Love God & Neighbor. Welcome Strangers.

He/Him
Help fund my indie academic research - Hx of Catholic enslavers in IA
venmo: @schmidtyschtuff
If you want ✌ work for ⚖! Paul VI

[Ilhan Omar @IlhanMN]

Yes. Reform the Supreme Court.

Term limits.
Expand the Court.
Enforceable code of ethics.

It’s time we address corruption on the highest court.

[Love God & Neighbor. Welcome Strangers. @Schmidtyschtuff]

Next week, WOF and Bishop Barron are honored to host the ghosts of Pinochet, Franco, and Mussolini.

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Friends, it was an honor to have Vice President Vance as my next guest on Bishop Barron Presents.

[Michael Harriot @michaelharriot]

America’s 250th birthday also marks the 150th birthday of the racial massacre that ended Reconstruction, overturned an election and ushered in Jim Crow.

It started because of road rage. https://t.co/8LfbxKq3Hb

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

People are upset about the World Cup because instead of bringing the world together it’s another reminder of how unjust the world is.

It’s not a conspiracy. A Somali referee was denied entry to the U.S., that’s a fact. The U.S. tried to swap Iran for Italy, and then mistreated the team, that’s a fact. The U.S. president made a call to reverse a red card for an American player, that’s a fact…

From discrimination and over-priced tickets, to commercial breaks and VAR issues, many people who have watched and enjoyed the World Cup since childhood are more than disappointed. The whole tournament was tainted from the beginning, starting with a fake peace prize to gratify the host country.

[Jenin Younes @JeninYounesEsq]

In 2009, my father--a Palestinian who grew up in the West Bank and became an American citizen when I was a child--was denied entry into Israel on a trip to visit his mother, siblings, nieces, and nephews in the West Bank, because he was Palestinian. Israel never provided any specific explanation for mistreating him, beyond the obvious inference it was due to his ethnicity.

Despite promising reciprocal treatment of Americans regardless of their ethnic backgrounds under the visa waiver program between our countries, Israel routinely abrogates its commitments.

My father wrote about his humiliating and disturbing experience for a 2016 anthology called "Being Palestinian." You can read it below.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

Scandalous.
18 months in arbitrary detention. No charge. No evidence. Torture attested by his lawyer, marks visible on his body.
And instead of covering this, @BBC amplifies Israel's unproven claims casting doubt on a hostage doctor.

>BBC's journalism in the time of genocide.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Six months, and DOJ never opened a criminal probe into Good's death at all. Dhillon looked into investigating Good's widow instead. Six federal prosecutors quit over it. An FBI agent quit over it.

Minnesota is doing the job Washington refuses to do, and doing it without the evidence Washington is required to hand over. Good's car is still in an FBI warehouse. Pretti's phone is still withheld. A judge in an unrelated assault case had to order records released before anyone outside DHS could see them.

Hennepin County calling this "unprecedented in American history" is not rhetoric. It is a description.

[Mohammed El-Kurd @m7mdkurd]

NEW: The Board of Directors at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will formally change its definition of who qualifies as a journalist, to broadly exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese journalists who worked for government-funded media outlets. Israeli, American, and Ukrainian journalists who work for state-funded outlets or are embedded with the military will remain recognized as journalists, of course.

The move was catalyzed to appease the right-wing Zionist rag The Free Beacon, which has repeatedly accused Palestinian and Lebanese journalists of being undercover militants or used their political opinions or affiliations as justification for their killing by the IOF.

This is a racist scandal of massive proportions for everyone involved, and it makes a mockery of the purported mission of the organization. It is absolutely abhorrent that the organization’s resources are wasted on this cowardly witch-hunt, at a moment in history that is the deadliest for journalists, especially in Palestine and Lebanon.

[Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1]

Justice Kagan: "I'm not sure what to call a remnant of a remnant, but that is what the Court has left today. And the result will be what Justice Breyer warned of: a legal regime increasingly unable to stop political corruption, and thus to preserve our institutions' democratic legitimacy."

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Three unarmed teenagers from Elkhart went to prison for at least 50 years each because someone else in the group was shot by a homeowner.

Indiana's own Supreme Court called the sentences disproportionate.

Bruenig's piece documents what the national evidence shows: trying juveniles as adults produces more crime, not less. The catharsis is real. The results aren't.

