The Voting Rights Act was reauthorized in _2006_ by a Senate vote of 98-0, after passing the House 393-33.

Today, almost all national Republican legislators oppose it.
Why?

Because the GOP now opposes free and fair elections.
How come? Let's see...
1/4

https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1555693079960735761

First, the GOP is on the wrong side of every 80/20 issue the electorate cares about.
83% of _gun owners_ in the U.S. support universal background checks before buying a firearm. The GOP opposes that.
Only 13% of Americans believe abortion should be banned in all circumstances.2/4

So. Ugly truth time.
James Patterson is horribly, horribly wrong.
Older white male author here. Publishing is hard. But almost everything is slanted more in your favor if you're white and male. Everything. Thread, with receipts: 1/x First: Only 58% of us in the U.S. identified as non-Hispanic white in the 2020 census. But of the fiction books out from the big publishing houses? 89% of them are by white authors. That's a change from (check notes) 100% in 1960, '62, '63, and '66. 2/x
nytimes.com/interactive/20….

Louisiana GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy "explains" that the state's rank (worst in maternal death rates) isn't that bad, if you take out black women. A thread: 🧵🔥
1. The state has racism and inequality. But there's more! 1/4

vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/b… 2. You see, Louisiana's anti-abortion stance makes it difficult to get appropriate medical care if you have a dead fetus, ectopic pregnancy, or other problem that might entangle your doctor with the state. By statute, they have to lie to you! 2/4
lailluminator.com/2021/07/06/lou…

Objectively, this so wrong, it's babbling lunacy.
Under Eisenhower, the GOP platform was:
Expand Social Security and Unemployment Insurance
Increased minimum wages and union membership
Maintain the 90% marginal tax on the rich to retire the war debt. 1/x Here's the link to the GOP platform under Eisenhower, with positions far to the left of today's Democratic Party: 2/x
presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/repu…

So. I'm trying to write my monthly post for YA Outside the Lines.
About Libraries.
But I'm in incandescent rage.
Because libraries, librarians, and the kids they serve are under attack.
By DeSantis, Abbott, and their GOP enablers.
And it matters. 1/x Because today a county in DeSantis' state has banned books I absolutely love (and thing everyone should read) and FL has banned the discussion of the existence of LGBTQ+ people I love and care about, and I--a guy of words, a writer--am so outraged,
I'm incoherent about it. 2/x

Perhaps, instead of calling in sick next Monday, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas should call in "completely corrupt."

He failed to recuse himself on the issue of whether communications about insurrection with WH staff were privileged, which covered his own wife's 29 texts.1/2 When the Court ruled against former President Trump, and held that privilege couldn't hide communications with WH staff--like Ginni Thomas's messages--Justice Thomas dissented, making in an 8-1 ruling.

He. Had. An. Interest. In. The. Outcome.

Inexcusable. Corrupt. 2/2

Answer to the the question posed of @SenTedCruz @SenMikeLee @RandPaul @SenRonJohnson @MarcoRubio @SenTomCotton @SenShelby @SteveDaines @SenJohnKennedy @SenJohnThune and @JerryMoran 5 years ago:

"Where do you see yourself in 5 years?"
(Profiles in Treason) 1/x 8 of these prostrate, propaganda-spewing parrots spent July 4, 2018 in Moscow on a PR junket Russia arranged to distract from their poisoning of people in the UK and the Senate report that Putin interfered in our election to install Trump.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/eight…

Former law clerk to 2 Supreme Court Justices here.

The NYT ed. board is out of its collective mind this morning. There's no right--anywhere--not to be shamed or shunned because you say vile racist, fascist, repulsive things.

1st Amendment prohibits gov't punishing speech. 1/3 Neither the 1st Amendment--or any other right--prevents private individuals from appropriately recoiling in horror when someone says vile racist things or parrots murderous Russian fascist talking points or spews debunked lies and conspiracy theories about horse de-wormer. 2/x

About the butterfly mines the Russians dropped outside Mariupol to kill and injure fleeing civilians. A thread. 🧵
Once in 1986 in Peshawar, near the border of Afghanistan, when I was an alleged freelance journalist, a guy tossed a (deactivated) butterfly mine at my chest. 1/x He was one of two rival “Afghan Information Institute directors.” (It was Afghanistan. Of course there were two rival information institution directors. He was the goofy one who flung mines at visiting journalists. I wrote about it here: 2/x yaoutsidethelines.blogspot.com/2017/09/crushi…

What to do when you say something badly wrong on Twitter. (A short contemporary subtweet thread.)

