The good:
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows last week filed a petition
to move Georgia’s racketeering case against him from state court in
Fulton County to the federal court for the Northern District of Georgia.
He was granted an evidentiary hearing on Aug. 28.
The removal request raises a host of issues regarding him and former president Donald Trump
in the case alleging a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020
presidential election. Meadows will need to produce evidence to justify
removal at the Aug. 28 hearing. [snip]
In any event, Meadows’s effort to scramble into federal court might well fail. The relevant statute, U.S. Code 28 Section 1(a),
allows removal only if the defendant was a “officer (or any person
acting under that officer) of the United States or of any agency thereof
… for or relating to any act under color of such office.” Neither Trump
nor Meadows, however, had any constitutional duties regarding state
certification of Georgia’s own election. The Framers parceled out
election duties to the states, the electoral college and Congress, but not the president.
Moreover,
in seeking removal, a defendant must also show that he has a
“colorable” defense under federal law, such as immunity. In Mesa v. California,
the Supreme Court in 1989 held that mail truck drivers charged with
misdemeanor manslaughter could not get into federal court even though
they were performing their assigned duties: driving mail trucks. Because
the defendants lacked a federal defense to their charges, the
court declined to allow “removal of state criminal prosecutions of
federal officers and thereby impose potentially extraordinary burdens on
the States when absolutely no federal question is even at issue in such
prosecutions.”
This
is where Meadows and Trump, if he tries to follow Meadows’s gambit,
likely will falter. They lack a viable defense, such as presidential
immunity, in trying to overturn the 2020 election, according to multiple judges...
These treasonous rats clearly think they have a better chance of evading justice through the Federal courts (and with judges like Aileen Cannon and the robed Republican pols on the Supreme Court, it's not hard to see why). We'd like to believe they won't get their chance to find out.
The bad:
The
engineers at a once-bustling industrial hub deep inside Russia were
busy planning. The team had been secretly tasked with building a
production line that would operate around-the-clock churning out
self-detonating drones, weapons that President Vladimir Putin’s forces
could use to bombard Ukrainian cities.
A
retired official of Russia’s Federal Security Service was put in charge
of security for the program. The passports of highly skilled employees
were seized so they could not leave the country. In correspondence and
other documents, engineers used coded language: Drones were “boats,”
their explosives were “bumpers,” and Iran — the country covertly
providing technical assistance — was “Ireland” or “Belarus.”
This was Russia’s billion-dollar weapons deal with Iran coming to life in November, 500 miles east of Moscow in the Tatarstan region. Its aim is to domestically build 6,000 drones
by summer 2025 — enough to reverse the Russian army’s chronic shortages
of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, on the front line. If it
succeeds, the sprawling new drone factory could help Russia preserve its
dwindling supply of precision munitions, thwart Ukraine’s effort to
retake occupied territory and dramatically advance Moscow’s position in
the drone arms race that is remaking modern warfare...
Ukraine itself is working on long- range drones capable of delivering a payload up to 1,844 miles. What an appropriate, reachable target this would be for them.
The ugly:
A dispute over an LGBTQ+ pride flag at a California clothing store
spiraled into deadly violence this weekend when a man shot and killed
the 66-year-old business owner right in front of her shop, authorities
said.
The man ran away from the store after the shooting Friday
night but was later found and killed in a confrontation with officers
from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
The agency
said Laura Ann Carleton was pronounced dead at Mag.Pi, the store she
owned and operated in Cedar Glen. The small community in the San
Bernadino Mountains is roughly 60 miles (96 kilometers) east of downtown
Los Angeles.
Before the shooting, the man “made several disparaging remarks about a
rainbow flag that stood outside the store,” sheriff’s officials said.
It was not immediately clear what happened when officers confronted the man, whose identity hadn’t been released as of Sunday.
Carleton, who preferred to be called “Lauri,” is survived by her husband and nine children in a blended family.
An
LGBTQ group in nearby Lake Arrowhead said Carleton didn’t identify as a
member of the LGBTQ+ community. But she spent time helping and
advocating for everyone, and was defending her Pride flags placed in
front of her shop on the night of the shooting, the group said...
That the hateful, homophobic psychopath paid with his life is of no comfort to the friends and family of Ms. Carlton, nor is it to us.
