The dismissal of criminal charges against the Yam Man for concealing classified records at Mar-a-Lago eliminated a significant barrier to making records about the probe public, a federal judge ruled Monday. Via Politico:
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said Trump’s election as president — which forced the end of the criminal case — combined with the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity mean Trump is effectively insulated from any criminal responsibility for his conduct. That means the FBI’s previous reasons for refusing to gather and disclose records related to the probe no longer apply, Howell wrote in a ruling in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by journalist Jason Leopold.
She noted that while the dismissal of charges against Trump may have reduced his criminal exposure, it “ironically” made him more susceptible to public scrutiny for his conduct. “With the far dampened possibility of any criminal investigation to gather evidence about a president’s conduct and of any public enforcement proceeding against a president, the [Supreme Court’s] decision … has left a FOIA request as a critical tool for the American public to keep apprised of a president’s conduct,” Howell ruled.
February 11, 1790 The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, composed mostly of Quakers and Mennonites, petitioned Congress for emancipation of all slaves. Benjamin Franklin had become vocal as an abolitionist and in 1787 began to serve as President of the Society which not only advocated the abolition of slavery, but made efforts to integrate freed slaves into American society. The proposed resolution was immediately denounced by pro-slavery congressmen and sparked a heated debate in both the House and the Senate. More on early Abolitionist and Anti-Slavery Movements
February 11, 1916 Emma Goldman was arrested for lecturing on birth control, presumed a violation of the 1873 Comstock Law which prohibited distribution of literature on birth control, considered obscene under the act. Goldman considered such knowledge essential to women’s reproductive and economic freedom; she had worked as a nurse and midwife among poor immigrant workers on New York’s Lower East Side in the 1890s. She also organized for womens’ suffrage, later opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, and was imprisoned for allegedly obstructing military conscription. Emma Goldman speaking on Birth Control -Union Square, New York City May 20, 1916 “. . . those like myself who are disseminating knowledge [of birth control] are not doing so because of personal gain or because we consider it obscene or lewd. We do it because we know the desperate condition among the masses of workers and even professional people, when they cannot meet the demands of numerous children.” – Goldman letter to the press following her arrest Emma Goldman’s courageous efforts ————————————————————————————– February 11, 1937 Forty-eight thousand General Motors workers won their 44-day sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan. On December 30 workers at Fisher Plants 1 & 2 sat down and refused to leave, forcing workers around them to stop work and preventing the next shift from starting. The sit-down strike ended when the company agreed to recognize the United Automobile Workers union as the representative bargaining agent for the striking hourly employees. Other automakers gradually accepted the legitimacy of the union. The success of the sit-down was an inspiration to workers in other industries to organize their own unions. Nearly 100 images on the Flint sit-down from Detroit’s Wayne State University Walter Reuther Archive —————————————————————————————- February 11, 1978 Native Americans began The Longest Walk, a march from Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to Washington, D.C. Native American Activism: 1960s to Present A Brief History of the American Indian Movement photo Ilka Hartmann The Walk was intended to be a reminder of the forced removal of American Indians from their homelands across the continent, and drew attention to the continuing problems plaguing the Indian community, particularly joblessness, lack of health care, education and adequate housing. —————————————————————————————– February 11, 1979 Poet John Trudell, a former national chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM), burned an upside-down flag and spoke from the steps of the FBI building in Washington, D.C. during a vigil for Leonard Peltier. Peltier, also a leader of AIM, was imprisoned (and is still today after 30 years,) and is considered a political prisoner by Amnesty International. (NOTE: Leonard Peltier’s sentence was commuted to home confinement in 2025.) Twelve hours later Trudell’s wife Tina, her mother, and their three children died in an arsonist’s attack of their home on the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada. The FBI did not investigate even though the crime fell under its jurisdiction. Learn about Leonard Peltier Remembering John Trudell ———————————————————————————————- February 11, 1990 Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in a South African prison following months of secret negotiations with South African President F.W. (Frederik Willem) de Klerk. In 1952, Mandela became deputy national president of the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest black political organization in South Africa, having joined as a young lawyer in 1944. He advocated nonviolent resistance to apartheid – South Africa’s institutionalized system of white supremacy, black disenfranchisement and rigid racial segregation. However, after the massacre of peaceful black demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960, Mandela helped organize a paramilitary branch of the ANC to engage in guerrilla warfare against the white minority government.
