#Defense Attorney Drone N

[bartibit]

An important debate.

[MD&AA AU info]

[thevitalportal]

This is an excellent compilation of articles regarding the current state of our democracy. Subscribe if you can they break down the in and outs of your political ecosystem.

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EDITED BY ANDREW COHEN

PICK OF THE NEWS

After an act of political violence in Butler, Pennsylvania. The man killed during the attack on former President Donald Trump on Saturday was a former local fire official who tried to protect his family from the gunshots. PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, was a registered Republican who worked as a nursing aide at a nursing facility. THE NEW YORK TIMES Police say there is no known motive for the attack. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Former classmates say Crooks was ardently conservative. Police say the AR-15 rifle used in the attack belonged to his father. PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER President Biden used a primetime television address on Sunday to urge Americans to tone down their political rhetoric. POLITICO

More on the assassination attempt. There is no denying the rise in political violence in the U.S. POLITICO Indelible photographs from the aftermath of the attack. THE NEW YORKER It’s the biggest security crisis for the U.S. Secret Service in decades. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Kimberly Cheatle has led the Secret Service since 2022. USA TODAY The feds say local police were used to help bolster security at the event. THE WASHINGTON POST More surveillance drones and other forms of heightened security are likely at political rallies between now and November. THE BOSTON GLOBE Misinformation spread quickly in the hours after the attack. THE WASHINGTON POST

A grim warning. A federal trial judge who has presided over many Capitol riot cases used a routine sentencing hearing on Friday describing the Jan. 6 insurrection in stark terms and warning of more political violence this year. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan also presides over Donald Trump’s federal election interference case in Washington, D.C.. POLITICO More: A Trump ally in New York is training a cadre of 75 armed “provisional emergency special deputy sheriffs” that local residents and experts say amounts to a private right-wing militia that could be used to threaten political violence during this election season. THE NEW YORK TIMES

A sexual harassment policy that protects the harassers at the expensive of the victims. The Texas Senate revised its policies in 2018 as the #MeToo movement took hold but state legislators and their staffers continue to shirk discipline under a system that still often blames young women for being harassed. Senators aren’t required to keep written records of complaints, or even investigate them, and so they don’t. Many complaints of harassment or workplace discrimination simply disappear into a bureaucratic mist. The Texas House, meanwhile, recently ousted a member accused of sexual misconduct. TEXAS MONTHLY

TMPBankrupt. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Purdue Pharma case makes it harder for third parties to be shielded by bankruptcy laws. That might be good news for victims of police sexual abuse in the “Explorers” scouting program. The Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and agreed to pay $2.5 billion to compensate more than 82,000 victims of abuse. But police agencies were shielded by the deal. They may not be any longer. TMP’s Lakeidra Chavis continues our coverage of the story in “Closing Argument,” our weekly newsletter. THE MARSHALL PROJECT TMP Context: A trail of abuse in a police youth program. THE MARSHALL PROJECT

N/S/E/W

Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter case is dropped, again, this time for good. ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL A New Mexico judge dismissed charges against the actor on Friday after defense attorneys discovered that prosecutors did not turn over all the evidence they were supposed to turn over to Baldwin’s team. LOS ANGELES TIMES

Police in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have recommended felony murder charges against four people implicated in the death of D’Vontaye Mitchell earlier this month. MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL Mitchell died after he was violently restrained by four security guards at a local hotel. The guards have since been fired from their jobs. THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled on Friday that plans to execute Marcellus Williams may proceed despite a prosecutor’s effort to overturn the murder conviction on which Williams’ death sentence is based. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell says that new DNA evidence undermines Williams’ conviction. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Officials in five cities in King County, Washington, have banded together to help first responders provide better assistance to people in crisis. The reforms include de-escalation training and steering people with substance-abuse problems to get help. SEATTLE TIMES

By a single vote, commissioners in Fulton County, Georgia, have rejected a plan to build a new county jail. Instead, they approved $300 million in renovations to the facility which is now the subject of a Justice Department investigation into poor conditions of confinement. WSB

COMMENTARY

A failure of security—and democracy. “Political violence reveals deep cultural dysfunction, and that dysfunction is what our leaders must address. No security perimeter can shield our fractured democracy.” THE ATLANTIC More: Echoes of another assassination attempt, involving Theodore Roosevelt, 112 years ago. THE NATION

The end of the special counsel as we have known it. One under-appreciated part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision granting Donald Trump sweeping immunity will place new restrictions on Justice Department probes of sitting presidents. LAWFARE More: How Trump is trying to undo his criminal conviction in New York. LAW NEWS

Unsettled people: The case against prisoner transfers. “Like solitary confinement, routine transfers are used to isolate people—to keep them separated, physically and emotionally, from family, friends, and community.” INQUEST

The U.S. Supreme Court’s dereliction of duty in its immunity decision. “[I]t is difficult to escape the conclusion that the majority did what it did not out of concern for the presidency in general, but because it didn’t approve of the charges against Trump in particular.” LAWFARE

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor bites back against junk science. She dissented last month when her colleagues refused to hear a case involving discredited “bite-mark” evidence. THE INTERCEPT

ETC.

A victory for DeRay Mckesson. A federal trial in Louisiana last week dismissed a lawsuit against Mckesson, a Black Lives Matter protest organizer, for an act of violence committed by a demonstrator at one of the protests Mckesson organized in the wake of the police shooting of Alton Sterling in 2016. REASON

The body of a victim of the 1921 Tulsa massacre is identified. CNN The World War I veteran was slaughtered along with hundreds of other Black people during a racist attack by White Tulsans over a century ago. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Police officers are migrating, too, from large cities to smaller towns, where there is less public scrutiny. Meanwhile, Bureau of Labor estimates indicate that the median annual salaries for law enforcement officers rose 14% from 2019 to 2023. STATELINE TMP Context: It’s not just a police problem. Workers are opting out of other government jobs. THE MARSHALL PROJECT

Congress moves on prison reform. The Federal Prison Oversight Act is going to give incarcerated people a better chance of forcing crucial reforms within the Bureau of Prisons. FORBES

A violent arrest, captured on camera, leads to an investigation in New York City. NYPD officers seen on video punching a man on a street earlier this month have been placed on “modified assignment” while the episode is investigated. NBC NEWS

Andrew Cohen is an editor-at-large at the Marshall Project. He covered law and criminal justice for 21 years as a legal analyst and commentator for CBS News and 60 Minutes. He also is a former fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and a former contributing editor at The Atlantic.

Opening Statement curates timely articles on criminal justice and immigration; these links are not endorsements of specific articles or points of view.

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The Marshall Project ·

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[youknowwhatted]

“YOU SENT ME PICTURES OF YOU NAKED WHILE I WAS IN A WORK MEETING!” with Andy Barber, pleaseeeeee💕💕

Ohhh ho ho! Staring this sleep over off right! Hope you enjoy, Ren!

Andy barber x reader

Warnings: MINORS DNI, smut, edging, piv, mentions of toys, slight dom/sub if you squint

A/N: I'm sorry Ren, this....got away from me and I couldn't stop 🙈

~

Your phone dinged on the kitchen island as you turned a page of the raunchy novel you were engrossed in. The sound barely registers as your eyes fly over the page. Your mind flooding with how you wanted to try some of these new found kinks with your new husband, Andy. The thought had you biting your lip and squirming on the bar stool. Your phone dinged again, this time catching your attention and you picked it up.

Notification: Your Amazon Package is 10 Stops Away

Notification: See You Package on the Map

Your face lit up, a smile spreading across your lips and you let out a little squeal of excitement. The new lingerie and toys you had secretly ordered was almost here. A delicious thought crossed your mind as you watched the little dot on the map move closer to your location.

~

Andy leaned back in the leather chair in Judge Morgan's chambers. The defense attorney droning on and on about new evidence for the trial and the possibility of a plea deal. Andy's phone dinged in his pocket and he gave the judge an apologetic smile as he reached in his pocket to silence it and it dinged again in his hand as he looked at the screen. 2 new notifications. He opened up his text messages.

The first was a picture of the new purple nipple clamps with little bells attached, laying on the gray satin pillow of your bed.

Y/N: I can't wait for you to get home 😏

Andy cleared his throat, his mind racing with thoughts of attaching the new toys to your perfect peaks.

The phone vibrated in his hand as another photo popped up in the text thread. Andy's eyes went wide before he quickly locked his phone and stuffed it back into his pocket, using all his willpower to not get a raging hard-on in the middle of a judges chamber. Oh you were in for it as soon as he walked through the door tonight.

~

You stood in your bedroom, looking yourself over in the full length mirror, adjusting the choker tie of the red lace teddy you wore and checking your red lipstick again. Anticipation sent a swirl of butterflies through your tummy when you heard his car pull up the driveway. He hadn't texted you back after you sent a picture of you in this little number and you were a bit nervous as to how he was going to react when he got home.

Andy barely put the car in park before he was opening the door and dashing in the house, his voice gruff as he called out your name.

~

You sat on his lap on the edge of the bed, your back pressed to his bare chest, thighs spread wide over his with his cock buried deep in your soaked pussy. Your head lolled back on to his shoulder and you whined as he stopped his movements just as you were about to fall over the edge.

"Aht aht ah, Princess," he tutted, grabbing your chin in one hand to lift your head back up to the mirror in front of you, "eyes forward." He trailed kisses up your neck before hitting that sweet spot below your ear. "How many was that princess?" His middle finger taps your pulsating clit, you hips jolting at his touch.

"Seven. Please let me cum, Andy, please!" You whimpered as you looked him in the eyes through your reflection.

His voice is low as he growls in your ear, "YOU SENT ME PICTURES OF YOU NAKED WHILE I WAS IN A WORK MEETING," each word punctuated by a tap to your clit, winding the coil tighter and tighter, your thighs shaking and you walls spasming around his length. His hand moves to wrap around your throat, his thumb caressing your heated skin.

"Fuck, Andy, please," the coil ready to snap, your eyes closing as tears roll down your cheeks, "I'm sorry."

There were those words he was waiting for.

"Come on, sweetheart. Make a mess all over my cock," he groans, helping you bounce on his lap as colors burst behind your closed eyes. Your body moves on its own accord as heat spreads from your core, your body thrumming with pleasure and you don't even recognize the sounds your making as your orgasm rips through you. Andy groans behind you, sinking his teeth into your shoulder and he can't hold back anymore, spilling his seed deep inside you.

As you both come down from your highs, Andy lays you both back on the bed and wraps you in his arms, kissing your temple.

"Thank you," you whisper, turning in his arms to face him, "for exploring this with me." You finish with a sweet kiss to his soft lips.

He smiles, "Thank you for trusting me, sweetheart. I love you."

"Love you too."

~

[tinyboxxtink]

“Doodling”

So @aprildecker-blog​ asked for this privately, a one shot where Nick and Fin are the only ones who know about the reader’s feelings for Barba and the jealousy of him and Olivia’s relationship. I did my best for it just being a one shot, no time for build up lol.

ALSO-- To the anon who asked for the smutty “reward” for the Defense Attorney S/O, I will write I promise. I just...have to be in the...”mood”, for writing smut, ya know what I mean?

+++++

You were unconsciously doodling on your legal pad as you sat there listening to your ADA drone on about your case. 

You had been over it a million times, trying to find a break in the attackers story; Something to discredit him, anything. 

You had checked out almost immediately after sitting down, you were exhausted from working this case and for some reason the color of Barba's eyes were unusually green today. Or maybe you were just noticing them for the first time.

"Y/L/N," A voice knocked you back to reality. You looked around to see your squad staring at you, Barba had his arms crossed in annoyance. 

"What? Uh, yeah sure whatever you said Barba," You muttered as you looked down at your legal pad; all of a sudden your eyes went wide. 

You had unintentionally been scribbling "RAFAEL BARBA" all over the paper in different signature writing. What was worse, your partner Fin promptly noticed and snickered to himself. 

"Well since you're taking such diligent notes maybe you have something useful to add?" Barba asked in a snarky tone as he gestured to your notepad. 

"Actually Barba can we finish this later I've got a Vic I need to check on" Fin piped up, coming to your rescue. 

"Seriously Fin?" Barba scoffed.

"Yeah Barba you know what we've been at this for two hours, let's pick it up tomorrow with fresh eyes, yeah?" Oliva added as they all gathered up their stuff.

"Whatever," Barba grumbled. "She's your victim," he grabbed his briefcase and walked out of the squad room. 

"Nice taste of men, Y/N," Fin whispered to you. 

"What?!" You acted oblivious. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh don't even" Fin teased. "You're scribbling his name all over your pad like a high schooler,"

"I swear to you Fin, that was completely unconsciously," You put your hand over your heart.

"Maybe subconsciously?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Wha--? No, no of course not--" You were dismissing his accusations when Nick rolled up on your conversation.

"What are we talking about?" He asked.

"Y/N's in love with Barba," Fin smirked.

"FIN," Your eyes widened.

"Oh, that? No shit Fin, where have you been?" Nick laughed.

"NICK," You hissed. "Oh my god…."

"Oh I'm sorry was it supposed to be a secret?" Nick looked around the squad room.

"It's not true!" You denied it, even though your face was turning a deeper shade of red every second.

"Oh please, the way you look at him?" Nick shook his head with another laugh.

"How do I look at him?" You raised your eyebrows.

"Like I look at my abuela's Christmas tamales," Nick wiggled his own eyebrows suggestively, causing you to hit him across the shoulder. 

“Oh my god I do NOT,” You wanted to crawl under your desk and die right there.

“Oh ok, yeah you DON’T,” Nick said sarcastically.

“Yeah well…” You sighed, looking over at Barba and Olivia talking. “It really doesn’t matter,”

“What, him and Olivia?” Fin asked, noticing where your gaze had wandered. 

“Mmm,” You pushed down the jealous feeling bubbling in your gut.

“Aww, YN,” Fin put a hand on your shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry about them,” 

“Yeah they’re more like brother and sister,” Nick agreed. “Who occasionally fuck,” He added under his breath.

“WHAT?!” You practically screamed, causing the entire squad room including Barba and Olivia turned to stare at you.

“I was just kidding Y/N, chill,” Nick muttered, trying not to bust out laughing. 

“I’m going to KILL you, Amaro,” You growled, making him laugh harder.

“Why don’t you just go ask him out, just put a wedge in there if you’re so worried about it,” Fin gestured towards them.

“No!” You hit him this time.  

“Hey, Barba!” Nick called across the squad room.

“Yeah, Amaro?” Barba asked as he walked over to your group.

“Don’t you dare, Nick,” You hissed quietly.

“Are you and Olivia dating?” Nick asked with a straight face.

“Excuse me?” Barba asked with a stunned face.

“Y/N wanted to know,” Nick smirked, nodding at you.

“Oh my god…” You muttered under your breath.

“Did you now, detective?” A smile spread across Barba’s face.

“What? No! Maybe…” Your mind was racing at the sight of him smiling at the thought of you being jealous of him and Liv.

“Well, you’re in luck,” Olivia smirked as she came up behind Barba. “The only man in my life is Noah,” 

“Oh,” You smiled meekly. “Well um, good to know,” 

“Indeed,” Barba was now grinning from ear to ear. “Detective, walk me out?” He offered his arm to you. You looked at Fin and Nick who were smiling triumphantly.

“Yeah, sure,” You pushed your hair behind your hair nervously with a smile as you latched arms with him.

“You’re welcome!!!” You could hear Nick yelling from the squad room as you walked out into the New York Streets with Barba.

“Dinner? On me?” He asked you casually.

“I um, y-yeah!” You blinked in disbelief. “Absolutely,” 

“Good, I’ll see you after work,” He smiled at you with a quick wink as he walked away.

Now you really would have to thank Nick.

[me-and-your-husband]

Need Someone Part 5

Summary: Reader gets into some trouble, and doesn’t know who else to call besides her best friend’s dad, District Attorney Andy Barber.

Warnings: age gap, mentions of kidnapping and attempted sexual assault, reader gets a rape kit

Pairing: Andy Barber x Reader

Word Count: 1.2k

Note: Lets say reader is 18 and in senior year.

