Friday, January 23, 2026

Special Counsel Jack Smith's Congressional Testimony: Procedures, Findings And Smith's Decisive Conclusion That Trump Was Involved In Heavyweight Criminal Activity


Jamie Raskin delivers opening remarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjnlO9UiL0g


Jack Smith, the former special prosecutor who led two failed prosecutions against President Donald Trump, is publicly testifying before the ...
YouTube · CNN · 9 hours ago









LIVE: Jack Smith testifies at House Judiciary Committee ...


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The Bonus Round
If you only want the scoop on Jack Smith's congressional testimony, please go no farther.
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The Normalization Of Cruelty During Donald Trump's Administration: A Compendium  (Updated July 6, 2025)



In Praise Of Canada - And My Fervent Hope That America's Empire-Of-Cruelty Collapses



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Why Canada Is A Civilized Country... And by contrast, why the United States is Barbaric. (This is a re-post from 2013. Many photo links are broken, but the narrative remains true and intact.)


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The American Revolution
by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and Steven Schmidt
(All episodes now streaming on PBS)

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The Revolutionary War Was A Bloody Mistake. We Should Not Have Polluted Our National Wellspring With Needless Carnage, But Instead Should Have Followed Canada's Lead (As A Nearly Identical British Colony), Evolving Peacefully Into National Sovereignty Less Than A Hundred Years Later, Becoming An Exemplary Member Of The World Community


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The Iroquois-Seneca were the native people who, until their near extermination, 
lived on the ground where I grew up.
(The Noll-Archibald family cottage on Honeoye Lake was located 200 yards from a Seneca burial ground excavated by the University of Rochester in 1955. See: White. Marian E. 1957 A Salvage Dig at Honeoye Lake. Museum Service, October issue: 24-25. Rochester Museum. Rochester)

Brennan Law Center: "Canceled Election" /// George Washington and Seneca Indian Genocide /// Marine Commandant Major General Smedley Butler /// Dwight Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex /// The American Revolution Was A Bloody Mistake


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Donald Trump, Felon: Starting With His Trump University Scam And Itemizing His Criminality On Through His First Wife Ivana's Accusation Of Violent, Hair-Tearing Rape


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Master Compendium Of Trump's Mendacity: Malignant Messiah Lies More Easily Than He Metabolizes. (Or... You Know He's Lying Because His Lips Are Moving.)


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Compendium: Christian Conservatism, Biblical Literalism And The Unique Hatred Of Yahweh's Command That ALL Men In Any Town Where Rebellious Children Live, MUST Stone Them To Death


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"All" My Blog Posts Containing The Word "Jesus," Or The Word "Christ" -- Plus "A Theology In Memes"


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Everything Jesus (And The Apostles) Had To Say About Rich People And Poor People


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"The Rich Plunder The Poor, Then Pile The Blame On The Dispossessed" (Updated 9/26/2025)


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The Woe Passages
2.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woes_of_the_Pharisees (Of the two major Jewish sects in Jesus' time, Yeshua was affiliated with the Pharisees.)

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"The Pharisees Are Always With Us. They Are The People Who..."


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Is this why "Christian" "conservatives" (who are neither) lead meaningless lives, approving His Maligancy and his Casual Cruelty because they have been remade in the image of their vengeful gods, and are thus always on the lookout to punish people?

As we discover at the end of Dr. Seuss' classic kids' book about the theft of Christmas, 
"The Grinch" is a "foul-tempered misanthrope" whose "heart was two sizes too small."

The salient difference between The Grinch and Trump's ersatz "Christian" lickspittles
 is that Trump's suck-ups have hearts - and heads - that are two sizes too small.

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But worst of all, "everybody gets in" for heaven and hell are the same "place" 
seen through different lenses, lenses of our own lifelong manufacture.

Imagine the 73 million "Americans" who voted for Trump -- in order to elect him a SECOND time!! -- realizing at The Pearly Gates that everyone gets into "heaven," and only the spiritual invertebrates are tormented by this fact.
 
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Fr. Thomas Merton Explains -- In 16 Words -- Why "Christian" "Conservatives" Are Always Wrong
https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/08/fr-thomas-merton-explains-in-16-words.html

Thomas Merton: Our job is to love others – When did you last feel ...

