Author: condor

[U: Hinderaker Idiocy, At Bottom] Officials In Chicago AND Minnesota Bring Similar New Federal Suits Against Tangerine 2.0’s Noem And Bovino — For Lawless Brutality.

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These are new federal suits. They both allege intentional, knowing and flagrant violations of the US Constitution — and the checks and balances inherent in individual states’ limited sovereignty.

Here’s the Chicago version — a 100 plus page complaint at law, filed in the Dirksen Building tonight — and a bit of it:

. . .Unable to force Illinois and Chicago through legal challenges to alter their policies, the federal government attempted to coerce the same result by unlawfully withholding federal funds. Defendant Noem issued a directive to cease federal funding to “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

The federal government then withheld millions of dollars in funds wholly unrelated to immigration — including homeland security and disaster relief funds — and promised to continue withholding funds unless and until Illinois diverted resources from the investigation and suppression of violent crime to federal immigration enforcement. Federal courts have barred the administration from implementing these illegal actions. See, e.g., Illinois v. FEMA, No. CV 25- 206 WES, 2025 WL 2716277 (D.R.I. Sept. 24, 2025); see also City & Cnty. of San Francisco v. Trump, 25-CV-01350-WHO, 2025 WL 2426858, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 22, 2025); Martin Luther King, Jr. Cnty. v. Turner, 798 F. Supp. 3d 1224, 1255 (W.D. Wash. 2025) (barring federal government from requiring Chicago to enforce federal immigration policies as a condition of receiving public safety, transportation and health grants).

Angered by his inability to force Illinois and Chicago to adopt his policies, President Trump threatened to unleash a military assault upon them. On September 6, 2025, the President shared on social media an image of himself dressed as a military officer from the film Apocalypse Now, rebranded as, “Chipocalypse Now.” The post riffed on a line from the film in which a character celebrated using napalm on a Vietnamese village, writing “I love the smell of deportations in the morning. . .” Referring to the announcement by Trump and Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth a day earlier that they would rebrand the Department of Defense as the “Department of War,” the post also threatened that “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR. . . .”

[Then, months later,] the United States Supreme Court denied the Trump administration’s application for an emergency stay concluding that “the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.” Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443, 2025 WL 3715211, slip op. at 2 (U.S. Dec. 23, 2025). . .” [See at right.]

Because of the purpose of border security (to prevent entry into the United States of smugglers, contraband, and undocumented immigrants) and the realities of border security (including rugged terrain where backup is often miles away and radio equipment frequently fails), Border Patrol agents operating at or near the border may engage in enforcement tactics that are not permissible for removal enforcement in the interior [like inside Chicago or Minneapolis], like warrantless searches of vehicles within a reasonable distance of the border and trespass on private property. CBP officers also may collect the biometric information of all noncitizens entering and leaving the United States, whereas such biometrics collection is only authorized in narrow, limited circumstances when effectuating removals. Compare 6 U.S.C. § 211(c)(10) (requiring Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection to “deploy technology to collect the data necessary for the Secretary to administer the biometric entry and exit data system”), and 8 U.S.C. § 1365b (addressing the creation of a biometric entry and exit data system), with 8 U.S.C. § 1357(f) (authorizing collection of biometric information from immigrants “14 years of age or older against whom a [removal] proceeding is commenced under section 1229a of this title”). . . .

Defendants have implemented an illegal policy of deploying Border Patrol to the interior of the United States [Where they are not authorized to operate], including the Chicagoland area. On October 30, 2025, Defendant Noem stated she was “thrilled with all the work that ICE and Border Patrol are doing to help clean up our streets… I would say that we actually are using our ICE officers and our CBP officers everywhere….”

[Border Patrol was observed on video, on the Chicago Riverfront, and in Little Village,] patrolling in large numbers wearing military gear and brandishing military weapons in crowded areas of Chicago, including the Loop, Magnificent Mile, and Millenium Park, and interrogating people without belief the person was an alien or unlawfully in the country; arresting or detaining hundreds of people without a warrant or sufficient cause, and seemingly based solely on race or ethnicity; indiscriminately releasing tear gas in urban neighborhoods among civilian populations….

[Since the early 1950s, under well settled federal law] U.S. citizens are not required to carry, much less produce upon request, documentation establishing their citizenship or otherwise prove their citizenship while going about their day. [But many are now doing so, to avoid these goon squads]….

Commander-in-charge Bovino has acknowledged and affirmed the Roving Patrol Policy in stating to a reporter named Priscilla Alvarez: “I can question anyone anywhere in the United States as to their citizenship. Priscilla, what’s your citizenship? See I just did it now, and I can do that anywhere in the United States, and our border patrol agents are trained to do that.” [That is a false statement of the law. He is not so empowered.]….