I don’t know if it’s a scam, phish, spam, or real. I wonder if anyone else got one of these, though, so let me know, and please don’t click anything within it. Meanwhile, I got a macabre giggle out of this email I received this morning from noreply@studentaid.gov ; Help your child submit their FAFSA form today. (You know how I love my giggles.)
Yeah, after all the news for over a week about access to such sites by unauthorized, unsworn, unelected, non-government employees actually younger than our “child,” who needs no help with such things nor even needs such things, we’re gonna log right on and put all that info in there! (Yes, we did it way back when he did need it done.)
The graphic won’t show here, but the body is very like my recollection of things from FAFSA.
I don’t know if anyone here has or knows someone who will need to fill out these forms with their kids for college in Fall. I simply hope we all remember to not click through from anything in an email, but to go directly to the site to do our work, OK? Thanks!
(I used to do 10-20 minutes of some yoga each day during W’s admin while the kid was in school. I sort of let it go over time, though I suppose technically I use it when generally stretching, and during some exercises. This is linked on Oliver Willis’s news page, and I thought it could help all of us.)
The news is all shit right now. Sure, there are more artful, creative, and writerly, ways to say that, but time is precious and writing something like that would prove nothing more than ownership of a thesaurus.
If you’re like me and millions of others, you are absorbing all this and wondering, “What can I do?” You can subscribe to journalism (which you probably already do! Yay!), donate money, volunteer, show up for your family, friends, and neighbors, and then what? That’s the thing about the battle for a real democracy—it is not won in flashy, Hollywood fight scenes, though those do make for excellent inspirational images for sharing amid said battle for democracy. It’s won in federal workers showing up to do their jobs. It’s won in reporters showing up to do their jobs. It’s won in a lot of us, in our own ways, showing up, doing our jobs, and not being assholes, even to the person who irritates you—and they are so, so annoying—but dammit we’ll deal with that after we make sure there’s still a republic.
Except, after all that showing up, there’s still a lot of time left for the mind to spiral. It can be easy to forget that our brains, for much of human history, did not take in this much news every day. Not even 100 years ago, most people got their news from a newspaper or magazine. They read it and went about their day, unless they listened to a radio broadcast. Then came television, then cable, then 24-hour news, then smartphones, then apps with push notifications, then social media and its endless firehouse of likes and lives. If we do not know how to log off it is because, in part, for most of human history, nobody had to. You could read to the end of the newspaper or reach the end of the newscast; you cannot ever scroll to the end of Instagram or TikTok. The endlessness is the point. We sacrificed true boredom to the gods of engagement.
So here’s my advice: Stretch your hips. Yes, even if you aren’t naturally stretchy, which I am not, and even if you can’t touch your toes, a feat I can barely accomplish myself. Those of you who have followed my work for a while probably will be unsurprised to know that I completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training in 2018. I didn’t become a yoga teacher afterward, but it did deepen my practice and gave me more tools for stress management. Mostly, it taught me that one secret to leading a good yoga class is setting aside time for a hip stretch. Everyone gets so excited for a hip stretch, almost as much as savasana, and everyone feels really good afterward.
For my money, the best hip stretch is deer pose. You won’t run into it in a ton of classes; I find the defaults tend to be pigeon pose or figure four. But figure four doesn’t provide me much relief, and my hips are too inflexible to pull off a proper pigeon pose without bolsters and time to settle in. But deer pose? It requires less flexibility, no props, and provides a nice hip stretch.
In lieu of giving you an entire explanation of how it works, here’s a good video to walk you through the pose because, c’mon, you were just gonna skip to this part anyway. Though, if you want to read more about the pose, you can do that here. Also, remember you gotta do both sides!
