Law, Power, and Justice

FRIDAY 5 JANUARY 2024

Life with Cats:

Little Carmine showed up for breakfast while the other cats were out for their morning walk.  He is so camouflaged and moves so slowly, he just seems to appear out of nowhere.  Mike was sitting on the steps just outside the screened in porch and looked up to see Carmine only a few feet away.

For some reason, Eddie flew out of the screened in porch and went after Carmine, something that has never happened before.  Carmine turned tail and ran.  Flynn then raced after the two of them, told Eddie he would take care of it, and chased Carmine out of the yard.  Eddie immediately stopped the chase as soon as Flynn intervened and came back to the screened in porch.  We thought that was the end of it. 

Carmine then finally showed back up in the front yard and had his breakfast.  “Jeeeze,” he must have thought.  “All I wanted was a little breakfast.”

Then, we came home from physical therapy and an ice cream (which took almost as long as getting physical therapy) Flynn was not feeling well.  Sure enough, he had what looked like some dried blood on his shoulder and he was groaning when we tried to see if he had a wound.

He didn’t come to supper when I went down and is now laying in the breakfast room.  We made an appointment for him for tomorrow at the vet.  Oh, boy.  Life with cats, male cats.

NEWS NOTES: Monday night

TRUMP

I am not at all sure I cam going to survive another election year.  Trump is all over the television, saying dreadful things.  His moronic “lawyer” Christina Bobb is threatening Kavanaugh, saying Trump did a lot of favors for him (Kavanaugh) now let’s see if he returns the favor.  You couldn’t make it much more apparent than that.  The Supreme Court (which should already have been expanded) has decided to take up the Trump/Colorado ballot case in early February.  Pundits on TV are still acting as if this was a real court.

Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter asking Clarence Thomas to recuse himself.  Resign would be a much better suggestion.  He will, of course, not do either.

ISRAEL

There is a video on Twitter in which Netanyahu is bragging about standing off the Clinton administration and Clinton himself.  It looks like a group of family members sitting around watching him and listening to him play the big man.  He is saying that the US is easy to manipulate and that he manipulated to violate international agreements.  I have no idea whether the video is real.

UKRAINE

The Kyiv Independent is reporting that a Russian company associated with Oleg Deripaska imported a new jet via Kazakhstan.  The sanctions are a joke.

We must not abandon Ukraine.  It would be like abandoning ourselves.

The Kyiv Independent is also reporting that there was a cross-border raid on Russian positions in Belgorod, and that Armed forces struck Russian arsenals in occupied Crimea 

Kyiv Independent:

• Putin signed a decree making it easier for deported Ukrainian children to be given Russian citizenship.

The British Foreign Office says that Russia is using North Korean missiles in strikes on Kharkiv.

The Telegraph is reporting:

• The US also is reporting the use of North Korean missiles.
• Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic, has proposed exchanging Ukrainian POWs in return for the lifting of US sanctions against his family.
• The authoritarian leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukasheko, has granted himself lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution.  Belarus was rocked by mass protests after Lukashenko’s re-election in 2020.
• Russia has blocked UN access to parts of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant.

US

The NRA’s longtime chief, Wayne LaPierre, resigned.  He has led the NRA for some thirty years  He is on the eve of a corruption trial in Manhattan.  The NY Attorney General, Letitia James, said that the resignation was not part of a plea deal. 

The NY investigations came amid reports of “runaway spending practices.”  The NRA had previously tried to argue with the government that it had reigned in its spending practices.  James is seeking financial penalties for LaPierre and three other defendants. 

In the past few years, membership has plummeted, legal costs soared, LaPierre spent nearly $40,000 in a single day at a ritzy boutique, “billing it through an N.R.A. contractor.”

EPSTEIN

I cannot read about this case.  Just looking at photographs of Epstein and his buddies turns my stomach.