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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 11 months ago

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"If we back down from this---there is nothing left"

Lara Logan (God bless her) interviewed Rep Clay Higgins who has a career in law enforcement. I hope Representative Clay Higgins is right. -GRITS

Lara Logan's Truthinmedia.com Episode 9

www.policestatefilm.net @Truth_InMedia

Police State Trailer:

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Episode 9: Rep. Clay Higgins Speaks Out

Clay Higgins brought his investigative skills from the streets of Louisiana where he was a cop for years to the halls of congress, where he’s been investigating January 6th ever since it happened.

We sat down for a tough, far-reaching interview to explore what he’s learned…

Read the Episode Transcript:

Lara – studio intro

We’re breaking with our regular series to bring you a rare, in-depth interview with a man who is no stranger to controversy and doesn’t seem to give a damn what people think of him. Clay Higgins has gone from cop to congressman. And along the way, did things law enforcement officers don’t normally do, like the way he delivered his message in crime stopper videos that earned him the name the “Cajun John Wayne.”

If you look him up online, you’ll find no shortage of articles condemning Clay Higgins as a far-right conspiracy theorist, peddling in crazy, unfounded ideas about January 6th. Then again, these are the same people who told us Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation and President Donald Trump was a Russian spy. Simply put, they often lie and we don’t care what they think.

We know we’ve been deceived about January 6th because the narrative has shifted. For example, we now know from court cases and the FBI itself that the bureau did have undercover assets on the ground. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to speak to Representative Higgins. He’s one of the few in Congress who’s challenged the insurrection narrative from the start and as a former law enforcement officer himself knows a thing or two about investigations.

Powerful people who dominate the flow of information don’t want you to hear what he has to say or what he’s learned over the past two and a half years. That alone seems like a compelling reason for us to find out.

Lara

This is a letter from Bennie Thompson, who was chairman of the January 6th Select Committee, and he sent this to TSA, to the Honorable David Pekoske, who’s the administrator for TSA.

They want a briefing on “efforts to address the travel of white supremacists and other domestic terrorist groups. Options for quickly denying air carrier service to individuals posing a potential threat, and current status of efforts to identify and add to watchlists.” How far does this go?

Clay

That letter was the beginning of an executive action by the TSA to use its authority to instruct America’s air marshals to track and follow Trump supporters that have been charged with no crime. They were guilty only of – of arriving by air into D.C. on January 4th, fifth or sixth. And those – those manifest were turned over to the FBI.

The FBI went through those manifest. And every American that they identified, that the FBI identified as a Trump supporter, that was on those manifest was added to the FBI’s suspected domestic terrorist watch list. The FBI create the profile on those people – a suspected terrorist profile, and then the TSA administrator used his authority to instruct air the Marshals of America to track those Americans wherever they fly and

Lara

Still today?

Clay

It’s still happening. This is who our air marshals are following, the Trump supporters and that letter signed by Bennie Thompson, who was chair of the J6 Select Committee and signed by John Katko, who at the time was a ranking member.

Lara

A Republican.

Clay

He was the lead Republican of the Homeland Security Committee advising the- the Pekoske, the TSA senior guy to use all of that authority to track Trump supporters that have not been charged with a crime. They were guilty only of arriving in D.C. by air.

Lara

And every time they fly, they’re being tracked?

Clay

That’s right.

Lara

If they have never been convicted of terrorism, why are they on the terror watch list? It’s a violation of the First Amendment. They exercise their First Amendment rights. They’re being punished for it. It’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment. I mean, how many laws does this violate? How many rights does this violate? This is not a free country.

Lara

You’re not a free country where you’re tracked by air marshals, by the way, at taxpayer expense. And we’re not talking about an insignificant expense. Teams of three air marshals tracing people all over the country? You’re putting physical detail onto people.

Clay

That’s right

Lara

That’s the most expensive form of surveillance that exists.

Clay

Let me say – let me clarify. It’s very comforting to Americans to think that there’s, there might be an air marshal on your flight.

Lara

Not if they’re tracking you for your political beliefs.

Clay

Well, not if they’re being used for nefarious purposes. But the people that are complaining about this are the air marshals themselves, digital whistleblowers that are coming forward to tell a congressman that they felt would pay attention.

Lara

This has been going on since January ‘21 and you just found out about it. What else is going on, that we don’t know about?

Clay

We don’t know, but I’m telling you, we’re in uncharted waters as it relates to the weaponization of our government against the American people. I am not frightened of these people. I’ve spent my life serving others and and I love my country. This thing is not going to just slip away. They’re not going to take us without a fight.

Clay

And I’m going to fight legally and peacefully and within the parameters of the Constitution that I’ve sworn to serve, but they’re going down. These – these men, and their high perch in there, their position of power and authority and are walking upon our entire history, our deepest core principles. They’re not going to get away with it.

Lara

They have so far.

Clay

We’ll see.

Lara

Powerful people in this country. They want to make sure no one hears your voice. They want everyone to look at you like a far-right, crazy conspiracy theorist. Is that who you are?

Clay

No, m’am. I’m a regular American man. I’m an investigator – police officer by background. I’m going to continue to speak the truth, whether anybody likes it or not.

Lara

You’ve always been controversial. I mean, even when you were in law enforcement, you did those crimestopper videos that went viral. People loved them. You got a lot of heat for them, too.

The Gremlin Street gang is responsible for hundreds of violent crimes: Murders, armed robberies, witness intimidation, burglaries, drug trafficking, extortion, and brutal beatings.

We’ve arrested 10 of these thugs and have warrants on seven more. You will be hunted, you will be tracked, and if you raise your weapon to a man like me, we’ll return fire with superior firepower.

Darren Carter – you think men like these are afraid of an uneducated, 125-pound punk like you? That’s never won a fair fight in your life and hold your gun sideways? Young man, I’ll meet you on solid ground any time, anywhere. Light or heavy. Makes no difference to me. You won’t walk away. And for those who would use this message as a way to create false racial division in our country, take a close look behind me. Standing next to every cop is a leader of our black community. This is not about race. It’s about right versus wrong.

Lara

Was that your idea with you? Were you the reason behind that?

Clay

Those videos, those public service announcements were part of my job that the sheriff asked me to perform.

Lara

Because you were the press officer? Public affairs person?

Clay

Public service, but that was a late in my career. I didn’t ask for that position, I had been a swat cop for long time. In fact, when the sheriff asked me to to take that role, I first I thought he was joking. And I told the sheriff, “I don’t know how to do that.” and he said, “well there, it’s easy.”

Clay

And you show up where the TV people tell you to show up and you stand where they tell you to stand and somebody holds the script for you and you read it. I did that a couple of weeks. I read the script, but I was uncomfortable with that because it wasn’t real. It wasn’t reflective of what I had been telling actual suspects for many years.

Clay

In the dead of night. That direct conversation that a lone cop will have, whether a young man has taken a wrong turn in life and asked to be arrested. That’s a very special communication for a good cop.

Lara

How do you do that, Clay? How do you have that conversation?

Clay

Well, you speak candidly and honestly and from your heart with compassion, but discipline and confidence. I mean, if – if I show up in your life at 2:00 in the morning, it is not because you’ve had a good day. I don’t consider you to be a bad man. You’ve just done something that has crossed a line and – according to statute, and I’m ‘a help you through the booking process and hopefully lead you to a better day.

