Note that the hero of the Republican party was guilty of a crime related to Central America:
https://petapixel.com/2023/06/12/photographer-reveals-how-his-picture-exposed-a-cia-coverup/

So the bottom line here is that you have admitted that Trump has committed the crimes for which he is being indicted. The others for wh**ever reason were not pursued but the comparison is obvious-all of them committed what you consider to be criminal activity but only Trump is being prosecuted. So you do admit he did these things.

It is clear that he supervised the collection of these documents when he was in the White House. Given his criminal history, I assume that he was planning to use them in some way- perhaps as a bribe to Putin to lower the amount of cash he borrowed from the Ruskies when he was in deep debt.

It seems that Trump's Florida lawyers have all flown the coop. So the arraignment might be delayed while he digs up a Florida lawyer willing to risk not being paid. Of course he could throw himself on the mercy of the court and get a public service lawyer-that would be hysterical!

By the way Trump's repeated statements that he was singled out for investigation while Biden and Pence were not investigated, is a tacit admission that he knew in fact what he had done was illegal.

Biden and Pence immediately turned over documents felt to be classified. They were in their possession as accidentally within a bunch of ordinary papers. Hillary has never been investigated for illegal activity despite repeated cries from the right that she is guilty of something (what??). Trump personally ordered the classified documents to be removed from the WH, and shipped to Mar a Lago. When they were discovered and he was requested to turn them to the government, he balked and refused. He blocked this investigation. This happened multiple times and so Mar a Lago was raided. Some of the documents were so top secret that ordinary FBI guys were not allowed to handle them, and special agents with top clearance were sent to remove them.

I can't see Trump in prison if convicted. I would sentence him to permanent confinement at Mar a Lago, ankle bracelet and no rallies or public appearances. Very awkward to place this guy in prison.

The GOP primary is already decided:
IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN
Republicans are going to split the v**e and hand the primary to Trump. Uh, spoiler.

HAMILTON NOLAN
JUN 7, 2023

We’re all friends here. (Photo: Getty)
Sometimes, when an e******n year is looming, people who are under the mistaken impression that political reporters have some sort of worthwhile knowledge will anxiously ask, “What is going to happen?” The wise answer to this question is almost always “I don’t know.” Occasionally, though, there is a small piece of insight that becomes so obvious that it seems rude not to make sure that everyone understands it. In that spirit, I want to point out something that is becoming harder to deny with each passing day: Republicans are absolutely going to split the anti-Trump v**e in the p**********l primary, and hand the nomination to Donald Trump. Does this sound familiar??

Remember 2016? A simpler time. Americans loved to listen to Twenty One Pilots and believe that the political alignment of the past 30 years would hold steady. Donald Trump—a fool, a joker, an amusing sideshow—entered the Republican primary. Haha, funny. A big joke. There were 17 candidates. Everyone knew Jeb Bush was the man to beat. Everyone knew that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio would be strong contenders. Everyone knew that John Kasich and Ben Carson were a force to be reckoned with. Everyone knew that it would be a mistake for any of the “real” candidates to tarnish themselves by getting in a mud fight with Trump. So they all proceeded to spend the primaries knifing one another instead. Trump started winning, and they were so happy, because it meant that whichever “real” candidate emerged would just have the easy task of marching over this buffoon. The smart tactic was to nod and laugh and be friendly with Trump, who had no chance. The real race was for the non-Trump v**e. This conventional wisdom, which everyone in the political establishment firmly believed, held solid right up until Trump took the nomination and all those “real” candidates got down on their hands and knees to endorse him.

Now it is later. Now we approach the 2024 primaries. The main difference between 2016 and 2024 is that the arrow of time—despite the speculative work of physicists—runs in only one direction, which means that 2016 is in the past, which gives us all the handy advantage of being able to access the events of that time in the form of memories. In theory people might even learn lessons from the events of the past and modify their present conduct accordingly. In practice, we are about to do the same motherfucking thing over again in an excruciating display of egos run wild. Watch.

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Yesterday, frequent Sunday talk show panelist and humiliation fetishist Chris Christie joined the race for the Republican nomination. He joins a group of ten(!) candidates who have already declared for the race. He also joins a group of five other mainstream politicians—Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson, and Mike Pence—competing for the “Not Trump” v**e. A few more candidates might still be coming. There are varying calculations that go into running for president, and everyone is motivated to some degree by the thought that the free media that goes with a campaign might be good for their careers even if they lose, but on the whole, each one of these candidates is making the implicit argument that they will be the one who will rally the party’s majority—the 60 or 70 percent of Republican v**ers who are not solid for Trump—to their side, and sweep to victory.