Adjusting the collar of my black pantsuit in the full-length mirror of my bedroom, I exhaled a long, suffocating breath. My expression in the mirror was earnest, to say the least. Dark circles had resided under my eyes the past few days, and my silent lips curved downwards in a permanent frown, casting a sullen scene across my features. The days had slowly droned on, in which I mostly spent parked in front of the TV or sleeping. Even then I never really watched the content portrayed on the screen. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten or drank anything, besides the constant mug of coffee that always rested on the closest surface in arms reach. The ability to think was becoming a curse, and I was forbode to think freely of anything but the events that transpired nearly two weeks ago now. It never left my mind, the blood-spatters and unsteady breathing towards the end.

Andy had left my house six days ago now, and I hadn’t had the will to look at the Caller ID lately, so who knows how many times he’s called since. He told me to take care of myself, to make sure I eat, sleep, shower, daily tasks that stable people would be able to complete. I don’t listen.

Before I could comprehend fully what I was doing, I was stepping over the threshold, almost tripping over the dozens of flowers, cards and even chocolates from people. The news had broken to the press, as it does, and it was too much to even turn on the news. I remember a few days ago, waking up with the news caster outside my house.

I huffed out a breath, making it form a cloud in front of my face and dissipate immediately due to the fall chill that had spread over Newton in the last week. I wouldn’t know; the last time I had been outside was the night that Andy brought me home.

I turned around and shoved my keys in the door, twisting them to lock it, and began the short walk to my neglected car. I wondered if it still had gas, I couldn’t remember. Unimportant, they wouldn’t start without me anyways.

In the car, the music hummed in the background. My eyes were fixed on the road, my lip caught under my teeth almost the whole way. Glancing up occasionally in the rear-view mirror, I looked less and less zombie-like. Maybe it was the sunlight and the fresh air. It could have also been the eggs I made for myself this morning; my stomach was grateful, yet my brain barely let me eat a third of the plate. Or, maybe it was just the makeup I had piled on this morning, in hopes to look less sullen and maybe appear more benevolent.

Pulling up to the courthouse, I could see a familiar figure, Andy, pacing back and forth in front of the steps, talking to someone on his phone in a calm tone, but pinching the bridge of his nose between furrowed brows, his lips curved downwards in an engraved frown. Once he spotted me, he mumbled something rapidly into the phone and hung up, shoving it back into the pocket of his slacks. His pace quickened as he neared my car, eyes locked onto mine. I averted my gaze to the steering wheel, where my hands gripped it aggressively.

     I could hear the muffled sound of him calling my name through the window as he stalked towards my car. I lifted my head as reflex when he knocked three times on the window. I pressed the button to roll the window down, and the chilly November air infiltrated my car.

“Y/N,” he breathed out, almost in awe.

“Yep, it’s me. Let’s get this thing over with- “

“Hey, are you okay? Are you sure you’re ready for this?” He questioned with soft eyes. I sighed and tilted my head to look up at him.

“No, I’m not. But we can’t reschedule this thing, so you and I better get in there,” I said with pseudo-humor, getting ready to put on the charade of a stable woman. Stepping out of the car and kicking my door shut, I slid my sunglasses onto my face, attempting to walk towards the huge crowd that has since accumulated outside of the courthouse.

Andy grabbed my hand from behind me and spun me around to face him. “Where’re your parents?”

I slid my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose. “They weren’t scheduled to come back until the end of the month. They can’t get a flight back…” I said, my eyes drifting down to our feet. I pushed my sunglasses back in place. I turned on my heel to get into the courthouse, Andy tailing me.

Pushing myself through the crowd, I was blinded by the flashes of light and I couldn’t hear Andy shouting my name over the chorus of people screaming questions at me. I was swarmed by reporters, my sunglasses successfully covering my eyes. Entering the courthouse, the doors shut behind me and Andy. Brushing off my blazer, I drew in a deep breath, scanning the room. It was a generally modern setting.

    Andy steered me down the hallway, and we soon entered the actual courtroom. There were minimal people, only the ones that legally needed to be there, and the defendant’s family members. It would have hurt that mine weren’t here, but I had adapted to blocking everything out at this point.

Andy spoke just below a whisper, telling me what to do and where to go. Finally, we took our seats at the prosecution’s table. Andy scribbled nonchalantly in his fancy notebook while we waited for the defense lawyer to show up.

Andy finished filling out his paperwork or whatever he was doing and set down the pen. He let out a long sigh, “The defense attorneys on cases like this, assigned to posthumous trials, they tend to be…” he struggled to find a fitting word, “lazy. They are often lazy. They’re getting paid to do the same amount of work, but the client is dead; it does not matter to them if they win or lose the case, therefore there’s no reputation to keep. Unless the specific defendant was wealthy, and the attorney is being payed a generous sum by the client.”

I huffed out a breath through my nose, careful not to come across agitated. “So that’s a good thing, right? I mean, he’ll be lazy. It’ll make it easier for us to win over the jury…” he gave me a look, one that bore into my flesh, one that meant “really?” but at the same time, I had to squeeze my things together. Averting my gaze to my hands, I frantically mumbled, “Not that it wouldn’t be easier if they weren’t lazy, I know you’re an amazing lawyer and I’m so thankful you’re doing this for me because God, I don’t think I could have anyone else do it, I just…I don’t know it feels like-“ I was interrupted by the court clerk announcing the arrival of the judge, Judge Rivera. The smack of the gavel on the oak podium sounded in the courtroom, and the trial had officially begun.

  A/N: Thanks for being so patient with me guys. This is just a filler chapter, but the next one will have some angst, fluff and POSSIBLY some smut ;)

TAGLIST: 

@zaddychris @kyrarose16 @lexeeehhh @kelbabyblue @lovelivelife128 @kalesrebellion @princess-evans-addict @jeremyrennermakesmesmile @wesleypiper @unnuevosoltransformalarealidad @sherlockinand @sunnydisposition-08 @rosalynshields @denisemarieangelina @a-golden-sunflower-vol-6

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@kyrarose16

[thorsterstrudle]

Scar Tissue

Anon request: can you pleaseeee write a daredevil x reader smut with a lot of teasing & appreciating his body? if you don’t write about daredevil anymore that’s totally fine though!

Daredevil x reader

Warnings: Unprotected Sex (Wrap the Willy before you get Silly), swearing, general NSFW, Law Jargon

You stormed into the dusty attorney office, absolutely fuming. As the already fragile door slammed behind you, your eyes scanned the small lobby. They fell on Karen, who uncomfortably shifted in her pencil skirt behind the desk.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” Karen eyed you carefully.

“Yes, actually, I need to speak to Matthew Murdock,” you straightened, looking at each door to the small individual offices before adding, “now.”

You softened slightly as Karen’s wide eyes looked at her with a kind of fear. You were used to this look. It was how your co-counsel looked at you when she went off-script cross-examining a witness. It was how defendants looked when you stared them down as they sat on the stand. It was how opposing counsel looked when you introduced herself as the representative of the state. It was how everyone looked at you, except for one person.

How unfortunate.

Karen stood and walked over to the door labeled, ‘Matthew Murdock, Esq.’ before knocking and opening the door briefly. 

You stared at that crack in the door as if you were going to burn a hole through the back of Karen’s head. You didn’t have a lot of time, and if you wasted any more time on this stupid plea deal, you’d lose your patience.

“It’s okay, let her in,” you heard the deep, gravelly voice from the other side of the door and began approaching before Karen had even turned to her.

“Thank you,” you said to the secretary before opening the door the rest of the way and closing it behind you. You should have felt bad about closing the door in Karen’s face, but where would you be if you thought like that?

“Would you like to sit down, Ms. YLN?” Murdock asked.

You ignored him, jumping immediately into the issue at hand.

“How dare you encourage him to deny our plea deal?” You stuck a finger out, pointing a manicured nail directly into Murdock’s face; his expression never changed, of course.

“Who are you referring to, Ms. YLN?” Murdock played dumb, waiting for you to explode. And, exactly as he had hoped, you did.

“I am talking about the Sims trial, Murdock, and you know it. We offered that plea deal on good faith that you would advise him to accept it, and what did you do?” You took a deep breath, feeling your voice go into that dark, commanding tone that you only use when your fury has been pent up for far too long.

“I encouraged Mr. Sims to deny the plea deal in favor of trial,” Murdoch’s expression never changed, and his voice never wavered, and for that, you were impressed but even more frustrated.

“Listen,” you started, pinching the bridge of your nose, “I really don’t have time for this. And we both know that taking Sims to trial is a waste of tax-payer money and our time. So, just have him agree to the deal, and we’ll be good, okay?” You found your voice turning up in false sweetness at the end before glaring daggers towards the defense attorney across from you.

“I have to disagree, Ms. YLN,” Murdock replied, a small smile on his face as you huffed at his answer, “I think that Mr. Sims is innocent until proven guilty, and that can only be done in a court of law.”

It took all of the willpower you had gained from dealing with privileged frat boys in college and law school to not slam your fist on the table…maybe that would get something more than a calm smile from the blind man.

Getting this plea deal pushed through would keep your record clean. You knew that if this case went to court, it wasn’t a sure conviction, which meant you could have a loss on your hands, and that was the last thing you wanted. Being the youngest partner at your firm meant you had to be aggressive and tenacious, and you had been, but it just wasn’t enough to crack Murdock.

“How about this, Ms. YLN,” Murdock piped up, interrupting your thoughts, “you’re clearly eager to get this deal, so I will hear you out. Unfortunately, I have a meeting in less than fifteen minutes. If you would like, we can continue this conversation over dinner. My place. 7 o’clock. I’ll have Karen send you the information.”

With that, he stood up, took his walking stick, and moved to leave his office, with you still dumbstruck at his desk.

All you could think was, over and over, that motherfucker.

As promised, Karen sent you the address, and you showed up, still wearing work clothing, though it was different than what you had been wearing earlier that day. You’d ditched your blazer and opted instead for just the blouse and dress pants. This was a work dinner.

You knocked three times, sharp raps against the smooth door. No more than a few seconds later, Murdock opened the door, wearing jeans and a button-down. The sleeves of the button up were rolled past his elbows, and you could see the muscles in his forearms as he gestured for you to come in. You quickly looked away, rolling your eyes at yourself for even paying attention to the way the veins in his arm popped as he closed the door behind you.

“Thank you for doing this,” Murdock said, moving to the counter where a bottle of wine and a spread of Caesar salad, scampi, and warm bread.

“No,” you suddenly found yourself feeling more civil, more polite. It had been a long time since any man had cooked for you. You reminded yourself that this was all for the plea deal. That’s all it was. You continued, “thank you. It looks great.”

He offered you a glass after carefully pouring the wine. You studied him as he did so. His hand found the bottle and made its way up to the neck before moving it to meet the glass and pouring slowly. You wondered how long it had taken him to learn how to do that. At the thought, you shook your head, that was rude. Murdoch was a giant pain in your ass right now, and he was blind, but why should you think him doing something normal was exceptional for him? You checked yourself on your ableism before taking the glass he offered.

You tried your best to not jump immediately into the plea deal. Instead, as you both ate, you asked him how his meeting went. His reply was a smile and a nod before elaborating.

“It was good,” he paused, tilting his head slightly, “not incredibly interesting, as it was about a plea deal.”

You stopped chewing, eyes fixed on him, on the way his jaw ticked slightly before grinning.

“I’m kidding,” he offered. 

You took a breath before chuckling and taking a deep gulp of wine. You looked at Murdoch, a defense attorney trying his best to be nice and cordial to you, a prosecutor known for being ruthless. 

It could have been the one—two, three?—glass of wine, but you didn’t feel like being aggressive or assertive or anything like you were at work. In fact, you would much rather be the easy-going woman you were at home, laughing at yourself for talking back to a commercial or making faces at your nieces through FaceTime. 

“Well any meeting beats listening to Judge Hamilton drone on about courtroom etiquette,” you quipped back, not even realizing it.

Murdock—no, Matt—Matt laughed at that.

“I knew it,” he replied, smiling.

“Knew what?” 

“You’re just like the rest of us, bored to death by Judge Hamilton.”

You couldn’t help but smile again, a full, bright smile that actually showed your teeth. You took another sip of wine before picking up a piece of the bread. As you did, Matt leaned back in his chair, sighing. 

“What’s that for?” You asked, popping the bread into your mouth.

“I guess we have to hash out that plea deal now, don’t we?” He said, eyebrows raised. You Looked at him before letting your eyes travel to his shirt, where the top button had come undone. You shouldn’t stare, should you? But what if I’m staring at something interesting? You thought to yourself. You let your eyes travel downwards, past each button, wondering what wonders lay underneath. And then, just as your eyes reached the beginning of his jeans, your view was blocked by the table.

“Ms. YLN?” Matt said, gaining your attention again, barely hiding his small smile. It’s as if he knows. But, there’s no way, right?

“Y/N,” you replied, “outside of the office, I’m Y/N.”

“Sounds good to me, Y/N.”

A few glasses of wine later, the plea deal was all but forgotten. The two of you traded trial stories and made fun of other attorneys, throwing yourselves into laughing fits until the warmth from the alcohol running through your veins made you wonder. You sat there, looking at Matt once again, wondering what about this night, this supposed-to-be work dinner, made you let go, relax. Wine on its own didn’t do this.

“Penny for your thoughts?” You heard Matt’s voice and realized you had been silent for a little bit too long. You exhaled, almost chuckling.

“Fuck it.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what it is about you, Matthew Murdock, but I don’t want this night to end,” before you knew what you were doing, you stood, chair scraping the floor and walking over to him. You paused before asking, “can I take your hand?”

He nodded, head tilted, listening to you intently.

You looked down and took his right hand before slowly moving it up to your face. You closed your eyes as his fingers delicately felt your features, mapping out your face.

“It’s kinder than I would have thought.”

“And how do you know that?” You said, mesmerized.

“All these gentle curves,” he said, tracing your nose, then your jawline, then, slowly, your lips.

“What about these?” You took his hand again and moved it to your waist before taking his free hand and moving it to the other hip, “are these curves soft?”

He hummed, and you thought you might never forget the sound of it.

Matt stood, hands tightening slightly on your hips. You inhaled sharply, waiting.

“Not as soft as your lips, if I may?” 

You smiled before consenting.

And then, to your absolute delight, Matthew Murdock, your would-be enemy in the court system, placed his lips on yours. He had said your lips were soft, but his were more so. Your arms wrapped around his neck as his arms wrapped around your back.

Before you could stifle it, a moan escaped you.

Instead of pausing like you thought he would, Matt kissed you harder, deeper. Without thinking you moved your hands to his chest, doing some mapping out of your own. You marveled at how firm he was as your hands moved lower.

“These buttons are a bitch,” Matt said as you pulled away slightly, moving to undo the buttons. He scoffed, smiling as, one by one, the button-down was discarded. 

Like so many times before, you found your eyes glued to him. His chest swelled with each breath and his abs contracted as you looked at him. Before you knew it, your hands were on him again, feeling the lines, moving down to his Adonis belt. Your fingers passed over a scar, thick and long. You stopped.

“Stray bullet,” Matt said gently, “and it’s not the only one.”

He said it in a tone that would have confused you if you were any other mental state. It was almost disappointed, like his scars were meant to be disappointing to you. 

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

You knelt, moving closer to him. Once again, he tilted his head, listening to you as you placed your lips on the scar. Looking up, you smirked and began to move again. This time, you made your way up, placing kiss after kiss along his torso, taking special care to attend to the many scars you could now see dotting his body like road markers.

As your lips touched a particular scar on his collarbone, his hand shot up and tangled itself in your hair, bringing you close for another fiery, passionate kiss. You bit his lip gently, and he groaned.

“If I had known you were hiding all of this from me, I would have been a lot more polite,” you said in between kisses. Matt chuckled, his free hand untucking your blouse and feeling the hot skin beneath. You stopped his hand, holding it in place as you discarded your blouse. Then, you led it up to where your lacy white bra covered your breasts.

