"The Justice Department charged two former FBI officials with lying to Congress about an investigation around a laptop belonging to former president Joe Biden’s son Hunter."

WaPo reports (gift link).

In 2020, Floris and Benavides briefed Republican lawmakers about the laptop as part of a congressional investigation into Hunter Biden. Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), then the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, claimed that the FBI officials gave that briefing as a way to frame the investigation as Russian disinformation....

"It's so funny because it's so nothing in a way, but incredibly profound. It reminded me of Sam Shepard."

nathan fielder creating a play called “smokers allowed” to get around the smoking ban

what’s the loophole? nathan’s responding “theater law” makes me laugh every single time 😭 pic.twitter.com/PLSnotfqC1

— susie (@susieetweets) October 20, 2026

"The Puritans had scarlet letters, and now the content creators have scarlet posts: video apologies..."

"... usually negotiated by lawyers for brands and public figures that have come under criticism from influencers pushing commentary not always rooted in facts. For the women who whittle their free time on New York lifestyle Instagram accounts, Gellis’s austere video was startling as it appeared amid a scroll of the standard imagery that generates likes, comments and commerce.... Chatter about the video spread across Instagram and around New York last weekend, revisiting F-Factor, a pre-Ozempic-era high fiber diet, as well as Gellis’s relentless campaign, which created a pandemic-days internet spectacle-cum-unscripted reality show....."

From "An Influencer’s Punishment Is a Pinned Instagram Post/A dispute over online misinformation about the F-Factor diet led to an unusual agreement: an apology video that must be pinned to the top of social feeds for three and a half years" (NYT).

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A post shared by Emily Gellis Lande (@emilygellis)

"It’s surreal. I’ve been dreaming about this moment for all this time, but often thinking I might not make it, financially, emotionally or physically."

Said David Sabatini, after the verdict, quoted in "M.I.T. Scientist Wins $6 Million in Sexual Harassment Defamation Suit/David Sabatini, once a prominent scientist at M.I.T., sued a former colleague who accused him of inappropriate behavior. A jury found in his favor" (NYT).

[Santini] ran a research lab at the Whitehead Institute, in Cambridge, for 24 years. His lab studied cellular biology to better understand neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes, and aging. He was forced out of his lab in 2021 after an internal Whitehead investigation concluded he had a past sexual relationship with a younger and less experienced colleague, Kristin Knouse, over whom he had a career-influencing role. The investigation also found that his lab had maintained a sexualized atmosphere. Dr. Knouse said that the relationship was coerced. But Dr. Sabatini denied his lab had an improper atmosphere. He maintained that his relationship with Dr. Knouse had been consensual and that Dr. Knouse had schemed to get him fired and disgraced after he became interested in another woman....

The 911 calls in the aftermath of the failed execution of Christa Pike.

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See "Calls Show How Confusion Delayed Emergency Response for Christa Pike/The first 911 call from inside the prison was made at 8:40 p.m. It took about 30 minutes to verify its authenticity" (NYT).

"Confusion" is putting it euphemistically. How do I know the prison employees were not deliberately delaying in the hope that Pike would eventually expire?

"The initial 911 call did not come, as it might normally, from the central control at the Tennessee Department of Correction, and the caller did not have the right security verification." So who called? And why didn't someone with clear authority call? The NYT can't answer those questions because the state has secrecy laws that protect its employees who do the work of carrying out the death penalty. 

There was an execution protocol, it didn't kill Pike, and there was no protocol relating to what to do next. But that did not create the authority to kill her in some other — slower — way. 

"Federal agents search Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home as part of a criminal investigation, AP sources say."

AP reports.

The search was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations agents, said the people... More details about the investigation and its focus were not immediately clear, though Vice President JD Vance last May signaled that the Trump administration would investigate Omar for immigration fraud allegations, which she has denied...  The Justice Department said in a statement Monday that HSI agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant....

"You don't have to look at the facts and the law. All you have to do is study what they do."

Letitia James offers a gift to Saritha Komatireddy:

The Nobel Peace Prize as a "grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice."

I'm reading "Live Updates: Human Rights Lawyer Navi Pillay Is Awarded Nobel Peace Prize/Ms. Pillay has served as a judge in her native South Africa and on international courts investigating war crimes. She led a U.N. panel that determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding the Israeli government rejected" (NYT):

Last year, a United Nations commission led by Ms. Pillay determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding that the Israeli government rejected. The decision to honor her added to the growing global blowback against Israel’s actions in Gaza. The Israeli foreign ministry denounced the Nobel committee’s decision, calling it "the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice." Though the committee did not mention Gaza in its official statement honoring Ms. Pillay, its chairman, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, told reporters that her work on the U.N. commission was "an important part of the reasoning why she received the prize."

"This whole thing was triggered by the fact that somebody brought a civil lawsuit, a lawyer who's working on contingency...."

"This is multi-million dollars at stake. And I hope it doesn't shock anybody, but oftentimes in civil litigation, people motivated by money do lie...." 

