Well, this isn’t surprising. Matt Gaetz is under investigation for a relationship with a 17 year old teenager.

The Justice Department is investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz — a Florida Republican considered a close political ally of former president Donald Trump — over an alleged sexual relationship with an underage girl, according to people familiar with the matter, though the probe has been complicated by the congressman’s assertion that his family is being extorted.

The investigation into Gaetz began some time last year, when Trump was still in office, after a criminal case against a different Florida politician led investigators to allegations that the congressman had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her travel, a person familiar with the matter said on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. As that probe was underway, the person said, Gaetz’s family raised allegations that the congressman was being extorted, and the FBI is separately exploring those claims.

“Under investigation” does not mean he’s guilty, of course. There could be an innocent explanation. What’s suspicious, though, is his response. He went on Tucker Carlson, and his argument was: a) Hey, Tucker, you were once falsely accused, too; b) he denied that he travelled with a 17 year old and had travel records to prove it, and c) someone tried to extort $25 million from his daddy to hide the evidence.

That’s just weird. Trying to recruit Carlson as a supporter is irrelevant; that Carlson might have been falsely accused does not mean Gaetz is also innocent. No one thinks that being on a plane with a teenager is a crime. The accusations have emerged out of a federal investigation of a sex trafficker, so what he should have denied was that he was dating or had sex with her, which he didn’t do. Was he dating someone less than half his age or not? The next phase in his denial is right here:

What really mystifies me, though, is why is the extortionist running to Daddy Gaetz? Matt Gaetz is 38 years old and presumably an autonomous adult human being. If I were trying to blackmail or extort money from a victim, I’d go straight to them, terrify them with my wicked claims, and let them go running to a big-money source.

It’s all very strange. I’m sure more info will be emerging. Perhaps Gaetz will consult with a competent lawyer and come out with a logical, coherent explanation. Although it seems he’s sounding out an alternative strategy.

Separately, Axios reported Tuesday that Gaetz was telling confidants he was contemplating not seeking reelection and possibly leaving his post early for a job at Newsmax, a conservative media outlet.

I used to appreciate Glenn Greenwald, back in the Bush years when he was a loud voice against the American war machine, defender of Chelsea Manning, etc. But then he got weird, and in his efforts to oppose the Establishment became increasingly aligned with what were fringe political perspectives that have since become mainstream Republicanism, and he never seemed to notice. He resigned from the Intercept because he thought they were neglecting marginal voices.

On Thursday, Greenwald penned a lengthy resignation letter ripping the publication he helped co-found, saying it is “completely unrecognizable” from its creation in 2014.

“Rather than offering a venue for airing dissent, marginalized voices and unheard perspectives, it is rapidly becoming just another media outlet with mandated ideological and partisan loyalties,” Greenwald wrote on Thursday.

So now, to avoid those “mandated ideological and partisan loyalties”, he has decided that the “marginalized voice and unheard perspective” he must support is that of… Tucker Carlson?

It’s good to see that I’m not the only one who has been dismayed by his strange and obvious rightward turn — not just a turn, by a headlong rush into the arms of Carlson and Jimmy Dore and other pundits who try to pretend to be brave centrists while parroting the Republican party line.

At this point, Greenwald seems to have almost no ideology besides reflexive contrarianism. Perhaps this is simply the end result of spending hours on Twitter every day for years, or spending two (or four?) years focused laser-like on the Russia inquiry. His incessant—and often finely detailed, and articulate—criticisms have transformed the man into a kind of fanatic.

More problematic, obviously, this tendency towards contrarian criticism has increasingly aligned him with the far right. Some of this can clearly be chalked up to the simplification of information within the context of social media; self-reinforcing media bubbles are created. But we pick our bubbles, and Greenwald appears to be comfortable with his niche.

It is worth noting that the rhetorical overlap between Greenwald and the far right was always there, but could, in the past, usually be plausibly discounted as both-sides hostility towards a corrupt elite—consider the comparisons between Trump and Bernie. Or at least that’s how I felt. No longer. Take a look at Greenwald’s Twitter feed, which reads as an unending stream of right-wing grievance against cultural liberalism, and/or specific and almost exclusive amplification of right-wing media.

Right now, he is just another media pundit with “mandated ideological and partisan loyalties” of the kind he deplored — and worse, he has incomprehensibly hitched his star to the wagon of Trumpism and far right conservatism. I’d say that’s too bad, but after four years of incontrovertible empirical evidence that that political wing is incompetent and evil, I just have to say … screw him.