They won’t. Instead they will divide the v**e and Trump will win the primaries. (Unless he drops dead.) Watch.

The single funniest political story I have read so far this year was this Politico story detailing the pitch that Ron DeSantis’s advisors were giving to top donors on the even of his campaign launch.

They conceded that the former president would likely not go below roughly 35 percent support in a primary but that such a floor allowed for DeSantis, his strongest rival, to take a larger share of the remaining 65 percent of the v**e.

Uh, sure. That’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is “you are starting out 35 points in the hole.” Another way to look at it is, “ten of us will fight like dogs over two-thirds of the e*****rate, each huddling in our corners with a small percentage in our mouths, while Donald Trump luxuriates in a series of 35/17/17/15/9/7 victories.” DeSantis’s straight-faced pitch to donors sounds like a losing football coach telling his team at halftime, “We may be down by four touchdowns but there are potentially dozens of touchdowns left to be scored, so we are actually ahead.” If you suspected that major Ron DeSantis donors are dumb, you are onto something.

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If the Republican Party had any remaining grip on itself, it would have viciously intimidated and bribed as many people as necessary to clear the field for a single main opponent to Trump. But Trump broke it quite thoroughly. The Republican Party as a party today operates in the sort of bumbling, ineffectual way that Democrats have long imagined their own party. A single sick bastard with TV charisma was enough to steamroll all of the party’s power brokers. They are still afraid to attack him. Watching candidates flood into the Republican primary and do their little campaign simulacrums and strenuously pretend that they will be able to dislodge Trump from their party without ever saying a bad word about him—by outsourcing all Trump criticism to Chris fucking Christie, of all people, my god—is one of the most pathetic spectacles I ever hope to witness. Unlike in 2016, today they do not even have the excuse of saying that nobody saw this coming. We have seen this same movie, exactly, before.

I do not consider this analysis to be a demonstration of some profound wisdom. I just want to give you the option of saving yourself a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the next year. If ten or a dozen people are competing for 51% of a pie and one guy starts out with 35% of the pie it is not looking good for everyone else. If you had the opportunity to design a crusade to defeat the guy with the 35%, the very first conclusion you would draw would be “we better not have ten people running against him.” Republicans have already failed that test. We have all spent the past eight years inventing reasons why Trump is just about to collapse. I covered the 2015 cattle call primary event in Iowa where Trump got on stage and said about John McCain, “I like people who weren’t captured.” As soon as he said that, all the full time campaign trail reporters leapt up and ran out to file stories about how Trump had just torpedoed his chances. That, like the many insane remarks and scandals that were still to come, was not the case. It seemed like a reasonable assumption at the time, sure. We can’t expect people to be psychic, but we can expect people to learn from the past.

Donald Trump’s base is a statistical minority of the Republican Party. Their inability to outmaneuver him is perhaps the first time in history that Republicans have failed to figure out a way to persecute a minority. The problem is that they are all cowards. With few exceptions, Republican politicians are barnacles who are happy to go down with the ship as long as they can continue clinging safely to its side. You will hear some of these candidates launch some attacks on Trump when they finally conclude that they have no choice. They may even say, as they have at certain opportune times before, that he is a bad, dangerous person. But when they lose to him, they will do the thing that is in their nature: They will fall in line.

You describe the woke bunch as inclined to cancel things. It is the anti-woke bunch that wants to cancel science education; to eliminate books from libraries; to second guess educators; etc.

School prayers are generic and simplistic. They become routine utterances that lose all meaning for the students- just a routine when done. And most schools other than religious, never had school prayers so I think your idea about prayer ending societal discord is misplaced.

And SF has a lower crime rate than any city in the South with a population of more than 100,000.

You state: "I’ll bet he could tell you what a woman is." What is the relevance of that statement to qualifications for the land's highest court. I want distinguished legal scholars on my Supreme Court. Kananaugh has nothing which gives him that distinction.

So Kavanaugh is the "median v**e" - his v**es are all slanted to conform with the Supreme Court now having become a branch of the Republican Party (actually its extreme right wing). That does not cancel the fact that he is not a distinguished jurist or scholar of law and is not the type of person that I think should be on the highest court in the land.

Appeals are only accepted if there is a legal or procedural error to complain about. Simply objecting to the verdict is not a basis for an appeal.

I heard a reviewer talking about the $$$ spent on the c****ation. He pointed out that as a tourist industry, the trappings of Royalty create an industry of $6-10 billion for the British economy. So the money on the c****ation is an investment in keeping that tourist attraction alive.