“Tempting, but I think we’d better move this somewhere a bit more suitable, don’tcha think?” His voice was dark, and you wanted him more than you thought possible. He took your hand and led you to the bedroom, the path memorized in his mind.

He twirled you before having you sit on the bed. This time, he knelt in front of you, hands tracing your skin until they met your dress pants. Quickly unbuttoning and sliding them down your legs, Matt’s fingers were deft and skilled. You wondered what else he could do with those fingers.

The heat in your core grew brighter, impossible to ignore, as Matt made his way back up your legs. His fingers traced up your calves, then over your knees, then your thighs. Your breath caught as they came to your underwear.

One hand made its way up to your torso, pushing you back onto the bed, while the other slid your underwear down and off your legs.

“Please,” you rasped out, ready for whatever he had in store for you. Ever so slowly, you felt him spread your legs, and then, the heat of absolute pleasure as he dove in. His mouth felt so, so sweet as his tongue swirled around your clit before dipping inside of you. 

You moaned, legs involuntarily moving to clench together at the pleasure. Matt, hands rough, but gentle, caught your thighs and held them open as his mouth continued its assault on your core.

He alternated from your clit to dipping inside of you with his tongue, and soon, you were shaking in his grasp. With his right hand, Matt gripped the inside of your thigh tighter, and you felt yourself give way. The white-hot pleasure of your orgasm rolled through you, and you couldn’t keep the pornographic moan inside you.

“Yes, Matt,” you moaned, riding out your high as he continued his onslaught for a few more moments.

Matt pulled away, grinning like an idiot before standing. You opened your eyes and looked at him, blissed out. As your eyes rolled over him again, you could see the outline of his dick in his jeans. 

As quickly as you could in your wobbly state, you pushed yourself into the sitting position, placing more kisses on his chest, then his torso, all the way down to his Adonis belt. You spun him until it was his legs against the bed, before unbuttoning his jeans and pulling them, along with his boxers, down.

You inhaled sharply, a shit-eating grin spreading over your face as you took in the sight of his beautiful, thick cock. You leaned forward, kissing the head.

Matt hummed as you licked a long stripe from the base to the tip. Then, as one hand roamed around his torso, the other ran over his length. You took him into your mouth, bobbing back and forth until he was groaning, one hand in your hair.

You felt him throb in your mouth and you pulled off of him with a pop.

Hand still in your hair, Matt pulled you up, locking lips and grabbing your ass. He moved his other hand from your hair down to your thigh and picked you up, turning, and laying you down onto the bed.

Wasting no time, Matt knelt in between your legs before frowning.

“Shit,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” You began to panic.

“I don’t have any condoms.”

You chuckled, relieved.

“I am as clean as they come, Counselor, and I’m on the pill. So, as long as you’re clean, we have nothing to worry about.”

“Thank God,” he said before leaning down to kiss you again. He held himself up with one arm as he lined himself up with your entrance. Gently, he thrust forward, sinking into you.

You gasped as he groaned. Your eyes rolled back as you relished the feeling of being filled. You wrapped your legs around his back and placed a hand in his hair, tightening your grip when he bottomed out.

“Fuck,” you gasped.

“Fuck is right,” Matt smiled.

“Why don’t you put all those muscles to work and fuck me hard, Counselor?” You never knew your voice could sound like that, but the way his cock twitched inside you, you knew you’d use it more often.

Matt pulled out until only the tip was inside you. Then, he slammed back in. He set an unrelenting pace, pulling out and pounding back into you until you couldn’t remember your own name. Your free hand gripped the comforter.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you chanted as Matt ruined every other man for you. He moved his free hand down to your clit, rubbing in time with his strokes until you felt yourself on the edge again. 

“Come for me,” he said, bringing his forehead down to yours, “it’s such a sweet sound.”

And come for him, you did. Once, twice, three times.

By the time Matt came, you were covered in a sheen of sweat, hair falling out of your once-neat ponytail. Your fingernails were digging into his back, searching for something to ground yourself with as Matt thrust into you one last time, coming deep in you.

You laid there, head on Matt’s chest, finger tracing all of his scars. His arm was around you, and you felt warmer, happier than you had felt in a long time.

And the plea deal? It could wait until the next day at the office.

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 8/24/20

by Kyle Anzalone

US News

Arizona police stole a $15,000 Jeep over an alleged $25 pot sale. [Link]

A police officer who kneed a man in the face 20 to 30 times gets qualified immunity. [Link]

John Durham’s investigation questioned John Brennan for eight hours. The investigation said Brennan was being investigated as a possible witness to crimes, not for criminal behavior. [Link]

Attorney General Bob Barr says he opposes a pardon of Edward Snowden. [Link]

A high-ranking State Department official will meet with the leaders of the Belarus protest movement. [Link]

Iran

Thirteen of the 15 member UN Security Council oppose the US effort to reimpose sanctions on Iran. [Link]

The US imposes visa restrictions on 14 Iranians. [Link]

Israel

Hezbollah claims to have shot down an Israeli drone. [Link]

Israel has banned all imports to Gaza, except medicine and food. [Link]

Middle East

Trump discusses withdrawing US troops from Iraq by the election with the Iraqi prime minister. [Link]

US-led coalition forces withdraw from the Iraq base Camp Taji. [Link]

Turkey is in talks with Russia to buy more S-400 air defense systems. [Link]

An airstrike killed two civilians in Yemen. [Link]

Africa

The Libyan National Army rejects a proposed ceasefire and claims that the Government of National Accord is using the ceasefire to launch a new attack. [Link]

The US suspends its military relationship with Mali in response to the coup. [Link]

The coup leader in Mali had training from the US. [Link]

Suspected Islamic militants killed 13 people in the Congo. [Link]

Read More

[micsopenpha1986-blog]

AZ has more polygamist then Utah and I believe if there is any state that would prosecute polygamy it would be AZ not Utah Remember Colorado City (Short Creek) is in AZ, sure some polygamist live in the Utah side but the vast majority live in AZ. They do because of geography get welfare (via some sort of exchange) in Utah. The big raid on polygamy years ago was n AZ not Utah. Pucker up for peppermint. Drink a cup of peppermint tea before bed to relieve tension and help you sleep. Chamomile, catnip, or vervain works well, too. The "Commemoration Ode" of Lowell has also been a source from which I drank something of the divine ecstasy of the poet's own exalted mood, and I would set this level with the 'Biglow Papers,' high above all 고성출장마사지 his other work, and chief of the things this age of our country shall be remembered by. Holmes I always loved, and not for his wit alone, which is so obvious to liking, but for those rarer and richer strains of his in which he shows himself the lover of nature and the brother of men. The deep spiritual insight, the celestial music, and the brooding tenderness of Whittier have always taken me more than his fierier appeals and his civic virtues, though I do not underrate the value of these in his verse.. But it is confidential internal information. If possible, for discussion proposes Cohen were the attorney for Reddit. Congress is not considered a legal entity for civil action (am I wrong)? Would or could Cohens defense if sued by Reddit be "whistle blower"? Could he take the fifth in fear of fighting a costly legal battle in which he may lose?. He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as serious a meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. I left them still listening to him when I withdrew to attend to my new duties. They had occupied me for some time, and I was passing through the passages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm when Mr. But we have somewhere 고성출장마사지 to belong! African Americans have a long and vast cultural and so does West/Central Africa. Now I can say that every descendant of slaves are from here but most are. Just the white school systems teaching us the bare minimum but drone on and on about Europe _ this is why we need black schools.. In the past I added Grapeseed Oil 5% to give it emolliency (but also still have anti acne properties). Other additionals I recommend are Sebum REG 5% (oil soluble active) and Green Tea EGCG. EGCG can be tricky to solubilize though, and it pre dissolved solution version from BulkActives requires 11% concentrate to = only 1% active EGCG (crowds out too much room in formula). You need a way of getting out there and being a little bit open and making space for interesting people, even if they don meet your requirements at first. Saying you need interesting feminist men only is sort of tough, because real feminism in men doesn reveal itself immediately. When I met my husband, he was great but seemed like he could be very mainstream in some ways, and he was definitely dullsville at times, even at the outset. I love figuring out how to make synergistic interceptor builds with my storm friends. Which is a HUGE part of the game that I think people are missing out on. Teamwork is a really big part of the game, and if you not playing with friends I can see why you might not like it that much.. Proper procedure in this case is to not permit the food to be taken home, unless it is still packaged or something of that nature. Then again, if it is still in a package and/or in a powered refrigerator (not merely an ice chest. That has dangers too).

[pemdasblog]

PEMDAS - 12•3•20

Open below for PEMDAS!

POLITICS/NEWS

Coronavirus

Case numbers this past week in the U.S.

New cases: 948,177 people

Hospitalizations: 98,691 people (on Dec. 1st)

Deaths: 8,476 people (almost three times the number of people killed on Sept. 11, 2001)

Case numbers this past week in the world

New cases: 3,449,295 people

Deaths: 59,579 people (in one week, the death toll is a number within the estimated range of deaths from the War in Afghanistan, a war that has been going on since 2001)

Vaccines

Genetic vaccines -- Vaccines that deliver one or more of the coronavirus’s own genes into our cells to provoke an immune response.

Pfizer - to distribute 6.4 million doses in U.S. by mid-December; found to be 95% effective in trials, but still needs final authorization in the U.S. before widespread usage; has been authorized for emergency use in the U.K.

Moderna - applied to FDA for emergency use authorization; could begin distribution as early as Dec. 21st

Biden’s Cabinet - New York Times

I’ll do my best to speak to the political actions for each cabinet nominee that I find favorable and those which I find questionable, but for now I’m leaning towards the side of questionable because most news sources are printing the favorable stuff already. You can basically Google each name, find a headline that names them as the Biden pick, and it will list their credentials.

Vice President: Kamala Harris 👩🏽

“Kamala is a cop” - Devyn Spring, in The Independent

Secretary of State: Antony J. Blinken 👨🏻

Former Deputy National Security Adviser (2013-2015) and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State (2015-2017) under Barack Obama

Co-founder of WestExec Advisors (see below)

Summary of his views with key U.S. global relationships - Newsweek

Russia: tough on them; believes in isolation and undermining of Putin/Russia to reduce their global power; sees a couple avenues of cooperation with Russia (such as extending New START)

China: wants to find opportunities to cooperate with China on things like arms control and climate change; won’t shy away from criticizing Chinese Communist Party’s abuses

North Korea: does not see possibility with denuclearization, so will focus instead on arms control

Iran: rejoin and strengthen the Iran nuclear deal (which he helped establish under Obama), which he believes will put us in a good position to push back against Iran’s other destabilizing activities

Afghanistan, Syria: “large-scale, open-ended deployment of large, standing U.S. forces in conflict zones with no clear strategy should end and will end under his watch,” but not quickly; believes some troops should remain

Palestine, Israel: supports the U.S. financial and military relationship with Israel; “Israel has never been—until now, unfortunately—a partisan political issue," he said in August. "And I think it's very bad for the United States and for Israel that someone tries to turn it into one.” He would restore U.S. assistance to Palestinian authorities but said it would not condition Israeli aid on its honoring international agreements and the two-state solution.

Secretary of the Treasury: Janet L. Yellen 🧑🏻‍🦳

First female Treasury Secretary

Former Federal Reserve Chair (the Federal Reserve is the central banking system of the U.S., responsible for many economic objectives, such as maximizing employment, stabilizing prices, and moderating long-term interest rates)

She is considered a “dove” to Wall Street (as opposed to a “hawk”) because she prioritizes unemployment over inflation. She also aligns mostly with Keynesian economic philosophy, which “seeks to preserve the system rather than overthrow it.” -- New Yorker, 2013 -- this New Yorker description of Yellen’s work pre-federal government work has solid info about her various economic beliefs, such as how Yellen supports higher minimum wages to reduce unemployment.

I couldn’t find much about how her ideology aligns with Leftist thought. She seems decent enough to me, but... idk economics. Here’s something in the Wall Street Journal about the challenges she’ll face entering the arena of politics.

Secretary of Homeland Security: Alejandro N. Mayorkas 🧑🏼‍🦲

First Cuban (and Latinx) Secretary of Homeland Security

Helped develop and implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows children brought to the U.S. through “unlawful” means to have two-years safe from deportation in attempt to obtain a work permit

“In 2013, the DHS inspector general investigated Mayorkas for allegedly improperly granting visas under pressure from former DNC chair Terry McAullife and Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother. While a report from the inspector general’s office said Mayorkas’s actions created “an appearance of favoritism and special access,” he was not sanctioned by the department.” -- Daily Beast

TBA: Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing & Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs

WestExec Advisors

Washington consulting firm founded by Antony J. Blinken and Michèle Flournoy.

Avril D. Haines (see below) was one of its former principals.

“By not directly advocating for federal dollars on behalf of their clients, they don't have to publicly divulge who is paying them and for what activities, such as the connections they make with government agencies, she said. But it is also impossible to assess the influence they have on federal expenditures.“ -Politico

Basically, we don’t know which companies fund this consulting firm, so the people coming out of it could have corporate interests or foreign government interests that we do not know about. There should be a demand that the people who worked here and/or the firm itself disclose this information!

Cabinet noms’ relationships to corporate interests - Democracy Now

Biden’s Cabinet-Rank Status and White House Staff

Chief of Staff: Ron Klain 👨🏻

a veteran political and policy operative well-known in Washington

has worked with Biden off and on since the late 1980s, when he served as a top aide to the then-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee

previously served as Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president

took point on the Obama administration’s handling of Ebola

has been outspoken about President Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic

was Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Revolution LLC, an investment firm launched by AOL Co-Founder Steve Case in 2005

buzz words like “big corporate law firm” and “worked as a venture capitalist” got me to this fact, but it’s pretty hard to Google... hmm!!

I’m going to keep my eye on this...

Office of Management & Budget Director: Neera Tanden 👩🏽

President of the Center for American Progress

apparently, she changed her Twitter bio, removing “progressive” from her bio and replacing it with “liberal”

she “hates the left” - Hasan Piker (a hot leftist who I like a lot, but I’m still gonna try to look up his claims)

Director of National Intelligence: Avril D. Haines 👩🏻

First female Director of National Intelligence

Played a key role in Obama’s “drone wars” as former Deputy Director of the CIA

“She approved an “accountability board” that spared CIA personnel reprisal for spying on the Senate’s torture investigators, and was part of the team that redacted their landmark report. After the administration ended, Haines supported Gina Haspel for CIA director, someone directly implicated in CIA torture, a decision that remains raw amongst progressive activists. Until late June, she consulted for the Trump-favorite data firm Palantir, which emerged from the CIA.” -- Daily Beast

National Security Adviser: Jake Sullivan 👱🏻‍♂️

Youngest person to serve as National Security Adviser

Held top positions at the State Department and in the Obama White House, playing a key role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal

U.N. Ambassador: Linda Thomas-Greenfield 🧑🏿‍🦳

an American diplomat who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the United States Department of State's Bureau of African Affairs from 2013 to 2017

following her work as a diplomat, Thomas-Greenfield became a senior vice president at Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington, D.C.

strong supporter of multilateralism (or, cooperation among several nations)

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate: John F. Kerry 👨🏼‍🦳

Worked in a top position at Bank of America, one of the largest financiers of fossil fuel development in the world. So like... can he not have this role?

