Oh boy. I have a lot to say about Mr. Hinderaker’s staggeringly dishonest post, which is just chock-full of falsehoods, mischaracterizations, and bad-faith arguments. Let’s take a look at them one by one:
Will the Abrego Garcia story go on forever? Apparently so. Although why Democrats want to keep it in the news is a mystery.
Hmm. Let’s see if I can solve the mystery. It might be because Garcia was illegally rendered to a foreign prison, with no due process and in violation of a court order barring his removal. Every single court all the way up to SCOTUS agrees that the government’s actions here were illegal. SCOTUS’s decision was 9-0. Key quote: “To this day, the Government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison.”
The administration has also asserted that there was a removal order for Mr. Garcia, but later court proceedings have revealed that no such removal order exists. If there was never a final order of removal, Abrego Garcia should never have been on whatever removal list the government kept that led to his rendition. No immigration judge has ever ordered his removal, so the entire episode is a crystal-clear example of the administration’s lawlessness. Maybe that’s why the Democrats keep talking about it. Just spitballing here.
When the Speaker of the Minnesota House filed to run against Walz, was it breaking news?
Well, no. But maybe that’s because nobody outside of Minnesota has any idea who the Speaker of the Minnesota House is. Mike Lindell is a national figure. Maybe that’s why it was reported. Again, just spitballing.
The “Affordable Care Act” was a disaster, and Congress should stop bailing it out.
Well, the ACA is pretty popular. It’s responsible for insuring millions of Americans who never had health insurance before. The Trump administration and the Republican Congress did their best to hobble the the ACA by reducting the mandate to $0 and illegally refusing to pay the risk corridor payments to insurance companies, as required by the law (until SCOTUS made them). The ACA also forbade insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditiions. Remember the dark days when insurance companies could deny you coverage for your cancer treatments because you had cancer before you got insurance? Anybody want to go back to that? Also, President Trump and the Republican party have had more than a decade to come up with something better, and still haven’t, despite Pres. Trump comically promising for all four years of his first term that his plan was “a couple of weeks away” from being released.
Letitia James was obviously guilty of mortgage fraud.
Gee, if John’s got proof of that, he might want to share it with the Justice Department, so maybe they can stop embarrassing themselves in court. This wasn’t jury nullification, as John baselessly claims. Every single prosecutor with an ounce of professionalism passed on this case, because the “evidence” is mostly exculpatory. Also, that evidence was very likely obtained illegally by Trump loyalist William J. Pulte, but that’s another story.
Has the Times acknowledged that its party, the Democrats, has been for many years the kings of gerrymandering?
This one’s a rather large whopper. Both Republicans and Democrats engage in gerrymandering, but analyses consistently show that Republicans have benefited more significantly and more frequently due to controlling the redistricting process in a greater number of states. Maybe the Times should have mentioned that In 2021, all U.S. House Republicans except two (who were absent) voted against H.R. 1, called the “For the People Act.” The law would have required states to establish independent redistricting commissions, nonlegislative bodies that would draw non-partisan political district lines. All House Democrats but one voted for it. Seems like a weird thing for “the kings of gerrymandering” to do.
Several Democrat-led states have enacted anti-gerrymandering legislation on their own. In fact, California had to ask its citizens to repeal their anti-gerrymandering law so that it could counter Texas’s egregious maps. The Indiana map would have resulted in zero Democrat-majority districts. Is that a representative government for the people or a naked power grab by the GOP? Good for Indiana Republicans for showing some integry in this matter.
If you use a second missile, it is “against the law.” I have not yet seen anyone show me the “law” in question. Let’s see a citation to the United States Code.
Yikes! Whoever John paid to take the bar exam for him didn’t do him any favors. Here you go, John, from the Department of Defense Law of War Manual:
The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.
In addition, we have the Geneva Convention guidelines, which explicitly state that attacks against persons who are recognized as “hors de combat” is prohibited. A person hors de combat is:
(a) anyone who is in the power of an adverse party;
(b) anyone who is defenceless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or
(c) anyone who clearly expresses an intention to surrender
So there you go. Now somebody has shown him the law. Also, if that’s not what happened with the second strike (and nobody in the administration has very convincingly denied it, amid all their ever-changing stories on this incident), let’s see the video. Pres. Trump said he’d have “no problem” releasing the video. So why hasn’t that happened?
But even if the double-tap story is false, the bombings are still illegal. The consensus among independent and international law experts is that the strikes constitute a war crime if they occurred within the context of an armed conflict (which it didn’t, since we’re not at war with Venezuela, and the boats posed an imminent threat to exactly nobody), or murder/extrajudicial killings if they did not occur within the context of an armed conflict. Either way, not good.
This has been the latest episode of “What has John Hinderaker lied about today?” We’ll see you next time.
To be certain, in most of the sciences (despite the odd examples we report on here), the dank darkness — of ignorance. . . is being pushed backward, into the background, day by day — and illuminated, by excellent — and more than occasionally… female genius scientists.The Galactic Plane Survey is Roman’s first selected general astrophysics survey — one of many observation programs Roman will do in addition to its three core surveys and Coronagraph technology demonstration. At least 25% of Roman’s five-year primary mission is reserved for astronomers worldwide to propose more surveys beyond the core programs, fully leveraging Roman’s capabilities to conduct groundbreaking science. Roman is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026….
Powerline Lies... 