Clay

Their only path really to freedom was through my jail and – and real freedom. Spiritual freedom would – would be if they could break the bonds of darkness, you know. So the way I deliver the message when I began having to record video segments, I just communicated in that same honest manner. And – and what started happening is people started turning themselves in.

Lara

People responded. And even beyond your little sheriff’s department in Louisiana.

Clay

It was big.

Lara

Right?

Clay

Worldwide. Some of those videos, wh- they were translated in eight languages, I’m told. IT people told me they were viewed 150 million times across the world.

Lara

No one had seen anything like it.

Clay

It was just honesty. And that’s what I do in Congress.

Lara

Well, there is another video of you that went viral not so long ago, which is when you at that press conference on the Hill and that activist kept coming up and you leaned in and took your sunglasses down, you told him, “I’m going to give you an interview. I’ll give you what you want, but this is what you got to do.”

Lara

And then he came back.

Clay

You had a Freedom Caucus press conference immediately following a Bernie Sanders-like rally. So they had, you know, not necessarily a good mix. You – one could anticipate there might be some activists there that that would not necessarily agree with the kind of things we were saying in our in our press conference. And one of those little fellas figured out there was no police around.

Clay

So he wanted to be more aggressive than he should have been.

Man causing a scene: Can you talk about when your family did an ad all endorsing your opponent and…?

Clay

And he came on and saw the barriers, you know, into the press area. He was not a journalist.

Lara

He was walking right between the group of congressmen.

Clay

Yeah, he came – he was trying to get around to Lauren Boebert and I had already dressed him down a little bit and put him in a box.

Man causing a scene: You can’t answer the question that he has.

Clay: No I can answer the question.

Man: Okay, listen, What’s your name?

Clay: Clay Higgins. I represent South Louisiana. All I’m asking you is to just peacefully stand by with your camera. I promise ya – look at me – I’ll come talk to you straight up and answer all your questions. Fair enough?

Man: Do you know about his family and his endorsement? Yeah.

Clay: I’ll answer that when we talk.

Clay

That didn’t last but maybe a minute and he decided to get even more aggressive, so I just – I had to escort him out of the area. I turned him over to the police. That was the end of it.

Lara

I like the way you say “escort him out.” You basically picked him up and walked him over and put him down.

Clay

That was an escort.

Lara

That’s a Clay Higgins escort?

Clay

That’s a Clay Higgins escort, Yeah.

Lara

And you stayed very calm and said, “Calm yourself.”

Clay

Calm down, son.

Lara

It sounded like you’d said those words before.

Clay

Yeah, I’ve said them before. Kind of where we are as a nation right now. It calls for calm consideration and response to the oppression that we face from within. It’s – it’s quite nefarious.

Lara

Tell me what you mean. What do we face as a nation?

Clay

Generationally, we have allowed our federal law enforcement agencies to gradually become commanded by corrupted men, and they’ve been corrupted not so much by money, but by power. And that power really began manifesting itself insidiously with The FBI and DOJ and our intelligence services since 9/11, since the Patriot Act. We gave them great authorities and power.

Clay

Those powers are no longer being – being used to thwart terrorists. They’re being used to oppress the individual rights and freedoms of regular Americans like me and like the citizens I’ve sworn to serve. So I have a problem with that.

Lara

The counter to that would be these are not ordinary citizens. These are domestic terrorists. Because that’s, I mean, it’s very clear from Christopher Wray, the letter that he wrote about parents going to school board meetings that need to be investigated as terrorists. You speak at a Moms for Liberty event today, you get targeted by the Anti-Defamation League or the Southern Poverty Law Center or someone like that as a domestic terrorist. And these organizations are working very closely with not just social media companies, but with law enforcement.

Clay

Regular patriotic American men and women are not terrorists. Let me say the factions within our highest levels of federal law enforcement – And I and I and I – FBI and DOJ and intelligence services, these corrupted men we’re discussing, they could be more readily identified and more accurately described as domestic terrorists than – than me. They’re the ones treading upon my individual rights and freedoms. They’re the ones that’s spying on – on Americans. They’re the ones traveling uh great distances to, to insert themselves into the lives of Americans that are just communicating freely, as is our right online or anywhere else, at meetings as we congregate and gather.

Lara

What about those who say your, your right to gather and uh have a conversation doesn’t give you a right to assault police officers and disrupt Congress and so on?

Clay

I don’t support battery on police officers or, uh, nor – nor violent disruption of – of government operations, but I will remind everyone that a free American has a right to resist an unlawful arrest.

Lara

At the last hearing where you addressed Christopher Wray, you produced a photograph of what you called “ghost buses.”

These two buses in the middle here, they were the first to arrive at Union Station on January 6th. Zero 5-hundred. I have all this evidence. I’m showing you the tip of this iceberg.

Lara

Your point really was that they’re unmarked vehicles full of individuals that have not been explained. Is that right?

Clay

A “ghost vehicle” in law enforcement is not an uncommon reference. It’s vehicle has been purposefully concealed to – to whereby it’s not easy to identify. So no license plate. It’s been painted over its original cover. In this case, these two buses were totally painted white, like a cheap, vast overspray over all of the markings. So when you have two charter buses show up, the very first buses to show up in Union Station on January 6th…

Lara

Around 5 a.m.?

Clay

Around 5 a.m. The initial witness, another charter bus owner, arrived at – at 5:20. He thought he would be the first to arrive because he knew the schedule of all the other charter buses and he knew that most the buses would begin arriving around 6. So this charter bus operator was very experienced man. Very squared away. When he arrived with his couple of buses, these two white buses were – were to his surprise already there, and he immediately noticed that these buses were odd because they were totally painted over. It was a bad paint job. There was no markings, no phone numbers, no company name, totally outside the parameters of the way charter buses are required to operate and by law. So he said, “these buses are weird” and no one was getting out.

Clay

So something else that happens within that charter bus driver community is the drivers know each other. The passengers may stay on a bus if they’re especially in a parking lot, and not ready to disembark yet.

Lara

Sure.

Clay

The passengers might stay on a bus, but the bus drivers get off and they talk to each other.

Clay

They talk to the other bus drivers. So there are things that happen normally that the absence of that happening was odd. So he was suspicious enough of these buses as a professional, that he collected some digital evidence of those buses and then estimated with him and – and other eyewitnesses between 40 and 50 guys that they described as “Trump supporters.”

Clay

They all disembarked from the bus and they gathered in front of – of the two buses and they had like some kind of discussion, a briefing like the way a military leader would address his troops.

Lara

Yeah, they call it a huddle.

Clay

And then they together went to the escalators and up into Union Station and were gone.

Lara

And they were all men?

Clay

They were all men in all the Trump regalia. These men were in really good shape. They made comments like, “Wow, these are real serious Trump supporters. These guys” and they said they all had elbow pads and knee pads. And least they appeared like they had common equipment, but they were not in uniform, but they – they behaved in a uniform manner. 0

Clay

And we intend to get all of that video evidence from Union Station, from the escalators, from the parking lot. We have other eyewitnesses, much to the chagrin of everybody that was in those buses and everyone who commanded them to be there. We’ve identified one of those buses. And you know what that means? That means that’s their ass, because a bus is a serial numbered vehicle.

