Law, Power, and Justice

Oh, and we have a new kitten.

WEDNESDAY 24 SEPTEMBER 2025

PODCAST: The Duran Podcast (9/23/25)

If you really want to get a dose of right-wing British commentary, you couldn’t do better than the Duran Podcast.  Alexander Mercouris, one of the hosts, who is interviewed on every podcast as if he were a guest is a disbarred attorney.  His contempt for the British and European government class (“utterly incompetent people”) couldn’t be more obvious.  His misogyny pervades his commentary as well.

To give you just one example of the discussion from this morning, the guest is rabbiting on about how the level of violence among the Trans community is 80%.  He claims some study (not identified) established this and that ALL the other research that has been done in this area had been changed to hide the high rate of violence within Trans relationships and by Trans people against others.  Just think about this: ALL THE OTHER RESEARCH, every other study that has ever been done which indicates low violence rates among Trans people has been changed.  You can’t take anybody like this seriously.

I listen to the podcast periodically just to get a snoot full of what they are talking about. 

They are now talking about the “globalist elite” and ubiquitous George Soros.

TRUMP:

Trump has put out a tweet or whatever that says Ukraine could take back its original borders.  He points out Russia’s “paper tiger” status in not taking back the country in a week.  He points out the economic woes of Russia.  I am just hoping Trump takes enough of his own Ketamine to believe that he can operate outside Putin’s control.  If he does, we can all hope that Putin just releases everything he has on Trump that allowed him to turn Trump into a Russian asset.

RUSSIA:

Russia continues to violate NATO airspace, testing the reaction.  So far, the reaction has been nothing. 

UKRAINE: EUROMAIDAN PRESS

• Russia built its war on oil money.  Then Ukraine took the fight to the oilfields.  Since August, drones have struck 16 of Russia’s 38 refineries.  “the war machine is under economic siege.”
• Ukraine Third Army Corps radio intercept of Russians “Kill everyone indiscriminately.  Except children.  The Russian troops in Donetsk Oblast followed the orders.  They shot the parents in a home and took the underage daughter alive.  The commander added: “She must not see the dead bodies.”  Russian forces use the girl as cover, preventing Ukrainian troops from firing on their positions.  (The Russians have taken thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia to be adopted.)
• Military aircraft with Spanish defense minister undergoes GPS attack.  This is the third time EU government planes suffered GPS interference this year.  The incident occurred over the Baltic Sea near Russia’s heavily militarized Kaliningrad Oblast.
• A former Florida police officer who fled to Moscow and works with Russian intelligence, runs a massive Russian propaganda network with over 200 fake news sites, all AI generated.

UKRAINE: The Kyiv Independent

• The Russian finance Ministry proposed a value-added tax hike to  boost “war-strained budget.” (quote from Independent)

FRIDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2025

TRUMP

U.S. Attorney Halligan, appointed by Trump, because nobody in the Eastern Office would indict, indited James Comey.  It is clear that it was brought because Trump demanded it.  It is selective prosecution.  Vindictive, retaliation.  Halligan brought the charges before the court herself.  She is not a prosecutor, she is an insurance lawyer. 

TRUMP: THE MARK THOMPSON SHOW:

INTERVIEW WITH SARAH KENZIOR (UTube) “Trump’s Transformed GOP, a Party of Followers (9/26/25)  

(Remember the woman who was right about everything and was invited back less and less to the cable news programs because she was right?  This is her.  Remember the women who told her podcast partner that Biden wasn’t going to do anything about the fundamental problems with Trump and Trumpism?  This is her.)