Updated: John Hinderaker says there is nothing to the Minnesota version of this suit.

He is mistaken.

The complaint and the related motion for a TRO — will be winners. You may find all the law [about which John and his minions complain “is missing”] and that supports the Minnesota version… in this 50 page memo of law, filed tonight with the complaint. Hilarious that John can’t read the docket for comprehension. The State of Minnesota will prevail. Bank on it.

Onward, resolutely — we, the people will prevail — these cretins will not. Our well-vetted system of ordered liberty will — bank on that, too.

नमस्ते

The EU Commission (And Its Member States) Authorize A New €1.2 Million, For Marburg Arrest Efforts In Ethiopia…

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The good news is we are now under 16 days away from declaring the current outbreak at an end — no new cases in almost thirty days’ time.

But to be certain, the aid will be put to good use in Jinka and outside of it. Here’s the latest, from a Commmission presser:

…The European Union has allocated €1.2 million in emergency humanitarian aid to respond to the Marburg outbreak in Ethiopia, currently affecting the South Ethiopia Region. The funding will support a coordinated response to strengthen the ongoing operations, prevent a major disruption to local health systems and avoid widespread social and economic consequences.

On 14 November 2025, the Federal Ministry of Health and the Ethiopian Public Health Institute declared the outbreak of the Marburg virus disease in southern Ethiopia.

As of 16th December 2025, 14 cases were confirmed, including 9 deaths, and over 600 identified contacts including around 400 already discharged. Population in the Jinka Town and other districts within the region are experiencing the impact of the outbreak. Mobility across regional and cross border routes, like Kenya and South Sudan, increases the risk of a wider spread….

Now you know — onward, resolutely, all as Trump hits about 60% unfavorable, to 40% favorable — overall, here stateside.

नमस्ते

Otis & Hinderaker: Now Wanna-Be Interventionists / Foreign Nation-Builders?!

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This is a new one on me: the GOP I knew generally held that the US should stay in its own lane — not Willy-Nilly invade other nations; nor threaten to kill their leaders, so long as they weren’t immediate threats, on shore to the US (see the immediately-post 9/11 GOP, here).

But tonight (again!) Bill Otis can’t wait to start the quagmire / nation-build in Iran. Even if Trump were capable of such a thing — and he’s not, Bill‘s real goal is a jingoistic decapitation of all that is Islam — both the good, and the less so.

But here’s a little hint, Bill: just like any other area of the world — and any other religion — there are good and bad people within it. It’s time to stop your black-and-white thinking and stop throwing babies out with bathwater.

This admonition applies with even greater force… to John Hinderaker’s — of this evening.

John’s is openly racist and bigoted from a religious point of view. John preposterously expects that Donald Trump is going to impose a new world of Western order — throughout the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East, more broadly. There is not a chance, John.

The guy can’t even incompetently use his own ballroom toilets, at Mar-a-lago. [He thinks it’s a presidential library for stolen top secret documents, remember…?]

Damn — what sort of peyote buttons have these glib idiots… ingested?!

Geez — have they completely forgotten the last 12 years? This man can do nothing. Nothing — at least — other than commit crime.

Out.

Are We Getting Closer To Solving… “The Final Parsec Problem”? The Math Doesn’t Work, When Two Super Massive Galaxies Collide — So, How Do Their Black Holes… Merge?

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If one envisions this as a simple rubber sheet, around a center pole in which two very, very heavy steel marbles are rolling toward one another (and thus, the rubber sheet itself increasingly sags — toward the center pole), we can easily imagine that — at some point, as the two are “whirlpooling” around each other, closer and closer and picking up speed — eventually they will bump into each other at the bottom — and in the language of astrophysics… that’s the moment of merger. And we “hear” the blip — as a gravity wave — even across hundreds of millions of lightyears, here.

At least, that is how middle schoolers are taught it might happen. But out there, across billions of light-years in scale. . . the observed reality seems a little different. The black holes often reach a sort of. . . equilibruim point — and don’t fall in any further, for the last three or so light years of separated distance [the so called Final Parsec]. Or so all the mathematical models hold.

But in point of fact, over billions of years (as light from thousands of galaxies reaches us)… we can observe that the pairs of two do, indeed… merge into one ultra super massive black hole, forever changing the shapes and orbits of the galaxies that host them. So what gives? Let’s listen to the Beeb, here (for a plain English tour through the high math problems):

…[A]stronomers encounter [a mathematical contradiction] when they try to model exactly how [super massive black holes merge]. In order to spiral towards one another, the two black holes must first shed energy. To start with, that energy is transferred to surrounding material, including gas and dust. Except when the galactic black holes get within a parsec of each other – just over three lightyears – it seems there’s no longer enough ‘stuff’ to shed energy to….