Clay

And in America, the change of ownership of a serial numbered vehicle…

Lara

Is recorded.

Clay

Is documented. So that means we can begin to trace from the original owner of that bus where it was sold and who bought it, and then who it was leased to and where it disappeared. And then eventually those buses were removed from the Union Station and we’re going to document all of that.

Lara

So you believe that those buses held undercover officers, not informants? Correct?

Clay

I feel very, very confident that – that everybody that was on those two buses were FBI assets.

And I have a high degree of belief there were actual FBI agents. And – and I’m, I’m sorry to say, ma’am, my objective conclusion is that – that senior officials at the at the FBI were deeply involved there.

Clay

You had a combination of FBI confidential informants either registered, unregistered – or a volunteer informant, or actual FBI agents depending upon a group and how significant a group was. Like the agents inserted in say the Proud Boys groups that we’re going to come to D.C. Those are most probably actual FBI agents. Whereas some, you know, random Facebook group of patriots from Arizona or something were most likely an informant.

Clay

So it would still fall under the umbrella of an “FBI asset” if they were communicating with the FBI – data that they were harvesting and information that they were recording and delivering it to the FBI, screenshots of text chats or actual recordings of phone calls, things like that – that they were delivering to the FBI, all part of the web of surveillance of the American people.

Lara

What have you seen? What can you tell us about? I know you can’t get ahead of everything. I know there’s limitations on some of this, but can you tell us anything?

Clay

I can tell you that, that the FBI had, had established a formula in 2020 that, that they pursued with all their – their power and authority to infiltrate groups across the country of Americans that were essential discussing online. They’d formed online groups.

Lara

Like chat rooms?

Clay

Yeah, like chat rooms.

Lara

Discord and Telegram.

Clay

Etc. to discuss their frustrations with COVID oppression and so the FBI identified groups and and – and infiltrated them with undercover operations that were very effective and they began planting seeds of discord. If you track the – the text threads, which I’ve – I’ve seen some of again, through evidence that I’ve been able to witness, but I cannot, I cannot share publicly because it would be in violation of – of court orders.

Lara

But to be clear, this is video you’ve seen with your own eyes?

Clay

Yes, ma’am. The evidence that was in criminal cases.

Lara

Is this what it’s based on? It’s based on the digital evidence, what you have on camera and supporting evidence for that and other kinds?

Clay

Yeah, eyewitness testimony, sworn testimony, affidavits, text messages, emails, and digital – digital footage. Yes, ma’am.

Lara

A lot of people would say “Clay, you’re lawman, right? That’s what we do. We infiltrate groups where we perceive there to be a threat or potential of crime being committed. We have undercover officers. We have undercover assets like informants. This is the bread and butter of law enforcement. What are you complaining about?”

Clay

They were the criminals. They were the threat.

Lara

Based on what?

Clay

We were just Americans. We were Americans that were that were angry and – and we were enraged that our freedoms were being oppressed and that FBI and the powers that had become corrupted, the those – those bad actors within the federal government that had this authority, they said “these Americans, how dare those Americans challenge the oppression that we’re putting upon them.”

Lara

Can you share any of the messages yet that you have said you traced back to FBI undercovers inside these groups and these chats?

Clay

No m’am.

Lara

Will you share it when you can?

The moment that I’m able to reveal that – that stuff, I will.

Lara

You said specifically that you saw that there were undercover police officers who were inside the Capitol before any of the protesters came in.

Clay

That’s right.

Lara

How do you know that? And can you give us any sense of what that means?

Clay

I mean, if you clearly have men dressed as Trump supporters walking around inside the Capitol on the other side of police officers who are, to one extent or another, not engaged with them, like they’re not concerned about them.

Lara

Right.

Clay

Then you have a set of closed doors like exterior doors and interior doors closed, and you have police officers positioned outside and then in between the two doors and then on the inside of the second set of doors –

Clay

Doors weren’t open yet.

Lara

What time was this?

Clay

This was – a couple of videos that Trump was still speaking and then on the inside, it looked like Trump supporters walking around in groups of five or six, so these were clearly separated physically and by doors and by police officers from the guys on the outside.

Any reasonable man would come to the conclusion– When you have videos of the doors being opened and police officers allowing Trump supporters that had gathered at the door to now enter, no violence, just walking in. “Just come on in, some fist bumps, and come in.” A second set of doors open, then there’s a group of Trump supporters on the steps, interior steps saying, “Come on this way, this way.”

Lara

What does that tell you?

Clay

Any reasonable man would look at that and say this was a coordinated effort by a law enforcement to have these people come in to. So who was that? They had to be, you know, I think as nefarious forces and part of the whole agenda of the – of the FBI with their involvement of this whole thing. We have other evidence, specific observations of police officers, Capitol police or metro, both entering rooms and here in the Capitol in uniform and coming out as Trump supporters and construction workers.

Lara

You’ve seen that?

Clay

Yeah, so…

Lara

Why has that video not been released yet?

Clay

One would say that’s a pretty good clue.

Lara

Yeah.

Clay

The other reason that we believe it’s just practical to have someone who knows how to get around, I mean, you know yourself, you can’t walk around his place. You have to be here for years and years.

Lara

The capitol is a maze.

Clay

That’s right. And it’s incredibly difficult to get around. You have to know where you’re going.

Clay

You had to have people that were very familiar with the the capital itself in order to lead to random groups of citizens that have come from every corner of the country in many cases, never been to D.C. before, much less walked around in the capital. So it – it just makes sense that the Trump supporters that were leading the way and were clearly already inside the capital before the doors were open, were working in coordination with the FBI agents and assets that were embedded into the crowd.

Clay

In some cases in these groups had been embedded for months. This is ugly stuff we’re discussing, but the American people deserve to know the truth and I intend to see that it happens.

Lara

A lot of people just won’t believe it without – they have to see the evidence or they just don’t believe you.

Clay

I don’t want to believe these things. I’ve been a cop for a long time, since I was a little boy. The FBI shield was – that was the baddest ass badge a cop could ever earn. It was an honored achievement to become an FBI agent so it’s with great pain I describe the corruption that has taken hold within our FBI, and we intend to clean it up because these rank-and-file FBI agents, let me tell you that a lot of these men and women are quite disturbed about what has happened to their beloved FBI. Same thing inside the DOJ. We have an obligation as Americans to embrace truth, whether it’s ugly or not, so that we can take corrective action.

Lara

Okay so you have the floor now, but you don’t know how much longer you have it for, right? And you don’t have forever.

Clay

We don’t.

Lara

And it’s been how long?

Clay

10 months.

Lara

10 months?

Clay

Some things have not happened that – that – that the conservatives within the people’s house would like to happen. We’ve had some disagreements internally regarding who shall be our speaker. We just had to go through what we went through in order to arrive at that particular junction of American history where a man like Mike Johnson became our speaker. Mike gets it, that all the digital evidence of for instance J6 has to be released to the American people, talking about altogether between 40 and 50,000 hours of digital evidence.

Clay

No one has a staff large enough to go through that evidence. So it has to be crowdsourced, have to give this stuff to the American people. And then the truth will be revealed, clip by clip.

