The Frankish Reich

To be serious for a moment: this case is a perfect exhibit for what Trump 1.0 critics called malicious incompetence. Incompetence in that he was deported to the one country a final legal decision said he couldn't be deported to. Malicious in that they refused to clearly admit the mistake and quickly undo it. (In fact, they fired the lawyer who told the judge it was a mistake.) And malicious in that they threw together an extraordinarily weak criminal charge as some kind of face-saving device to bring him back to the USA. And malicious in that they got Costa Rica to agree to accept him for deportation, but then said we're not gonna send you there unless you plead guilty to that extraordinarily weak criminal charge. And malicious in that they came up with a wacko third country - Uganda (probably conditioned on some promise of help to that nation) - if he refused to plead guilty to that extraordinarily weak charge. I worked on cases like this. Sometimes people are deported too soon or to the wrong place. It happens. (It is more likely to happen when you're in a mad dash to make numbers look better.) In those cases the U.S. government does what it should do: admits the mistake, and works with the alien's lawyer to restore the status quo ante. Usually that's in a legal agreement. "We'll bring him back, but he stays in our custody." Maybe they could've even gotten an agreement to "we'll bring him back, but then he's going to Costa Rica." But no. We have the President he refuses to admit a mistake, even a common mistake that doesn't reflect poorly on himself personally. And now his attorney is once again seeking asylum, and arguably he is eligible to do that because there is no agreement to say that he can't, and because he has entered the country this last time under one year ago (that's why he was deemed ineligible for asylum the first time around). They screwed up a really simple matter in an attempt to score political points. What a mess.

He also doesn't speak the predominant language of the United States, but that hasn't stopped him.

"overburdened with mitochondrial challenges" indeed

Like that whole bump stock thing never happened.

Do we need 3+ million active/reserve/guard/civilian employees in DOD? Are you suggesting we should just trust them without question? What happened to the promised DOGE comes to DOD phase?

I agree. But that crosses one of the lines in the sand of the gun nut lobby: preventing someone from buying a gun even though there is no showing of any danger to oneself or others, just a correlation between certain types of mental illness and violent acts.

This makes no sense. Not theoretically, and not empirically. So under what law would you have denied him his 2nd Amendment rights? Let's assume (since nobody knows otherwise) that he had, until today, never let it be publicly known that he was a danger to himself or to anyone else. He would've passed background checks and would've been allowed to purchase his little arsenal.

And even if we find out that he was well known to be a demented and satanic transgender, he still could have purchased each and every one of those firearms. That’s why.

Whether or not there is any type of god I'm not supposed to say; And today, I don't really care. God is a word, and the argument ends there. - Bill Callahan, feeling much the way I feel today

except for those that aren't. Our gun laws haven't worked

Well, I refuse to believe that. That is just giving up. I have no doubt that we will find out that this kid's guns were all legally obtained. And ammo too.

Is there really NOTHING between this (confiscating all guns) and what we have now (disturbed 24 year old accumulating a huge arsenal)?

I'm not "playing into it" at all. I'm pointing out that I can't recall one of these mass shooters ever being in an intimate/loving relationship with another person. As far as the trans element, no, I'm not going to ignore it. It is a sign - a sign that lonely, disaffected young people are attracted to some kind of magic cure for their misery. It will all be ok when I am treated as a female. That's no different than the other misguided attempt to find community in a group of militaristic racists online. These things aren't what we mean by "community." The are a sign of a sickness in our society. One of the nice young lawyers who worked for me (who wasn't at all religious) asked me some time ago about what I thought about sending her kid to Catholic school. My kids were in Catholic schools at the time. I noted that there were many non-Catholic kids in the school, and I did praise them for providing some moral compass to kids. And with a tone of "but for the grace of God I go too," I said that maybe that's why school shootings don't seem to happen at Catholic schools. But I knew it was too good to be true.

If that video floating around really is by this latest killer: how did he get that arsenal? WTF are we doing? How can he even afford it? Disaffected/nihilistic trans 20-something incel. Disaffected/nihilistic (presumably) straight incel. Racist white incel. Autistic white incel. The profile is: Young. Generally white. Nihilistic. Male, or shall we say "born male." Probably an incel, or at least certainly with no lasting personal relationships with anyone, same or opposite sex. Generally with documented mental illness. Typically blames some people (race/immigrants) or institution (church) for his troubled life. Generally loves video (shooter) games and some kind of faux internet "community" obsessed with some political/social issue. Never in any kind of upwardly mobile career or education; loser. And always managed to obtain multiple weapons. What do we do? Just live with it? I cannot accept that.

Do we really care anymore what kind of nut - left, right, straight, trans - it is? It is all a sign of a sick, nihilistic society utterly at a loss about what to do about it. https://theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527/

I'm not saying they aren't important or useful. I'm just saying that we need to think hard about what level of active/reserve/guard troops we need, since they aren't exactly cost-free. Ukraine is showing us that we're in a very new age of warfare.

I'm glad to see they have these reservists doing something useful. I have a nephew who is a state guard reservist. I have yet to hear of him being assigned anything remotely useful. He just re-upped (with bonus) because hey, why not? He might think twice if picking up trash on the National Mall in August is now in the job description.

As if Trump has ever eaten in a Cracker Barrel. They should have gone with the full gold leaf rococco style preferred by Donald the First.

If that agent had unwrapped and proceeded to eat that sub, he'd be a cult hero today.

We can all breathe a huge sigh of relief. America is still America. Uncle Herschel (who even knew the name of that character?) lives. The rocking chairs will still be on the front porch. The grits will still be as tasteless and crusted-over as ever. The gift store will still sell those signs that say things like God Bless Our Home and and those chalkboards that say Thing I Keep Forgettin and those paperbacks like 1001 Best Dad Jokes. Will Travis make Taylor more Trumpy? Will Taylor make Travis more woke? Let's form a prayer circle.

Well, you better pray for an independent Fed, whichever side of the aisle you're on. The ability of politicians and dictators to manipulate the money supply for their short-term political gain is one of the hallmarks of a failed state. Imagine a future AOC administration in which the monetary strategy is to cause runaway inflation to inflate away consumer debt ...

No, I'm pro independent Federal Reserve.

Ken Paxton. Weirdly, Trump has not seen fit to endorse Sen Cornyn ...

They were righteous prosecutions, and righteous convictions. And obscene pardons.