Glenn Greenwald takes a stand for procedural fairness and professional journalism.

NEW: Glenn Greenwald slams AOC and the press for branding the accused Cornell students "gang rapists" without a trial.

None of the seven has been charged, yet a sitting member of Congress described the allegations as fact.

GREENWALD: "This whole thing was triggered by the fact… pic.twitter.com/UUK7enNosJ

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) October 6, 2026

Here's the whole segment:

"The [rooster] was named Nixon, after the former president, 'basically because he was a jerk' said his owner, Bill Leimgruber...."

I'm reading "The Chickens Came Home. So Did the Roosters. In Vermont, a single bird set off a feud over what, exactly, constitutes farm country, mirroring a battle dividing communities across America" (NYT). 

Last fall in Merrimack, N.H., a former town councilor infuriated by one bird spent months pressing for an ordinance with fines that climbed to $500, prompting one 40-year resident to ask: “We’re an agricultural town. If people moved here and now, all of a sudden, don’t want to listen to the noises of the deer, and the roosters, and the raccoons and the loons, why did they move here?”...

Because of the covid lockdown and because of the rising price of eggs, a lot of people were buying chicks, and some of those chicks grew up to be roosters. 

The ultimate process clusterfuck.

So embarrassing:

Reporter: "Attorney General, on your Facebook page three days ago, you wrote, ‘What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I'm holding her in my heart and in my prayers. To her and to all survivors, you're not alone. We stand with you.’ Why did… pic.twitter.com/AtHcuaPumE

— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) October 2, 2026

"There was really no escape... I don’t remember the very end of the event where I was raped... I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped... I will never know who all touched me. I will not know."

I'm reading "Cornell Police Report Omitted Student’s Claim She Was Raped/Documents obtained by The New York Times show that the campus police at Cornell University sent a condensed statement to a prosecutor, who then declined to bring charges" in the NYT.

The woman spoke for hours with [a campus police department] officer;... The officer then condensed the interview into a six-page “voluntary statement” written from her perspective.... The student, after leaving about 20 handwritten corrections on a draft, signed a final version the next day. While the shorter statement explained that she felt some of that night’s events were a crime, it omitted some of the more forceful and definitive language she used. And it was missing her unequivocal statement that she had been raped....

More detail — better detail —  in today's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily": "The Firestorm Over a Rape Allegation at Cornell." I wish I had a transcript so I could quote some things.

This is a complex story, and the news media seem to want us to look into it right now, for whatever reasons. The news media and key political actors: New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed the state attorney general, Letitia James, as a special prosecutor in this case. There's a press conference going on right now:

Hochul said she was concerned to learn what information was taken from Jane Doe’s interview with police and passed to the district attorney. “In what world would the police learn from the victim that she had been literally been gang raped” and that she believed “100 percent” she had been raped and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney, Ms. Hochul asked.

Do you mean "May President Trump Demolish the Kennedy Center?"?

I wonder, reading "Can President Trump Demolish the Kennedy Center?" in the NYT. Subheadline: "The president has entertained the idea of tearing down the performing arts venue. Analysts say any plan would face multiple daunting challenges."

Sample analysis: "'I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll see bulldozers around the Kennedy Center any time soon,' said Paul Edmondson, a lawyer who specializes in historic preservation law.... While the center’s leadership made assurances months ago that demolition was not being contemplated, Mr. Trump, who is chairman of the center’s board, went on to speak openly of the prospect. 'The president has a pattern of moving so fast that it’s difficult to catch up,' Mr. Edmondson said."

"Headlines like 'Are Shirt Buttons Sexist?' are why the New York Times has lost credibility with the broad center of American politics."

"To we [sic] moderates, it sounds like something that would be mocked on the satirical website, 'The Babylon Bee.'"

That's the 3rd-highest-rated comment at the NYT article "Are Shirt Buttons Sexist?/A reader questions the point of having men’s and women’s shirt buttons on different sides." 

The highest-rated comment is "Sometimes I really do wonder what life is like for people who are constantly scanning the world in search of something to gripe about."

I didn't pick that for the post title because it's too gripe-y — it gripes about griping — and I don't think the article is griping. It's puzzling over a quirk of clothing construction.

The author of the article, Vanessa Friedman, is addressing a question from a reader. She goes through the various theories of how this right/left difference might have happened — one is most common and perhaps you're sure it is the explanation — and observes that none of those reasons apply today. Tradition has its hold. We could change but we don't.

Only the headline writer uses the word "sexist" — and only to ask a question.

But the commenters — NYT commenters! — come for Friedman. They don't say what an amusing light-hearted jaunt through history, thanks for the fun. She's not perceived as having fun at all. She's seen as a grim, angry feminist. Things are changing.

Writing that made me think of this video clip I saw yesterday:

"The View" host Sunny Hostin stands up for accused Cornell gang rape defendants.

🎥: ABC pic.twitter.com/4wo46PXsQU

— TMZ (@TMZ) September 29, 2026

"In an unsigned decision with no noted dissents, the justices warned of 'electoral chaos' if the state were to change course so close to the election and use the 2025 map."

