ChiGoose

Alternative headline: “Jeffrey Epstein’s buddy thinks it’s bad to arrest criminals.”

I’d like to see a serious investigation into this but it’s also important that a Secret Service Agent left the protection detail to take a political position and then returned to the agency and, I believe, is currently running their training. Feels like not everything is on the up-and-up there. Very interested in what the IG has to say (and the IG has already stated that the Secret Service has not been cooperative in the investigation).

No he didn't.

Many of the laws in Europe have exceptions so large you can drive a truck through, such as the woman's mental health. Ohio doesn't even have an exception for minors who are raped.

They are proposing it, though I don't know if there is more current draft legislation: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/24/politics/republican-reaction-abortion-congress/index.html

Fair enough. We should have a "summer thread" with lighthearted posts about what everyone's up to during the summer.

Get help.

Are you ok?

Or they keep their heads in the sand and do nothing while the problem gets worse.

I don’t know much about California, but since Pritzker took over in Illinois, we have had multiple credit ratings upgrades (after the last governor intentionally took us down to one above junk), dramatically reduced the bill backlog and have rebuilt the rainy day fund. Things are actually going quite well in the state.

For one, I don’t think every single issue should be left up to the states. Should the right to contraceptives be left to the states? Should we let the states decide if they want to allow interracial marriage? If I was offered a great job opportunity in Ohio, the state where my wife and I went to school and still have friends, it would be a really difficult decision because moving to Ohio would mean losing access to important healthcare. Secondly, the whole “leave it up to the states” argument falls a little flat when the GOP is openly advocating for a nationwide ban through Congress. Ultimately, it likely won’t be left to the states one way or the other.

Government employees often have a separate phone for their work. I know a couple employees of the state who have a work-issued phone because everything they do for work is subject to FOIA. I do not know if the secret service has the same policy, but if cops and other state government employees have this, it wouldn’t surprise me if the secret service did too. However, I think the best course of action is to remain skeptical and keep an eye out for updates of an investigation into this.

He’s a troll. Between him and DR, they don’t have two brain cells to rub together. Best to ignore and let the adults talk.

Sorry I’m just seeing this, was on dinner and clean up duty. I think it’s a bad look for any government employee phone to have data deleted after an IG asks for it to be preserved. Generally, I would expect that there is a procedure to identify such devices and prevent them from undergoing regular data wipes. As far as I can tell, that leaves three likely potential scenarios: 1. There was no procedure to prevent devices from being wiped after an IG asks them to be preserved. 2. There is a procedure but it failed in this instance for some reason. 3. The data was intentionally deleted to prevent the IG from uncovering facts. I think all of those are a bad look for an agency as serious as the Secret Service. I am not going to do the PPP thing and break out my jump to conclusions mat, but if I had to guess, I think Occam’s and Hanlon’s Razors would make me more inclined to lean towards option 2. In any case, this should be investigated to get to the bottom of it.

Per The Intercept: THE SECRET SERVICE erased text messages from January 5 and January 6, 2021, according to a letter given to the January 6 committee and reviewed by The Intercept. The letter was originally sent by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General to the House and Senate homeland security committees. Though the Secret Service maintains that the text messages were lost as a result of a “device-replacement program,” the letter says the erasure took place shortly after oversight officials requested the agency’s electronic communications. ... The Department of Homeland Security — the Secret Service’s parent agency — is subject to oversight from the DHS Office of Inspector General, which had requested records of electronic communications from the Secret Service between January 5 and January 6, 2021, before being informed that they had been erased. It is unclear from the letter whether all of the messages were deleted or just some. Not a great look.

My understanding is that a lot of the solutions around things like recycling simply aren't profitable, limiting their scale. Though, I will certainly defer to someone with LEED accreditation.

(citation needed)

Nice telling on yourself with that comment, but if you were really interested, here are some stats: The states with the lowest maternal mortality rate are: California (4.0 per 100k) Massachusetts (8.4 per 100k) Nevada (8.4 per 100k) Connecticut (10.5 per 100k) Colorado (11.5 per 100k) The United States as a whole has a fairly high maternal mortality rate, tied for 57th and below such countries as Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Belarus.

I was referring to the claim that there are people pushing to allow for killing babies after they are born. I do not know who is proposing that, nor would I support anyone who did. As to your point, I do live in Chicago but I have no hand in crafting laws in Illinois. Nor do I need to lobby on this issue since Illinois has a forward-thinking government that codified these rights prior to Dobbs, (since the writing was on the wall once Barrett was appointed). I do, however, have monthly donations to several senate candidates, as well as a fund to help people in less fortunate states access the care they need. Unfortunately, as we can see, that is not enough to prevent people from suffering due to Dobbs. I can pretend that "trusting the process" will fix all of this eventually, but I can also wish that the Patriots would be sold and moved out of New England. Doesn't mean a whole lot nor does it help anyone.

No idea. I’m not aware of this movement, their guidelines or proposed legislation.

I agree that there are crazies on all sides of all issues, however, comparing what some random loons say to a statement by the author of model legislation that had enough support to be passed into law by a legislative body seems like a false equivalence.

Given Iran's policy of supporting terrorist organizations, I'm less concerned about Iran launching a nuke at Israel than them giving a nuke or dirty bomb to terrorists.

What lawmaker, elected official or party leader is advocating for post-birth abortions? Is there proposed legislation on this? I don't doubt there are some nuts out there that want something like this, but I am skeptical that is a belief with enough support to be put into law.

It's just a distraction technique used by bad faith actors or (in this case) morons who actually don't realize they are being played. They want to pick one small thing and hammer it in order to avoid talking about all of the other aspects or the bigger picture. If you think about it, even if this theory about Ray Epps is true, it changes almost nothing. It doesn't change the fact that the president was told that the actions he wanted to take were illegal but he took them anyway. It doesn't change that they bilked their own supporters out of $200 million for a fund that actually didn't exist. It doesn't change the call to the Georgia Secretary of State asking him to put false numbers into the electoral tabulation. And the idea itself, that actually all of the violence was due to the FBI, would require that the Trump supporters at the capitol were brainless sheep. If the Bills win the Super Bowl this season (fingers crossed) and we all go to the parade, and someone at the parade is like "let's storm city hall!" Guess what every sane person is doing? Not storming city hall. Frankly, I mostly just avoid DR at this point to avoid feeding the trolls, but this whole Ray Epps thing is so idiotic, it's hard to avoid some times.

Oh, this is definitely true. We are a very car-centric culture and people in Europe have better access to public transit that mitigates the rising cost of fuel. I do not mean to say in anyway that the cost of fuel is immaterial or that we should be happy about it because it's more expensive elsewhere. I roll my eyes when I see my more liberal friends post about wanting gas prices to be higher to drive down car use because they completely ignore that this would greatly harm the poor and working class they claim to support so much. I mostly just wanted to point out that this isn't an issue singular to the US like we have high prices and everybody else is fine.