She looks nice.

That’s Freddie Oversteegen. She was 14 years old and living in the Netherlands when the Nazis invaded. She and her sister got busy.

If the Nazis or Dutch police caught the sisters, they might have killed them. However, the fact that they were both young girls—and Freddie looked even younger when she wore braids—meant that officials were less likely to suspect them of working for the resistance. This might be one of the reasons why, in 1941, a commander with the Haarlem Resistance Group visited their house to ask their mother if he could recruit Freddie and Truus.

Their mother consented and the sisters’ agreed to join. “Only later did he tell us what we’d actually have to do: sabotage bridges and railway lines,” Truus told Jonker. “‘And learn to shoot, to shoot Nazis,’ he added. I remember my sister saying: ‘Well, that’s something I’ve never done before!’”

In at least one instance, Truus seduced an SS officer into the woods so that someone from the resistance could shoot him. As the commander who recruited them had said, Freddie and Truus learned to shoot Nazis too, and the sisters began to go on assassination missions by themselves. Later on, they focused on killing Dutch collaborators who arrested or endangered Jewish refugees and resistance members.

I have to admire the Oversteegen sisters. They were doing good work. We should be more like Freddie and Truus.

On these missions, Freddie was especially good at following a target or keeping a lookout during missions since she looked so young and unsuspecting. Both sisters shot to kill, but they never revealed how many Nazis and Dutch collaborators they assassinated. According to Pliester, Freddie would tell people who asked that she and her sister were soldiers, and soldiers don’t say.

Consequently, we don’t have too many details about how their “liquidations,” as they called them, played out. Benda-Beckmann says that sometimes they would follow a target to his house to kill him or ambush them on their bikes.

Their other duties in the Haarlem Resistance Group included “bringing Jewish [refugees] to a new hiding place, working in the emergency hospital in Enschede… [and] blowing up the railway line between Ijmuiden and Haarlem,” writes Jonker.

I think it’s time to stop merely punching Nazis.

I don’t ever watch any of that biased punditry that infests broadcast television on Sunday mornings, but if I did, I’d probably see Murc’s Law in non-stop action.

“The widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics.” This is famously known as “Murc’s Law,” named after a commenter at the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money who noticed years ago the habitual assumption among the punditry that Republican misbehavior can only be caused by Democrats. Do Republicans reject climate science? Must be because Democrats failed to persuade them! Did Republicans pass unpopular tax cuts for the rich? Must be that Democrats didn’t do enough to guide them to better choices! Do Republicans keep voting for lunatics and fascists? It must be the fault of Democrats for being mean to them! Even Donald Trump’s election was widely blamed on Democrats — who voted against him, to be clear — on the bizarre grounds that Barack Obama should have rolled over and just let Mitt Romney win in 2012.

In order to be a highly paid influential thought-leader in the American news media, you have to apply the filter of Murc’s Law to everything you say. Oh, also: the “news” isn’t news, you have to suppress it until you’ve landed your lucrative book deal.

Awww. Some Trump apparatchiks are feeling uncomfortable.

I have a source inside the Trump regime who feels, in their own words, a little disillusioned. This person says they signed on to the Trump team because of DEI going too far and because woke culture was dividing the country, but is now concerned about the blatant criminal behavior of Donald Trump. Really? His last administration didn’t show you that? Well, OK.

DEI never went too far. If you think it did, that says more about you than it does about the policies, which were all about reasonable recognition of disparities. Everyone complaining about DEI are simply bigots who resent any awareness of their privilege.

Woke culture was not and is not dividing the country. If you want to be concerned about any attitudes, wake up to the culture of greed and so-called rugged individualism. What divides the country is that some people are incapable of sharing the wealth. We’re the richest country in the world with huge numbers of the poor, and a government that likes the idea of starving them to death as a tactic to end poverty.

The problem here, dear reporter, is that your source is a colossal asshole who cannot be trusted. They do not like the corruption, but the instant a trans person or a black person wanders into view they’ll go running into the arms of their orange Daddy. Screw ’em.

Back in December, there was a race for committee leadership in congress that exposed the flaws in our gerontocracy. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (age 35) ran for the house Oversight Committee lead against Gerry Connolly (age 74), a guy most of us had never heard of, who looked his age and was particularly cadaverous since he had been suffering from esophageal cancer. If they had any plans for the future, Ocasio-Cortez was the obvious choice…but the equally old Democrats all voted for Connolly. This was insane, short-sighted, and stupid, and additionally was incredibly selfish of Connolly, but I guess power demands its perks. Democrats said he was “feisty”. “Feisty” is kind of a death sentence as far as I’m concerned.

Now Connolly has predictably died.

In addition, since Trump’s ascendancy to peak corruption in January, two other aged Democrats have flopped over dead of old age: Raul Grijalva (age 77) and Sylvester Turner (age 70), both of whom had been diagnosed with cancer. The Democrats are losing representation and votes to inescapable mortality. All of them may have been the very best liberal politicians, but good intentions do not impress the grim reaper.

We cannot make an unconstitutional decree that people above a certain age may not run for office, but the Democratic party could decide to purge the party leadership of all those ancient gomers at, for instance, the age of 65. They wouldn’t be kicked out of the building, but they would be required to make room for a younger generation. I think that would revitalize the party, and encourage people to retire at a reasonable age.

I’m 68. I can say this. I’d be accommodating if I were forced to step down from my position, IF the US provided for a livable retirement wage (retiring senators and representatives have no worries there) and IF the US supported the educational system well enough that they could maintain staffing (again, congress is never going to be left short-staffed).