"The election is not merely upcoming; it has already started. Ballots using the 2022 map have been printed and mailed. Absentee voting has already begun, as has military and overseas voting,” according to the five-page decision."

From "Supreme Court Once Again Blocks Republican-Backed Voting Map in Missouri/A federal appeals court had sided with Republicans seeking to use redrawn congressional district boundaries to give their party an advantage in the midterms elections" (NYT).

Note: All NYT links are gift links now. I'm not going to write "gift link" next to every NYT link anymore. Just know they are gift links. I'm not going to keep repeating myself, and there's also no need for you to repeat the complaint that the NYT requires you to register with them to get the access they're offering free. You can't have everything you want. What in this world is completely free?

"The ruling from Judge Kelly, a Trump appointee, is a temporary reprieve..."

"It pauses a chaotic series of events that began last Friday, when Mr. Trump declared in a Truth Social post that the outlets were banned from the White House because of their reporting.... Judge Kelly’s rationale for ruling against the White House echoed his own reasoning in a similar case from November 2018, when Mr. Trump, in his first term, revoked the White House press credentials of the CNN journalist Jim Acosta. Mr. Acosta had not been given an opportunity to contest the decision, Judge Kelly said at the time. Fights over journalistic access have become a staple of Mr. Trump’s presidency...."

From "Judge Blocks Trump’s White House Ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico/Judge Timothy J. Kelly issued a temporary restraining order and told the White House to immediately restore the press credentials for the employees of the three news outlets" (NYT).

Trump is better off this way.

He's had his say against the press, but the press won — at least for now — and the fighting quiets down. The criticism of him is muffled. The leverage is gone. Trump can move on to things like this:

Trump just gave Xi the full American welcome package — Star-Spangled Banner, a rigid salute… then the sky starts roaring.

You don’t even see the jets. You HEAR them. That deafening B-2 / F-22 flyover rolls over Joint Base Andrews while Trump and Xi are standing there side by… pic.twitter.com/6zMNvVeqXQ

— Pete Santilli 🇺🇸 🇮🇹 🎙️ (@petersantilli) September 24, 2026

ADDED: I love how Trump reacts like a human being — man, that's noisy! — and Xi holds his pose like a machine. That bland smile! Trump looks over at him as if the 2 of them could agree that the planes are indeed noisy, but Xi gave him nothing. They could have laughed together, Trump may have thought. But, no, Xi has one smile, for noise and for silence. Nothing is revealed.

When Sunny Hostin was the holdout juror: A lesson in insanity.

Sunny Hostin brags about being a holdout juror that prevented The Butcher of Thompson Square Park from going to prison.
She admits "once he killed her, he chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts ... and fed her body parts to the unhoused." pic.twitter.com/sLbElgLuGt

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 22, 2026

Here's the NYT article from 1991, "Man Acquitted of Killing and Boiling Roommate."

Several jurors questioned afterward said one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict. "We don't think he intended to kill her," said a juror, Asuncion Cummings. "But once he did, he dismembered her body in an effort to commit the perfect crime."

Asuncion Cummings is the first name and maiden name of Sunny Hostin.

"'I am the code,' Trump said."

I'm reading "'I am the code': Trump clashed with ballroom architect over safety issues/James McCrery II resigned in October after warning that the president was insisting on designs that violated fire and safety codes" (WaPo)(gift link).

White House renovations and construction are typically handled by federal agencies required by law to comply with nationally recognized building safety standards to the “maximum extent feasible,” unless doing so would present a national security risk. But Trump’s White House construction projects are being routed through the Executive Residence, a tiny office that is not a federal agency and is therefore exempt from rules governing agencies.

"The case drew national attention when a surrogate from Alaska refused to have an abortion after the fetus she was carrying was diagnosed with a serious heart problem."

"She eventually traveled to Texas and gave birth to the child over the initial objections of the parents, a couple from California.... On Tuesday, Justice Kagan, who oversees emergency filings from California, denied the surrogate’s request to block the lower-court ruling in the couple’s favor. She acted on her own without referring the matter to her Supreme Court colleagues. The justice’s order did not include an explanation, as is often the case when the court responds to such filings...."

From "Supreme Court Order Gives Parents Custody of Baby in Surrogacy Fight/A surrogate refused to have an abortion after the fetus was diagnosed with a serious heart problem. She asked the justices to block a court order giving custody to the biological parents" (NYT gift link).

Here's the emergency filing. The proceedings below are all in state courts, and much of the argument is about jurisdiction, but that's interwoven with the merits of the case — who gets the baby:

Meade texts me from upstairs, at 5:47 a.m., about how badly Democrats want to be rid of Donald Trump.

                             Today 5:47

Here's the link to the tweet Meade sent.

Assassination may be "underwater" at 29%, but there are 25% more who are neutral on the subject. A failure to view assassination as negative?! I'd say there's a majority — 54% — who fail to disapprove of assassination. 

AND: Only 28% disapprove of a military coup to oust Trump.