Lara

Mike Johnson has released precisely 12 and a half thousand hours of that 40,000, and he’s not releasing 5%, which is 2,000 hours. Whether it’s for a good reason or a bad reason, it provides opportunity to hide whatever you want in those 2,000 hours. I’m not saying he’s hiding something because I don’t know.

Lara

But I’m just saying is when you’re withholding 2,000 hours, you can put whatever you want in that 2,000 hours. There are American citizens who are sitting in jail, some of them for three years without a trial. People have gone to solitary confinement for misdemeanor charges, nonviolent misdemeanor charges.

Lara

They’re still arresting people. You expect people to go to an election and vote when they don’t even have answers on their questions on the last election. And over time, more and more and more evidence is coming out in court cases. Right? Judges that wouldn’t take those cases when the light was on them. Now they’re not able to avoid them anymore. So what are you waiting for?

Lara

The people who don’t want the truth out have complete information dominance.

Lara

Right? You come out with something, you have a committee hearing? Dismissed. Conspiracy theories. “Ah Higgins. He’s a far right lunatic. Now, you know, don’t listen to him.” And so there are millions of people in this country that read The New York Times every day. Some of them were in this room, right? They hear you saying this and they think you’re just a nut.

Lara

You’re just a nut. And where’s the evidence or Mike Johnson’s going to release it? What is he waiting for?

Clay

The truth of what happened on those days, J 4 or 5 and 6 is in the digital evidence that Speaker Johnson has control of. And thank God we have a speaker who has stated that he is committed to release all of that data. Now he’s restrained to the extent that he’s restrained by attorneys, but he’s an attorney himself.

Clay

And, and we’ll see. When you when you say not going to release at all, I say, let’s see.

Lara

Well, those were his words, not mine.

Clay

Well, I know the man’s heart and it is pure and he knows that American needs full truth. I believe, I speak on behalf of “we the people” when I say we demand full release. The whole thing. Not just from the Capitol grounds and within the Capitol proper by the way. We want it all. We want all the DC Metro digital evidence. We need evidence from Union Station and and some other spots that we’ve identified.

Lara

Can you tell me any of those spots that you’ve identified, Union Station being one. What other the spots?

Clay

The parking areas and, and areas for dismemberment.

Lara

What do you mean by that?

Clay

The escalator areas where you can connect the dots from agents disembarking from vehicles and going either on foot to their stations and their teams of three and four and five, or getting in other vehicles that were dispersed and where some actions were noted that were born of of those vehicles, where some actions were taken, nefarious stuff.

Lara

What can potentially happen there? If you were a J6 defendant who’s in prison or was convicted of a crime, but you find out later that – that Brady material was withheld from you in violation of the law, is there legal redress for you here?

Clay

Yeah, that would flip the case. The bottom line is that if we are successful, if Mike Johnson is successful at getting all the digital evidence from J4, 5, and 6 released entirely to the American people, including the body cam footage of – of – of every police officer that was either operating in uniform or not in uniform, shall we say, then all these J6 I call “persecutions”, these political prisoners, those cases will be flipped because it’s exculpatory evidence that’s been withheld and the prosecution has a legal responsibility to provide exculpatory evidence that they’re in possession of to the defense. In this case, in every one of these J6 cases that have been prosecuted, the FBI and the DOJ has most certainly been in possession of all the digital evidence that we’re describing right now. If we’re successful at getting that evidence released to the American people, the American people are going to be stunned into acceptance of the reality that our FBI and our DOJ, and in some cases, head people in our intelligence services, have been corrupted by power.

Lara

Have you seen all the video? I know it’s a lot.

Clay

it’s a lot.

Lara

Have you seen the key parts?

Clay: I’ve seen many segments of video that most Americans have not seen, that is incredibly condemning. They’re so desperate to keep this digital evidence away from Americans, just regular citizen’s review, that they’re going through quite complex legal maneuvers to stop Americans from viewing this evidence. Every American that’s watching this should ask themselves why. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, ask yourself why.

Lara

Why do you think?

Clay

Why are you concealing that evidence from me? Why can’t I see that? It’s video from my own capital. People have a tendency to forget, especially my liberal brothers and sisters across the country. This is your country. This is your capital. You have the right to know what actually happened in 2020 in the months preceding J4, 5, and 6. You have the right to see the digital evidence of what truly happened in your capital on January 4th, 5th, and 6th. This is my position.

https://shop.salemnow.com/product/police-state/

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Lara Logan spoke to Steve Bannon's War Room:

https://rumble.com/v41yu2q-bannons-war-room-rep.-clay-higgins-speaks-out-.html

For every martyr: Please forgive us & know your suffering is temporary. 💔

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shiorimakibawrites · 1 year ago

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The Conversation (Part 10 of Alley Cat)

Image credits: kissthemgoodbye.net / Amber Kipp / Nathan Dumlao

Pairing: Matt Murdock x fem! Reader

Word Count: 5701

Summary: Matt Murdock and Reader have a conversation.

Warning(s): Awkward flirting, thirsty Reader, frank thoughts about sex and sexual acts, referenced character death, referenced ableism, hurt/comfort, cat antics

Author’s Note: This turned into a beast. It took longer to write than I expected as after I wrote the first draft, I realized the muses had presented the events out of order. I wasn't expecting both horniness and angst but here we are.Hope this was worth the wait.

Can also be read here

Series Masterlist is here.

The Conversation

by Shiori_Makiba

You poured yourself a cup of coffee. You were trying not to worry that you had completely misread the situation. It was hard. Because it was past midnight and there was still no sign of Daredevil. As you doctored the coffee to your liking, you once again tried to tell yourself that you were worrying about nothing.

Maybe he was just busy. That Houdini had managed to escape while you were in the shower. Usually if he wasn’t intercepted, that meant Daredevil was busy. You hadn’t heard more sirens than usual but that didn’t mean it wasn’t rowdy out there. It could just mean that said rowdiness wasn’t happening that close to your apartment.

Maybe he had gotten hurt again. You hoped not. Or if he had, you hoped that he had listened to the Night Nurse for a change and was resting. A delay wouldn’t do your nerves any favors but you’d rather he delayed your conversation than be the reason he tore his stitches or otherwise aggravated his injuries.

Maybe it wasn’t even his Daredevil side that keeping him busy. Assuming that you weren’t crazy and he actually was Matt Murdock . . . well, he could have a lot of legal work to do. Nelson & Murdock didn’t seem to have a paralegal on their team. Which meant they were doing all the research and writing themselves. You were intimately familiar with how long both could take. Maybe Page was assisting them on that front, assuming she had the training to do so. And the time since she might be too busy with her investigative work.

Even if she did assist them, they would still need to read her drafts and the cases she found for them before submitting any of it to the court. At least if they were sensible. Nothing against Page – you remembered her articles in the Bulletin and was sure she would do just as well on drafting motions and legal research. Just that Murdock (and Nelson if he was aware) were already risking their licenses enough. No need to risk Rule 11 sanctions on top of it.

The point was that being a lawyer (if he really was a lawyer) would give him plenty of reasons to be burning the midnight oil.

There were a myriad of other possible reasons. You didn’t know anything about his family. One of them could have an emergency of some kind. Or it could be something silly like he decided to take a nape before going on patrol and forget to set his time-to-fight-crime alarm first . . .

