Oklahoma election official Misha Mohr, who said that her office had only just received the previous emails.

“The email address was misspelled on the previous correspondence,” she wrote. Instead of sending messages to “info” at the Oklahoma State Election’s office, the government had addressed their demands to “ifo” at the same mail server. 

This gaffe is part of a wider trend of unprecedented prosecutorial missteps by Trump’s Department of Justice, undermining numerous civil and criminal cases. A recent filing included misspelled versions of “voters,” “emergency,” and “United States.” Another filing repeatedly misspelled the name of an elected official. 

Spellcheck is too ‘woke’, or something?

This Attack On That Michigan Synagogue Depresses Me:

The man who rammed his truck into a Michigan synagogue on Thursday killed himself during a firefight with security guards, after his vehicle became lodged in a hallway during the attack, law enforcement officials said on Friday.

The vehicle was loaded with fireworks, and the engine apparently caught fire during the gunfight, Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. office in Detroit, said at a news conference on Friday evening.

The attacker, identified by federal officials as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, lived in Dearborn Heights, Mich., which is home to a large Muslim community about 20 minutes from the synagogue in West Bloomfield Township. Both towns are suburbs of Detroit.

Mr. Ghazali lost four relatives in an airstrike in Lebanon last week, according to a Lebanese official, who said he knew the family. A Dearborn Heights mosque held a memorial for Mr. Ghazali’s slain family members on Sunday, according to its imam, Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Institute of America.

In no way was anyone at that synagogue involved in the deaths of Mr. Ghazali’s family members.  However, I fear that Netanyahu’s war crimes has made it more likely that attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions becomes more likely in the wake of Bibi’s war crimes, including the needless carpet-bombing of Lebanon.

Trump Knows ‘All About’ Iranian Sleeper Cells.  Fills you full of confidence, doesn’t it?  Which dysfunctional agency is keeping close tabs on them?:

With U.S. and Israeli forces continuing offensive strikes on Iran, federal counterterrorism authorites are warning that the desperate theocracy could launch retaliatory strikes on American soil using sleeper cells, affiliated Iranian terrorist groups, lone wolf sympathizers or targeted cyberattacks.

Within days of the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, cryptic messages were broadcast globally on a new shortwave radio frequency.

“Tavajjoh! Tavajjoh!” the message began, using the Persian word for “attention.” The eerie male voice then read a seemingly random string of numbers.

The monotone transmission recalled the manner in which deep-cover Cold War spies for the KGB and CIA once received orders. Using a special encryption code, the operatives could translate the numerals into a readable message. Although messages from so-called number stations have been broadcast for decades, they are now less prevalent in the digital encryption age.

Federal authorities warned local law enforcement that they had detected a new broadcast of a likely encoded sequence that could be “an operational trigger” for “sleeper assets” potentially on U.S. soil.

At a news conference Monday, President Trump said officials were “on top” of the situation.

”They’ve been trying for a long time, and we’ve been very much on top of it,” Trump said in response to a question about whether Iran might activate sleeper cells in the U.S. “We’re watching every single one of them, yeah. We know a lot about them.”

He’s right, you know.  Other than him declaring war on Iran and decimating their country, nothing has really changed.  You can all rest easy.

What do you want to talk about?