Communications Director: Kate Bedingfield 👩🏼

in November 2011, Bedingfield started working at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)

in May 2013, Bedingfield was named spokesperson and vice president of corporate communications at the MPAA

in 2015, Bedingfield was named communications director for then Vice President Joe Biden; she also held two additional roles in the Obama administration: director of response and deputy director of media affairs

after working in the Obama administration, Bedingfield returned briefly to sports and entertainment communications

Press Secretary: Jen Psaki 👩🏻‍🦰

Jan. 2009 - Dec. 2009: White House Deputy Press Secretary

2009 - 2011: White House Deputy Communications Director

2013 - 2015: Spokesperson for the United States Department of State

2015 - 2017: White House Communications Director

TBA: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, U.S. Trade Representative, Small Business Administrator, CIA Director

EDUCATION - Topic suggestion from Justin Myhre: The Tuskegee Experiments

CDC Title: “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”

The CDC page for the Experiments

offers a timeline of the events from 1895 to 2009

1895: at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Booker T. Washington describes his vision for Black economic development and gets “philanthropists” to come on board

this speech is known as the “Atlanta compromise” speech, with the compromise being “an agreement between African-American leaders and Southern white leaders in which Southern blacks would work meekly and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education and due process of law” -- Wikipedia

the Expo was “designed to promote the American South to the world and showcase products and new technologies, as well as to encourage trade with Latin America” -- Wikipedia

2009: the last widow receiving Tuskegee Health Benefit Program benefits dies on January 27th

contains write-ups for how the study began, what went wrong, and how the study ended and reparations began

How the study began: the Public Health Service (a division of the executive branch’s Department of Health and Human Services that began in 1798 as a system of marine hospitals and grew into a larger system that was given its official title in 1912) along with the Tuskegee Institute (an HBCU in Alabama, established on July 4, 1881) “began a study to record the natural history of syphilis in hopes of justifying treatment programs for blacks”

in 1932, 399 Black men with syphilis and 201 Black men who did not have it (Wikipedia says that these men were “impoverished, African-American sharecroppers”) were told that they were being tested (without consent) for “bad blood” and were promised a form of health care

they were also told it would last 6 months but it ended up lasting 40 fucking years

this CDC page fails to mention that “the victims of the study included numerous men who died of syphilis, 40 wives who contracted the disease and 19 children born with congenital syphilis,” a fact from Oliver J. Kim and Lois N. Magner’s book A History of Medicine

What went wrong: in 1971, a panel was assembled and they “found that the men had agreed freely to be examined and treated. However, there was no evidence that researchers had informed them of the study or its real purpose. In fact, the men had been misled and had not been given all the facts required to provide informed consent”

1947: it is discovered that penicillin can treat syphilis, but none of the men are offered it

the men were never given the option to quit the study

How the study ended and reparations began: in October 1972, the panel stops the study; in 1973, the study “participants” and their families file a class-action lawsuit; in 1974, a $10 million settlement is reached in which the U.S. government agrees to paying for health care and funeral services of the “participants” (called the Tuskegee Health Benefit Program, or THBP); in 1975, wives, widows, and offspring received these benefits as well

“Study clinicians could have chosen to treat all syphilitic subjects and close the study, or split off a control group for testing with penicillin. Instead, they continued the study without treating any participants; they withheld treatment and information about penicillin from the subjects. In addition, scientists prevented participants from accessing syphilis treatment programs available to other residents in the area. The researchers reasoned that the knowledge gained would benefit humankind; however, it was determined afterward that the doctors did harm their subjects by depriving them of appropriate treatment once it had been discovered. The study was characterized as ‘the longest non-therapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history.’” - Wikipedia

on May 16, 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized to the study “participants” and their families

this study about the Legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study makes the point that “Blacks are more reluctant than Whites to participate in biomedical research studies because of the infamous study of syphilis in men run by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932-72″ -- there are very valid reasons to distrust the U.S. government with biomedical advancements, particularly for Black people

here is an article that connects the legacy of Tuskegee to fears around Coronavirus

now, does this mean we shouldn’t take the vaccine? no! but don’t shame people, particularly Black folks, for very reasonable distrust of the U.S. government!!!!!

this is also an interesting case of reparations given in modern times!

MEDIA (Other)

BOOKS - Tues. 12/8

Layla •• Colleen Hoover

A Universe of Wishes •• edited by Dhonielle Clayton

Mozart •• Jan Swafford

An Inventory of Losses •• Judith Schalansky, translated by Jackie Smith

The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life •• Lauren Martin

Mercy: The Fair Lady, the Frost, and the Fiend (Vol. 1) •• Mirka Andolfo

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (The Singing Hills Cycle #2) •• Nghi Vo

Bag-Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House •• Rachel Maddow & Michael Yarvitz

The Invention of Medicine: From Homer to Hippocrates •• Robin Lane Fox

The Mermaid from Jeju •• Sumi Hahn

MOVIES

Friday 12/4

76 Days •• limited theatrical & virtual cinema release

Directors: Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, Anonymous

Writer: Hao Wu

Premise: Set in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, this documentary captures the struggles and human resilience in the battle to survive the pandemic in Wuhan.

Run time: 1 hour 33 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (46 reviews)

Metacritic: 83 (14 reviews)

Oscar buzz?

Best Documentary Feature: long-shot

All My Life •• theatrical release

Director: Marc Meyers

Writer: Todd Rosenberg

Starring: Jessica Rothe, Harry Shum Jr., Chrissie Fit, Jay Pharoah, Keala Settle

Music by: Lisbeth Scott

Premise: A couple's wedding plans are thrown off course when the groom is diagnosed with liver cancer.

Run time: 1 hour 31 minutes

Oscar buzz?

Best Picture: long-shot

Best Actor: long-shot (Harry Shum Jr.)

Best Actress: long-shot (Jessica Rothe)

Best Original Screenplay: long-shot (Todd Rosenberg)

Best Original Score: long-shot (Lisbeth Scott)

Ammonite •• premium on-demand

Director: Francis Lee

Writer: Francis Lee

Starring: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Jones, James McArdle, Alec Secăreanu, Fiona Shaw

Music by: Dustin O'Halloran, Volker Bertelmann

Premise: Acclaimed paleontologist Mary Anning works alone selling common fossils to tourists to support her ailing mother, but a chance job offer changes her life when a visitor hires her to care for his wife.

Run time: 2 hours

Rotten Tomatoes: 68% (152 reviews)

Metacritic: 72 (34 reviews)

Oscar buzz?

Best Picture: good chance

Best Director: decent chance (Francis Lee)

Best Actress: great chance (Kate Winslet)

Best Supporting Actress: good chance (Saoirse Ronan), decent chance (Fiona Shaw)

Best Original Screenplay: decent chance (Francis Lee)

Best Production Design: good chance (Sarah Finlay, Sophie Hervieu)

Best Cinematography: good chance (Stéphane Fontaine)

Best Costume Design: good chance (Michael O’Connor)

Best Editing: decent chance (Chris Wyatt)

Best Makeup & Hairstyling: good chance

Best Sound: decent chance

Best Original Score: good chance (Dustin O’Halloran, Volker Bertelmann)

Another Round •• limited theatrical release

Director: Thomas Vinterberg

Writers: Thomas Vinterberg, Tobias Lindholm

Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, Lars Ranthe

Music by: Janus Billeskov Jansen

Premise: Four friends, all high school teachers, test a theory that they will improve their lives by maintaining a constant level of alcohol in their blood.

Run time: 1 hour 55 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 90% (59 reviews)

Metacritic: 72 (9 reviews)

Oscar buzz?

Best International Feature Film: submitted for Denmark

Black Bear •• theatrical release & premium on-demand

Director: Lawrence Michael Levine

Writer: Lawrence Michael Levine

Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Abbott, Sarah Gadon, Paolo Lázaro, Grantham Coleman

Music by: Giulio Carmassi, Bryan Scary

Premise: A filmmaker plays a calculated game of desire and jealousy in pursuit of a work of art that blurs the boundaries between autobiography and invention.

Run time: 1 hour 44 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 88% (52 reviews)

Metacritic: 81 (14 reviews)

Godmothered •• Disney+

Director: Sharon Maguire

Writers: Kari Granlund, Melissa Stack

Starring: Isla Fisher, Jillian Bell, June Squibb, Jane Curtin

Music by: Rachel Portman

Premise: An inexperienced fairy godmother-in-training tries to prove that people still need fairy godmothers.

Run time: 1 hour 50 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 67% (24 reviews)

Metacritic: 49 (6 reviews)

Half Brothers •• theatrical release

Director: Luke Greenfield

Writers: Eduardo Cisneros, Jason Shuman, Ali LeRoi

Starring: Luis Gerardo Méndez, Connor Del Rio

Music by: Jordan Seigel

Premise: Renato, a successful Mexican aviation executive, is shocked to discover he has an American half brother he never knew about -- the free-spirited Asher. The two very different half brothers are forced on a road trip together. masterminded by their ailing father, tracing the path he took as an immigrant from Mexico to America.

Run time: 1 hour 36 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 36% (11 reviews)

Mank •• Netflix

Director: David Fincher

Writer: Jack Fincher

Starring: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Arliss Howard, Tom Pelphrey, Sam Troughton, Ferdinand Kingsley, Tuppence Middleton, Tom Burke, Joseph Cross, Jamie McShane, 

Music by: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

Premise: 1930s Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes of scathing wit and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish "Citizen Kane."

Run time: 2 hours 11 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 88% (139 reviews)

Metacritic: 80 (38 reviews)

Oscar buzz?

Best Picture: top contender

Best Director: top contender (David Fincher)

Best Actor: top contender (Gary Oldman)

Best Supporting Actor: great chance (Charles Dance), good chance (Arliss Howard), decent chance (Tom Pelphrey), long-shot (Tom Burke)

Best Supporting Actress: favorite to win** (Amanda Seyfried), decent chance (Lily Collins)

Best Original Screenplay: top contender (Jack Fincher)

Best Production Design: favorite to win** (Donald Graham Burt, Jan Pascale)

Best Cinematography: favorite to win** (Erik Messerschmidt)

Best Costume Design: top contender (Trish Summerville)

Best Editing: top contender (Kirk Baxter)

Best Makeup & Hairstyling: great chance

Best Sound: favorite to win**

Best Visual Effects: great chance

Best Original Score: favorite to win** (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross)

Mayor •• limited theatrical & virtual cinema release

Director: David Osit

Starring: Musa Hadid

Premise: This documentary follows Musa Hadid, the mayor of Ramallah, the de facto capital of Palestine, for two years.

Run time: 1 hour 29 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (17 reviews)

Metacritic: 77 (8 reviews)

Minor Premise •• on-demand

Director: Eric Schultz

Writers: Justin Moretto, Eric Schultz, Thomas Torrey

Starring: Sathya Sridharan, Paton Ashbrook, Dana Ashbrook

Music by: Gavin Brivik

Premise: Attempting to surpass his father's legacy, a reclusive neuroscientist becomes entangled in his experiment, pitting 10 fragments of his consciousness against each other.

Run time: 1 hour 35 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (17 reviews)

Nomadland •• theatrical release

Director: Chloé Zhao

Writer: Chloé Zhao

Starring: Frances McDormand, Jason Strathairn, Linda May, Charlene Swankie, Bob Wells

Music by: Ludovico Einaudi

Premise: A woman embarks on a journey through the American West after losing everything during the recession.

Based on: Nomadland •• Jessica Bruder

Run time: 1 hour 48 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 97% (140 reviews)

Metacritic: 97 (25 reviews)

Oscar buzz?

Best Picture: favorite to win**

Best Director: favorite to win** (Chloé Zhao)

Best Actress: top contender (Frances McDormand)

Best Supporting Actor: great chance (David Strathairn), long-shot (Bob Wells)

Best Supporting Actress: great chance (Charlene Swankie), decent chance (Linda May)

Best Adapted Screenplay: favorite to win** (Chloé Zhao)

Best Cinematography: top contender (Joshua James Richards)

Best Editing: great chance (Chloé Zhao)

Best Makeup & Hairstyling: decent chance

Best Sound: top contender

Small Axe: Red, White and Blue •• Amazon Prime Video

Director: Steve McQueen

Writers: Steve McQueen, Courttia Newland

Starring: John Boyega, Steve Toussaint, Joy Richardson, Neil Maskell, Stephen Boxer

Music by: Mica Levi

Premise: Spotlights the true story of Leroy Logan, who at a young age saw his father assaulted by two policemen, motivating him to join the Metropolitan Police and change their racist attitudes from within.

Run time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 96% (48 reviews)

Metacritic: 85 (13 reviews)

Sound of Metal •• Amazon Prime Video

Director: Darius Marder

Writers: Darius Marder, Abraham Marder, Derek Cianfrance

Starring: Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric

Music by: Nicholas Becker, Abraham Marder

Premise: A heavy-metal drummer's life is thrown into freefall when he begins to lose his hearing.

Run time: 2 hours 10 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 97% (118 reviews)

Metacritic: 82 (25 reviews)

Oscar buzz?

Best Picture: great chance

Best Director: good chance (Darius Marder)

Best Actor: great chance (Riz Ahmed)

Best Supporting Actor: decent chance (Paul Raci)

Best Supporting Actress: good chance (Olivia Cooke)

Best Original Screenplay: good chance (Darius Marder, Abraham Marder, Derek Cianfrance)

Best Cinematography: long-shot (Daniël Bouqet)

Best Editing: good chance (Mikkel E.G. Nielsen)

Best Makeup & Hairstlying: decent chance

Best Sound: great chance

Best Original Score: good chance (Nicholas Becker, Abraham Marder)

Tuesday 12/8

The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone •• limited theatrical release

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Writer: Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Andy Garcia, Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, Bridget Fonda, George Hamilton, Sofia Coppola

Music by: Carmine Coppola

Premise: Coppola tweaks the little-loved final part of his Godfather trilogy as Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone tries to go into respectable business.

Run time: 2 hours 42 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (11 reviews)

Metacritic: 74 (7 reviews)

Thursday 12/10

Funny Boy •• Netflix

Director: Deepa Mehta

Writers: Deepa Mehta, Shyam Selvadurai

Starring: Rehan Mudannayake, Arush Nand, Brandon Ingram, Nimmi Harasgama, Ali Kazmi, Agam Darshi, Seema Biswas, Shivantha Wijesinha

Music by: Howard Shore

Premise: Explores Arjie's sexual awakening from a young boy to a teenager who falls in love with a male classmate, just as political tensions escalate between the Sinhalese and Tamils in the years leading up to the 1983 uprisings.

Run time: 1 hour 49 minutes

Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (6 reviews)

Oscar buzz?

Best International Feature Film: submitted for Canada

Let Them All Talk •• HBO Max

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writer: Deborah Eisenberg

Starring: Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Gemma Chan, Lucas Hedges, Dianne Wiest

Music by: Thomas Newman

Premise: A young man finds romance with a literary agent while taking a trip with the woman's famous aunt and her friends.

Oscar buzz?

Best Director: long-shot (Steven Soderbergh)

Best Actress: some chance (Meryl Streep)

Best Supporting Actress: some chance (Candice Bergen), long-shot (Dianne Wiest)

Best Original Screenplay: some chance (Deborah Eisenberg)

Best Cinematography: long-shot (Steven Soderbergh)

Best Editing: long-shot (Steven Soderbergh)

Best Makeup & Hairstyling: long-shot

Best Original Score: good chance (Thomas Newman)

TV SHOWS

Friday 12/4

Big Mouth •• Season 4 •• Netflix

Earth at Night in Color •• Season 1 •• Apple TV+

The Hardy Boys •• Season 1 •• Hulu

MacGyver •• Season 5, Episode 1: “Resort + Desi + Riley + Window Cleaner + Witness” •• CBS

Magnum P.I. •• Season 3, Episode 1: “Double Jeopardy” •• CBS

The Mandalorian •• Season 2, Episode 6: “Chapter 14: [tba]” •• Disney+

Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special •• Apple TV+

Synopsis: Faced with a holiday cheer crisis, the North Pole knows there's only one person who can save the day: Santa Claus's great friend, Mariah Carey. Combining musical performances, dynamic dancing and groundbreaking animation, the undisputed Queen of Christmas jumps into action to create a holiday spectacular to make the whole world merry.

Appearances: Mariah Carey, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, Tiffany Haddish, Billy Eichner, Snoop Dogg, Jermaine Dupri, Misty Copeland, Mykal-Michelle Harris, The Peanuts Characters

Pokémon Journeys: The Series •• Part 3 •• Netflix

Selena: The Series •• Season 1 •• Netflix

Sunday 12/6

Euphoria •• special episode part 1: rue •• HBO

A Holly Dolly Christmas •• CBS

Synopsis: Performing from an intimate, candlelit set, Dolly will bring both powerful, faith-filled hymns and light-hearted holiday classics to help viewers celebrate her favorite time of year, as well as tracks from her new holiday album, A Holly Dolly Christmas. The beloved entertainer will share personal Christmas stories and faith-based recollections of the season to spread some much-needed joy and holiday cheer at the end of this challenging year.