Compendium Of Christianity Posts: Why "Conservative" "Christians" Are All Going To Hell (If There Is A Hell...Which I Don't Believe)




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Wednesday, January 21, 2026

I've been pissed off at suck-hole religion and suck-hole politics since I was "knee high to a grasshopper." From now on, I'm cutting no slack. These bad actors -- clerical and political -- deserve unrelenting opprobrium

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Look deep into the fascist goon's eyes.

The Normalization Of Cruelty During Donald Trump's Administration: A Compendium  (Updated July 6, 2025)


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In Praise Of Canada - And My Fervent Hope That America's Empire-Of-Cruelty Collapses


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Heer's how to get a semblance of Christianity back...

Joe Rogan and Ezra Klein (Of The New York Times) Interview Texas Democratic Representative James Talarico, A Christian Seminarian And Rising Democratic Star

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"Bad Religion: A Compendium"


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Compendium Of Christianity Posts: Why "Conservative" "Christians" Are All Going To Hell (If There Is A Hell...Which I Don't Believe)


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MAGA's God is as false as they come.

Any MAGA "Christian" who claims the bible is inerrant 
needs to come to grips with 1 John 4:18
Otherwise, they're trafficking in spiritual sludge.

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Christianity: A Compendium Of "What Went Wrong" - And Current Worship Of The Wrongness

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If there is anything like a "judgment" at the "Pearly Gates," I speculate that the litmus for "getting into heaven" will be to "embrace" the person we have disliked/hated most in life -- and to do so in the presence of God... without any external prompting. "This is a test. Only a test. But your eternal welfare depends on it." In this life, we make the heavenly - or hellish - "bed we lie in," upon arrival at "the other shore." There is none of "conservative" "Christianity's" "sola fide" nonsense.


Either we make ourselves "fit" for paradise by working diligently, dedicating ourselves to non-judgmental service... or, there will be "hell to pay" because we have not "done the work" to make ourselves "fit" for heaven. Heaven and Hell are not "states" conferred upon us, but states we prepare ourselves to embrace. And if we did not learn to be loving, kind and generous "to the least of our brothers and sisters," what could have been heaven is hell, and what could have been hell is heaven.

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Salvation in a nutshell:
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Fr. Thomas Merton Explains -- In 16 Words -- Why "Christian" "Conservatives" Are Always Wrong
https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/08/fr-thomas-merton-explains-in-16-words.html


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"The Love Of Money Is The Root Of All Evil" - An Open Invitation To Christian Conservatives

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The Normalization Of Cruelty During Donald Trump's Administration: A Compendium


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Monday, January 19, 2026

"This Is The Only Card Trump Can Play," Jamelle Bouie

Jamelle Bouie
January 17, 2026
Federal immigration officers in action on the street.
John Locher/Associated Press

Not since the British occupation of Boston on the eve of the Revolutionary War has an American city experienced anything like the blockade of Minneapolis and its surrounding areas by the federal government.

Acting under the pretext of immigration enforcement, the Trump administration has sent both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to terrorize the people of Minneapolis. Masked paramilitaries stalk streets, schools, businesses and other places of public accommodation in search of anyone deemed “illegal,” regardless of whether they’re citizens or legal residents. Using race as part of their criteria — a now-legal tactic, thanks to a recent opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh — armed officers go door to door through neighborhoods searching for Latino, Asian and African people to detain.

And then there is the violence. On Jan. 7, an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good while she was in her vehicle. A video analysis by The New York Times of the footage from that day “shows no indication that the agent who fired the shots, Jonathan Ross, had been run over,” and “establishes how Mr. Ross put himself in a dangerous position near her vehicle in the first place,” eventually shooting into Good’s S.U.V. three times. Since then, we’ve seen multiple attacks on protesters and citizen observers, with ICE officers using flash grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to harass and disperse demonstrators. We’ve seen evidence of vicious brutality against detainees; on Jan. 8, two U.S. citizens working at a suburban Target were arrested, with one of them seen bleeding and injured.

All occupations resemble one another in some way, and it is striking to read descriptions and accounts of the occupation of Boston in light of events in Minnesota. “Having to stomach a standing army in their midst, observe the redcoats daily, pass by troops stationed on Boston Neck who occupied a guardhouse on land illegally taken it was said from the town, and having to receive challenges by sentries on the streets, their own streets, affronted a people accustomed to personal liberty, fired their tempers, and gnawed away at their honor,” writes the historian Robert Middlekauff in “The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763 to 1789.”