There must be solution to this “Final Parsec Problem”, and recent experiments such as NANOGrav have picked up a lot of gravitational waves that look like they come from colliding supermassive black holes.

There’s clearly something we are missing in our models.

That could be the influence of a third black hole, but that’s unlikely to account for all cases….

Perhaps the black holes interact with their environment in some other way that causes them to lose orbital energy, spiral in and collide.

For now, the Final Parsec Problem remains one of the biggest mysteries in black hole and galactic astronomy….

Perhaps your own super bright young mathematician / offspring will solve this for us, in a few years’ time. Smiling… perhaps.

नमस्ते

Again, Paul: Two Things Can Be True — At Once. Black/White Thinking Infects The Far Right…

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Paul again sets up a false dichotomy — claiming that Democrats only rely on opinion polls, as to foreign military actions. That is plainly false. Even in the examples he offers, Paul is in error: Barack Obama won two terms by being the lone dissent, on Iraq II. And by being a voice of reason, on the 2007/2008 Mortgage Crisis/Meltdown — one the GOP tried to say was “not a real thing”. See the Palin/McCain lunacy.

Moreover, Paul seems unaware that Tangerine 2.0 runs his foreign “policies” (whatever that air-quoted term might mean to him) by Rasmussen polls, nearly exclusively — and the feckless whims of billionaires that want to seize assets, of course.

Note that none of the supposed principled far right would have invaded, and decapitated a South American dictatorship that DID NOT possess the most tempting heavy crude reserves on the planet, here Paul.

So again — Mirengoff is accusing the Democrats of things that he himself and the GOP are equally if not more fully guilty of.

Yes, Paul one can agree that Maduro was a bad guy — and still respect the law, and say we possess no right to take out a foreign President.

And if we really believe in democracies — we certainly should not be DELAYING free elections after we’ve done so, in any event.

We all know, if elections were held tomorrow, Machado would win about 67% of the free and fair vote, if allowed. But Trump, Rubio and Mirengoff hate that she would not be the supplicant they seek.

She might sell the oil to… Russia. And Cuba. [And that — money — is the only principle, the MAGA nuts adhere to. Not freedom, for just… anyone. And especially not any brown… one.]

Wake up, Paul.

Tonight, Hinderaker Only Cares That “The Trains Run On Time”*

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Hinderaker clearly knows better.

He knows ICE is acting lawlessly.

But he cheers them, as the “good German” he tries to mimic.

Again Hinderaker tells knowing lies — to keep the rubes in line.

In many ways, then — he is worse than the sociopath of a leader he supports.

The rubes don’t know better — but John Hinderaker does.

Out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* This is, of course, what the early Germans said was Hitler’s chief virtue — and they would overlook what turned out to be… his genocidal intentions.

John should take heed.

A Fascinating Half-Hour [Late Night Friday] Visit, From The NY AG’s Office — Looking At Over 12 Pages… Hmmm.

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[This admitted tangent is from another property of mine — related to Martin Shkreli’s now nearly fifteen years of run-ins with the law. And his eventual jailing — and various lifetime barring orders.]

But first… is it possible that they will call me, feeling I might be harassing a law abiding citizen of the tri-borough area? Perhaps, but that seems… unlikely. [I am in truth, outside the NY AG’s jurisdictional reach, in any event. They’d need to call the IL AG. Smile.]

No, Occam’s Razor would suggest the NY AG wants to know how it is… that Martin is serving as a paid consultant (presumably to include both securities pricing matters, and even perhaps waning pharmaceuticals research), for an intrepid / nascent ’34 Act public company.

As I’ve pointed out a few times in the last month or so… even forgetting that he’s been generally a bear — on quantum computing (and so, may not be in the role as a genuine advocate — but just a $120K a year “buy-off”, to avoid his running a shorting scheme, against QC Tech?)… it is my guess that the able USDC Judge Cote, in Manhattan, will frown on this whole arrangement, given the FTC and SEC case resolution orders.

But we shall see — maybe they were just at the office late, and ordered pizza and beers — and were doing some recreational reading while Indiana crushed Oregon, in a conference room with a TV on. Maybe.

And… go Bears! Escape safely from Wildcard weekend. Yep, my Ducks were crushed last night. Ugh. [Indiana will slaughter Miami for the title, though now.]

Onward,

Update, X2 — On Crew 11 Departure Prep, From NASA — Now Likely 5 PM EST Jan. 14 Undocking…

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The coming days may unfold without a lot of advance press notice, for the team.