To be clear, I’m not saying occasional hip stretches will stop fascism; I’m saying they help you stay level while you’re trying to survive the fascism. Tomorrow you will wake up, grab your phone, and scroll through what will feel like an endless stream of bad news and horrors. But then what? Maybe you go on a walk. Maybe you actually touch grass. Or maybe you take a few minutes to do deer pose. (snip)
February 10, 1961 Pirate radio ship The Voice of Nuclear Disarmament, a pirate radio station, began operation offshore of Great Britain. It was run by John Hasted, a physicist, a musician, and a radio expert in World War II. He was active with mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell in the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, a group that practiced Gandhian an nonviolent civil disobedience.
February 10, 1964 Bob Dylan’s ”The Times They Are A-Changin’” was released. The album’s title song captured the emerging, principally generational gap in American culture concerning war and racism. Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don’t criticize What you can’t understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is Rapidly agin’ watch video (1964) the lyrics
February 10, 2003 Iraq acceded to U-2 surveillance flights over its territory, meeting a key demand by U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there.The 60 weapons inspectors in Baghdad and Mosul were under the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), led by Hans Blix, and the International Atomic Energy Agency under Mohamed El Baradei. The U.N. had destroyed all of Iraq’s banned weapons by 1994, as well as production and development facilities later, though Saddam Hussein expelled the U.N. representatives in 1998. U-2 spy plane. Hans Blix gives his report at the UN as Mohamed El Baradei listens. The economic and trade embargo during the inter-war period prevented resumption of the weapons programs. CIA and other intelligence estimates, however, insisted upon the existence of WMDs in Iraq. None have ever been found.
This is a local cartoon drawn for the FXBG Advance, which is looking into the ways Trump’s Executive Orders will affect the 540 region.
I think it’s funny when readers of mine who don’t live here mention Gary the Goose. A lot of people were making Gary the Goose the region’s mascot, but I wasn’t aware of that until he disappeared. Maybe he didn’t want the job and that’s why he left. Or, maybe he heard about Trump’s tariffs and planning to make Canada the 51st state, so he protested by flying back to Canada. Or, maybe when the otters came back, they said, “Beat it, Goose.”
Or maybe Gary, who got used to being around humans, paddled too close to the Stafford side of the river, which is full of yee-haw fuckers, and Gary the Goose’s goose got cooked.
Creative note: I was thinking last week that I needed to get the train bridge into a local cartoon. I also got a Rappahannock Otter into a cartoon. I asked my editor, Martin, if Gary was starting to get a little long in the tooth. Is he still relevant? He’s been missing for about a year, I think. We decided that if it’s funny, then we still go with it.
Also, a proofer didn’t get the cartoon and neither did a friend. I was like, whaaaaat?
Dear Laura: I got your check for a paid membership (anyone can do that), but I can’t find your email address. Please email me at clayjonz@gmail.com so I can get you up and running. We want your comments. I’m starting to think Gary the Goose will be found before we find Laura.
Another update: When I publish these cartoons for the Advance, I make sure to state on social media that they’re on local issues. I don’t get upset when readers who don’t live here don’t get the local cartoons. Why should you understand it? What does make me pull my hair out is when readers complain they don’t understand it even though I left a comment with the cartoon on social media that it’s on a local issue. Sheesh. Now if you do live here and don’t get it, that’s on me.
We ask for peace. We, at the bound O life, are weary of the round In search of Truth. We know the quest Is not for us, the vision blest Is meant for other eyes. Uncrowned, We go, with heads bowed to the ground, And old hands, gnarled and hard and browned. Let us forget the past unrest,— We ask for peace.
Our strainéd ears are deaf,—no sound May reach them more; no sight may wound Our worn-out eyes. We gave our best, And, while we totter down the West, Unto that last, that open mound,— We ask for peace.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 8, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
I do not care for sleep, I’ll wait awhile For Love to come out of the darkness, wait For laughter, gifted with the frequent fate Of dusk-lit hope, to touch me with the smile Of moon and star and joy of that last mile Before I reach the sea. The ships are late And mayhap laden with the precious freight Dawn brings from Life’s eternal summer isle.
And should I find the sweeter fruits of dream— The oranges of love and mating song— I’ll laugh so true the morn will gayly seem Endless and ships full laden with a throng Of beauty, dreams and loves will come to me Out of the surge of yonder silver sea.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 9, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
Scottie's Playtime 