“Harrison Gray, a prominent merchant and a member of the council, told soldiers who challenged him one evening that he was not obligated to respond,” writes Richard Archer of the same period in “As if an Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution.” “They retaliated by thrusting their bayonets toward his chest and detained him for half an hour.”

Consider the language of occupation authorities as well. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and an architect of the administration’s immigration policies, has called protesters violent agitators and accused Minnesota state officials of fomenting an “insurgency” against the federal government. In the same way, the British general who oversaw the Boston occupation, Thomas Gage, described Bostonians as “mutinous” — “desperadoes” who were guilty of “sedition.”

It is also hard not to hear the echo of the Boston Massacre in the killing of Good.

Occupations are, as Americans should know from our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, brutally unpopular, too. So it goes for the response to the federal occupation of Minnesota. More than half of Americans, according to a recent CNN poll, say that ICE enforcement actions are making cities less safe rather than safer; 57 percent of Americans, according to a survey from Quinnipiac University, disapprove of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws, and 55 percent of Americans support ending mass ICE raids targeting immigrants, according to a poll conducted by YouGov for the A.C.L.U.

For President Trump, the overall effect of the events of the past two weeks has been to pull his numbers even further into the inky depths of unpopularity. Thirty-eight percent of adults approve of the president’s performance, according to a Marist poll released this week; 56 percent disapprove. The Associated Press finds 40 percent approval and 59 percent disapproval, while Reuters reports 41 percent approval and 58 percent disapproval.

Not only is Trump deeply unpopular, according to a new CNN survey that similarly shows 39 percent approval and 61 percent disapproval — 58 percent of Americans say that the first year of his second term was a failure. On virtually every issue more Americans say that the president has made things worse rather than better, and large majorities say Trump has gone too far in the use of presidential power to pursue his own interests.

One way to read the occupation of Minnesota is as a flex — a demonstration of the government’s power and authority. That, perhaps, is how Miller and Kristi Noem see the situation. I smell, on the other hand, a stench of desperation, an attempt to do with force what they can’t accomplish through ordinary politics. Faced with an angry public but committed to a rigid agenda of nativist brutality, the president and his coterie of ideologues are playing the only move they seem to have: wanton violence and threats of further escalation. They think this will break their opposition.

But looking at the ironclad resolve of ordinary Minnesotans to protect their homes and defend their neighbors, I think the administration is more likely to break on their opposition and learn, as the British did in Boston, that Americans are quite jealous of their liberties.



What I Wrote

I wrote about the president’s conception of his power and how it is distinct from — and opposed to — both the Constitution and the larger Anglo-American political tradition:

Trump’s assertion of unlimited authority — subject only to his moral judgment and his mind (whatever that means) — is a total rejection of popular sovereignty and the logic of the Constitution. And for as much as the Trump administration speaks of defending Western civilization, the president’s MAGA absolutism is also a challenge to the foundations of the Anglo-American political tradition — to the settlement of the Glorious Revolution and the defeat of Stuart claims of divine right and parliamentary subordination.

I joined my colleagues Michelle Cottle and David French on an episode of “The Opinions,” and I discussed the 1997 thriller “Murder at 1600” on my podcast with John Ganz. I also made a video for Opinion on themes related to this weekend’s newsletter.

On Jan. 20, I will be at the Aratani Theater in Los Angeles with my colleague Ross Douthat for a conversation about the first year of Trump’s second term, hosted by Kathleen Kingsbury, the editor of Times Opinion. If you are out there, you can buy tickets here.

Now Reading

Osita Nwanevu on Trump’s war on the human conscience for The Guardian.

Nicholas Guyatt on the Mason-Dixon line for The New York Review of Books.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on the vice signaling of the Trump administration for Boston Review.

Lila Hassan on ICE’s reign of impunity for Wired.

The story of a community art project in East Jerusalem bearing witness to the forcible eviction of Palestinian families by Israeli settlers, presented by Jewish Currents.

Photo of the Week

An Art Deco building that says Niagara Mohawk Power.
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