Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Forward..
Sanctions..
War..
Monday, January 13, 2025
Fani..
The order to pay originated from an open records case from the conservative group Judicial Watch. The group asked Willis's office to provide it with documents pertaining to possible communications with Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, who led a separate investigation into Trump's actions surrounding his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Earlier this month, Superior Court of Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney ruled that Willis's office violated Judicial Watch’s open records request by categorizing identifying responsive documents as exempt from the request but previously said none of these documents existed.
"Even if the records prove to be just that — exempt from disclosure for sound public policy reasons — this late revelation is a patent violation of the ORA. And for none of this is there any justification, substantial or otherwise: no one searched until prodded by civil litigation," he wrote
Racketeering..
New York City’s “congestion pricing” cash extraction scheme went into effect last week. Already, drivers are fuming.
Under this project, the Big Apple outsources the traditional job of picking the pockets of commuters to a set of robotic cameras. Anyone headed south of 60th Street must hand over $9 for the privilege of using roads already paved and maintained by the highest state and local tax burden in the union.
Lawmakers paid so little attention to the details in setting up this racket that locals trying to avoid the charge are being hit with bills. For instance, the escape from uptown New York to Queens on the Queensboro Bridge results in a $9 tax -- even when the same trip in the opposite direction is free.
This happens because the ramp headed toward Queens briefly dips into 59th Street, where a spy camera eagerly awaits. Locals near the tolling zone’s border face a similar dilemma. One-way street layouts can force them to momentarily step over the charging zone’s invisible line, even when both their origin and destination is outside the zone.
Denial ..
Humanity has a 95% probability of being extinct in 7,800,000 years, according to J. Richard Gott's formulation of the controversial doomsday argument, which argues that we have probably already lived through half the duration of human history.
On the other hand.... The Pentagon, as the headquarters of the US Department of Defense, significantly impacts the environment by being the world's largest institutional consumer of petroleum, making it the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases among institutions globally.
Its military operations and vast network of bases contribute significantly to climate change, with emissions rivaling entire nations like Norway or Sweden.