If you were right . . . Matt Murdock’s hair, in addition to looking very enjoyable to run your fingers through, seemed like the kind to produce incredible bedhead. You snickered. Imagining him trying to stuff that kind of fluffy mess under his helmet struck you as funny.

You were still snickering as you made yourself comfortable on the couch. You picked up the remote and started browsing through the streaming options. You had been watching nature documentaries earlier but had almost fallen asleep. You loved learning about animals but you almost always fell asleep watching them. Maybe it was narration. There was something rather soothing about a soft-spoken voice telling you about fish . . .

But you needed to stay awake so more nature documentaries were out. You settled on The Princess Bride. You had seen it a million times but figured that a million and one wouldn’t hurt. Despite the fact that you practically had the film memorized, it didn’t take long for you to become thoroughly engrossed in the story.

The sudden knock on the window made you jump. Heart pounding, you looked over at the window to see Daredevil standing on your fire escape, Houdini held in one arm. Immediately your heart slowed to a more normal pace. Seemingly aware that he now had your attention, he gave you a cheeky little wave.

It was a little tempting to leave him standing there for giving you a heart attack but that would mean leaving Houdini out there too. And that wouldn’t be fair to Houdini. Besides you had been waiting far too long for this conversation. So you paused the movie and went over to the window.

You unlocked and opened it. You were about to hold out your arms for the now familiar transfer of cat but paused. Houdini’s coat was messy. It looked like he had been rolling in dirt and there were tufts of fur missing.

“Houdini, have you been fighting?” you asked the cat. Who just meowed at you.

“Yes,” Daredevil answered. “With an another cat in an alley not far from my apartment.”

You sighed. “Hang on while I get a towel. I don’t want all that alley yuck all over my shirt.”

“No, you don’t,” Daredevil agreed with a slight grimace. Probably because he had said alley yuck all over his gloves and suit from carrying the cat from that alley to your apartment.

That gave you an idea. When your brother had come to visit you, he had forgotten some of his clothes. He was about the same size as Daredevil. And it was just a pair of sweatpants and muscle shirt. Which ought to be flexible enough for him to wear comfortably.

You detoured to your bedroom to retrieve the forgotten clothing, then went to the linen closet in the bathroom to grab a towel and some washcloths. Daredevil was waiting patiently on the fire escape when you returned, Houdini less so. You sat everything but the towel on the coffee table and went over to the window. There you accepted the transfer of Houdini into the waiting towel.

You stepped to one side of the window and said, “Come in and make yourself comfortable.”

“As you wish,” he said with a little amused grin. Like he was making some kind of joke.

He swung one leg over the still, ducked his head down to move his upper body through the window, and then pulled his other leg inside. He moved with an easy, fluid grace. You tried not to be jealous about his ability to avoid tripping over his own feet as he closed the window.

As soon as window clicked shut, you felt the nerves you had pushed away earlier return. Up until now, this impending conversation had been mere potential. Something that may or may not happen. But now that he was standing in your apartment while you held your dirty cat in the towel, it no longer felt like a maybe. Like there was no avoiding telling him you were pretty sure that he was Matt Murdock.

You decided to distract yourself by attending to the necessary task of getting Houdini cleaned up and checked for injuries. You bent down and retrieved the washcloths before walking into the kitchen. You hoped that mess on his fur could be cleaned with a damp cloth. Neither of you liked it when you had to give him a bath . . .

“You don’t seem surprised,” Daredevil said.

“About what?” you asked as you turned on the kitchen tap and waited for the water to warm. Houdini wasn’t going to like the damp washcloth at all but he would like it even less if it was cold.

“Houdini fighting. Is that something he does often?”

“I’m not sure often is the right word,” you said. “But no, this isn’t the first time he’s come home after clearly being in a fight.”

“An escape artist and a brawler,” Daredevil said, sounding amused.

“Yes, you two have much in common,” you said which earned you a chuckle. You tested the water. It was warm enough and you wetted one of the cloths. As predicted, Houdini reacted to the cleaning with his usual attitude – lots of meowing and squirming.

“Yes, yes, I know. I’m a mean mommy,” you said, forgetting that you had an audience until Daredevil laughed. He sounded closer than the living room.

You looked up to see that he had indeed followed you into the kitchen. There was something surreal about Daredevil standing in the same room as your collection of funny coffee mugs and various craft projects gifted to you from your niece and nephew.

“I meant what I said,” you said as you turned back to your task. Thankfully whatever that gunk was, it was cleaning away easily. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“I don’t want to get the ‘alley yuck’ on your couch,” he said.

Here was your opportunity. You took a deep breathe, gathered your courage, and took the plunge. “You can use some of the washcloths on the coffee table to clean off your suit or . . .”

“Or?” he asked.

“You can change into the clothes that are also on the coffee table, Mr. Murdock.”

You watched as the little amused smile morphed into a pleased grin. He reached up and removed his helmet. And there he was, Matt Murdock standing in your kitchen.

“Call me Matt,” he said smiling.

You didn’t know why seeing his face right now had such an impact on you. You had seen it at the office. But in the hallway, time had been limited and your eyes had zeroed in on that familiar mouth. Later, when you were signing paperwork, you sneaked glances but didn’t want Nelson to catch you ogling his partner.

Through he was so handsome, you were pretty sure that Nelson was used to people checking out his partner. If not outright undressing him with their eyes. You couldn’t be the only one whose eyes had been unable to resist the urge to rove over those broad shoulders, thick thighs, glorious ass, and that pretty mouth.

Maybe because at his office, his eyes had been hidden behind those red sunglasses. This was the first time you had ever seen his eyes. Big, brown eyes. Looking at those eyes, you just knew that he had a killer sad face. The kind that could make you feel like you had just kicked a poor, innocent puppy. That kind that no one could withstand because no one wants to feel like a puppy-kicking monster. Hopefully no one had informed him of this powerful weapon in his arsenal.

It was a good thing that his helmet covered so much of his face. Apart from the whole not wanting to get arrest and go to prison thing, he looked a lot less intimidating. Part of that was, without the helmet, he looked younger than he probably was. Which you guessed was early to mid thirties. You supposed he could actually be younger than that but when you tapped the rumor mill, no one had said anything about Murdock being the Doogie Howser of law. They mentioned his disability often enough that you assumed that teen genius would have come up.

Add in those aforementioned big brown eyes and fluffy brown hair, the end result was that he looked about as scary as a puppy. Maybe he would look scarier when he was angry. Or maybe you just weren’t the best judge of his scariness since he had never scared you.

Making you jump being a sneaky-sneak didn’t count.

You had been right about the hair. Helmet hair wasn’t the same as bedhead but it is still a delightful mess that your hands itched to bury themselves in.

Keep your hands to yourself, you told yourself sternly. Matt isn’t your cat. Or puppy. You can’t just pet him.

But you wanted to. Houdini, sensing your lack of attention, took the opportunity to squirm out of your grip. Your hands being free only made the desire worse. You wondered if you would need to literally sit on your hands to stop yourself from doing something stupid . . .

