History was made on Thursday in the United States Senate.

And neither Lindsey Graham nor Rand Paul could be bothered to be on the floor for it.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to be the next Supreme Court Justice by a 53-47 margin, with three Republicans joining every Democrat in voting for her. That vote paves the way for Jackson to become the first Black woman to hold a seat on the nation's highest court.

South Carolina's Graham and Kentucky's Paul voted against Jackson, which was not surprising. But it was the way they did it that's worth calling out.

Neither senator was allowed to vote on the Senate floor because they were not wearing ties, as noted by CNN's Ali Zaslav and Ted Barrett. Graham arrived to the vote wearing a quarter-zip and a blazer, even though video from a press conference Graham participated in on Thursday shows that he was wearing a tie earlier in the day. He voted "no" from the Senate cloakroom, which essentially amounts to a members' lounge off of the floor.

Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop declined to say why the senator did not wear a tie for the vote when asked by CNN. "He voted. His vote was recorded," Bishop said.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/08/politics/lindsay-graham-rand-paul-ketanji-brown-jackson/index.html

This Texas teacher's goal is to provide everything she can for her students -- and that includes pads and tampons.

As an eighth grade teacher in Austin, Kylie DeFrance's students are between the ages of 12 and 14. This is the time that most girls start their menstruation cycle, according to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Remembering what it's like to go through this phase herself, DeFrance began thinking of ways she could make it easier for her students, she told CNN.

"I want to provide them with what they need, whether that be a pencil or a tampon," DeFrance said.

"A lot of these scholars go home and are the parent to their siblings, and maybe can't go to the store that day," she continued. "Or, they can't afford the pad or tampon that would be best for them, or maybe they don't have a good relationship with their parents."

Her school provides only one type of pad, DeFrance said, so she began purchasing pads and tampons to give her students more options. She soon became the go-to teacher for all things menstruation.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/10/us/texas-teacher-menstrual-products-trnd/index.html
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How great is this?

Los Angeles jail guards have frequently punched incarcerated people in the head and subjected them to a “humiliating” group strip-search where they were forced to wait undressed for hours, according to a new report from court-appointed monitors documenting a range of abuses.

The Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD), which oversees the largest local jail system in the country, appears to be routinely violating use-of-force policies, with supervisors failing to hold guards accountable and declining to provide information to the monitors tasked with reviewing the treatment of incarcerated people.

The report, filed in federal court on Thursday, adds to a long string of scandals for the department. The monitors – first put in place in 2014 to settle a case involving beatings – suggested that some problems in the jails appeared to be getting worse after they visited the facilities in December 2021.

The monitors, Robert Houston, a former corrections official, and Jeffrey Schwartz, a consultant, alleged that the use of “head shots”, meaning punches to the head, had been “relatively unchanged in the last two years or more, and may be increasing”. They also wrote that deputies who used force in violation of policy were at times sent to “remedial training” but that “actual discipline is seldom imposed”. And supervisors who failed to document violations were also “not held accountable” .

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/08/los-angeles-jail-sheriffs-department-violence-accusation
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LAPD/SD yet again.

The former CBS reporter Lara Logan, who compared Dr Anthony Fauci to the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, has claimed she was “pushed out” at Fox News because the conservative network does not want “independent thinkers”.

“I was definitely pushed out,” Logan told Eric Metaxas, a conservative radio host, this week. “I mean, there is no doubt about that. They don’t want independent thinkers. They don’t want people who follow the facts regardless of the politics.”

Fox News has not commented on reports that it “quietly benched” Logan over her remark about Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser. On Friday, a spokesperson for Fox News said the network would not comment.

Logan has not appeared as a guest on Fox News since making the comment about Fauci. There have been no new episodes of her show on the Fox Nation streaming service, Lara Logan Has No Agenda, which is still available.

Logan made the comment about Mengele, the “Angel of Death” who conducted medical experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp, in November, during a discussion of the Covid pandemic on Fox News Primetime.

