Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith has defeated Democrat Mike Espy in the Mississippi Senate race. This brings the Senate count to 53 (R) — 47 (D). Read the rest

Climate change is why California is burning, and thousands of its citizens displaced, injured, or killed by the wildfires that spread with never-before-seen intensity. Read the rest

A crowdfunding campaign to cover security costs for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford raised $647,610 in two months, which far surpassed the initial goal of $150,000.

The woman who stood up to Trump Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh says she will donate all the extra money to organizations that support survivors of trauma.

But do go on about how she’s a gold-digging liar who fabricated the whole Kavanaugh thing for a payoff. Read the rest

Breaking News: Robert Mueller says former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort violated his plea deal by lying to investigators. Read the rest

Yes, irony is dead. The Washington Post reports that Presidential Daddy Daughter Ivanka Trump used a personal email account to receive and send emails about her work for the government of the United States. Read the rest

It's not your imagination. The big cable news networks like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox pay way more attention to hurricanes and extreme weather on the east coast than they do to major firestorms in California, like the recent Camp and Woolsey fires. But why? Read the rest

My 14-year-old pointed me to the cool work of artist Christian Faur. I see Mark featured his crayon portrait pieces on Boing Boing in the past but not pieces using his more recent medium of soda crackers!

Prior to the midterm elections, he laser-etched all the (then-current) U.S. senators on crackers (Is the medium the message?):

View this post on Instagram

Having fun with stop motion and our U.S. #senators. 73 days until #election2018

A post shared by Christian Faur (@christianjfaur) on Aug 25, 2018 at 7:37am PDT

View this post on Instagram

100 #saltine #crackers with laser etched portraits of each 2018 U.S. #senators.

A post shared by Christian Faur (@christianjfaur) on Feb 19, 2018 at 4:45am PST

Thanks, SJ! Read the rest

File with "I can change the 14th Amendment with an executive order" and "no collusion". [via] Read the rest

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been charged with crime in the U.S., according to one court document, while anonymous sources tell the Wall Street Journal the Department of Justice is planning to prosecute him.

The supposed charge was revealed by a reference to it in an unrelated case against someone named Seitu Sulayman Kokayi: “Due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer.

It's not clear what the charge is and a spokesman for the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. attorney’s office told Huffington Post it was "not the intended name for this filing," leaving open the question of whether he has in fact been charged.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that U.S. authorities are "optimistic" about pressing charges.

“I have no idea if he has actually been charged or for what, but the notion that the federal criminal charges could be brought based on the publication of truthful information is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set,” said Barry J. Pollack, one of Assange’s attorneys, in reaction to the news.

Assange remains holed up at the Ecuadorean embassy in London after skipping bail on his extradition to Sweden, where he was accused of rape. Though the Swedish prosecution was eventually dropped, Assange still faces arrest on the bail issue if he leaves the embassy, and fears this will be used to engineer his extradition to the United States. Read the rest

Amid a growing number of lethal anti-Jewish hate attacks, including a gun massacre at a synagogue that left 13 dead, a man shouts “Heil Trump” in a crowded theater. Audience members told a reporter they believed they were about to die in a mass shooting. Read the rest

Yoshitaka Sakurada might not be Japan's best pick for the cybersecurity portfolio: confused by a USB drive, he was forced to admit he'd never even used a computer. Read the rest

"Big news Wednesday... Hillary's campaign will die this week," Randy Credico texted Trump ally Roger Stone, just 6 days before the WikiLeaks email dump.

These text messages obtained by NBC News show that Donald Trump's longtime political “dirty trickster” consigliere Roger Stone was boasting of dirt to come from Wikileaks. Stone has previously denied any foreknowledge of the late-2016 Wikileaks dumps, as he attempts to squirm away from the Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller. This latest news won't help him accomplish that. Read the rest

CNN is suing President Donald Trump and various White House aides over the administration's ban on chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta. Read the rest

Kyrsten Sinema, the apparent winner in Arizona's Senate race, is the first Democrat to win that vote for decades. Read the rest

"If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row," Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said of a supporter who praised her. Hyde-Smith is facing a run-off election; her opponent is a black man.

"If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row"- Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith says in Tupelo, MS after Colin Hutchinson, cattle rancher, praises her.

Hyde-Smith is in a runoff on Nov 27th against Mike Espy. pic.twitter.com/0a9jOEjokr

— Lamar White, Jr. (@LamarWhiteJr) November 11, 2018

“Hyde-Smith’s decision to joke about ‘hanging,’ when the history of African-Americans is marred by countless incidents of this barbarous act, is sick,” said NAACP president Derrick Johnson in a statement Sunday. “Any politician seeking to serve as a national voice of the people of Mississippi should know better.”

Democrat Mike Espy, whom she’ll face in a Nov. 27 runoff election, said the comment had “no place in our political discourse.”

In conservative "jokes" about violence, always look for the rope. Read the rest

Take it to the streets, America. The investigation into Trump's corruption and likely criminality must not be stopped. Read the rest

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Trump's replacement for fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, thinks that if you're not Christian, you shouldn't be a federal judge.

Judges should be "people of faith" and need to have a “biblical view of justice," and Whitaker would like to see a person's "world view," because if they have a secular world view, he'd be "very concerned with how they judge."

Whitaker revealed his ignorance with these remarks during a 2014 conservative forum while vying for the Republican US Senate nomination in Iowa.

The takeaway from this: According to the acting Attorney General of the United States, if you're open-minded, don't be a judge. Read the rest