We will keep you informed, though. Here’s the overnight update:

…Updated 01.10.2026: NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 5 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Jan. 14, for the undocking of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission from the International Space Station, pending weather conditions…. [End, updated portion.]

Four Expedition 74 crew members are preparing for their return to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft. Amid departure preparations, the International Space Station residents also conducted spacesuit maintenance, space biology research, and an artificial intelligence study.

Mission managers have decided to move up the return date for the four SpaceX Crew-11 members living and working aboard the orbital outpost. No departure date has been announced, though the crew has begun checking the fit and operability of their Dragon pressure suits. Fit verification is necessary because the spine lengthens and body fluids shift toward the head in microgravity, affecting torso and limb dimensions. The quartet also tested the suits’ audio and video communication systems.

Dragon Commander Zena Cardman will lead Pilot Mike Fincke, both NASA astronauts, and Mission Specialists Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos back to Earth inside Dragon….

Now you know. Onward, resolutely.

नमस्ते

In Another Bovino / Noemites’ Longer Pending ICE Class Action In Chicago — The Tallies Of All Warrantless Arrests Will Be Released Shortly…

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Bovino and Noem are on their way to being unable to ever find work again, in respectable society [and to be clear, being a Faux News or SkyNews Australia talking head is not… respectable].

And I am here for all of it. Here’s the latest, overnight:

…MINUTE entry [in USDC NDIL Cause No. 18-cv-3757] before the Honorable Jeffrey I Cummings:

The parties are ordered to file a joint status report on 1/16/26 regarding the production of warrantless arrest records.

Mailed notice….

Now you know. Grinning.

नमस्ते

A Day Later, Mirengoff Shows Some Good Judgment, Re Renee Good’s Murder In Minneapolis. Scott Johnson? Not. So. Much.

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Paul is showing more and more signs — signs that he knows Tangerine 2.0 is poisoning America, and poisoning the way his acolytes think, speak and act.

Consider this below, from him this afternoon — related to Kristi Noem’s odious lies. [And, in passing, compare it (in full) to the disgusting one posted by Scott Johnson this morning on the same topic. If anything, Scott — the officer’s body cam makes it even clearer that she was given conflicting commands, and was NOT given a chance to comply before the officer fired. What happened to “de-escalation” — at a protest? In sum, Scott doesn’t understand (or refuses to acknowledge) the applicable law.]

[Yesterday, recall that Paul was offering straw man arguments, on these fronts.] Here, a day Later, however — Paul correctly points out that Kristi Noem is making it much easier to prosecute the involved, quick triggered officer, a man named John Ross — with her statements on behalf of the whole federal government that are demonstrably false.

She is creating a cover up / propaganda story, and trying to taint any future jury pool — where (if he was acting lawfully) none would be needed — or wanted. But this is headed to a state law indictment, just as obtained with Derek Chauvin / George Floyd, now.

So I do applaud Paul for this:

…Kristi Noem, trotting out the Trump administration’s standard overwrought and misleading language, has said that the woman killed by ICE “weaponized” her vehicle and engaged, along with other protesters, in “domestic terrorism.” But Noem does not know whether the woman was trying to injure the ICE officer or simply trying to flee from the scene….

As for “domestic terrorism,” there was none in any version of this unfortunate event.

Terrorism occurs when an individual or a group unleashes violence designed to kill or maim random individuals for the purpose of terrorizing the general population. Even if the woman tried to kill or maim the ICE officer — and again, there’s no reason to assume she did — this would not [amount to] violence against random individuals for the purpose of terrorizing the general population.

Nor are protesters engaged in domestic [he means terrorism, but he typed “violence”] when they try to obstruct ICE officers from doing their job. They are committing crimes, but terrorism isn’t one of them….

Whatever one thinks of Renee Good and her actions that led to the shooting, her six-year-old son is now without a mother…. For Kristi Noem to suggest that the boy’s mother was a domestic terrorist who weaponized her vehicle against federal law enforcement officers not only prematurely and unfairly assumes her guilt and misuses the English language, it is cruel….

Updated: perhaps unsurprisingly, late night on Friday, Hinderaker seeks to distract us from the truth, by claiming “the left” has colluded to create a false narrative here. He fails to identify any false element(s), though. Yawn. [He deludedly also claims to “know” what most people think. Preposterous — he’s done no (even flawed) polling.] So…

Most of all, what we should take from this wanton act of violence by a badge wearing government official… is, as Democratic members of Congress are now resolving (with more than a few sensible GOP regulars) to take away all funding for ICE. That will end the killings.

Nothing gives Trump the right to fund this malign gestapo force, without the purse-strings, clearly held by the Congress.

Onward.