“Is there something wrong?” he asked, bringing your mind back to the present. Matt was no longer smiling, his hands fidgeting with his helmet. His shoulders were hunched, almost like he wanted to hide. His eyes were filled with uncertainty and a growing sadness.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” you rushed out. You were right to be worried about those eyes. That wasn’t even a full sad puppy face and you still had absolutely no resistance to it. “Just got lost in thought.”

“Oh?” he said. You were right about the eyebrow raising accompanying that particular tone. “About what?”

“Your hair,” you said. And because apparently your brain-to-mouth filter was disabled, continued, “It’s very fluffy. I want to bury my hands in it but you aren’t a cat. I can’t just start petting you . . .”

You clapped your hands over your mouth but the damage had been done. You groaned. That was easily the most embarrassing thing you had ever said to anyone, let alone a cute guy.

While obviously surprised by your word vomit at first, it was soon replaced with something else. Delight. It transformed his already handsome face into something indescribably beautiful. You felt yourself get weak in the knees. It wasn’t fair. He was already sexy. Why did he have to be pretty too?

Matt threw his head back and laughed. It sounded so cheerful that you couldn’t even get mad at him for laughing at you.

“Oh sweetheart,” he said between chuckles. “You are welcome to touch my hair anytime you want.”

“Really?” you asked.

“Really,” he confirmed before his smile shifted to something wicked. “Along with anything else.”

You blushed. You could think of several things. None of which were appropriate. Especially before the first date. Assuming he wanted a date from you. It seemed like it but maybe outrageous flirt was just his personality and all he wanted was more like friends with benefits.

You weren’t opposed to getting laid. You hadn’t had sex with anyone other than yourself in a long time. But you knew you wanted more than just sex from him. Even if it was good sex.

“Maybe later,” you muttered, forgetting for a moment about his super ears. Until his bark of laughter reminded you.

“I think I’ll take you up on that clothing offer,” he said after he got his laughter under control. “If you would show me where the bathroom is?”

“Sure,” you said. And, after a quick detour to the coffee table to grab the clothing, you lead him to the bathroom. And got a quick crash course on providing useful layout information to a blind person. Even one whose remaining senses had been enhanced to a superhuman degree.

While he sat down his helmet and started removing his gloves, you took out some washcloths out of the linen cabinet and set them down on the counter.

“Washcloths if you want to clean the alley yuck off of your suit,” you said.

“Thank you,” he said. He had already gotten the top of the suit was loose, offering a tantalizing glimpse of muscled chest. You felt your face heat.

“Y-your welcome,” you said and fled the bathroom. Before you did something like see if he was serious about letting you touch him anywhere you wanted. Keeping your mind out of the gutter was already hard enough without seeing him nearly naked. Assuming he was wearing something under that suit. For all you knew, he was nude under all that dark red leather and Kevlar.

And now you were picturing it. Again. You have got to stop imagining him naked. You were already awkward enough around Matt . . .

You jumped when you felt something brush against your leg. You looked down and saw Houdini rubbing against your legs. Little sneak. Well, you needed a distraction so you would stop thinking about Matt naked. Houdini was good at being distracting.

You bent down and picked up Houdini. You started petting him and used the action to check him for injuries. You hadn’t seen any injury when you cleaned him but his coat was pretty thick. It would be easy to miss something. Maybe because his earlier capture and cleaning, it didn’t take Houdini long to want to be put down.

And after you checked one last spot, you would do just that. Which Houdini complained about. Loudly.

“What are you doing to that cat?” asked Matt. You jumped and lost your grip on Houdini. Who wasted no time escaping. You sighed. He probably wasn’t hurt but you liked to be sure. Cat bites could be nasty.

“Trying to make sure he didn’t get bitten or something,” you said. “He is obviously cooperative and not a pain in the ass about it. Doesn’t remind me of anyone at all.”

Matt laughed but notably didn’t deny the accusation. “Would it ease your mind to know that I didn’t smell any blood on him when I picked him up and still don’t?”

“Yes,” you said, feeling relieved. You turned to looked at him walking up the hallway and felt your mouth go dry.

The good news was that your brothers clothes fit. The bad news was that they fit. The gray sleeveless shirt displayed his arms and all their muscular glory. You knew he had muscles. Anyone who went around punching crime in the face like he did had to have muscles. The suit hinted at muscles. Those hints were nothing to actually seeing it. You were mesmerized by everything from the big muscles of his upper arms down to the forearms covered in dark hair and the large hands with thick fingers.

You bit your bottom lip. You weren’t going to gasp or moan or make any other embarrassing noise. That heat you had felt earlier returned with a vengeance. Especially as your mind supplied you with heady images of those arms picking you up and tossing you on the bed. Those hands wrapped around your wrists, pinning your arms over your head while he . . .

A soft call of your name broke the reverie. You blushed when you realized that wasn’t the first time he had called your name either. Then blushed hard when you saw the smug smirk on his face. He knew. He knew you were checking him out and was very turned on about it. How did he . . .

A sudden and terrifyingly embarrassing realization struck you. It wasn’t just his hearing that was enhanced. It was everything. Including his nose. You had worried about his bloodhound nose earlier but that had been about smelling bad from various body odors. But what if he could smell things like pheromones? Or the slick pooling between your legs?

Seeing his tongue swipe across his lips made you wonder if he could taste it?

You buried your face in your hands, feeling the heat of your skin against your fingers. Every time you thought something dirty about him, had he been able to tell? Discern it from the racing of your heart along smelling (and tasting) you getting wet from those thoughts?

“A penny for your thoughts?” he asked. It was question but the tone was more of a demand. His voice had gotten a little rough, closer to the Devil than Matt Murdock. You peered between your fingers at him. He had stopped in front of you, his eyes landing on your chest. Anyone else and you would thought he was ogling your breasts. But Matt couldn’t ogle. Not with his eyes anyway.

But those eyes that were dark with hunger . . . and you looked down. And had to bite your lip again to hold back a sound. Those sweatpants did nothing to hide his growing erection and your cunt was throbbing with need. Almost against your will, you shifted closer. Just a little further and you’d be pressed up against him . . .

A strident yowl shattered the growing tension. You jumped back, startled. Looking behind you, you could see Houdini standing by his wet food bowl. Which was empty. When it was well past time for his nightly treat. Hence the irate yowling and the swishing tail.

Part of you wanted to angry at the cat for being a little cock-block. The other part was grateful for the interruption. Having sex, as enjoyable as it was looking like it would have been, might have set the wrong tone for this relationship. You wanted Matt to date you, not just fuck you.

Still it took more willpower than was pretty to step away from him. To turn your back and walk over to Houdini’s feeding station. As you spooned out the fishy food, you were hyperaware of Matt’s presence and his focused attention. Not wanting any further interruptions, you double-checked the dry food and water bowls.

That completed, you took a couple of deep breaths. And feeling a little more bit more in control of yourself, you turned back around to look at Matt. It looked like you weren’t the only one who managed to wrestle back some self control. His eyes were still dark but he no longer looked like he wanted to eat you.

You tried not feel disappointed about that.

“Um, maybe we should sit down,” you said, gesturing toward the couch.

“As you wish,” he said with a little twitch of the lips and slight lilt to his voice. Like he was making a joke . . .

Your eyes widened and you blurted out, “You’ve seen The Princess Bride?”