Logan said: “Dr Fauci, this is what people say to me, that he doesn’t represent science to them.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/apr/09/lara-logan-fox-news-mengele-fauci-remark
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Poor li'l victim

The Disney corporation has been accused of supporting grooming children ever since it withdrew its support for Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. The law, which has inspired similar legislation elsewhere, bans teachers from teaching kids up to age 12 anything about sexual orientation or gender identity. In just the past week, the Disney grooming conspiracy has rapidly morphed into wild claims that the corporation is on a covert mission to indoctrinate children with a satanic agenda or is a front for a secret pedophilia ring.

Wednesday’s rally was organized by Sean Feucht, one of the “patriot pastors” who has risen to national prominence in recent years amid a surge of Christian nationalism within the GOP. Feucht and his ilk view culture war issues—election conspiracies, vaccines, critical race theory, LGBTQ rights—as primordial battles between good and evil that not only offend Christianity but also threaten what it means to be American.

The Disney controversy couldn’t have come at a better time for the far-right, which has lately found itself rudderless and in need of a new cause du jour. Anger over mask mandates and vaccines, which brought disparate elements of the far-right under one banner, has dissipated now that COVID restrictions have been rolled back.

The vast array of conspiracies against Disney have recently shown up everywhere from the social media feeds of Donald Trump Jr. and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to anonymous forums and far-right Telegram channels. The far-right has latched onto the debacle—as well as a recent slew of state bills and laws targeting the LGBTQ community—as an excuse to traffic in tired transphobic and homophobic slurs, bashing gay and trans people as sex predators or pedophiles. On one pro-Trump forum, users have made threats against teachers , especially LGBTQ teachers, saying “Hang them all” and “Groomers get the rope.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88g3ep/anti-grooming-rally-at-disney-is-latest-stop-for-culture-war-traveling-circus
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Little Sean can't even spell "fucked" right. Probably can't say it right either, but sure is fucked up.

Alabama lawmakers are trying to win a prize for the most bigoted bills passed in one day, and fine, we will give them the asshole trophy.

Today the Republican-controlled state legislature is set to pass a so-called “bathroom bill” that would ban transgender students in grades K through 12 from using the bathroom and locker room corresponding with their gender identity; a felony ban on doctors providing gender-affirming healthcare to transgender minors; and a so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would prohibit teachers from discussing sexuality in kindergarten through fifth grade. If passed, the bills will go to Governor Kay Ivey (R) for her signature.

The bathroom bill, HB 322, has already passed the House, and the Senate is considering it today. Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brian Lyman said on Twitter that right after the bathroom bill was introduced on the Senate floor, Republican Sen. Shay Shelnutt moved to add a “Don’t Say Gay” amendment to the bill. (Shelnutt is the lead sponsor of the healthcare ban.) Lyman reported that the amendment passed 24 to 6 and the larger bathroom bill passed 26 to 5, sailing right on through. It will now go back to the House for final approval.

he Senate has already passed the health care ban, SB 184, and the House will take it up today. It would make providing gender-affirming care like puberty blockers and hormones a class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. That bill could also potentially out trans kids to their parents by forcing schools to report gender non-conformity to parents. Lawmakers haven’t yet voted on the health care ban. but we’ll update this post after they do.

https://jezebel.com/alabama-is-set-to-pass-3-three-anti-gay-bills-today-1848763049
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Alabummer. Notice no one seems overly concerned about transgender MALES?

DAN FRIEDMAN

Late in the 2020 presidential campaign, trailing in the polls, Donald Trump and his allies worked to make a campaign issue out of a trove of files on a laptop that his opponent’s son, Hunter Biden, had apparently abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. The effort to publicize compromising emails, images, and videos from the device involved prominent Trump confidants including Rudy Giuliani and Steven Bannon. But it also featured an unexpected player: Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese tycoon who was working with Bannon to build a small empire of Chinese-language media outlets, nonprofits, and other ventures.

Mother Jones obtained scores of WhatsApp audio messages Guo sent to supporters, along with underlying material from Biden’s hard drive that Guo’s assistant distributed at his behest. Previous reports have noted the role of Guo allies and companies in publicizing sex tapes and other material involving Hunter Biden. But the WhatsApp messages, and sources who were involved in the effort, reveal that Guo—who has been accused in lawsuits of fraud and rape and of secretly acting as an agent for the Chinese Communist Party—played a larger role than previously known in ensuring that explicit images and videos from the laptop appeared online, and in spreading lies about them. (Guo has denied the allegations made in the lawsuits against him.)

