"I think it's very simple. Look, if you protested peacefully on January 6th, and you've had Merrick Garland's Department of Justice treat you like a gang member..."

"... you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn't be pardoned. And there's a little bit of a gray area there. We're very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law, and there are a lot of people, we think, in the wake of January 6th, who were prosecuted unfairly. We need to rectify that."

Said JD Vance.

On X, there are quite a few people objecting to this line-drawing and saying that every January 6th protester should be pardoned. 

"I talked to Meta’s Black AI character. Here’s what she told me. Is this the new era of digital blackface?"

Writes Karen Attiah in The Washington Post... and this is well worth a free-access link.

Attiah asks the AI character, "How do you celebrate your African American heritage?" This nonexistent person — billed as "a Proud Black queer momma” — answers:

Through music, food and tradition! My family loves cooking soul food for holidays like Juneteenth and Kwanzaa — my mom’s fried chicken and collard greens are famous! [...] How about your heritage? Any special traditions?

Annoyed at AI's posing as a real person — which seems like blackface — Attiah conducts an interrogation:

"We are ready to talk. Cooperation is about dialogue. Cooperation means that you will work towards solutions.”"

Said Múte Egede, the prime minister of Greenland, quoted in "Greenland leaders ready to talk with Trump after prez-elect expressed interest to make territory part of America" (NY Post).

At a press conference Friday in Denmark, which exercises nominal sovereignty over Greenland, Egede said he accepted that Greenland was “a place that the Americans see as part of their world” and that while he has not spoken with Trump, he was open to “discussions about what unites us.”... 

“We have a desire for independence, a desire to be the master of our own house … This is something everyone should respect,” he said. “Greenland is for the Greenlandic people. We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American. We want to be Greenlandic.”

"I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day. He will not have a blue pass to the White House..."

"... he will not have full access to the White House, he will be like any other person. He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down. Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore.... This thing of the H-1B visas, it’s about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords, they use it to their advantage, the people are furious.... Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans. He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States? We have been fighting this fight for ten years.... We are going to expose the entire corruption of the American system, of how money controls everything...."

Says Steve Bannon, quoted in "'I Will Do Anything' to Keep Elon Musk out of the White House" (Breitbart).

"As the former presidents, first ladies, and vice presidents sat together at the National Cathedral on Thursday..."

"'Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that God put me on one of these rows,' Pence remarked. Media coverage scrutinized the small interactions among them, noting Pence’s handshakes with the Trumps and former Second Lady Karen Pence’s refusal to acknowledge either. 'He greeted me when he came down the aisle. I stood up, extended my hand. He shook my hand. I said, "Congratulations, Mr. President," and he said, "Thanks, Mike,"' Pence said. 'You’d have to ask my wife about her posture, but we’ve been married 44 years, and she loves her husband, and her husband respects her deeply.' The very public reunion was far from the only thing on his mind at the funeral. Before joining the Reagan Revolution and becoming a Republican, Pence had voted for Carter and was 'greatly heartened that there was a born-again Christian serving in the White House,'... Backstage at an event in 2015, Pence said he got to thank the 39th president for his service and commended how Carter 'spoke plainly about his faith in Jesus Christ' in office...."

Write Harvest Prude and Kate Shellnutt, in "Mike Pence Shares the First Thing He Said to Trump in Four Years" (Christianity Today).

There is always a dog story on the home page of The NYT and The Washington Post.

Watch. You'll see. And it's some of the most inane material.

For example, today, at The NYT, there's "Do Our Dogs Have Something to Tell the World?" and at The Washington Post, there's "This love letter to dogs praises them as 'creatures of commitment.'"

Obviously, they know there are readers who click for every dog. I am not one of those readers, and I won't even click through to get links. Every day, the story is the same: Dogs continue to be dogs.

And, no, there is no equal treatment for cats. A search for "cat" on the WaPo home page came up with nothing, and on the NYT home page, it got "Biden Awards Medal of Freedom to Pope Francis/President Biden, a Catholic, awarded the medal with distinction to the pontiff, to whom he has turned for personal guidance" and "Hams in the Belfry: How a Cash-Poor French Cathedral Fixed Its Organ/A dispute over a project to cure hams in a bell tower underscored the difficulties that churches in France face trying to pay for restorations."

If Althouse were to make a free-access link to one of those articles, which one would you want?

Do Our Dogs Have Something to Tell the World?

This love letter to dogs praises them as "creatures of commitment."

Biden Awards Medal of Freedom to Pope Francis

Hams in the Belfry: How a Cash-Poor French Cathedral Fixed Its Organ

 

pollcode.com free polls

"The fires are still raging in L.A. The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out. Thousands of magnificent houses are gone..."

"... and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?"

Trump wrote on Truth Social 3 hours ago (that is to say, in the middle of the night).

And, here, the NYT got a guy to write a whole article about it in the middle of the night: "Trump Calls Officials Handling Los Angeles Wildfires ‘Incompetent’/Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles County authorities have invited President-elect Donald J. Trump to tour the devastation, but he has not publicly responded."

Published at 4:37 a.m. Ah, but I clicked on the reporter's name — Mike Ives — and I see he's "based in Seoul." It was 6:37 p.m. — Korea Standard Time. A normal work day. The NYT didn't roust some reporter in the middle of the night to make an article out of the most recent Trump truthing.

"Mr. Trump’s comments indicated that the fires, and officials’ response to them, will likely occupy a prominent place on his domestic political agenda when he takes office on Jan. 20. He has renewed a longstanding feud with California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who in turn has accused Mr. Trump of politicizing the fires."

Is it wrong to "politicize" the fires? Isn't fire fighting one of the top services we demand from government? I can see saying, don't distract us with recriminations while we're right in the middle of an epic struggle against fire, but that only means, don't politicize yet. But are they fighting the fire right now or are they helpless? And if they are helpless, are we supposed to refrain from asking why are they helpless?

ADDED: I wondered if there are earlier examples of anyone ever saying "There is death all over the place." I only found one thing, at Internet Public Library, from what looks like a sample answer to a predicable high-school essay test question: "Similarities Between Death Of A Salesman And Hamlet": "In Hamlet there is death all over the place...."

"Here's the way I look at January 6th. Truly. Have you ever been at a party that's gotten out of hand?"

Says Tim Dillon, on the new episode of his podcast:

"That's kinda what happened.... It was a high school party.... It wasn't a civil war.... The kids from the other high school came. And they're a little wild. And things got a little out of hand. And then the really popular quarterback may or may not have egged it on without knowing.... He was like, we're having the best time of our lives tonight. We gotta go out there and have the most fun. No one can tell us how much fun we can have.... He's quarterback. And he was like, we're tonight's our night to make a mark and have the most fun we've ever had. And, and, and this is what happened.... We're all kind of having fun, And it's getting a little wild. It's getting wild. It's getting a little wild. Well, we've all been at those parties where we regret the next day. Everybody looks around and goes, that, that was really nuts.... I can't believe that happened.... It's a regrettable day. Yeah. It's a regrettable day...."