{"id":58763,"date":"2026-02-13T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=58763"},"modified":"2026-02-12T20:16:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T04:16:44","slug":"open-thread-february-13-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/02\/13\/open-thread-february-13-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread February 13 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I got my car back. It starts instantly and runs nicely &#8211; I will have to readjust the seat of course &#8211; It was the end of the work day and I didn&#8217;t want any more dark. I did make it home in civil twilight. Congress passed the SAVE Act. Andy Borowitz&#8217;s headline was &#8220;Mark Kelly Records Video Telling Bartenders They Are Allowed to Refuse Hegseth&#8217;s Orders&#8221; And I found out why the FAA put on a ten day stop on flights and then rescinded it the same night. See the cartoon<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/who-exactly-is-ice-arresting-and\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Reich<\/a> points out that DHS is not even close to arresting &#8220;the worst of the worst.&#8221; I would point out that this isn&#8217;t the real point &#8211; which is that NO ONE deserves the treatment they are getting, Not even anyone convicted of a violent crime. People convicted of violent crimes are still human beings &#8211; and not even an animal &#8211; not even an Australian box jellyfish &#8211; deserves this treatment either. Republicans must not be allowed to get a pass by claiming they are animals.<\/p>\n<p>Not the most transformative news of the day from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allrisenews.com\/p\/hegseth-kelly-horsefeathers-leon-tiyr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">All Rise<\/a> &#8211; but encouraging that the judge feels so strongly.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/trump-guts-endangerment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Common Dreams<\/a> is hot again. I probably could have used any of the stories in their newsletter<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/malcolmnance.substack.com\/p\/feeling-the-pain-of-others-empathy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Malcolm Nance. 5:36 minute video<\/a> (need to unmute &#8211; or there&#8217;s a transcript. Please share widely.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-Bl6Px37Yd0?si=AjOdF76XedxCuash\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-58766\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/drones.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1245\" height=\"490\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/drones.jpg 1245w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/drones-300x118.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/drones-1024x403.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/drones-150x59.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/drones-768x302.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1245px) 100vw, 1245px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I got my car back. It starts instantly and runs nicely &#8211; I will have to readjust the seat of course &#8211; It was the end of the work day and I didn&#8217;t want any more dark. I did make it home in civil twilight. Congress passed the SAVE Act. Andy Borowitz&#8217;s headline was <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/02\/13\/open-thread-february-13-2026\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":58319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[4355,4531,5024,7132,4159,6894,3811],"class_list":["post-58763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-dogs","tag-drones","tag-dronesfaa","tag-empathy","tag-malcolm-nance","tag-personal","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}