MTV Movie & TV Awards: Greatest of All Time •• MTV

Host: Vanessa Hudgens

Performers: Sia, Steve Aoki, Travis Barker

Presenters: Neve Campbell, Sofia Carson, Lily Collins, Derek Hough, Jacob Bertrand, Peyton List, Xolo Maridueña, David Spade, Maddie Ziegler

The Real Housewives of Atlanta •• Season 13, Episode 1 •• Bravo

Shameless ��• Season 11, Episode 1: “This Is Chicago!” •• Showtime

Your Honor •• Season 1, Episode 1: “Part One” •• Showtime

Monday 12/7

His Dark Materials •• Season 2, Episode 4: “Tower of the Angels” •• HBO

Nurses •• Season 1, Episode 1: “Incoming” •• Global TV

A Suitable Boy •• Season 1 •• Netflix

Wednesday 12/9

Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Musical! •• NBC

Thursday 12/10

One Night Only: The Best of Broadway •• NBC

Host: Tina Fey

Performers: the casts of Ain’t Too Proud, Chicago, Jagged Little Pill, Diana, Jersey Boys, Mean Girls, Rent; Kelly Clarkson, Brett Eldredge, Patti LaBelle

Appearances: the cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Annaleigh Ashford, Lance Bass, Kristen Bell, Ron Cephas Jones, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Peter Gallagher, Josh Groban, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sean Hayes, Nathan Lane, Camryn Manheim, Alanis Morissette, Jerry O’Connell, Leslie Odom Jr., Billy Porter, John Stamos, Aaron Tveit, Blair Underwood, Vanessa Williams, Susan Kelechi Watson

TIME Person of the Year •• NBC

VIDEO GAMES

Friday 12/4

Commandos 2: HD Remaster (Switch)

DARQ: Complete Edition (PC, PS4, XBO)

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC)

FIFA 21 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S)

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light (Switch)

Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise (Switch)

John Wick Hex (Xbox One, Switch)

Madden NFL 21 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S)

Suzerain (PC)

Tuesday 12/8

Call of the Sea (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC)

Destiny 2 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S)

Destiny 2: Beyond Light (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S) – December 8 

Doom Eternal (Switch)

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch)

Ryte: The Eye of Atlantis (PSVR)

Shakes on a Plane (PC, Switch)

Swords of Gargantua (PSVR)

Temtem (PlayStation 5)

Wednesday 12/9

Woodsalt (Switch, PC)

Thursday 12/10

Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia (PlayStation 4)

Cyberpunk 2077 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Stadia, PC)

Haven (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC)

Orwell's Animal Farm (PC)

Sword of the Necromancer (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC)

DIRECT ACTIONS / DONATIONS

Donate to...

houseless encampments in Minneapolis

order a book through a Black-owned progressive independent bookstore

list for various cities

Minneapolis: order from Black Garnet Books

enjoyed a queer artist’s music this year? purchase their album on Bandcamp (even if you won’t listen to it on Bandcamp, who cares, just buy their music!!!)... aaaand Friday 12/4 is Bandcamp Friday, in which ALL of your money goes DIRECTLY to the artist... here are some recommendations from moi of who to support and listen to their music, is güd

BLACK SAILOR MOON •• Backxwash

Peaceful as Hell •• Black Dresses

ROSETTA •• Dua Saleh

“A Dead Cop Is A Good Cop” •• GOYACONNECT

BRAT •• NNAMDÏ

Beauty •• Patricia Taxxon

Read up!

abolitionist manifesto (MPD150)

Political witness

attend your city’s city council meeting -- i did this the other day virtually on this site... maybe your city has something similar!

ALBUMS - Fri. 12/4

Limbo (Deluxe) •• Aminé

Mrs. Clean

Zack & Cody (feat. Valee)

Gelato

Talk (feat. Saba)

Chicken (feat. Toosii)

Buzzin (feat. Unknown Mortal Orchestra)

Solid

Burden

Woodlawn

Kobe

Roots (feat. J.I.D & Charlie Wilson)

Can’t Decide

Compensating (feat. Young Thug)

Shimmy

P.I.M.P. (feat. Vince Staples & slowthai)

Riri

Easy (feat. Summer Walker)

Mama

Becky

Fetus (feat. Injury Reserve)

My Reality

Goosebumps [EP] •• Bastille

Goosebumps (ft. Kenny Beats)

survivin’

WHAT YOU GONNA DO??? (ft. Graham Coxon)

survivin’ (One Eyed Jack’s Sessions)

Goosebumps (One Eyed Jack’s Sessions)

Real Bad Boldy •• Boldy James & Real Bad Man

Real Bad Boldy

Light Bill Master (feat. Meyhem Lauren)

Thousand Pills (feat. Stove God Cooks)

Failed Attempt

Lil Vicious (feat. Eto)

On 10

Held Me Down

Street Shit

Good Food (feat. Mooch & Rigz)

Champion

We Know the Truth •• Drakeo the Ruler

We Know the Truth (feat. Icewear Vezzo & ALLBLACK)

20 Pieces

Too Famous

Fullys for Bullies (feat. Lil Mosey & Ralfy the Plug)

Punk Rock Bitch

Fights Don’t Matter

Energy (feat. Tee Grizzly)

Lil Boosie (feat. Stupid Young)

Hundiddy

In My Rear (feat. Da Boii)

Big Dogg (feat. Ralfy the Plug & Ketchy the Great)

Who Am I (feat. Desto Dubb & Rich the Kid)

Captions

Friday

Mardi Gras

Mr. Mosely Claps Back

John Madden (feat. RMC Mike, Rio Da Yung OG, Lil Yachty & Ralfy the Plug)

Polar Bear

Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special •• Mariah Carey

[tracklist TBA]

Fresh Tapes 2 •• Patricia Taxxon

APJGHPLRKGH

THE WITCH IS DEAD

CHECKC

BAPBAP

SLAPJUG

WICKEDTRACK

THECREATURE

BATTLESHIP

A Very Poppy Christmas [EP] •• Poppy

I Like Presents

I Won’t Be Home for Christmas

Kiss in the Snow

Silver Bells

Nightmare Vacation •• Rico Nasty

Candy

Don’t Like Me (feat. Gucci Mane & Don Toliver)

Check Me Out

IPHONE

STFU

Back & Forth (feat. Aminé)

Girl Scouts

Let It Out

Loser (feat. Trippie Redd)

No Debate

Pussy Poppin

OHFR?

10Fo

Own It

Smack A Bitch (feat. ppcocaine, Sukihana, & Rubi Rose)

Smack A Bitch (Bonus)

SAWAYAMA (Deluxe) •• Rina Sawayama

Disc 1

Dynasty

XS

STFU!

Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys)

Akasaka Sad

Paradisin’

Love Me 4 Me

Bad Friend

Fuck This World (Interlude)

Who’s Gonna Save U Now?

Tokyo Love Hotel

Chosen Family

Snakeskin

Disc 2

LUCID

We Out Here

Bees & Honey

Love It If We Made It (The 1975 cover)

XS (Live)

STFU! (Acoustic)

Bad Friend (Acoustic)

Chosen Family (Acoustic)

Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys) [Brabo Remix] ((feat. Pabllo Vittar))

XS (Remix) [feat. Bree Runway]

Bad Friend (Dream Wife Remix)

Wonder •• Shawn Mendes

Intro

Wonder

Higher

24 Hours

Teach Me How to Love

Call My Friends

Dream

Song for No One

Monster (with Justin Bieber)

305

Always Been You

Piece Of You

Look Up at the Stars

Can’t Imagine

Odin’s Raven Magic •• Sigur Rós

Prologus

Alföður orkar

Dvergmál

Stendur æva

Áss hinn hvíti

Hvert stefnir

Spár eõa spakmál

Dagrenning

Christmastide [EP] •• Tori Amos

Christmastide

Circle of Seasons

Holly

Better Angels

The White Stripes Greatest Hits •• The White Stripes

Let’s Shake Hands

The Big Three Killed My Baby

Fell in Love With a Girl

Hello Operator

I’m Slowing Turning Into You

The Hardest Button to Button

The Nurse

Screwdriver

Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

Death Letter

We’re Going to Be Friends

The Denial Twist

I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself

Astro

Conquest

Jolene

Hotel Yorba

Apple Blossom

Blue Orchid

Ball and Biscuit

I Fought Piranhas

I Think I Smell a Rat

Icky Thump

My Doorbell

You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)

Seven Nation Army

SINGLES

New Tracks

“Coco” •• 24kGoldn feat. DaBaby

“Better Days” •• Ant Clemons feat. Justin Timberlake

“Grove Elation” •• Bernice

“Swimming in the Stars” •• Britney Spears

“Matches” •• Britney Spears feat. Backstreet Boys

“Blame It On the Mistletoe” •• Ella Henderson & AJ Mitchell

“No Flag (en Français)” •• Elvis Costello avec Iggy Pop

“Keeps Me Running” •• Esther Rose

“Family Farm” •• The Hold Steady

“Real Shit” •• Juice WRLD & benny blanco

“Oh Santa! (Remix)” •• Mariah Carey feat. Ariana Grande & Jennifer Hudson

“Dark Side of the Party” •• Miss Grit

“Snow Day” •• shame

“Her Revolution” •• Thom Yorke, Burial, & Four Tet

“His Rope” •• Thom Yorke, Burial, & Four Tet

“Greener Pools” •• Witch Egg

“Santa Stay Home” •• U.S. Girls feat. Rich Morel

Covers

“Stay Home” (American Football cover) •• Anamanaguchi

“Our Anniversary” (Smog cover) •• Bill Callahan & Bonnie “Prince” Billy feat. Dead Rider

“Boris” (Melvins cover) •• BORIS with MERZBOW

“In the Bleak Midwinter” (Traditional English Christmas Carol cover) •• James Blake

“River” (Joni Mitchell cover) •• Margo Price

“Nobody Wants a Lonely Heart” (Arthur Russell cover) •• Muzz

Remixes

“Teenager (Robert Smith Remix)” •• Deftones

“The Ground Below (Royal Jewels Remix)” •• Run the Jewels feat. Royal Blood

New Tracks + New Music Videos

“Diazepam” •• Buke and Gase / So Percussion

“Paper Fog” •• Cory Hanson

“Unblu” •• Jenny Lewis & Serengeti

“Reason” •• Jordana

“Hindsight” •• Madison McFerrin

“Foxes” •• Midnight Sister

“Shortcummings” •• Sleaford Mods

“The Crack” •• Goat Girl

“Satisfied” •• The Staves

“Lemon Mouth” •• Tigers Jaw

“Creatures” •• Viagra Boys

Old Tracks + New Music Videos

“Savior Complex” •• Phoebe Bridgers •• directed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge

New Music Films

The Road to Miss Columbia: A Documentary •• Lido Pimienta

[bartibit]

My obsessions are collapsing onto each other like stars. Presenting: MD AU - Defense Attorney N (a MD&AA AU)

Yeah I just had this idea for some time now and I guess I wanted to share it now with you all; What is another AU if not opportunity for more fun stuff to draw haha, it will probably be expanded in the future. (Do not worry, the Cmol/name pending AU will continue)

This one is little more fun as reimagining all of the characters from MD as Drones made for (kangaroo) court of law, very well known from Ace Attorney series (which I adore).

N, previously a pilot & combat drone, takes on his dream of becoming defense attorney drone, through many trials and tribulations and thanks to help of his mentor, Tessa, he successfully became one. In the future, taking on nickname: 'Nick Turnabout' for his unconventional defense methods, and revealing the truth from the veil in impressive comebacks.

His first solo case was the murder of his mentor, and defending the accused - Cyn, a judicial assistant drone, who was Tessa's assistant. Fully convinced that Cyn didn't do it, as he knew her from time he trained to become a lawyer drone, he appointed himself as her defense, little knowing that this case will begin his legendary career and legendary rivalry.

As the case began, he saw for the first time, not knowing this yet, his biggest rival. A prosecutor, who has not lost one case since the start of her career, 'The Prodigy' Uzi Doorman. A brooding presence despite her short stature. Quick witted, sharp and always on the offense, Uzi proved to be a formidable foe in the court and keeping N on his wit's end, rebutting any bluff or weak defense he may have attempted and throwing in a little immature jab at him, as extra measure. Of course she is good, she is from the legendary family of prosecutors...

[kateyes224]

A Preponderance of the Evidence: Prelim (Part 3 of 3)

Author:  KatEyes224 Rating: R (For adult themes) Timeline: Post-ep for Never Again and Memento Mori.

A/N: @piecesofscully, you are the peanut butter to my jelly, and I love you more than you know.  If you missed it, read part 1 here, read part 2 here.

Mulder tosses and turns as minutes trickle into hours, entertaining himself by memorizing the way shadows dip and swirl across the ceiling to the sound of traffic gradually overtaking the steady metronome of Scully’s breathing.  He kicks the sheets off at one point, frustrated when they cling to his legs with a crackle of electricity, his body still charged with the current of all the things he hasn’t said.  

Morning finally comes.  

The late winter storm has retreated overnight, leaving the sun and blue sky to glare into the room as if demanding the two of them acknowledge that day has dawned.  They’ve ended up facing one another on their respective beds, and Mulder is watching Scully’s face when her eyes snap open seconds before the alarm goes off.  He sees her focus as the haze of sleep retreats, and doesn’t bother to look away when she finds him staring at her.  

Slipping past one another in the bathroom and their room, they’re comfortable enough with the dance of the other’s morning routine that they don’t even need to speak.  Mulder shaves while Scully showers; Scully leaves the water running when she steps out with a towel wrapped securely around her body.  She finds that Mulder has wiped the fog away from the mirror in a perfect circle where she can stand to apply her makeup; Mulder discovers that Scully has hung his suit and tie from a hook on the back of the bathroom door.

They catch a cab to the courthouse and arrive almost half an hour before they’re supposed to meet with ADA Venegas.  At a small coffee cart out front, Mulder buys them both coffees and wordlessly hands a banana nut muffin to Scully.  He frets until she rolls her eyes and eventually nibbles the top off before handing him the rest.

They’re sitting outside a long row of courtrooms when Scully makes eye contact with a young woman in an impeccably tailored grey skirt-suit who’s speaking animatedly to a uniformed police officer.  The woman nods at them, and they both stand.

“Agent Scully?”  

Clicking her way towards them in towering high heels, the petite brunette smiles and extends her hand.  She’s even shorter than Scully by a good two inches, although her shoes bring them almost eye-to-eye.  

“I’m ADA Regina Flores-Venegas.  Thanks so much for coming down on such short notice.”

Scully nods and takes Venegas’s hand, shaking it firmly.  “This is my partner, Fox Mulder.”

Venegas looks up at Mulder and her lips quirk into a bashful smile.

“Ah, Agent Mulder.  Nice to finally meet you.  Sorry for being so curt with you on the phone the other day.  I was...a little stressed out.”  She shrugs and holds her hand out to him.

Mulder grasps it and narrows his eyes, frowning at her.  “Not a problem, I understand.  If you could get Agent Scully on the stand first thing, we’d really appreciate it.  She has a doctor’s appointment back in Washington this afternoon.”

Venegas looks back to Scully, curiosity flashing in her eyes as they study one another.  “No problem.  I can call you out of order and get you up on the stand first thing.  Have you had a chance to review your report?”

Nodding, Scully sips her coffee and waves a few stapled sheets of paper up as proof.  “Yes, I have.  I’m good to go.”

Venegas glances over her shoulder as the bailiff steps out of their courtroom and catches her eye, motioning to her.  “Great.  That’s me.  Just have a seat in the hallway where I’ll be sure to see you, and I’ll have you in and out of here in a jiffy.  You’re free to go once you’re done with your testimony.”  Tilting her head in close to Scully, she lowers her voice so that Mulder has to crane his neck to hear over the din of the hallway.  “And Dana, remember what we talked about on the phone.  Expect some pretty...intimate questions from defense.  I’ll be doing my best to make sure they don’t overstep their bounds.”