At the rate he’s going, Madison Cawthorn will be president one day.

Madison Cawthorn’s political origin story is that of an innocent Christian boy transformed through tragedy into a fierce freedom fighter. This tale begins with Cawthorn as a popular home-schooled teenager. He played football in a faith-based league, worked at Chick-fil-A, and was destined for a long and rewarding military career. Tragically, his path to the U.S. Naval Academy was derailed by a brutal car crash. Cawthorn, then just nineteen, was “declared dead on the scene.” But then a miracle happened. He kept the faith and fought his way back to a fulfilling life. In short order, he became an inspirational speaker, self-proclaimed CEO of a real estate investment company, and Paralympic athlete.

Cawthorn’s quasi-biblical biography captured the hearts of many in North Carolina’s 11th district, who last year elected him one of the youngest Congressmen in American history. While most political careers are assisted by mythmaking, Cawthorn’s self-spun narrative is particularly fictitious. In truth, he’s a college dropout, credibly accused sexual predator, and fan of the Third Reich who had no path to the Paralympics and was rejected by the Naval Academy. Contrary to Cawthorn’s past statements, he was not declared dead at his car’s crash site, and his real estate “business” appears to have only purchased a single foreclosed lot.

But what Cawthorn lacks in integrity he makes up for in resiliency. The determination and durability he demonstrated throughout his post-crash recovery—plus his natural born charisma—served him well during his Congressional bid. Cawthorn used these skills to convince many low-information voters that he was a soldier of some sort, then leveraged the credibility conferred by this false perception to cast his Democratic opponent, a retired Air Force Colonel named Moe Davis, as a “dishonorable” ally of terrorists. This warped reality led to a bizarre Election Day moment in which a voter essentially recognized Cawthorn as a decorated war hero. “Hey,” the voter began, “thanks for, uh, doing your service—.” Before he could finish, Cawthorn interjected: “It’s an honor to get to fight for America,” he said.

The article also points out something important: while Cawthorn is the most extravagantly dishonest of the Republican valor-thieves, Democrats do it too, unconvincingly rubbing themselves up against the “glamour” of big-money defense contractors and citizen enthusiasm for bigger, better, nastier weapons. That’s a mistake.

Democrats would do best to frame war as what it is: a deeply damaging experience for American service members, their families, and the world. In their failure to do so, the left has not only perpetuated conflict but also failed to define peace. The Pentagon has stepped into this vacuum and convinced the American people—a majority of whom want a smaller military footprint abroad—that peace is armed, dangerous, and MAD. Those who describe it otherwise, or call for the peacekeepers to put down their guns, are deemed weak-willed and anti-American.

Unwilling to challenge this consensus, Democrats continue to concoct war stories or cozy up to the military establishment in hopes of insulating themselves from criticism. Take Bernie Sanders’s support of the F-35 fighter jet being based in his hometown of Burlington, a highly controversial position that a political scientist once half-jokingly suggested to me was directed “almost at the point of a gun.”

Dulce et decorum est and all that. They really need to read beyond the title.

Sydney Powell (remember her? One of Trump’s most ridiculous defenders?) is being sued for defamation, because her lies cost a company that made voting machines a heck of a lot of money. Her defense is a grifter’s work of art.

Right-wing lawyer Sidney Powell is claiming in a new court filing that reasonable people wouldn’t have believed as fact her assertions of fraud after the 2020 presidential election.

The election infrastructure company Dominion Voting Systems sued Powell for defamation after she pushed lawsuits and made appearances in conservative media on behalf of then-President Donald Trump to sow doubt about the 2020 election results. Dominion claims that Powell knew her election fraud accusations were false and hurtful to the company.

Did you believe anything she said? Then Sydney Powell believes you weren’t a reasonable person. Ha ha, don’t you feel foolish now?

I guess that was the kraken, the revelation that Powell was a fraud and a liar.

There are a lot of people who participated in the recent insurrection who are pooping their diapers right now, and I’m here for it. They seem to be shocked that they are actually being held accountable for breaking the law. It’s hilariously stupid.

Take, for instance, the case of Debra Maimone and Philip Vogel, two business owners from Pittsburgh. One of the slight surprises emerging from these proceeding is how many of these people are reasonably well-off, middle class small business owners by day, and shrieking MAGAts the instant they get on the internet. Maimone and Vogel are definitely in that category, and the capitol insurrection was their opportunity to bring their online persona out into real-world action. They still tried to hide their identities behind masks, but poorly, and the police have thoroughly documented their presence in the event (pdf). All those security cameras caught their every move, including when they briefly took the mask off to take a selfie (brilliant criminal minds at work), when they broke in, when they moved into very offices, and when they stole stuff from capitol security. In some ways, it’s rather chilling how completely they monitored every movement of these individuals.