And immediately cringed. What had happened to your brain-to-mouth filter? You knew you had one. Otherwise you would have fired from your job ages ago after telling a client or one of your coworkers what you really thought about them and their unclear instructions and/or unreasonable demands . . .

“Yes,” he answered with a fond smile on his lips. “Foggy loves it and introduced it to me while we were at Columbia. I enjoyed it so we’ve watched it several times.”

You nodded. That would fit. Despite that hidden edge of sharpness, Foggy Nelson had seemed like a Princess Bride kind of guy.

“That explains a lot about The Man in the Mask,” you said,

“Does it?” he asked.

“Unless those grainy photographs have deceived me, your black outfit is very Dread Pirate Roberts,” you said. “Minus the rapier.”

“Disappointed?”

“A little,” you said with forced casualness. “The rapier is pretty cool.”

“Cooler than batons?”

“A stick just doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi as rapier.”

“Inconceivable! Batons are infinitely cooler than rapiers.”

“Look, I’m sure your stick is very impressive . . .,” you started before stopping when he started snickering. Then you realized how your words could be taken and blushed.

“Most impressive, I’m told,” he said with a wicked grin. “I have also been praised for my skill in wielding it.”

You knew he wasn’t talking about the batons he used against criminals. You felt your blush deepen as you couldn’t keep your eyes away from the bugle in his pants. It hinted at a promising size and inevitably your mind recalled your fantasies. How you imagined he would feel inside you. Your cunt clenched around nothing. You couldn’t stop yourself from pressing your thighs together and squirm. It took everything not to reach down and start touching yourself. Or walk over to him and yank those sweatpants down . . .

Your eyes flicked up to his face and sure enough, that smug smirk was back. Along with that hungry look. His hands were curled into fists at his sides and his body was stiff with tension. Like it was also taking everything in him not walk over and start pulling your pants down . . .

Somehow you forced yourself to move away from him. To go to the couch and sit down like your cunt wasn’t aching with need. You tried to focus your mind on something other than sex. You didn’t even notice him moving until his weight settled on the couch. On the opposite end. That was good (It was bad insisted the horny parts of your brain). You weren’t sure you would have been able to stop yourself from straddling his lap if he had sat down next to you (horny brain insisted the only problem was that you both were wearing too much clothing . . .).

“So,” you said, trying and failing to prevent your voice was sounding breathy. “How about those Mets?”

That startled a laugh out of him. “Are you really asking about baseball?”

“I thought that’s what you were supposed to do,” you said, trying to joke. “Think about baseball.”

He chuckled. “I got told to think about Jesus.”

“That’s . . .” You paused and tried to think of way of describing it that wouldn’t be considered insulting. “A very religious answer.”

“Well, they were nuns.”

“Nuns?” you repeated. “Are you Catholic?”

“Guilty,” he said.

Somehow it fit. Of course, the blind ninja vigilante lawyer was Catholic. Only a Catholic would have the operatic level of drama needed to dress like the Devil to beat up criminals by night and be a criminal defense attorney by day.

He only laughed when you told that. But rather tellingly, he didn’t deny it.

After he got his laughter under control, he said, “I know you must have questions. You can ask.”

You plucked at the hem of your shirt. He was right. You had so many questions. Many of which even had absolutely nothing to do with sex or how he may or may not feel about you.

“I’m not sure where to start,” you admitted. “What was everyone else’s first question?”

“Are you really blind?”

You frowned. “Someone actually asked you that?”

“Several someones,” he answered. “Pretty much everyone when they discover that I’m Daredevil. For the record, the answer is yes, I’m really blind.”

“I never doubted that,” you said. “Please don’t take this the wrong way but pretending to be blind sounds like a lot of hassle for very little benefit.”

“Exactly,” he said. His lips pressed into a thin line. “Trust me, I’d rather people didn’t treat me like I’m made of glass. I hate that.”

You didn’t know what to say about that. You weren’t sure there was anything you could do say that wouldn’t sound like pity. But maybe he didn’t need you to say anything. Maybe he just needed you to listen and try not to repeat other people’s bad behavior.

“I can’t promise that I wouldn’t mess up,” you said. “I can only promise to try. Can you promise to tell me when I’m doing or saying something wrong? Or when I’m making bad assumptions?”

“I can do that,” he agreed. “I have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Most people seem surprised that I can fight at all. But you don’t seem surprised. Why?”

“Oh,” you said. “I read an article once about blind martial artists while researching. Don’t remember much of it – it’s been years.”

“Are you looking for articles about blind martial artists?”

“Probably not,” you said. “I fall into these research rabbit holes where I started off curious about one thing but end up reading or watching something unrelated to the original topic because it sounded interesting.”

He gave a hum of understanding.

“One of those forays lead me to a documentary about this group of blind people who had learned how to echolocate. Again, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it so I’m probably not remembering everything correctly but I figured if someone with normal human hearing can do it, someone with your senses ought to be able to.”

He nodded. “I can. And that’s a large part of how I navigate my surroundings and fight. But it isn’t just echoes. It’s other sounds like heartbeats. And it’s differences in air pressure and temperature. Put them together all and with a little concentration, I can build a picture in my mind of what and who is in my surroundings. There’s no detail. Just shapes. But it’s enough that I can basically tell where, example, the table is. Or when someone is trying to punch me.”

“Sounds like a lot to process,” you said.

He shrugged. “I’m used to it. My world on fire.”

“Poetic,” you said. “Why fire?”

“Because those things? Air currents, temperatures, echoes? They aren’t static.”

“Like a candle flame,” you said, hoping you were understanding his metaphor correctly. “Sometimes they burn hotter. Or grew dim. Or flicker.”

“Exactly. The ‘flames’ I can perceive can and does fluctuate depending on the circumstances. Everything from the weather to how loud somewhere is can change the flames.”

You nodded, thinking carefully. As much as someone who wasn’t directly experiencing it could understand it, you think you might understand.

“You said it takes a little concentration?” you started. Encouraged by his nod, you continued, “Am I wrong to assume that things that affect your ability to concentrate impact this world on fire?”

“No, you aren’t,” he said. “It’s harder when I’m tired or I have a headache. And when I lose control of my filtering process and get overloaded.”

“Filtering process?”

“I get a lot more sensory input than I can realistically deal with,” he explained. “Before I learned how to control my senses, I would alternate between screaming and catatonic. The nuns thought I was either crazy or possessed.”

“You spend a lot time around nuns?” you asked. Even for a Catholic, that sounded odd.

“Catholic school,” he said. “And I lived at St. Agnes Orphanage until I was eighteen.”

“Orphanage?” you repeated.

“Yeah,” he said. “My mother left when I was baby and my dad died when I was ten. The rest of the family was either dead or wanted nothing to do with me, so I wound up at St. Agnes.”

“What happened to your dad? Was he sick?”

“No,” Matt said. He closed his eyes and his hands tightened into fists. “He was murdered.”

“Murdered?” you echoed, shocked.

“Yes,” he said. His eyes opened and they were filled with a familiar pain. The same pain you saw in your parents’ eyes when they talked about family members who died before you were born.

“He was a boxer. They called him Battlin’ Jack Murdock. Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of him. He wasn’t famous. Never hit the big time. Just a local fighter but he was one hell of a fighter.