With a toss of her long, wavy brown hair over her shoulder, Venegas clips away and disappears into the courtroom.

Scully sinks back down onto one of the benches that line the hallway.  “Jesus, I forget how nervous this part makes me,” she mutters.

“No need to be nervous,” Mulder says, sitting down next to her even closer than he usually would, leaning in so that he can feel the heat radiating from her.  Draping an arm behind her, he lets his thumb swipe a few circles on her shoulder blade.  “You’ve testified for prelims before.  And you’ve got your report there if you need it.”

“It’s not the testimony I’m worried about, Mulder.”  In the bustling courtroom hallway, Scully’s eyes look everywhere but at him.  “I haven’t seen him, not since…” She trails off and stares down at her hands as she starts to fold her report into smaller and smaller squares.

Mulder swallows a tennis-ball-sized lump in his throat and unconsciously tightens his arm around her.  That’s what she’s nervous about.  She hasn’t seen Jerse since the line-up at the police station, when she’d identified him as both her attacker and her one-night stand.  Yes, that’s the man who took me home and fucked me.  Yes, that’s the man who tried to kill me.  

Jealousy and wrath burn like wildfire in his chest as he stares at her, unfiltered light streaming in through the windows from behind them to set her profile aglow. Mulder quashes the urge to shake her, to scream at her, to demand answers from her.  He wants to tell her that whatever happened the night before Jerse tried to kill her doesn’t matter; but he’s not sure if he means that it doesn’t matter to him, or that it doesn’t matter to the court for the purposes of a preliminary hearing.  He thinks he’d be willing to lie to her, either way.

But he’s only able to get out a strangled, “Scully, I-” before Venegas pokes her head out of the courtroom and beckons Scully in.

Scully stands and straightens her suit jacket.  With one brief, searing look back at him over her shoulder, she’s inside the courtroom with Venegas following close behind as the door eases shut behind them.

Mulder stands and rakes a hand through his hair, pacing in a tight circle before he strides towards the door and grabs the handle just before it closes completely.  

Slipping quietly inside, he surveys the courtroom and settles himself in the back row of the gallery.

“The People call Special Agent Dana Scully to the stand.”

Venegas is standing just behind Scully where the bailiff has stopped them at the bar’s swinging door.  The clerk asks her to raise her right hand and swear an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God.  As if she could ever do anything else.  Scully is nothing if not brutally, wonderfully honest.  

“I do,” comes Scully’s response, clear as a church bell on a cold winter morning.

Rounding the defense table, Scully climbs the low stairs to the witness stand beside the magistrate and eases herself into the chair.  She casts one quick glance around the courtroom, assessing her surroundings, before her eyes find Mulder’s, and her tongue darts out quickly to trace the edge of her upper lip before it disappears.  It’s a tell he recognizes.  

Scully adjusts the microphone down with a harsh squeal and looks directly at Venegas.  She has not once looked at Jerse, who Mulder notices has been staring intently at Scully since she walked in.  

The court clerk clears her throat and drones, “Please state your full name and spell it for the record.”

“Dana Katherine Scully, D-A-N-A K-A-T-” Scully spells, her voice unwavering.  “-U-L-L-Y,” she finishes.  She turns her head from the clerk to Venegas.  

Venegas takes her time flipping through a couple of pages in her binder, and the deliberate pause allows Scully to take a few deep breaths before Venegas looks up from the podium and throws a quick, encouraging smile at Scully.  Scully, remaining stoic, simply blinks back in response.

“Ms. Scully, please tell the Court what you do for a living.”

“I’m a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“And how long have you been a Special Agent?”

“About five and a half years.”

“What kind of training do you undertake to become a Special Agent?”

“I attended a 16-week training course at Quantico, Virginia, that included classes in preservation of evidence, self-defense, forensics, behavioral science, and procedural criminal investigation.”

“And are you required to maintain certifications in these various areas of expertise?”

“Yes.  Periodically we are required by the Department of Justice to attend classes that keep us abreast of changes in the law, department-wide procedural changes we need to be made aware of, advances in technology, and then those courses that are required to keep all of our certifications up to date.”

Venegas nods, adjusting her glasses.  “And do you hold any other degrees or certifications that the FBI does not deem to be a requirement or necessity?”

“Yes.  I’m a medical doctor.  I completed my degree in medicine at Stanford University and was recruited by the FBI just after I completed my residency and fellowship in anatomic and clinical pathology at Johns Hopkins.  I am also a board-certified forensic pathologist.”

“And how does a forensic pathologist end up working for the Department of Justice as a special agent?”

“I was recruited by the FBI just as I was completing my fellowship.  I found that I had a…” she breaks off and her blue-green eyes flash over to Jerse for a split-second before she juts her chin back to Venegas, “...a passion for criminal justice.  I felt I could distinguish myself there while serving my country.”

Venegas smiles serenely, nodding along.  “Fair to say you wanted to make a difference?  Help put the bad guys away?”

Mulder’s eyes slide over to Jerse’s defense attorney, a bearded, grizzled hulk of a man with a gleaming shock of blue-black hair, who is hunched over his legal pad furiously scribbling.

“Yes,” Scully answers.  “That’s fair to say.”

“And where are you currently assigned in your capacity as a Special Agent?”

“To a division of the FBI’s Violent Crimes Unit called the X-Files.  My partner and I investigate cases that have been deemed by the Bureau to be unexplainable, or that may have a paranormal element.”

At that, the defense attorney stops scritching on his legal pad.  He glances up at Scully and seems to study her for a long moment before he lowers his head and goes back to writing.

Venegas marches on.

“Agent Scully, I want to draw your attention to February 26, 1997.  Where were you on that day?”

“I had been asked by the supervising agent in my division, my partner, Special Agent Fox Mulder, to pursue a lead in an open investigation here in Philadelphia.”

“And did you pursue that lead?”

“I did.”

“And where did that lead take you?”  

“To a small neighborhood in the Little Russia area of the city, northeast Philadelphia,” Scully replies.  

“And what type of lead were you pursuing?”

Scully glances up at Mulder for the first time since she’s taken the stand, a questioning look in her eyes.  He shakes his head almost imperceptibly.  

“I’m not at liberty to reveal that information as the investigation is still ongoing.”

Venegas flips a page of her binder.  The defense attorney keeps writing.

“And on February 26, where did you find yourself?”

“On the northeast side of the city, in Bustleton.  I was staking out the lead that my partner had requested I follow up on when I saw my mark enter a small convenience store on Hendrix Street, just east of Barlow.”

“And what did you do next?”

“I followed him into the convenience store, where he stayed for only a moment or two.  I observed him speaking Russian to a woman I believed to be the shop owner before he left and crossed the street into a tattoo parlor.”

“Do you recall the name of the tattoo parlor?”

Scully’s brow creases for a moment before she answers.  “I believe it was Svo’s.”

“And then what happened?”

“I followed him from the convenience store into the tattoo parlor, but at that point I’d lost my visual on the lead.”

“You didn’t see where he’d gone?”

Scully shakes her head.  “No.  At that point, I knew he had entered the tattoo parlor and that he hadn’t exited through the front door because I’d been able to maintain a visual on the front door the entire time.  But I didn’t know whether he had escaped through the rear of the shop or through some other exit.”

Venegas nods and checks off a few things from her binder.  “So you entered the tattoo parlor.  Then what happened?”

“I went in and didn’t see the man I’d been tailing right away, but I did encounter a white male, mid-30s, engaged in a discussion with a man who appeared to work at the tattoo parlor.  The white male was complaining about a tattoo he’d gotten there recently.”

“And do you see that man here in court today?”

Scully closes her eyes, takes a slow, deep breath, and as she exhales she looks briefly over at the defense table.  “I do.”

“Can you describe where he’s sitting and an article of clothing that he’s wearing?” Venegas asks gently.

“He’s seated at the defense table and he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit,” Scully says, her voice wavering almost imperceptibly.

“May the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant?” Venegas asks, looking up at the magistrate, who nods before intoning, “The record shall so reflect.”

“Agent Scully, you said the defendant was complaining about a tattoo he’d gotten recently?”

“Yes, he was arguing with someone who appeared to be an owner or manager of the tattoo parlor, I’m not sure which.”

“What was the nature of the argument?”

“I’m not sure exactly.  I wasn’t paying complete attention to the argument, as I was still looking around the shop for the person of interest I’d been tailing.  It wasn’t until I was brought into the conversation that I started to pay any attention to it.”

“How were you brought into the conversation?”

“The owner, or manager, I believe his name was Svo, asked my opinion about the quality of the artwork of defendant’s tattoo.”

“And what did you say?”

Scully finally looks over at Jerse, who is still studying her intently, before answering a moment later.  “I said I thought that it was beautiful.”  Mulder glances back and forth between Scully and Jerse, a cold sweat ripping through him the longer the two maintain eye contact.

Venegas clears her throat slightly, then asks, “And then what happened?”

Scully seems to remember herself and closes her eyes again, shaking her head slightly.  “At some point, I saw my lead open a door at the rear of the tattoo parlor and catch the owner’s attention.  The owner left the defendant and I on our own in the shop and we struck up a conversation that eventually led to him asking me out to dinner.”  The skin on Scully’s chest starts to flush scarlet and the color creeps its way up her neck until it stains her cheeks.  

Mulder chews on his bottom lip and looks over at Jerse, who has sunk down in his chair.  

Venegas flips to the next page of her binder and starts thumbing through some photos.  “And what did you say?”

“Since I didn’t know if my lead was still within earshot and I didn’t want to blow my cover, I told the defendant I was visiting an aunt but that I was supposed to leave town that night.”

“So you declined his invitation for dinner?”

“Yes, initially.”

Mulder closes his eyes and exhales heavily through his nose.  

“But you did end up going out to dinner with the defendant that night, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us how that came about?”

Scully clears her throat.  Her voice has dropped an octave when she answers.  “Mr. Jerse had given me his number.  Since he seemed like a nice enough guy, when I was back at my hotel room that night and I’d had a chance to think it over and reflect on my encounter with him, I decided to take him up on his offer.”

Venegas taps her pen against the podium to punctuate her next question.  “And why did you do that, Agent Scully?”

Scully’s eyes lift from Venegas to Mulder, and she holds his gaze as she answers.  Each word slices through him like he’s being flayed wide open and disemboweled on one of her autopsy tables.  “It had been a long time since someone had seen me as anything more than a badge and a gun.”

Mulder’s eyes slide shut, breaking contact momentarily with Scully.  They’d always managed to have entire conversations, arguments, theories bandied about and shot down, with their eyes.  Today, he reminds himself, he needs to hear what she has to say.  All of it.  Even if it hurts.

“So you agreed to go out to dinner with someone you’d just met, someone who seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be normal, correct?”

“He did appear to be a perfectly normal, nice man, yes.”

“Did he appear to you, when you first met him, to be suffering from any auditory or visual hallucinations?”

“No, he did not.”

Venegas nods and checks something off in her binder.

“Then what happened?”

“I called Mr. Jerse later that night and told him that I’d changed my mind, and that I would like to go out to dinner with him.  And I believe he said his car was being worked on, so I told him I’d pick him up from his apartment.”

“And did you pick him up?”

“Yes.  He invited me in, as he wasn’t quite ready to go yet, and said something about having made dinner reservations somewhere.  I noticed that he was bleeding through his shirt near the area of the tattoo I’d seen earlier that day.  I asked to take a look at it to be sure it wasn’t infected.”

The defense attorney’s head jerks up and he takes a hard look at Scully before he scribbles something on his notepad.

Venegas crosses her arms and starts pacing behind her podium.  “Did you make it to dinner, Agent Scully?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Scully again looks directly at Mulder when she answers.  “I asked the defendant to take me out for drinks instead.  At a bar across the street from the tattoo parlor where we had met earlier.  I believe it was called The Hard Eight.”

“And why did you decide to go out for drinks instead of dinner?”

Scully licks her lips and shrugs slightly.  “I don’t know.  I guess part of me was thinking it would be easier to get out of drinks than dinner if it ended up being awkward.”

“So you went to the bar.  How much did you have to drink?” Venegas asks.  She had told Scully over the phone that she was going to ask this question in order to, as she put it, ‘jump on that grenade before defense has a chance to blow us up with it.’

Scully swallows and ducks her head, staring at her folded hands.  “At least three.”

“Do you usually drink alcohol while you’re actively investigating a case, Agent Scully?”

Scully bristles, but just barely; Mulder reads it in the subtle way she straightens her shoulders and lifts her chin a bit higher.

“I was no longer actively investigating a case.  When I’d returned to the Philadelphia field office on the evening of February 26, I’d handed the case off to another agent, effectively turning it over to them for further investigation as they saw fit.  I’d notified my partner over the phone that the case agency had been transferred, and that I was officially off the case.  I was just awaiting a flight out the next morning.”

“So you weren’t violating any internal policies and procedures when you agreed to go out on a date with the defendant and have a couple of drinks with him?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Okay, so you had a couple of drinks with the defendant.  What did you talk about?”

Scully shifts in her seat and a pained look crosses her face, like she’s suddenly discovered a pine cone underneath her rear end and she needs to sit comfortably in spite of it.

“I don’t- I don’t recall the specifics.  I remember making small talk, about the bar we were at, how he’d come to find it.  And about how…” her brow furrows, “about how I felt like I was caught in a circle...”

Mulder’s heart starts to thud in his chest.  Caught in a circle?  

“At some point,” Venegas interrupts, jarring Scully from what she was remembering, and Mulder curses under his breath, “did you and Mr. Jerse decide to leave the bar?”

“Yes.  We got to talking about his tattoo.  I noticed that it had started to bleed again, so I asked him if I could take a look at it, and he, uh...he d-declined.”  Scully’s eyes drop to her hands clasped in her lap.  

Mulder’s ears perk up at the slight stumble and her sudden lack of eye contact, and he notices that Venegas also leans forward on her podium, sensing something more that Scully wants to say.  Mulder watches Venegas watching Scully.  She’s incredibly perceptive, reading Scully’s cues almost as well as he’s able to.

“What do you mean he ‘declined’?” Venegas presses.

Scully licks her lips and continues to stare down at her hands as she fidgets with them.  “The same way when I had asked to see his tattoo back at his apartment, thinking it was possibly infected or not healing properly, he brushed me off.  This time, when I asked, I, um...I tried to roll his sleeve up to see it for myself, and he, uh, grabbed me.”

Mulder feels his temperature start to rise, and he unbuttons the first button of his dress shirt and loosens his tie as he glares at the back of Jerse’s head.  Jerse stares down at the table in front of him.

“He grabbed you?” Venegas asks.

“He was trying to stop me from touching the tattoo,” Scully explains quickly.  “I don’t know if it was painful, or if he just didn’t want me to see it, but he grabbed my hands to keep me from touching it.”

“Agent Scully,” Venegas starts to pace again, “was this a violent grab?”

“Objection, your Honor,” Jerse’s attorney speaks for the first time, and his voice is deep and mellifluous, tinged with a genteel Southern accent.  “As far as I’m aware, as pertains to Agent Scully, my client is only being charged with the one count of assault and one count of attempted murder, and I’m not sure what Counsel is trying to get at here.”

Venegas whirls and faces the magistrate.  “Your Honor, if Agent Scully was assaulted not once, but twice, then I’m perfectly willing to amend the charges if necessary.”

The magistrate looks back at Jerse’s attorney for a response, who shrugs.  “Overruled.  You may answer, Agent Scully.”

Scully contemplates her answer carefully before responding.  “It was forceful, yes.  But not violent.”

Venegas pauses and turns towards her again.  “Did you fear for your safety when he grabbed your hands?”

Scully stares at Venegas.  “Uh...n-no.  Not at that time.”

“Why not?”

“He, uhm...he didn’t appear to me to be dangerous at that time.  I just thought that maybe he didn’t want me to touch the wound.  That it was tender or inflamed, and maybe I’d unintentionally hurt him when I’d touched it.”

