Terri Wise

Food for thought. I might not agree with Brooks on what a new-vision Democratic Party would look like, but I do agree that the party’s thinking has been way too small and confined. The time for that kind of thinking has passed. It’s not going to be enough to counteract recent shifts.

This is more vital than it might seem. Worth your consideration, IMO.

This might be part of why I live here. The theater is filling up for a Wednesday night screening of the 1940 film The Mortal Storm, a part of a “F**k the Nazis” film series.

This whole article… calling people “monsters”. This is an official US gov’t publication. Our tax dollars are supporting this.

This is well written and mostly nuanced. Worth a read. And can we please get this part straight: Trump et al don’t give a shit about Jews. They’re using a highly sensitive and emotional issue to manipulate people to their personal ends.

This is still part of the Constitution, FYI: "[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust... shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

Yesterday I saw someone refer to Trump as “class”. How do you figure? time.com/7266334/us-h...

Tonight the men's hockey team from the old hometown U, Penn State, beat UConn and are going to the Frozen Four for the first time in school history. Check out this nifty winner (apologies for linking to X--I tried but could not find an alternative video source).

People with ties to Meta, Amazon, and Facebook are all implicated.

We must have due process for every person or no one is safe. It is blatantly unconstitutional to take away any person's freedom without due process. The only exceptions to the due process clause state that members of the armed forces can be court-martialed rather than appear before a grand jury.

Total incompetence, and gross negligence to put a legal point on it: Trump WH "envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials" discussing war plans on Signal.

ICYMI

Kenneth Stern, who drafted a widely used definition of antisemitism, says the Trump administration is using antisemitism claims to stifle speech and debate on the Middle East on college campuses.

How we define our world changes. That's not always a bad thing.

Six years ago today, my beautiful mother died. I still can’t believe it sometimes. The world is not right without her in it.

What possible good can come from purging Pentagon websites of suicide prevention content?

Boom

This is wrong. This is bad. And of course he "doesn't give a shit". Please tell me that is not news to anyone.

I love Mondrian, perhaps especially for his landscapes, women, and flowers, and this piece gets it.

Everyone doesn't agree w/you. Yelling won't to change that. "[NYT] readers are more liberal than the overall population [& more liberal than 4 yrs ago]... the country went the other way... [Dems] have said... if everyone votes, we win... this is the [1st] cycle where... the opposite [was true]."

This is the degree of extremism we’re dealing with.

US Institute for Peace is not a government agency, friends. It's a nonprofit established by statute (.org, not .gov) This makes the DOGE raid all the more outrageous. They won't stop with actual feds.

The expanded financial aid plan will also offer free tuition to families that make $200,000 or less. The move comes after affirmative action was barred from the admissions process.

It's apparently difficult to find free meeting space. I thought surely it would be possible to reserve a room at the public library, but no. They don't reserve them for students, only for nonprofit organizations. This makes no sense to me (the room is available all day on the date I'm requesting).

DOGE is forcing their way into buildings. Trump et. al. are flouting court orders. It's January 6th all over again, but it just keeps going and some of them are wearing suits.

"I don't care what the judge thinks?" Um, it's not about what he thinks. It's THE LAW. And it's not about left and right! If it's always us versus them, of course the law is meaningless. Let's not go there. This is insane.

In free countries with representative democracies, elected leaders don't hide from their constituents. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/u...

President Trump expected to invoke a wartime authority (Alien Enemies Act) to deport immigrants without due process. Wartime? And yet: "The Department of Defense is not expected to have a role in the invoking of the authority." Because it's not a war. abcnews.go.com/Politics/tru...

bsky.app/profile/thes...

Authoritarians govern through fear, not legislation. The simple fear of what they would do in certain situations can push even the opposition to capitulate. That’s success for them. We lose when we fold due to a hypothetical. We win when we challenge the REALITY that is hurting working people.

If the government can do this to universities, we don't live in a free society. Five alarm fire.

🚨In less than 24 hours the Senate will vote on a Republican bill that could cut everything from cancer research to health care for seniors. Is your Senator undecided? Call (202) 224-3121 ASAP and tell them to vote "HELL NO" on cloture and passage of the Continuing Resolution.

Good read.

Who's reading? It's a great night to read. Next up for me? Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg, which was recommended to me via Veronica Raimo's novel entitled Lost on Me. I haven't actually read the linked article yet. Will read the article after I read the book.

You know what to do.

Exquisite response by Georgetown Dean to interim USA Ed Martin On Martin's threat letter not to hire grads until Martin approves of law school curriculum: "The constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution."

you’re fired. wait you’re rehired. email us a list of things you’ve done today wait forget it you’re fired again. come back your job was important. you’re fired. or hired. come in to the office. wait the office has no computers go home. we are the department of government efficiency.

Just restating the simple point: President lacks the constitutional authority to close a department created by Congress. Full stop. Both the creation and on-going funding of these Depts are LAWS not suggestions. This is criminal conduct. www.wsj.com/politics/pol... via @WSJ

This actually tells you a lot.

People should be calling this what it is, which is a crypto bailout. They're cutting cancer research so they can bailout rich, degenerate gamblers bsky.app/profile/ronf...

If DOGE is a federal agency, it can’t shield its records from the public. If it’s not an agency, then its tens of millions of dollars in funding weren’t legally allocated and should be returned, some contend.