On Twitter, you may eventually say something thoughtless, wrongheaded, not nuanced, or harmful.

It happens. By definition, you're not aware of your blind spots. 1/x If you say something offensive, you may be criticized for that.

Pause. The criticism is probably correct. Think about it. Then, instead of justifying the self, apologize.

Tweet "I messed up. I'm deleting that tweet, because [reason] and will try to be more thoughtful." 2/x

A short thread on why Texas has no power:
1. Climate change and the moving polar vortex.
2. Gas, coal, and atomic powerplants offline in the cold.
3. Texas decided to have a grid separate from the rest of the country.
(You know, GOP.) 1/4 First, perhaps because of climate change, the polar vortex, a vast low pressure area that usually stays over the arctic, has split and wandered recently, leading to wandering extremely low temperatures. 2/4
livescience.com/polar-vortex-d…

It might be the night before "Turn Over the Tax Return" order, and--honestly--I _am_ having trouble falling asleep.

If Donny Dollhands' accountants have to turn over his returns, he is finished. Why? First, massive tax fraud. 1/x You may recall, after his atty Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $130,000, Trump LLC paid _more_ money to Cohen--grossing him up, so Cohen got $130,000 after paying taxes on the income--and so the LLC could fraudulently claim it as a deductible business expense. (It wasn't) 2/x

Hermann Maier, resilience, and how we should respond in a pandemic.
(Thread by a hack ski racer who currently cannot walk, about to go into surgery, but advising y'all.)
Here's our test subject, Hermann Maier, midair, realizing he'll crash at 70mph in the Olympic downhill. 1/x It’s Nagano, 1998, with a blind jump about four gates down from the start where you have to pick a line coming out of a gate, but the 3 racers in front of Maier have landed all over the hill, so he can’t use their tracks as a guide. He’s flying. 2/x

Q: What do you get when you cross Vladimir Putin with Bernie Sanders?

A: No one knows. With four chances, in votes on sanctions on Russia, Bernie has yet to cross Putin. But it would be nice if it happened someday.

2012 Magnitsky Act-nay
2014-nay
2017-nay
2019-absent Here's Sanders explanation for voting no on the 2017 bill (it also sanctioned Iran), which I'm not really buying:

1. The bill didn't, in fact, cause Iran to claim the nuclear deal was breached--Mango Cheetolini had to tear up the agreement. 1/2

The reviews are in for Mike "Mr. Frisky" Bloomberg in the #DemocraticDebates: "a catastrophe--stiff, arrogant, tone-deaf, and intensely unlikable" "terrible, fumbling, unpleasant." "on NDAs...among the worst in the history of presidential debates." 1/x
nytimes.com/interactive/20… Bloomberg "stammered and stumbled in the face of withering attacks from his rivals" in "a real-world demolition of his candidacy." So much so that "he might have bled out on stage if he hadn't been so bloodless" in a "tone-deaf mix of evasion, back-pedaling, and...hateur." 2/x

Thread: Reminder, Trump financed his (since closed) Trump Tower Baku in Azerbaijan with allegedly money-laundered funds from Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Last week, he may have effectively assassinated his loan officer. 1/x Here's the New Yorker article that broke the story about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard financing: 2/x newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…

Some facts: Gaetz's dad was prominent Republican Don Gaetz, president of the Florida Senate--which is how "Mugshot" Matt avoided losing driving privileges after a DUI despite refusing a breathalizer and binding law. He was given a +22R district to run in, as arranged by daddy.1/x

https://twitter.com/mattgaetz/status/1190435720722300928

Matt Gaetz was recently rebuked by the Florida bar for his witness intimidation antics, when he tried to discourage Michael Cohen from testifying to Congress, saying Gaetz was "unprofessional, reckless, insensitive and demonstrated poor judgment." 2/x floridapolitics.com/archives/30356…

There once was a sleeper-cell Gabbard,
Who said, "Keep your swords in their scabbards!"
She took Russian dough,
And their talking points, so
The Dems on the ballot get hammered.

Thread. 1/x

nytimes.com/2019/10/12/us/… Tulsi Gabbard is an apologist for the murderous regime of Putin-supported Assad in Syria:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/globa…

I don't know who needs to hear this, but back in the day, when I was a lawyer, over 30 years, I represented 2 high-functioning narcissistic sociopaths.
So I know how the endgame is going to be played out:
Bail out now, enablers. Quit. Cut your best deal. 1/x I was the guy the awful people came to after they'd screwed up so badly in front of federal judges with their first lawyers and wanted saving. It's seductive, thinking that you're making a difference, making it marginally less awful, managing to a result that's slightly okay. 2/x