Venegas’s lips purse and she’s silent for a long moment before she nods, appearing to be satisfied.  “So what happened next?”

Scully speaks down into her lap, so that Mulder has to strain to hear her.  “He said if I was so curious about his tattoo that I should get my own.”

Venegas perches once again over the podium on her elbows, leaning towards Scully.  “Did you have any tattoos at that time, Agent Scully?”

“No.”  

“Do you now?”

Scully swallows hard.  “Yes.”

“Did you get a tattoo that night?”

“Yes.  We went across the street to the tattoo parlor where we’d first met.”

“Did the defendant convince you to get a tattoo?”

“No, he did not.  It was my decision.”

“How long did the process of getting the tattoo take?”

“About an hour.”

“What happened after you got the tattoo?”

“We went back to the defendant’s apartment.”

“Did you keep drinking once you got back to his apartment?”

“No.”

Boring twin holes in the back of Jerse’s head with his eyes, Mulder leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers over his mouth.

“But were you still feeling the effects of the alcohol, Agent Scully?”

“Yes.”

“Did the defendant ask you to spend the night?”

“He offered for me to spend the night.  The weather was especially bad that evening, and he said he’d feel better if I stayed there, and that he would sleep on his couch.”  

Yeah, I’ll just best that would make you feel better, you sonofabitch, Mulder thinks venomously at Jerse.

Venegas has started pacing behind her podium again.  “And did you spend the night at the defendant’s apartment?”

Scully lifts her head and looks directly at Jerse, who is staring intently at the table in front of him.  Mulder’s breathing has become shallow, like he’s sucking oxygen through a straw instead of his nose.

“Yes.”

“Agent Scully, did you have sex with the defendant that night?”

Oh, God.  

Scully’s chest rises and falls slowly, once, twice, as she breathes deeply through her nose, her gaze shifting from Venegas to Jerse to Mulder.  Mulder finds that he can’t blink.  He can’t think.  He can barely breathe.  

It doesn’t matter, Mulder reminds himself.  Whatever she did with Jerse that night, whatever her motivations, it was her choice.  It’s her life.  She doesn’t owe him any answers.  Not now.  Not ever.  He needs to tell her now, needs her to know that whatever happened with Jerse that night, it doesn’t matter.  And they’ve always been more fluent in body language, always been able to convey more with their eyes than their words.  

Without breaking eye contact with Scully, Mulder rises from his seat and sidesteps his way across the row of seats towards the door.  Scully’s brow furrows slightly in confusion, and her lips part as if she wants to say something, to stop him from going anywhere.  It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, I love you, it doesn’t matter, he telegraphs to her on an endless loop, praying she understands.  

And now that he’s seen the man in the flesh, been in the same room with both Scully and Jerse, Mulder realizes that he truly doesn’t care what happened between them.  All that matters is that she’s alive.  He needs her to know that whatever the answer to this question is, he loves her, regardless.

The reality of it hits him like a ton of bricks.

He loves her.  

Regardless.

His hand is just touching the cool wood of the door of the courtroom, a whoosh of air sliding past him as the door cracks open to ruffle his hair and whip at his tie, when her answer comes.

“No.”

Scully’s strong, clear voice stops him, and he turns to find her looking directly at him.  

Venegas flips a page in her binder.  The defense attorney keeps scribbling on his notepad.  The bailiff whispers into the phone at his desk.  The court reporter types away on her stenograph.  

But Scully just keeps looking at him, and the rest of the courtroom fades into the background as Mulder stares back at her.  She shrugs almost imperceptibly and for a fraction of a second, the ghost of a smile washes over her face before it disappears.

“Why not, Agent Scully?” Venegas’s voice brings the two of them back to the present.

“I think we had both had a little bit too much to drink,” Scully answers slowly, and she turns to face Venegas again, her demeanor and inflection switching easily into clinical doctor mode.  “We weren’t able to have intercourse that night because the defendant wasn’t able to sustain an erection.”

If it’s possible, Jerse slumps even lower into his seat and covers his eyes with one handcuffed hand.  

Scully glances at Jerse for a brief moment before she lifts her eyes again to Mulder’s.  He hasn’t moved, hasn’t stopped staring at her since all of his air left his lungs.  

xxxxx

Venegas finishes her line of questioning over the next hour, painstakingly going over the events that unfolded the morning after Scully’s date and failed sexual encounter; how Scully learned from detectives that knocked on Jerse’s door that his neighbor had gone missing and two separate blood samples had been collected; how one of the samples yielded an abnormality that she’d been able to determine from the toxicology report was ergot, a parasite that potentially caused auditory hallucinations; how she’d confronted Ed with this information when he’d returned with breakfast before he’d assaulted her and wrapped her in the same sheets they’d been tangled in the night before and almost thrown into an incinerator; how Jerse had roasted his arm.  

Scully testifies with conviction and doesn’t even have to look at her report when asked about the minutiae of the case.

Mulder is even more impressed with Venegas.  She’s precise and thoughtful in her questioning, skillfully skirting the potential pitfalls of Scully’s testimony to build her case against Jerse.  What’s more, Venegas is able to read Scully like she’s an open book, sensing when Scully is willing to say more but needing time to formulate her answers.  Mulder has to hand it to the fiery prosecutor.  She’s good.  

But the morning is far from over.  

After a brief morning recess, Scully is back on the stand and it is the defense attorney’s chance to cross-examine Scully.

Judd Wilkinson, Jerse’s privately retained defense attorney, is tall and imposing; he’d spoken and objected little during Venegas’s direct examination, busy taking notes on his legal pad and studying Scully intently during direct.  

At points during Scully’s testimony, Jerse had leaned over to whisper into Wilkinson’s ear, gesturing wildly as far as he was able to with his hands still cuffed to his chair.

When Wilkinson finally stands up, he cuts an imposing figure in the courtroom.  Broad shoulders, a slight paunch he covers with a navy double-breasted suit, slicked-back jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes.

“Agent Scully, I’m going to show you a series of photos that have been premarked as Court’s exhibits one through five and I’d like you to take a moment and look over them for me.  Just look up when you’re done, alright?” Wilkinson says, and he ambles up to the witness stand and hands a stack of photos to Scully.

Mulder notices that Scully’s eyes darken as she flips through them, and her nostrils flare slightly.  By the time she’s done, two flaming spots of color have appeared on her cheeks.  

“Have you had a chance to review those photographs, Agent Scully?” Wilkinson drawls, rocking back on his heels and linking his hands behind his back.

“Yes.”

“Do you recognize what you see in those exhibits?”

“Yes.”

“What do those photos depict, if you don’t mind telling the court?”

“Injuries I sustained at the hand of the defendant.”

Wilkinson suddenly stops the slow swaying he’s been doing and he tilts his head to zero in on Scully.  “Well, now, Agent Scully, are you certain that those photos depict injuries you sustained at the hands of my client?  Doesn’t Exhibit 1 show bite marks on your neck?”

Mulder watches Scully blink slowly at Wilkinson.  “Yes.”

“Was that an injury, Agent Scully, or was that a love bite?”

Venegas almost catapults out of her chair and leans over her table.  “Objection, your Honor, argumentative as phrased, vague as to ‘love bite’.”

The magistrate looks over his glasses at Wilkinson, raising a bushy eyebrow at him before turning to Scully.  “Did you understand the question, Agent Scully?”

Scully’s jaw clenches visibly before she responds.  “Yes, your Honor.”

“Then you may answer.  But tread lightly, Mr. Wilkinson,” the magistrate warns.  “I don’t think I like where this line of questioning is going.”

“Understood, your Honor,” Wilkinson smiles through large, square teeth.  “Please answer the question, Ms. Scully.”

“Those bite marks were the result of our consensual sexual encounter the night before the assault,” Scully says tightly.

“And what about the bruises on your back pictured in Exhibit 2?”

“Well, that depends, Mr. Wilkinson,” Scully responds icily.  “If you’re talking about the finger-shaped bruises on my lower back, those were also the result of our sexual encounter.  But if you’re talking about the bruising along the T-10 and T-11 vertebrae, then no, those were the result of your client throwing me against a wall.”

Mulder has to quell the urge to stand up and cheer.  

Undeterred, Wilkinson crosses his arms and starts pacing behind the podium.  

“And what about the bruising and the scratches that we see depicted in Exhibit 3, Agent Scully?”

Glancing down at the photo, Scully lifts her head up and answers again in a clear, tremorless voice.  “The bruising and scratching on my thighs and buttocks were from our failed attempt to engage in intercourse.  The rest of the injuries pictured in that exhibit were the result of our physical altercation the following morning.”

“And how do we know, Agent Scully, that your ‘attempts to engage in sexual intercourse’ didn’t continue that following morning?”

Venegas stands again.  “Objection, that’s argumentative as phrased, your Honor!”

“Your Honor, I fail to see how I can determine exactly when this consensual sexual encounter, which was already apparently consensually painful and resulted in physical demarcations that Agent Scully obviously had no problem with when they were inflicted upon her, stopped being consensual unless I follow this line of questioning,” Wilkinson said, his voice smooth as molasses.

“Probably right about the time the defendant threw her up against a wall and she lost consciousness, Judd!” Venegas practically shouts.

“COUNSEL!” the magistrate yells, staring down at the two of them sternly.  “Sidebar, both of you.”

Venegas crosses her arms and brushes past Wilkinson, who gestures grandly with an ‘after you’ sweep of his arm before following her to the magistrate’s dais.  The judge bends down and the three have an animated conversation in hushed tones and sharp whispers.  Venegas pinches the bridge of her nose over her glasses and glares up at Wilkinson, whose smug smile has started to widen as the conversation progresses.

Eventually, the two attorneys retreat from the magistrate and resume their position, Venegas sinking into her chair and Wilkinson returning to the podium.

“Now, Agent Scully,” Wilkinson continues, “you say that by the morning after your encounter with my client, you already had sustained quite a few bites and bruises, is that right?”

“Yes.”  The slight bob of Scully’s throat as she swallows is the only indication Mulder can see that she’s uncomfortable.  

“And you didn’t mind those bites and bruises when they were being inflicted upon you, did you?”

“I didn’t know until the next morning that the defendant had left contusions.”

Wilkinson smiles broadly.  “You didn’t answer my question, Agent Scully.”

Scully closes her eyes for a moment, sighing audibly.  “I’m sorry, what was your question?”

“I said, you didn’t mind those bites and bruises, did you?”

“No.”

Wilkinson waves hand through the air and gestures between Scully and Jerse as he asks the next question.  “In fact, Agent Scully, didn’t you, at one point, tell my client during your consensual encounter to ‘make it hurt’?”

The furious blush that Scully has been maintaining throughout cross-examination drains rapidly from her face, leaving her shockingly pallid.  The air leaves her lungs and her gasp is amplified by the microphone so that it echoes in the courtroom.

Mulder silently begs Venegas to object, but Venegas just licks her lips and looks down at her table.  Their sidebar must have gone worse than he’d thought.

Scully’s breathing is labored now.  She sways slightly in her seat.  “W-What?”

Wilkinson smiles again, and looks at Scully with all the innocence and charm of a snake-oil salesman.  “Did you or did you not tell my client, Agent Scully, to ‘make it hurt so I know you’re not him’?”

Black spots swim before Mulder’s eyes as his heartbeat skids out of control and when it restarts it seems to be beating at triple time.  He vaguely realizes that he’s hyperventilating.  A fine sheen of sweat has broken out over his face and neck, but conversely a chill shudders through him.

Scully’s lips open and close wordlessly for a moment before she gulps and responds.  “I- I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember,” Wilkinson repeats slowly.  “Well, when exactly did the pain stop being consensual, Agent Scully?”

Scully’s eyes dart to Mulder’s, and he lifts a shoulder, trying to belie the naked astonishment that he knows must be written all over his face.  He shouldn’t be surprised; he’s a trained profiler.  He reads people for a living, has learned to see past the constructs and facades that they erect for one reason or another.  He’s adept at breaking them down to study the cracks and demons hidden within their foundations.  

For reasons he’s tried not to examine too closely, he had stopped himself from doing the same thing to Scully, in part because he’d needed to believe that she was the capable, detached hardass of an equal she’d projected herself to be.  He knew if he didn’t take her at face value, his twisted psyche would somehow find a way to make her a surrogate for Samantha.  Another kid sister.  

Lucky for him, Dana Scully was all of those things she projected: Capable.  Efficient.  The equal he’d been waiting for.  

He had always figured that when it came to the tightly-wound woman underneath the Kevlar, the woman who’d gradually been pared down to the essentials of herself since being partnered with him, she’d need to lose a certain amount of control in the bedroom.  But that was another thing he’d tried not to think about, for obvious reasons.  Scully in the bedroom was not a place he needed to be thinking about her.

But, Jesus, he’s never dreamed that she’d flirt with masochism so brazenly; that the line between pain and pleasure would all but disappear for her.  

And then this...this encounter with Jerse and how it had come on the heels of their argument in the office.  

I wish I could say that we were going in circles, but we’re not. We’re going in an endless line - - two steps forwards and three steps back. While my own life is...standing still.

How he’d voiced his disapproval of the way she’d handled the Pudovkin case.  How angry he’d been, how he’d scolded her over the phone.  

What, you don’t think I’m capable?

Mulder starts and his breath hitches when the pieces of the puzzle click into place, like the last few twists of Rubick’s cube.  

I’ve always gone around in this, uh...this circle. It usually starts when an authoritative or controlling figure comes into my life. And part of me likes it, needs it, wants the approval. But then at a certain point, along the way, I just, you know...

Mulder looks up at his partner, pale but strong on the witness stand, and remembers where she came from. Her Navy captain father, who had been loving but had no doubt run his household like a battleship, doling out stern words and corporal punishment; her strict Catholic upbringing that had included knuckles rapped bloody with a yardstick; how she had continued to wear the remnants of the plaid uniforms of her grade school days, even as an adult, in the shapeless, boxy suits that she’d just recently started to leave behind, right around the same time she’d stopped going to mass.  How pain must have become synonymous with punishment.

When she’d slept with Jerse, she hadn’t just been punishing herself, she’d been lashing out at him.  Reminding him, reminding herself, that she wasn’t a moon orbiting him, lost forever in his gravitational pull.  She was her own person. 

Scully pulls her shoulders back a few notches, lifts her exquisite jaw.  Some color has returned to her, though she’s still a shade too pale.  But the audacity of Wilkinson’s line of questioning has fortified her.    

“Since you seem to be having trouble understanding this, Mr. Wilkinson, let me make it perfectly clear for you.  At no time did I consent to the defendant’s actions the morning after our consensual encounter.  Any time he touched me after I’d woken up that day, he did so against my will, and I believe with the intent to harm me, or kill me.”

The smile disappears from Wilkinson’s jowly face, and he returns to his table and grabs his notepad before circling back around to the podium.  Mulder is weak with relief when Wilkinson moves to his next set of questions.

“Agent Scully, isn’t it true that you believed my client to be acting under the influence of a toxin known as ergot, which is known to cause auditory hallucinations and even psychosis?”

“Objection, your Honor,” Venegas speaks for the first time in what feels like hours.  “Total lack of foundation at this point for this line of questioning.  Agent Scully’s qualifications as an expert as pertain to the defendant’s reaction to this alleged toxin have not been established.”

“Sustained,” the magistrate nods.  “Next question, Mr. Wilkinson.”

Wilkinson looks like he wants to belabor the point, but Mulder knows it’s a losing battle.

“Isn’t it true, Agent Scully, that rather than inflict further harm upon you down in the basement, my client stuck his own arm inside the incinerator of his building?”

Venegas stands again.  “Objection, calls for speculation as to defendant’s intent and frame of mind.”

“Sustained,” the magistrate agrees.

Wilkinson tries one last time.  “Well, didn’t he have the opportunity to inflict further harm upon you, Agent Scully, and instead he chose to inflict harm upon himself?”

Scully answers before Venegas is able to object again.  “He could have killed me.  I believe he would have.  I don’t know what made him stop.”

