Welcome to the dystopian future of yesteryear's futurist cyberpunk novels. Read the rest

No malarkey. Read the rest

“An Associated Press review of those states found that at least 10 states also share the names of everyone who tests positive.”

A review by the Associated Press found that public health officials “in at least two-thirds of U.S. states” are sharing the addresses of people who confirmed to have the coronavirus with first responders.

Widespread disclosure of who has tested positive is said to be intended to protect medical workers and first responders from exposure, but the practice sparks concerns involving racial profiling, privacy, and security. Read the rest

LOL, nothing matters.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has been promoted to a new position is temporarily going to become chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican leaders announced on Tuesday. Read the rest

He's using big boy words today, isn't he.

Impeached and manifestly unfit U.S. President Donald Trump is being mocked around the world today for boasting about America's new ‘super duper missile.’

Does it go, 'PEW PEW'? Read the rest

A criminal hacker group that breached a major entertainment law firm says it will release documents on President Donald Trump if it doesn’t receive $42 million in ransom. Read the rest

One reason Trump's reelection campaign will become feral and unhinged is the likelihood of his prosecution as soon as presidential immunity comes to an end. Joe Biden, his presumptive challenger, promised last night that he would not pardon Trump.

"Absolutely. Yes," Biden said in response to a voter asking him to commit to letting any future prosecution play out. "Hands off, completely."

Given Biden's anachronistic "bipartisan" ideals and his obvious sense of kinship with GOP colleagues, his pardoning Trump was a genuine and growing fear. I'm glad to see he isn't that naive.

Richard Nixon resigned and was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, in 1974—a controversial decision long suspected (albeit with only circumstantial evidence) to have been a quid-pro-quo.

If Trump does lose, is there anything (other than paranoia) preventing him from resigning early in the expectation that his Vice President, Mike Pence, would briefly succeed him and pardon him before the winner took office? Read the rest

Watch live, as ousted Trump administration health official Rick Bright testifies on his whistleblower complaint before Congress. Read the rest

Today, in an exchange with a noted fan on Fox Business, impeached and manifestly unfit President Trump said a bunch of really dumb untrue things on live television that made no sense at all. Read the rest

Days after it was reported that James Damore's lawsuit against Google was quietly settled, NBC News reports that Google has ended or sharply curtailed diversity programs to "avoid being perceived as anti-conservative".

April Glazer:

Internal diversity and inclusion training programs have been scaled back or cut entirely, four Google employees and two people who recently left the company told NBC News in interviews. In addition, they said, the team responsible for those programs has been reduced in size, and positions previously held by full-time employees have been outsourced ... Seven current and former employees from across a range of teams and roles at the company said separately that they all believed the reason behind cutting Sojourn and taking employees off diversity projects to move them elsewhere at Google was to shield the company from backlash from conservatives.

I was going to remark that this was a big bet on Trump's reelection from a big holder of proprietary data indicating the preferences and intentions of American voters, but that's not really justified. The servile, supplicative attitude toward conservatives is the default to which American corporations always return¹. What are they afraid of, all told? What, specifically, is the bad thing that happens to Google as a result of diversity training?

1. Compare to how a Hollywood studio will acknowledge a mistake, explain the mistake accurately, promise not to make the mistake again, then cast Tom Cruise as Ghandi, etc., exposing the entire mistake management process as an unusually contemptuous and short-term PR exercise. Read the rest

In a more normal timeline, each one of these wack-ass tweets from impeached president Donald Trump would be their own news cycle. But this is no normal timeline. Read the rest

Bad legal news for Orange President Kleptocrat today.

He's gonna be in a mood. Read the rest

In an interview with Time magazine published yesterday, President Trump's failson-in-law and shady-assed advisor Jared Kushner suggested maybe postponing the November election.

That is not allowed, unless Congress says 'yes' to the plan.

That was Tuesday. On Wednesday, Kushner attempted to walk back his comment about how he's 'not sure' he can commit to a date for the 2020 presidential election. Read the rest