[Janet Abou-Elias @Janetabouelias]

So U.S. and Israel are coordinating strikes on Beirut! lovely

[ᴅʀ. ʜ.ᴀ. ʜᴇʟʟʏᴇʀ 🖖🏾 ⚜️ @hahellyer]

This is ridiculous. Shameful smear. The property in question is *not* Israeli property. It is Palestinian property, in the occupied Palestinian territories, as per the British government, the EU, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations. Shameful smear

[Rogue POTUS Staff @RoguePOTUSStaff]

ICE took a 31 y/o Haitian asylum-seeker into custody, drove her 30 miles away to a Pittsburgh office, put an ankle monitor on her, then sent her out the front door with no way to get anywhere or contact her family.

She froze to death at a bus stop. It's now ruled a homicide.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Michael Ian Black's piece has one observation that cuts through everything else written about the Epstein files this week.

The senior officials who gathered in the Situation Room last July - Vance, Wiles, Blanche, Leavitt, Cheung, Patel - spent hours strategizing about how to protect Trump from the political fallout. They workshopped options. They debated whether to call Tucker Carlson or use DOJ lawyers instead. They reportedly discussed nipples in the White House Situation Room. One official described it as "surreal."

What none of them apparently did: ask whether the allegations against their boss had merit. Not once. Not raised. Not even Bongino, who is Black's unlikely near-hero for the piece - Bongino's objection was to the botched rollout, not to the underlying situation that made a rollout necessary.

The documentable facts now in the record: Trump flew on Epstein's plane at least eight times after claiming he hadn't. Trump denied writing the birthday letter, then the Wall Street Journal obtained it. Epstein's personal secretary testified to Congress this week that she arranged calls between Trump and Epstein shortly before the 2016 inauguration - after Trump claimed he had cut off contact in 2004.

These are not allegations about what happened on Epstein's properties. These are documented lies about a documented relationship. The people in that Situation Room knew the relationship existed. They chose to manage the politics instead of asking the question that the people they serve - the American public - would want answered.

Black closes with the names of Epstein's accusers who went public. That's the right place to close.

[B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم @btselem]

Israel is running a network of torture camps for Palestinians. Our reports, Welcome to Hell and Living Hell, extensively documented a reality of extreme violence, starvation, and torture.

Palestinian prisoners are subjected to severe violence, deliberate humiliation, starvation, sleep deprivation, denial of medical care, and abuse in every facility where they are held. 

These abusive practices are fully backed by the political leadership, which openly boasts about the harsh prison conditions. Some inmates are subjected to severe sexual assaults. 

At least 89 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention facilities since October 2023 as a result of inhumane conditions, violence, starvation, and the denial of medical treatment. 

Despite the extensive evidence, media investigations, and reports issued by Israeli and international organizations documenting torture in Israeli prisons, the international community continues to stand by and allow Israel to commit crimes against the Palestinian people. 

Link to the full report >>
Welcome to Hell: https://t.co/41rgbvFjCx

Living Hell: https://t.co/vHSdH4GFsG

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

The Trump administration is quietly moving to change the Affordable Care Act to let health insurers offer people loans to pay for their care.

Deep in a document over 1,000 pages long about how the Affordable Care Act market will operate next year, the administration suggests that insurers consider offering loans to cash-strapped customers.

Under this approach, people who develop a costly disease or need unexpected emergency care would turn to their health insurer for loans.

A third of American households already have medical debt, and this approach would mean even more debt that patients owe to their health insurance companies.

The insurers, who already make billions, would stand to make even more.

https://t.co/V5mCfnmOLS

[Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance]

"We're here because you had the audacity to exercise your 1st Amendment rights"

[K. @IbaraEleven]

Selling major news in a book instead of simply reporting it. You don’t hate mainstream “journalists” enough.

[James Surowiecki @JamesSurowiecki]

So Iran is not handing over its uranium, is "promising" to not acquire a nuclear bomb, and is getting $25 billion in its assets unfrozen and the oil sanctions lifted. Why did we go to war again?

[Love God & Neighbor. Welcome Strangers. @Schmidtyschtuff]

Yes, instead of this they have healtcare and public transit.

[Texas Football Life @txfblife]

Meanwhile in Texas, these are high school football stadiums

The European mind cannot comprehend this