They also got a bonanza of information from Parler. Hoo boy, Parler was like the Rosetta stone to break far-right coding. People had to register with real names and all kinds of confidential information, so once the police got that, they could trace all kinds of loud-mouthed assholery made under the cloak of anonymity (they thought!) straight to idiotic small business owners. Like this absurdity from Debra Maimone:

She praises those brave patriots who occupied the government building FULL OF TYRANTS in one breath, and in the next insists oh no, she wasn’t in there. She was. She’s a chickenshit who just revealed that she knew her actions were illegal, but is going to deny it to avoid the consequences.

I’ll be mildly surprised if she gets the full ten-year sentence from the court, but I’ll be even more surprised if she escapes conviction or gets a trivial sentence — the case against her is awfully strong. She and Vogel are now out on $10,000 bail, but the tyrants have told her she can’t have any guns while awaiting trial.

Here’s their business, Vera General Contracting & Cleaning Services, and the Yelp reviews are amusing.

Super gross company. Owners are rude and outwardly racist. Asked me why I have a BLM sign in my yard saying they don’t work with people who support them. Umm… gee Karen how about because I’m black and I believe in equality.

I’m also a Christian so I forgive those who display hateful behavior–but it’s clear they are not because when I referenced John 13:34 they had no clue and seemed confused. Typical.

To add insult to injury they quoted me one price on the phone, but when they saw me they doubled it before even going inside my home.

It’s obvious that when they realized I’m a black woman they decided to try and screw me over.

This one is a little more succinct.

They promised me they’d do some work for me this weekend but now cannot as they have been arrested for being domestic terrorists.

Awww…

I never want to see what the local police are saying about the citizens they “serve and protect”. I suspect that some of it will be like what was exposed when text messages between Eureka, CA police officers were leaked. It’s a lot of contempt for the homeless and mentally ill, sexual descriptions of women they see on the street, and macho promises to shoot and beat hippies, drug addicts, and protesters.

Among the most appalling stories there was that the local public health department was asking these untrained, unprofessional, abusive thugs to check up on people who contracted COVID-19. The police called them “outbreak monkeys”. And these are the people expected to aid public health officials? Inappropriate much?

Take away a big chunk of the money spent on assholes with guns and recommit it to EMTs and social workers and people who actually know something other than how to threaten and harm others. At least some people are aware of what needs to change.

Banter like that captured in the Eureka text messages shows the rare, unvarnished reality of how some officers view their work, said Stinson, who used to work for a police department himself.

“This is the police subculture of that agency unmasked,” Stinson said. “This is the officers in their natural habitat, talking amongst themselves. It’s an us-versus-them mentality. It’s a sexualized environment where policing is violent. It’s ugly.”

The messages also show an environment resistant to change in the city, which for years has also struggled with a swell of drug abuse, homelessness and overwhelmed social services.

One officer in the Eureka texts appeared to ridicule efforts to ban chokeholds and other deadly restraints against suspects. In one text exchange, an officer shared a YouTube video about “control techniques” being barred in New York City. “(Gov. Gavin) Newsom is already j—- off with excitement hoping he can get it here I’m sure,” another officer wrote.

“At the end of the day, whether somebody was joking or not joking, or intended to to be offensive or not, we have to be responsible and accountable for our words and our actions,” Watson said. “And we have to be careful that everything that we do on and off duty reflects in a positive light, that reinforces trust with our community.”

Robinson, the former chief in Phoenix, said comments like those in the text messages are detrimental to the good work the vast majority of law enforcement officers are trying to do — especially given the recent reckoning facing law enforcement.

He said, based on the text messages, they need a cultural change.

Yeah, right. Two of the officers responsible for some of the worst messages have been put on paid leave; their co-conspirators in the department are probably just waiting for the heat to die down so they can put them back on the streets.

You’re sinking pretty low there, Lara Trump.

A dog rescue charity with links to Lara Trump has spent as much as $1.9 million at former President Donald Trump’s properties over the last seven years and will drop an additional quarter-million at his Mar-a-Lago country club this weekend.

According to a permit filed with the town of Palm Beach, Florida, Big Dog Ranch Rescue estimates it will spend $225,000 at the club where Donald Trump has taken up full-time residence since leaving the White House. All the profit from that spending winds up in his pocket.

