Letitia James – Politics Plus

Open Thread December 5 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 052025

Yesterday, another grand jury declined to indict Tish James. And in Colorado, a train derailed Wednesday night. All survived. Also – WRT thr cartoon – or whatever you want to call it – it is based on the phrase “Elf on the shelf” only different.

Heaven only knows how this will work out (and no one there will tell me). But I am glad the discussion is happening. (I have read recently that there is something in tattoo ink which gets into the bloodstream and does damage. Even if that includes brain damage – I haven’t gone beyond the headlines – that would be no excuse for Petey.)

This from Democratic Underground IMO demonstrates far more than just PTSD. There is deep resentment of betrayal here. The Russian Army is being run in ways we have never run our military, and Ukraine still doesn’t. I’m sure they think it makes soldiers “tougher.” In one way it probably does – but not in the way they think.

There are other sources for this story on the arrest of the alleged pipe bomber. I looked for the story at Law & Crime, even searched there, but they don’t yet have it (do not look there if you are prone to nausea). I just picked Joyce Vance for legal information, particularly in view of “this Justice Department.” I got that, and also some speculation on the length of time it took and the spin put on it. I am willing to believe that there may have been one or a group of agents in the FBI who deliberately sat on it, against the wishes of the rest of the bureau and of the administration. I am not willing to believe that the administration sat on it.

Open Thread November 25 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 5:58 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Nov 252025

Yesterday, Judge Cameron Currie dismissed both of the James cases – Comey and Letitia. Comey should be off the hook (although it was dismissed without prejudice) because the statue of limitations is up. There is, per Harry Litman, a possible argument that a Latin term in the opinion sets the calendar back a little, which could affect the statute of limitations. James’s was also dismissed without prejudice, so she could be indicted again (and likely will be, unless it turns out that the statute of limitations has run out for her also, which even Joyce Vance isn’t certain of – since it’s the Orange Oligarch.)

The F* News on the meeting between Zohran Mamdani and the Apricot Antichrist, which went surprisingly well. Even jaw-droppingly well. I’m so allergic to Trump**[*] I really can’t bear, not just his face and voice, but even his words, even when he appears to be making sense, so I really didn’t take much away from this, but it’s such a black swan event it’s hard to ignore.

I did not have this on my Bingo card. But now that Democratic Underground has reported it, I cannot say I am surprised. The only paperwork they actually pay attention to is the skin colors paint sample

This from Common Dreams is regarding Senator Mark Kelly, one of the six who made the video about not obeying illegal orders. Yes, they can do this. Any service member, officer or enlisted, who stays active long enough to receive retirement pay is subject to recall to active duty. That is why those retirement checks are funded in the DoD budget, and that’s a huge figure in it. Not all the DoD budget goes to $200 hammers and planes that don’t fly. I get why, if they are subject to recall, they must be paid from DoD funds, but very few people, including active duty service member and probably even some retirees are aware of that, and it makes the DoD budget look far worse than it is. Retiree pay is definitely fraud or waste, but if some creative Democrats could come up with a way around this, It could be an incredible public relations victory. Failing that, efforts to make the facts about retiree pay more widely known could also help. I was in the USMC for 10 years, most of which was spent directly working with military pay, and I did not find this out for at least 8 of those 10 years. Back to the court-martial suggestion – if this were going to be a civilian court, even now, I would, and I suspect Kelly would, say “have at it.” But I don’t have as much faith in a Court Martial. (Neither does Steve Schmidt, and he says so quite bluntly.)

Off Topic – sort of – The one-woman play “Ann” about Ann Richards is streaming on demand now and will be through next year. Of course it is political – but not current politics – which is why I say Off Topic. But it is a fun escape if you have a couple of hours to spare.

Open Thread September 22 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 222025

Yesterday, I saw Virgil and as usual we played cribbage. I may have said before that we count each hand, but we don’t keep a running total. We did when he was at other facilities, and i was careful to make sure he won at least half of the games we played. This can be done with making less-than-ideal discards to the crib. And anyone’s who’s ever played knows that near the end of the game, who wins it can depend simply on who counts first. The way we do it now is a bit easier since I don’t have to constantly watch the board (or the notepad – it can be done on a notepad if one tallies in groups of 5 and is consistent how many groups fit in a row, one can see at a glance who’s ahead). But as I say, just counting each hand without keeping a total, that’s not an issue. Also, if my “tags” look really gossipy today, yes, I took a break from thinking up impersonal issues to call them.

As with Lisa Cook, so with Tish James. Neither attempted t claim that two homes were both primary residences, and both have the receipts. Will that stop MAGA Ed Martin? Of course not.

I didn’t squeeze this into Sunday because it was already full, and also because, though this is a lovely gesture, the circumstances inspiring it are so grim.

PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.