Guo stage-managed an October 2020 effort to disseminate videos and pictures showing Hunter Biden engaged in sex acts and using drugs. After Giuliani, then President Trump’s personal lawyer, gave him material from Hunter Biden’s laptop, Guo issued detailed instructions to two WhatsApp groups that included dozens of Guo’s supporters. Guo directed these supporters to package, post, and promote hundreds of explicit images and other material about Biden on websites Guo controlled, people involved in the effort said.

The material Guo publicized seems to be real, but he instructed supporters to couple it with false claims that it came from Chinese sources, and that the Chinese government had used it to obtain leverage over Hunter Biden and his father, Joe Biden. “We have to express…The Chinese Communist Party used these to threaten Hunter and [Joe] Biden,” Guo told supporters in an October 24, 2020, message. (Mother Jones is quoting English translations of messages that were originally in Chinese. Multiple people independently verified the translations.)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/hunter-biden-laptop-guo-wengui-bannon-giuliani/
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Might have known that vile pusbag was involved

My favorite TikTok video starts with a clean-cut man in a baseball cap walking down a snowy street.

“I’m going to my favorite teacher’s house from when I did my 21-year prison bid,” he tells the camera. “She is the BOMB. She doesn’t know I’m coming. Here we go, let’s surprise her!”

He knocks, then turns back to the camera.

I’m So Nervous Right Now,” the caption reads.

Seconds later, the door swings open.

“Mr. Lacey? Oh my God! How are you?” his former teacher cries, dissolving into laughter and then tears before inviting him inside.

The 54-second video went viral last year with more than 2.7 million views. Michael Lacey — who did 21 years in Indiana prisons and now posts under the username Comrade Sinque — went on to become one of the top creators in the niche realm of prison TikTok, where people who did time tell the rest of the world what it’s like and put faces to the concept of mass incarceration.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/prison-tiktok-influencers-rcna23090
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I didn't know where to put this, but Media finally seemed obvious. I'm more of a podcast person myself, listening while I do other things, but TikTok apparently has a LOT

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon cannot argue at his trial that he is not guilty of contempt of Congress because he was following the advice of his lawyer, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said such a defense is not available in a contempt of Congress case, dealing Bannon’s defense a major setback. He faces trial in July.

“It’s a serious blow, because he doesn’t have another good defense,” said Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor. “He’ll now have to make a decision about whether to proceed to trial or try to cut some kind of deal.”

A federal grand jury indicted Bannon in November on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. One count accused him of refusing to appear for a deposition, and the other was for declining to produce documents requested by the committee.

If he is convicted, Bannon, who is 68, could be sentenced to a year behind bars and a fine of up to $100,000.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/judge-deals-blow-steve-bannons-legal-defense-upcoming-trial-rcna23314
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Potential fine and sentence are insufficient for this pusbag.

The school year at MacArthur High in Irving, Texas, began last fall with the administration scraping off rainbow stickers that had been posted on campus, prompting hundreds of students to walk out in protest. Seven months later, LGBTQ students say things have deteriorated further.

One faculty sponsor of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance is facing having her contract terminated, another is preparing to resign, and a third has been removed from the classroom. The alliance’s weekly meetings became monthly, and attendance dropped from about 40 students to fewer than 10. The student newspaper has functionally shut down. Two teachers said that the school’s principal asked teachers to take down gay pride flags in their classrooms and offices.

Several students said that either they or their classmates have been called homophobic slurs and bullied, and school staff members have failed to intervene. Some said they’re discouraged by the Irving Independent School District’s response to the concerns they’ve raised through the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) and school board meetings, and they feel less safe at school than they did a year ago. Two students said human resources officers with the district questioned them about their involvement with the GSA.

“It feels like a target was put on us,” said Adaiah Knight, a junior who identifies as gender-fluid and nonbinary and who said students have harassed them. (Knight uses they/them pronouns.)

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lgbtq-students-texas-school-rainbow-stickers-rcna23208
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Texass. Again. Can we just secede from them?