Lara Trump, the Donald’s daughter-in-law, wants to run for the US Senate from North Carolina. Do North Carolinians hate puppies? I hope they remember this grift.

What a strange headline: “Cuomo accusations split Democrats between wanting an investigation or a resignation”. How about an investigation, which prompts a resignation? Why not have him resign, and follow through with an investigation? Or do both simultaneously? I don’t care. Andrew Cuomo is a rolling disaster. Stop him now.

It’s not just that he hid nursing home deaths and mismanaged the pandemic for the most vulnerable populations. It’s that he runs the state as a smug patriarch and fosters a patronizing culture of sexism. Totally familiar. This crap is everywhere, and no one ever seems to take any steps to bring the abusers back in line. Listen to this woman who worked with him.

I never thought the governor wanted to have sex with me. It wasn’t about sex. It was about power. He wanted me to know that I was powerless, that I was small and weak, that I did not deserve what relative power I had: a platform to hold him accountable for his words and actions. He wanted me to know that he could take my dignity away at any moment with an inappropriate comment or a hand on my waist. (The Cuomo administration has declined to comment.)

It’s not that Cuomo spares men in his orbit from his trademark bullying and demeaning behavior. But the way he bullies and demeans women is different. He uses touching and sexual innuendo to stoke fear in us. That is the textbook definition of sexual harassment.

The message is that as long as you don’t rape or molest a woman, you can get away with all kinds of demeaning behavior. Go ahead, let all the apparatchiks in your orbit sneer at women. No crime, no foul.

Unfortunately, though, it wasn’t just the culture of the Cuomo administration I had to survive in New York’s capital. If it wasn’t Cuomo putting his arm around me, it was a drunken state lawmaker propositioning me at a bar or a guard repeatedly denying me access to the Senate chambers or a male colleague in the press corps refusing to accept his own complicity in what was happening. Whether the governor resigns or finishes out his term or is reelected or runs for another office, his eventual departure alone will not end the legacy of sexual harassment in Albany. As a former colleague recently tweeted, it’s “as pervasive as air.”

I know, who cares? Isn’t that women’s role, to look pretty and be nice toys to touch?

I supported the eviction of Al Franken from congress for the same reason: nothing he did was criminal, but it was disrespectful and sent a message that women are appropriate targets for demeaning jokes. Sorry, Al, you did good work but are a necessary casualty of an important shift in our social environment. Meanwhile, Cuomo is a colossal arrogant asshole who bungled his way through the pandemic and has no redeeming characteristics to cause us any doubts. So why are we debating whether he ought to resign?

I’ve been struggling to come up with a good excuse for keeping the British monarchy around, and I’ve come up with two. Just two.

1. Inspiring the Irish to write lovely diatribes against kings, queens, and other such useless “influencers”.
   

   Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.

   Beyond this, it’s the stuff of children’s stories. Having a queen as head of state is like having a pirate or a mermaid or Ewok as head of state. What’s the logic? Bees have queens, but the queen bee lays all of the eggs in the hive. The queen of the Britons has laid just four British eggs, and one of those is the sweatless creep Prince Andrew, so it’s hardly deserving of applause.

2. Giving conservatives apoplexy as they twist themselves into knots to defend the indefensible.

   British TV personality Piers Morgan on Wednesday doubled down on his criticism of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, after being pressured out of his high-profile anchor job at “Good Morning Britain.”

   In typical style, he dug in his heels, refused to apologize and announced he would be back.

   “On Monday, I said I didn’t believe Meghan Markle in her Oprah [Winfrey] interview. I’ve had time to reflect on this opinion, and I still don’t,” he tweeted.

   Morgan sensationally resigned Tuesday after his network was flooded with complaints about his coverage of the interview. He had said he “didn’t believe a word” Meghan told Winfrey, specifically her assertion that she felt suicidal and was offered no help from Buckingham Palace.

These are all worthy accomplishments, but also rather superfluous. Irish writers have a long history of beautiful writing and hardly need a royal cause to motivate them; for that matter, the Scots and Welsh have also achieved much in spite of the English appendage to their homelands. While I’m happy to see Piers Morgan blow himself up, conservatives will seek out and detonate outrage no matter where it comes from. If they aren’t rushing to support the British Royal family, they’ll just latch on to some other victim, like Pepe LePew.

Come to think of it, a British royal and an entitled, oblivious cartoon skunk do have much in common.