• Kenzior: People talked and talked about crossing some line moving toward authoritarianism.  We crossed a fundamental line when “They took control of the Supreme Court.”  Trump used the tactics he has used his whole life – bribery, black mail, threats of litigation.  The Republican party became more extremist because of Trump and attracted more extremists because of Trump.
• Thompson: Trump’s cabinet is incompetent. 
• Kenzior:  Trump’s administration is “very competent.”  It just depends on what you see them as trying to do.  They are extremely competent at “stripping the country down and selling it for parts.”  “That’s been their explicit goal since 2016.”  If you remember, in the first administration, Bannon said they aimed the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”  They came up with Project 2025 which was a blueprint for stripping down the government.  They “cast people” in particular parts, to lead the very departments they wanted to dismantle.
• Thompson: The corruption is just so out in the open like Tom Holman taking bag of money.  The Justice Department just “looks the other way.”
• Kenzior:  The Justice Department looking away is not unique to the Trump administrations. They are just forthright about it.  The DOJ is not meant to “serve the public good.”  Under Biden, it was portrayed as, there was the “pretense that it was” this plodding slow process, that needs to be carefully managed” “struggling to get everything right” and it accomplished absolutely nothing.  “That’s how the Justice Department has been behaving for the past ten or more years.”   They are not functional at holding criminal elites accountable.  Mueller brought no results at holding the criminal elite responsible. They pointed out criminal behavior but did nothing about it.
• Thompson: You write about “institutions created by the elite protecting the elite, institutions slow walking processes.”   
• Kenzior: “They are very brazen.”  The Trump Administration, but it is a similar result.  And, they have had a propaganda campaign in place to sway our opinions of institutions like the FBI.  I wrote an article called “Servants of the Mafia State.”  It details why Garland did what he did. He was mentored by Jamie Gorelick, who was associated with Jared Kushner. She was Kushner’s “so called” ethics lawyer.  That’s who got Garland a position under Clinton as an AG.  Under Biden, was fully aware of that.
• Kenzior: For Trump, it’s an “outright program of vengeance,”  “the show trial way.”  These are people who have probably committed crimes, but that’s not what they are being prosecuted for.
• Comey, for example, a little before the 2016 election, took the head of the Russian Mafia off the FBI’s Most Wanted List and replaced him.  This was beneficial to Trump.  In going after Comey, they are giving their base what they want.  It’s just chum in the water.
• Thompson: (Note: Don’t make the money they would make in the private sector.  Bull shit.  Don’t feel sorry for them).  The good people in the Justice Department are easily threatened because have families.  (Note: Everybody has families).
• Kenzior: Trump was a “career criminal associate.” If the Justice Department had done its job, he wouldn’t have been eligible to run in 2016.  His illicit foreign dealings were well known (and have subsequently been documented in several books).  That fact that he wasn’t prosecuted gave Americans a false sense of safety.  It made the Democrats look like they were lying.  If Trump was that corrupt why wasn’t he in prison?   
• Kenzior: Trump went after those investigating transnational crimed, gutting the investigative agencies. During the Biden administration they should have taken these problems seriously and taken care of business.  They did not.
• Kenzior:  “We’re kind of beyond the point of reform” with these agencies.
• Thompson:  Trump gave TicToc to Larry Ellison, a colleague (note: co-conspirator).  That kind of control over messaging is frightening.
• Kenzior: “There was always a gate keeper aspect to the media.  You remember seeing the coverage of Iran/Contra.”  And, the ability to speak freely on the internet is disappearing rapidly. 
• Thompson: About the government shutdown, OMB put out a memo warning that if there is a shutdown, they will permanently get rid of people.
• Kenzior: There’s an enormous risk to the shutdown. Republicans want to shut down everything.  There is the possibility of them letting a shutdown “go on forever.”  They value government as a way of spying on us or controlling us, but not to supply post office, or a public school system. 
• Kim McCallister: The leader of Turkey is coming to White House.  Liftin the ban on some arms sales. 
• Kenzior: Israel was recently threatening Turkey.  There were such hopes for Erdogan.  “They are two of a kind in a way.”  Erdogan is looking out for Erdogan.”  There was Brexit, Orban, Erdogan all kinds of soft power consolidation.  “The people and the culture (of Turkey) are every different from the government.”  But they are running very different dictatorships.  The Republicans want to “collapse the country” “sell off the remains.”  It is mafia state rule.  We are in more danger than if it were the former soft power electoral dictatorship model.  “Trump is just the front man not the ideologue.” 
• Kenzior:  I woke up one morning and “I had fewer rights than my son.”  Women had no bodily autonomy.  From the Democratic Party, we got well “too bad for you.” 
• Thompson:   “It is really a war on women.”
• Kenzior: Yes and they are “obsessed with the rapture.”  Talking about the MAGA folks.