Take the hint, Chuck Schumer (age 74).

The person who has been appointed to oversee immigration in this country is a world-class moron, and is obviously unfit for the job.

In a recent Senate hearing, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem made a concerning misstatement regarding the constitutional principle of habeas corpus. When Senator Maggie Hassan inquired about its meaning, Noem responded:

“Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”

Senator Hassan promptly corrected her, stating, “That’s incorrect.”

If you know what habeas corpus is, raise your hand. Congratulations, you’re better qualified for appointment to the highest positions of authority in the United States than is Kristi Noem.

I think “habeas corpus” is the nickname she gave to the open gravel pit behind her house where she has the corpses of her family pets and horses.

And then they came for the bookstores. As usual, Texas Republicans lead the way in oppression and ignorance.

A bill has been introduced to the Texas Legislature that could result in bookstores facing fines and legal costs if they place material deemed “obscene” within access of a minor.

House Bill 1375 was proposed by state Representative Nate Schatzline, a Republican, who said it is needed to keep “harmful material” away from children. Critics argue it would force bookshops to self-censor or risk potentially devastating lawsuits.

In recent years, a number of Republican-controlled states have passed laws banning school libraries from holding certain books that they regard as inappropriate.

The Texas Legislature in 2023 passed a bill forbidding school libraries from having any book among its stacks that “describes or portrays sexual conduct” in a “patently offensive way” that are not required by the curriculum.

PEN America recorded 3,362 instances of what it classified as book bans across the U.S. in the 2022-23 academic year, a 33 percent rise from the previous year.

House Bill 1375 would make commercial enterprises, such as bookstores, liable for “damages arising from the distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor.”

This would include when such material is “readily accessible to minors” or “includes a minor’s visual image, audio voice, or participation in any manner.”

Any business found to have broken this law could have to pay damages and would be liable for associated court costs and legal fees.

The library in my town has a vast collection of paperback cowboy and romance novels. We have a bookstore of sorts that specializes in gaming, D&D, and comic books. Can I deem those as “patently offensive”? Those romance novels feature a lot of heaving bosoms and passionate kisses, definitely a portrayal of “sexual conduct”. Can we shut them all down? (Don’t laugh, I’ve heard that one of our city council members actually wants to close the library).

When I was a kid in the 1970s in Washington state, my local library had copies of Playboy and Playgirl openly displayed in the periodicals section, and they had a good collection of underground comics — it’s where I read R. Crumb. I read them there, for the articles, you know, and look how I turned out. And then look at Ted Cruz. Do you really want to be like Texas?

It’s a beautiful state with a fabulous climate, when it’s not on fire, but what’s going on with their politicians? This question was prompted by an observation about their current governor, Gavin Newsom.

After two months and a gratuitous 15 episodes — including interviews with far-right talking heads Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, Obama-era Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein — guess how many women the governor of California has deigned to interview on his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom”?

One.

That (dubious) honor went to Amie Parnes, a senior political journalist at The Hill, who shared the interview with Johnathon Allen, a political journalist with NBC News. The two co-authored “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” about the 2024 presidential election, which was released in April.

Good for her. But in a state that’s home to nearly 40 million people, more than half of whom are women, the governor really can’t find any of them to interview for his little podcast project? Yikes.

I know — that’s not the worst thing he has done with his little podcast, that honor belongs to his willingness to throw trans athletes under the bus. That podcast, which I’ve never listened to, seems to be a self-constructed catastrophe to his political aspirations, and he keeps on doing it. There was a time a few years (or eternities) ago that he was considered a solid presidential candidate, but would I ever vote for him? No. It’s incredibly shallow of me, I know, but just the hair kills my impression of him. He looks like an insurance salesman or a preacher. His policies make me think he’s in the pocket of Big Tech. He’s definitely not progressive at all.

But then I started wondering — California is a populous and rich state, where are the national leaders it should be turning out? There’s Richard Nixon, the least said the better, who was our only president born in California. Then we had Ronald Reagan, the man responsible for starting the country’s downward spiral, who wasn’t born there, but was governor and is always associated with the state. Why do so many awful political careers start there? Is it something about Sacramento?

I’m already biased against California presidential candidates, so let’s not ever nominate another one. I hope Gavin’s political career has reached its apogee.

Speaking of big powerful states with an appalling political culture, dare I mention…TEXAS?

This first one is obvious and is a knife aimed at the heart of our country: the Trump administration is talking about suspending habeas corpus, and clearly their pet rat-weasel, Stephen Miller, is floating the idea to the press.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Friday that the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, the right of a person to challenge their detention in court.

If carried out by President Donald Trump, the suspension of habeas corpus would be a dramatic escalation of his administration’s immigration policy by significantly curtailing a right enshrined in the Constitution.

This is what tyrants do — they want the ability to silence critics by throwing them in prison while denying them the right to defend themselves. Never mind that they are busy draping themselves in the corpse of Abraham Lincoln, because he suspended the right during the Civil War (we are not in a war, no matter how insincerely they insist we are being “invaded”), this is a fundamental attack on the rule of law.

The second sign of imminent doom is that Dan Three Arrows is returning to posting video essays. The United States is so fucked right now.

I predict that there will be blood in the streets before this is over; if he suspends habeas corpus, why not suspend the 2026 elections next?

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If all that isn’t enough for you…

ADepartment of Homeland Security (DHS) official confirmed Saturday that arrests of Democratic members of Congress “is definitely on the table” following a confrontation at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Newark, New Jersey.

This statement comes after Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested on Friday at the Delaney Hall detention center, sparking a dispute over what actually occurred during the incident.