Tapping his finger to his chin, Wilkinson leans over from the podium and whispers into Jerse’s ear.  Jerse shakes his head and looks down at the table.

“I have no further questions at this time, your Honor.”  And with that, Wilkinson sits back down.

Scully looks at Venegas, who stands and says, “No redirect, your Honor.”

The magistrate peers down at Scully and says, “You’re free to go.  Thank you, Agent Scully.  Ms. Venegas, please call your next witness.”

Looking like she’s about to wilt with relief, Scully stands and takes a shaky breath.  She steps down from the stand and walks past Jerse, who follows her with his eyes.  Mulder thinks he hears Jerse say softly, “I’m sorry, Dana”, but he can’t be sure.  And he doesn’t care.

His focus is on the woman who is striding past the bar.  She pauses long enough for Mulder to stand, and he murmurs into her ear as he opens the courtroom door for her, “You did a good job, Scully.”

Scully ducks under his arm and looks up at him as they walk down the hallway.  “Take me home, Mulder.”

He hesitates only a moment before letting his hand settle softly into the sway of her lower back, the place she’s reminded him is only his because she allows it to be.  Mulder releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding when she leans into him.  

As they walk out of the courthouse and into the sunlight, he adds the slightest bit of pressure, curving his fingers around her so that he can feel the dip of her waist and she can feel the weight of his hand.  Her hand covers his as he touches her gently.  

Reverently.  

Softly. 

So she knows it’s him.

[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

U.S. Arrests Defense Intelligence Agency Employee Over Leaking to Journalists

A counterterrorism analyst with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested on Wednesday over charges he had leaked classified materials about a foreign country’s weapons system to two journalists in 2018 and 2019, the U.S. Justice Department said in federal court filings on Wednesday.

Information that 30-year-old Henry Kyle Frese had passed to a journalist, with whom he was apparently romantically involved, appeared in at least eight different news stories, the Justice Department alleged in an indictment unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The Justice Department did not identify the journalists or their news outlets, but said they each worked for a different outlet owned by the same parent company.

This marks the sixth federal case involving leaks of classified information in a little over two years. A crackdown on leakers was initiated by the Trump administration in 2017 and led by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The first case to emerge during the Trump administration involved Reality Winner, a former intelligence analyst who divulged a report about Russian interference in the 2016 election to the Intercept news website.

Another similar case earlier this year involved former intelligence analyst named Daniel Everette Hale, who was also charged in connection with leaking information to the Intercept related to a U.S. drone strike program.

Until the criminal case against Winner, no one had been charged with leaking classified information since 2013, said John Demers, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, in a press call on Wednesday to announce the charges against Frese.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Chris Reese and Bernadette Baum)

from IJR https://ift.tt/35l0gAI via IFTTT

[racingtoaredlight]

Opening Bell: June 21, 2019

Among the first cascade of news stories to wash upon the American consciousness yesterday came a report that Iran had shot down a U.S. Navy RQ-4 Global Hawk drone over the Persian Gulf. Both Iran and U.S. Central Command confirmed the shoot-down, but differed on where the event took place. Iran claimed that the drone had violated Iranian airspace and was engaged out of the defense of territorial integrity. Central Command asserted that the RQ-4, which is used predominantly for surveillance and intelligence collection, was well outside of Iranian territory and flying over international territory when it went down. This occurs in front of a backdrop of increased tensions between the United States and Iran, which have slowly been building in recent months after the U.S. accused Iran of being behind a series of attacks which damaged commercial shipping going through the Strait of Hormuz and of planning a series of attacks on American assets in Iraq, though the White House has not provided any clarification on what those threats were, but that they did demand the deployment of additional U.S. soldiers to the region. President Donald Trump does not appear to have many principles, but those he does have, most notably protectionism and a desire to retrench American involvement in world affairs (or, put it more succinctly, isolationism), he holds dearly. Each time National Security Advisor, and notorious hawk, John Bolton has put the United States on an aggressive footing, whether it be Iran, Venezuela, or any other nation, Trump has more-often-than not walked back the U.S. position. This is not necessarily a bad thing—most foreign policy and military experts agree that a war with Iran would be disastrous for the Middle East and only enmesh the U.S. further into a region it has been desperate to extricate itself from—but U.S. foreign policy lacks coherence, mainly because Trump’s approach to foreign affairs goes no further than his isolationism; he holds dear the principle but has made no attempt to explicate what it means in policy form, beyond occasionally claiming that he wants to bring American troops home. The military provides the ability to apply kinetic power to a situation, but foreign policy allows for the use of soft power, a nuance which this president does not seem to grasp and which his National Security Advisor openly disdains. The sum result of this cognitive dissonance was on display yesterday, when in the morning Trump declared that Iran had “made a huge mistake,” to the afternoon when Trump, when asked what the American response would be, said “Let’s see what happens.” And just as I was typing the end of this paragraph, news broke that Trump had in fact approved air strikes on Iran Thursday afternoon, but then abruptly pulled back last night, hours before they were due to be launched. By the time you are reading this, there may be even more developments.

Staying in the Middle East, which we are likely to do for a long time (Hey-o, try your waitress and tip the veal), yesterday the U.S. Senate voted on a bi-partisan basis to block a large arms sale to Saudi Arabia. Over the course of three votes, the Senate voted on 22 resolutions to disapprove of the sales to Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries, but passage was not overwhelming and the resolutions will likely not survive a presidential veto, which Trump has promised is forthcoming. The basis of the Senate’s disapproval is the sale coming so soon on the heels of the brutal state-sanctioned murder of journalism Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey and, more broadly, to reflect congressional disagreement on the manner of the Saudi air campaign in Yemen, which has contributed greatly to an enormous humanitarian crisis in the country. On the bright side, Trump will have to veto all 22 resolutions individually and for a White House that is known to have a poor grasp on details, there remains the possibility that one will slip through. Which, I suppose, is progress….?

In 2017, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump’s first significant congressional supporter, was nominated to be Trump’s Attorney General. Sessions was duly confirmed and vacated the Senate seat he had held for two decades. Alabama’s Republican governor, Robert Bentley, appointed the state’s Attorney General, Luther Strange, to fill the seat until a special election could be held which would determine who would serve out the next two years of Sessions’s unexpired term. Strange headed to Washington but also started putting together a campaign which virtually everyone, across the political spectrum, expected he would win. Strange’s main rival in the GOP primary was former state supreme court Chief Justice Roy Moore. Moore was—and still is—a Republican culture warrior whose antics twice got him removed from the supreme court bench, which in turn made him a hero to fellow conservative culture warriors. Strange ended up being tainted by the scandals of Bentley, his political benefactor and Moore defeated him for the Republican nomination. Though Moore was a controversial candidate, he was still expected to easily defeat his Democratic opponent, former prosecutor Doug Jones. But then the stories broke about Moore’s highly questionable behavior with female minors decades earlier and, Moore, rather than respond in a measured manner, instead attacked the media and his accusers, creating a grotesque image of himself which a majority of voters could not countenance. In a stunning turn of events, Moore went down in defeat to Doug Jones. Now with Jones facing Alabama voters again in 2020, and again facing long odds of victory, Moore has done him a huge favor, by announcing that he was entering the 2020 GOP primary. The GOP field is getting crowded and, make no mistake, Moore could win the nomination on a plurality of voters. If he does so manage, the odds of Doug Jones holding onto his Senate seat will increase dramatically.

It has been 8 years now since Syria became engulfed in a conflict which at first had the character of a revolution, but then devolved into a civil war and still further into a confused assortment of state and non-state actors—even mercenaries, both ideological and soldiers of fortune—fighting each other and in other cases, seeking to avoid conflict. One thing is clear, and that is that the only certainty in Syria today is that President Bashar al-Assad, whose ouster was sought in 2011, is a secure in power now as he was before 2011; everything else remains a cacophony of geopolitical noise. Mother Jones journalist Shane Bauer entered Syria from Iraq in late 2018, his first time in the country since 2009, and sought to take stock of everything occurring in the war-torn, nation. This is the part one of a two part series on Syria—I’ll be posting part two next week, but if you get to the end of part one and want to go ahead to part two before then, by all means do so—and in it Bauer uses a series of three vignettes to explore the complicated evolution of the last eight years. This is a very deep dive, and I thoroughly recommend it.

Prog rock, as this essay declares, was popular for about 30 seconds in the early-to-mid 1970s and provided an indulgent bridge from the rock-n-roll of the late 1960s, which included elements of pro-heavy metal, to the spare, aggressive noise of punk rock in the late 1970s. And while prog rock has its many proponents, including Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel whose book on the subject forms the central focus of this piece in The Atlantic, it seems to have as many enemies (not unlike punk, actually). Here James Parker of The Atlantic calls it the “whitest music ever,” and criticizes its atonal, overly experimental nature; a mad scientist is not necessarily a genius, seems to be the central thesis here. Whether you like prog rock or not, and I find it questionable some of which he includes under that umbrella, this is an amusing read.

There is a well-worn stereotype of the modern athlete who makes millions of dollars during his career, spends extravagantly on friends, family, and especially himself, only for it to be poignantly—gleefully, in some cases—reported years after his career is over, that he is broke (I suspect a large number of readers instantly thought of Latrell Sprewell just now). Today’s athletes, who are earning more money than ever before, have taken more careful attitudes towards their finances. Some have engaged financial planners and advisors to guide them through their most important decisions and some, like Joe McLean, have taken to managing the most minute details of their clients’ financial needs. McLean makes demands of his clients though: at least 60 percent of their annual earnings have to be put towards retirement, and he charges an administration fee on all sums above $5 million. My only criticism of this article is that it abruptly ends just as it gets truly interesting, but that which is included as a fascinating glimpse into the lives of individuals who, rather suddenly, have become super-wealthy.

Lastly, continuing on from last week, the Center for Politics looks at which incumbents in the U.S. Senate may be vulnerable during the primary season. No incumbent has lost re-nomination in the last three election cycles and there is no senator up for reelection who is currently facing a clear threat. Kyle Kondik looks at who is, and isn’t, the most likely to face a primary threat in 2020.

 Welcome to the weekend.

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 12/5/19

By Kyle Anzalone

US News

A US sailor killed two civilians Department of Defense employees before killing himself at the Pearl Harbor Shipyard. [Link]

The New York Times publishes drawings by CIA torture victim Abu Zubaydah of the abuse inflicted on him. [Link]

The Mexican President meets with AG Barr and says he will work with the US to prevent the flow of weapons into Mexico, but would not permit another operation like fast and furious. [Link]

NATO

Trump and Canada’s prime minster clash at the NATO conference. Trump called Trudeau two-faced and complained Canada is not meeting the 2% defense spending target. [Link]

Trump suggests he could sanction Germany for not meeting NATO’s 2% defense spending target. [Link]

Hungary says it will block Ukraine’s NATO membership over Ukraine’s language law. [Link]

Ukraine

Ukraine’s president says he will look to swap the rest of the POWs from the Ukrainian Civil War in talks with Russia next week. [Link]

Trump’s 2020 budget requests $250 million in lethal aid to Ukraine. [Link]

Myanmar

The Myanmar army killed a woman and two children while attacking an area with an insurgent group. [Link]

Afghanistan

Secretary of State Esper says the US withdrawing troops is not necessarily tied to negotiations with the Taliban. [Link]

The US Envoy for talks with the Taliban has returned to the region for talks. The US is demanding a ceasefire first, and the Taliban want a deal before they agree to put a ceasefire in place. [Link]

The US killed a family of six with a drone strike in Afghanistan. [Link]

Militants killed the head of Japan’s aid agency in Afghanistan and five other people. The Taliban say they were not involved in this attack. [Link]

Africa

The government of Tripoli claims eastern Libyan forces killed 14 civilians with airstrikes. [Link]

East Libyan forces say they had to use airstrikes to turn back Chadian forces advancing on Libya’s largest oilfield. [Link]

The UNSC calls on the UAE, Turkey, and Jordan for supplying weapons to warring forces in Libya. [Link]

Fourteen people were killed in an attack on a church in Burkina Faso. [Link]

The US is planning to exchange an ambassador to Sudan for the first time in 23 years. [Link]

The UN deploys peacekeepers to South Sudan, where 80 people have been killed in the ethnic violence in the past week. [Link]

The UN will provide food aid to a quarter of Zimbabwe’s population. The country is suffering from an economic crisis and a drought. [Link]

Read More

[coin-river-blog]

On March 15, well-known Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik revealed he was subpoenaed by the U.S. District Court of Southern Florida in the infamous Kleiman vs Wright bitcoin lawsuit. The Kleiman family is suing the self-proclaimed Satoshi for roughly 300,000 BTC and Garzik has been served by the court and asked to submit assorted documents and possible evidence that would be relevant to the case.

Also Read: Satoshi’s Pre-Release Bitcoin Code Contains Fascinating Findings

The Kleiman Estate Wants Jeff Garzik to Reveal Anything He Knows About Satoshi, David Kleiman and Craig Wright

The Kleiman estate and David Kleiman’s brother Ira Kleiman believe Craig Wright defrauded David and manipulated his assets. Some people believe that David Kleiman (deceased) may have been the creator of Bitcoin and the estate thinks he is owed about 300,000 BTC ($1.1 billion) from a trust that allegedly has 1 million BTC locked until the year 2020. News.Bitcoin.com recently reported on Wright’s response to the billion dollar lawsuit after Judge Beth Bloom denied his attempt at dismissing the charges. Now the early Bitcoin adopter and developer Jeff Garzik is involved with the lawsuit as he announced he’s been served with a subpoena to appear in court. The subpoena stems from the Kleiman’s council and asks Garzik to submit any evidence to the theory that David Kleiman was Satoshi Nakamoto.

“You got served,” Garzik exclaimed on Twitter. “The Bitcoin lawsuit drones on. In the interest of radical transparency, here’s the subpoena that just arrived for me (sans page 1).”

The subpoena also asks for any communications between Garzik and Wright and whether he had any direct communications with Kleiman. The plaintiff’s counsel is in search of any documents that stem from David Kleiman, W&K Info Defense (Kleiman and Wright’s company), and any communications with an individual called Uyen Nguyen. The request also asks for any communications between Garzik and the pseudonym or moniker Satoshi Nakamoto and any evidence that is tied to the “Tulip Trust” or “GISCR Trust.” The subpoena also refers to the search for subjects like early bitcoin mining between Jan. 1, 2009 through April 2013. Other subjects include any documents tied to Mt. Gox, Silk Road, Liberty Reserve, and the Prometheus Project. The documents ask about communications between well known figures like cryptographer Ian Grigg, writer Andrew O’Hagan, and billionaire gambling tycoon Calvin Ayre.

Garzik’s Personal Theory

Wright and his council have denied the allegations against him and said the oral partnership between Wright and Kleiman was barred by the statute of frauds. “There was no written partnership agreement between Dr. Wright and David Kleiman and/or W&K Info Defense Research, LLC,” Wright’s attorney’s detailed in the 36-page response to the charges. Meanwhile, Wright has been telling the public throughout many published tweets and memoirs how he was involved with the creation of Bitcoin.

In the 14-page request to Garzik it seems the Kleiman estate and council want to know everything the developer may have come across over the years. The request also mentions a Bloomberg article that talks about Garzik’s “personal theory” about David Kleiman. In the article Garzik states: “My personal theory is that [Satoshi Nakamoto] is the Floridian Dave Kleiman. It matches his coding style, this gentleman was self-taught. And the Bitcoin coder was someone who was very, very smart, but not a classically trained software engineer.” This specific quote has led the Kleiman estate to believe that Garzik may know more about the relationship between Wright and Kleiman or have clues about David’s possible connection to the infamous Nakamoto.

What do you think about the subpoena sent to Jeff Garzik? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Pixabay, Twitter and Scribd.

At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even look up the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

Tags in this story

Bitcoin, Bitcoin technology, Bitcoins, BTC, court case, court order, David Kleiman, Documents, evidence, Ira Kleiman, Jeff Garzik, Kleiman Estate, N-Featured, Satoshi, Satoshi Nakamoto, Self Proclaimed Satoshi, Served, Southern Florida, Subpoena

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.