“If we take away the people’s faith in this shadowy monolith exempt from any consequences, all that’s left is an extensive network of rogue, unelected intelligence officers carrying out extrajudicial missions for a variety of subjective, and occasionally personal, reasons.”

E.G. privation.

Sell drugs obtained in busts to drug dealers in other cities and in general be massively corrupt pieces of shit.

Old docs mostly retiring early because they weren't trained to be data entry clerks. Basically .gov is creating this future:

More Nukes in Kalingrad.

What idiot thought it was smart to short VIX?

And folks sometimes wonder where Terry Goodkind got the inspiration for Darken Rahl and Demmin Nass from.

Because it is thinly disguised puritanism of the stripe which likes burning witches, that's why.

It begins to feel as if the endgame of this project is not bringing to account powerful sexual bullies but, as a male acquaintance puts it, the “presumptive criminalization of all male sexual initiatives.”

Bingo.

Let us stress that the Congresscritters that called Wells Fargo a “criminal enterprise” were on the mark, yet as usual, the bank has gotten away with a wrist slap. The fake accounts scandal was neither the beginning nor the end of bad conduct by Wells Fargo.

You can always count on Wells to do the wrong thing and get away with it mostly unscathed.

The "Financial Secrecy Index" seems to track pretty close to the "Human Freedom Index". That is no coincidence. The fact that the ranking wasn't based on their "score" in the Financial Secrecy index should come as no surprise either, as it is meant to be a bugaboo.

Puritans still outraged that Katrina didn't wipe out the city entirely.

Hiroshima sized nuking A-OK on non-nuclear "extreme" threats. Presumably the ones that require "extreme" vetting?

Let's hope things work out.

All 100% warrant free!

No wonder the USA wants more FIM-92s

I wish this endeavour luck.

Require all porn sites to be behind registration wall? Considering the stigma attached with porn viewing in normal society, expect the rape rate to go up even more.

Stunning admission by the USA propaganda wing of Europe. For years they simply denied Azov's existence. True to form, they attempt to still downplay the threat these NAZIs pose.

Some former yardies fed up with the BS coppers now mostly do decided to make a business model that works for catching actual bad guys.

I mean, maybe if you weren't paying attention before, but this type of bureaucratic sissy fight is nothing new. Marcy Wheeler has some interesting observations regarding what's been going on while the Memo has served as a distraction. That part is much more interesting. Personally, I think the fact that Treasury is ignoring congressional sanctions on Russia is a good move, diplomatically. Sanctions are always a prelude to war. Seems there's a side channel of diplomacy going on here, though I'm sure that'll incense the DNC backers.

With the Republican changes to the tax code, the high-cost dynamic that has effectively redistributed some probable Democratic voters from left-leaning to right-leaning states will be thrown into overdrive.

THX Trump. You could have done the honorable thing and simply abolished the IRS, but noooooo

Well, considering what Angela Keaton has been saying for quite some time, this can come as no surprise.

Great news for folks affected by that stuff.

The empire comes home

lol