Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:
For LEO Power Up Day, I staked 217.913 LEO.
Unexpected Decline in Core CPI Sends Bitcoin Price Higher
SEC Sues Elon Musk Over Twitter Stock Buys
The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Elon Musk over allegations that he misled shareholders about his Twitter stock purchases, escalating the agency’s long-simmering feud with the billionaire.
A week after committing to free speech, Meta blocks decentralized competitor
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
Vulnerable Americans live in the shadow of COVID-19 as most move on
Politics:
Jack Smith Says It Was Trump Show Slowed Case
A common sentiment on the left is that Garland was too deferential to Trump after Joe Biden took office and failed to unleash the full might of the department on the former president for nearly two years.
But Smith’s report emphasized that the Justice Department was aggressively investigating leads related to Trump long before the special counsel’s tenure began. Litigation tactics by Trump and his allies, Smith argued, were the key factors that slowed the process to a crawl.
South Korea’s President Arrested
South Korean law enforcement officials on Wednesday detained impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his brief imposition of martial law last month.
In a video message recorded before he was escorted to the headquarters of an anti-corruption agency, Yoon lamented that the ‘rule of law has completely collapsed in this country’ but said he was complying with the detention warrant to prevent clashes between law enforcement officials and the presidential security service.
NATO launches new mission to protect crucial undersea cables
Europe Is at War. Why Can’t It Say So?
For the past three years, Russia has used missiles and drones to locate and destroy vital infrastructure in Ukraine—power plants, dams, electrical-transmission lines. Everyone understands that these attacks are acts of war, no matter how steadfastly President Vladimir Putin describes them as part of a ‘special military operation.’
When Russia targets other European neighbors, though, the West resorts to its own euphemisms to avoid directly acknowledging what Putin is doing.
“I have failed in things in my life, and thankfully I’m redeemed by my lord and savior Jesus.”
— Defense Secretary-designate Pete Hegseth, quoted by the New York Times, falling back on religious claims of redemption rather than offering substantive denials to past bad behavior.
The Pressure Campaign to Get Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary
Supporters of Donald Trump’s nominee have intimidated potential witnesses and suppressed the F.B.I. background check of the former Fox News host in the run-up to his Senate hearing…
As recently as the spring of 2023, according to an account shared last week with The New Yorker, Hegseth ordered three gin-and-tonics at a weekday breakfast meeting with an acquaintance in Manhattan.
Said the person: “It was an extremely strange experience. We met at Fox News in New York for breakfast, and he suggested we go across the street to a bar. It was, like, ten in the morning. Then he ordered two gin-and-tonics at the same time for himself. To be polite, I ordered one, too. But it was so strong I couldn’t drink it, so I ordered coffee. Then he had a third gin-and-tonic. I don’t know how he could pass a security clearance.”
The GOP Is No Longer the Party of National Security
What America and the world saw today was not a serious examination of a serious man. Instead, Republicans on the committee showed that they would rather elevate an unqualified and unfit nominee to a position of immense responsibility than cross Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or the most ardent Republican voters in their home states. America’s allies should be deeply concerned; America’s enemies, meanwhile, are almost certainly laughing in amazement at their unexpected good fortune.
Most of the GOP senators asked questions that had little to do with the defense of the United States and everything to do with the peculiar obsessions that dominate the alternative reality of right-wing television and talk radio, especially the bane of ‘wokeness.’ Perhaps that was just as well for Hegseth, because the few moments where anything of substance came up did not go well for him.
