The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

A federal judge has reimposed limits on former president Donald Trump’s public statements in advance of his trial on charges of conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Sunday evening put back in place an order she had lifted nine days earlier to give Trump and U.S. prosecutors more time to argue whether the restrictions were unconstitutional, as attorneys for the former president had claimed. Trump can now ask a higher court for an emergency stay pending appeal, but in the meantime he is bound by Chutkan’s limits. If Trump violates the gag, as he did a similar order by a state judge in New York, Chutkan will have to decide how to punish the former president and leading presidential candidate.  [snip]

Under the existing order Trump and all interested parties in the case are barred from making or directing others to make public statements that “target” individual attorneys, witnesses, “any reasonably foreseeable witness,” or court staff involved in the case or the substance of their testimony. While the order was on hold, Trump posted a comment on social media calling special counsel Jack Smith “deranged” and saying former chief of staff Mark Meadows would be a lying coward if he testified for the prosecution. Both comments involved some of the exact type of language Chutkan deemed out of bounds.

Trump appeared to potentially to violate Chutkan’s order 75 minutes after she gave notice that it was reinstated, attacking his former attorney general and potential witness, William P. Barr.

“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB,” Trump said in part of an 88-word post on his social media platform that both belittled the man he chose to serve as the nation’s top law-enforcement officer and exaggerated his crowd sizes. “So now this Moron says about me, to get even, ‘his verbal skills are limited.’ Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!”

About 19 minutes after his post about Barr, Trump complained on social media: “The Corrupt Biden administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech.”

We want the s.o.b. to suffer some consequences for a change.  F.A.F.O.

The bad:

All or most of a $267,000 loan obtained by Supreme CourtJustice Clarence Thomas to buy a high-end motorcoach appears to have been forgiven, raising tax and ethics questions, according to a new report by Senate Democrats.

Anthony “Tony” Welters, a longtime friend of Thomas who made the loan in 1999, forgave the debt after nine years of what he called interest-only payments, says the report, which was released Wednesday by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee.  [snip]

Thomas borrowed the money from Welters, a healthcare executive, to buy a 40-foot refitted tour bus in which he tours the country with his wife, Ginni. Thomas has talked about staying in Walmart parking lots and RV parks, which are “what the neighborhoods used to be like.”

At the time of the loan, Thomas said in a handwritten note on his Supreme Court letterhead that agreements to pay interest of 7.5% a year and repay the money in five years, the report says. In 2004, the time to repay the loan was extended until 2014.

Documents voluntarily provided by Welters to the committee show that he forgave the loan in 2008, the report says. Welters gave the committee a copy of just one payment of $20,042 that Thomas made, in 2000.

“Welters forgave the balance of the loan to Thomas in recognition of the payments made by Thomas which Welters characterized as interest only payments that exceeded the amount of the original loan,” the report says. Nine years of interest-only payments would total roughly $180,000, considerably less than the loan amount. Welters did not explain the discrepancy...

We have six justices, all Republican, who are liars (saying they'd uphold precedent on Roe, but then overturning it) and religious zealots, one who was a serial sexual assaulter, and at least two who've taken money or favors from billionaire patrons.  The stench is overwhelming.

The ugly: 

At least 48 people died when Category 5 Hurricane Otis slammed into Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, most of them in Acapulco, Mexican authorities said Sunday as the death toll continued to climb and families buried loved ones.

Mexico’s civil defense agency said in a statement that 43 of the dead were in the resort city of Acapulco and five in nearby Coyuca de Benitez. Guerrero state’s governor had earlier raised the number of missing to 36 from 10 a day earlier. The death toll increased after authorities had raised it to 39 on Saturday.

In Acapulco, families held funerals for the dead on Sunday and continued the search for essentials while government workers and volunteers cleared streets clogged with muck and debris from the powerful Category 5 hurricane.

Katy Barrera, 30, said Sunday that her aunt’s family was buried under a landslide when tons of mud and rock tumbled down onto their home. Her aunt’s body was found with the remains of their three children ranging in age from 2 to 21. Her uncle was still missing. Separately, Barrera’s own mother and brother also remained missing.

“The water came in with the rocks, the mud and totally buried them,” Barrera, who was standing outside a local morgue, said of her aunt’s family.

On Sunday, authorities released the bodies of her aunt and the two youngest children to relatives. Bodies in white bags were loaded into open caskets in the back of hearses. The eldest daughter had already been buried the day before...

Otis went to a Category 5 hurricane so fast it caught everyone by surprise, leading to people sheltering in place instead of evacuating.  Now rescue efforts are being hampered by the damage to the infrastructure and the magnitude of the destruction.