“We never had a lot of money. Unless you get to be a big name, boxing doesn’t pay all that much. My dad made ends meet doing low-skill construction work or other temp jobs that didn’t require any education. I never went hungry but I know that he did a few times to make sure that I didn’t.”

There was fierce, defensive edge to his voice. Almost like he was daring you to say that his dad was a bad father.

“But after my accident . . . things got harder. We didn’t have any health insurance and I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Then I needed specialized training to learn how to orient myself and read braille along with things like my cane. We got a lot of it of what I needed for free or a charity paid for it.

“But my dad hadn’t worked while I was in the hospital. Since the chemicals that had blinded me were radioactive, the doctors were afraid I was going to get radiation sickness. That is a slow, painful way to die and my dad didn’t want me to be alone if I started getting sick like that.”

You couldn’t take it anymore. You slide down the couch until you were right next to him. Tentatively, unsure of how it would be received, you reached and placed your hand on his shoulder. The muscle was taut with tension. But he didn’t jerk away from your touch. Gently, you squeezed his shoulder before sliding your hand across back until you arm was draped across his shoulders. A very light hug that he could easily shrug off if it was unwelcome.

Apparently it wasn’t unwelcome. He leaned into you, resting his head on your shoulder and nuzzling into your neck. You took the opportunity to wrap your arms around him and give him an actual hug.

After a few minutes of silence, he continued, “Even after I was released, he still wasn’t working as many hours as he was before. It was suggested that we sue the company that owned the chemicals and my dad did find a lawyer willing to take the case pro bono. But as I’m sure you’re aware, those kind of suits can take years to settle, let alone make it to court.”

You nodded.

“In the meantime, the bills were very tight. We were behind on rent. So when a man offered to pay my dad to start throwing his matches, he took the money. Boxing is a young man’s sport so when my dad started losing, people just thought he was getting old.”

Matt took a deep but shaky breath. His hands were clenched so tightly that the skin over his knuckles was white and the veins were in high relief. When he spoke again, his voice was tight with pain and anger.

“Then one day, he didn’t throw the match like he was supposed to. That man had his men beat my father. Then that bastard killed him. Shot him in the head and left him in the alley like he was trash. I heard the whole thing. I had just turned ten.”

Your heart broke for him. You wanted to say something but again, there was nothing you could say. There were no words you could speak or actions you could take that would make everything all better. All you could do was hold him and hoped it helped him hurt less.

You didn’t know how long you sat there on the couch with him in your arms, hands carding through his hair. You didn’t care. As long as he needed the comfort, he was welcome to it. Eventually the tension drained out of his body.

When you started hearing soft snores, you realized that he had fallen asleep. Unwilling to wake him up if you could help it, you slowly and carefully maneuvered the both of them until you were laying down with him mostly on top of you. It would probably feel embarrassed about it in morning. But that was a problem for Future You. Present You was tired and wanted to sleep.

So you closed your eyes and fell asleep.

Ending Note Hope no one minds me making Reader a fan of The Princess Bride.

Reader and Matt will talk more in Part 11, currently titled "The Morning."

#daredevil #fan fic #the alley cat series #matt murdock x fem!reader #ao3 link

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yamayuandadu · 11 months ago

Note

I have a question about Ishtar. Is there any difference between Ishtar and Inanna? Regarding the "ishtar-type" deities, are they more associated with Ninlil or Ishtar? Regarding the "D Ishtar" logogram, how do researchers know which deity it specifically refers to?

I already covered the first matter here in detail. I’m sorry but I cannot answer the same questions over and over again in depth and simultaneously publish in-depth posts/work on wiki articles focused on new things.

As for the second question… I think there is a typo here? It seems self explanatory that a deity outright regarded as analogous to Ishtar is more closely associated with Ishtar than with Ninlil. There is a small handful of cases, all from the first millennium BCE, and almost exclusively from Assyria, of Ninlil’s Assyrian derivative Mulissu being “imprinted” over local Ishtars - in Nineveh, Arbela and Assur - but this is a unique, late phenomenon and it’s also somewhat detached from what authors like Gary Beckman generally mean when they speak of deities belonging to an “Ishtar type” (for his coverage of this matter see here and here). You can read about this process here. In Babylonia the only remotely close case would be an apparent replacement of Ishtar of Kish by Ninlil in the first millennium BCE, which is discussed in Goddesses in Context, p. 112. The only point of connection otherwise is that Bizilla appears in both courts but minor deities might change “alignment” in unexpected ways because of transfer of cults, theological speculation, etc. When it comes to the use of logograms in cuneiform, sometimes the situation is clear. For example, a deity is listed alongside a cult center, or there is a phonetic indicator of some sort provided as a gloss. However, there are cases where the name simply cannot be established with certainty. Good examples are Alalakh, where the local deity designated by the lshtar logogram is variously interpreted as Ishtar, Shaushka or Ishara, and Arrapha, where multiple theonyms are represented by the same logogram. Marie-Claude Trémouille discusses this matter here using Shaushka as a case study (the article is in French).

#mesopotamian miscellanea

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schraubd · 2 years ago

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The Lawlessness is the Point: On Alito and Judicial Illegitimacy

"The Supreme Court," the old saw goes, "is not higher because it is right. It is right solely because it is higher."

The idea behind this aphorism is simple: while practically speaking we must have some actor with buck-stops-here final authority to interpret the law, that the nine justices of the Supreme Court occupy that position in no way suggests that they have some special insight or knowledge about the law that goes beyond that held by the average J.D.-holding-Joe. It is mostly a matter of happenstance that the sputtering machine of our constitutional order happen to spit out these nine in particular. There are any number of lawyers and legal professionals who could do as well or better at the task.

When Ilya Shapiro infamously said that any nomination short of Sri Srinivasan to the Supreme Court would necessarily be one given to a "lesser Black woman" he was -- beyond the obvious racism -- making this mistake. The idea that there is some unified ordinal ranking we can give of all lawyers and judges, such that we can say with confidence this person is the "best" candidate to be a Supreme Court Justice, is fanciful. The idea that if such a ranking were possible, these nine individuals would rank #1-9 is even more facile.

I thought about this when reading an interview Justice Alito recently did with the Wall Street Journal, which broadly tackled the question of the Supreme Court's declining legitimacy, framed around the cavalcade of unpopular right-wing rulings that have been de rigueur for the Supreme Court over the past few years. In his inimitable style -- nobody can match his combination of sneer and self-pity -- Justice Alito laid blame for the Supreme Court's legitimacy crisis on everybody but him and his faction. It's the media, it's the Democrats, it's the legal community writ large. It has nothing to do with the content of the decisions. It's a wide-ranging conspiracy depriving them of their just public adulation.

At one level, this is little more than Alito reflecting the ideology of his tribe. Nothing unites the contemporary right more than the complete abdication of personal responsibility. It's always someone else's fault. They are but helpless atoms, involuntarily reacting to the jostlings of the universe.

But I particularly want to zero in on his complaint that the broader community is not coming to the Court's defense:

"And nobody, practically nobody, is defending us. The idea has always been that judges are not supposed to respond to criticisms, but if the courts are being unfairly attacked, the organized bar will come to their defense." Instead, "if anything, they've participated to some degree in these attacks."

This discussion, again, is framed around the Court issuing repeated unpopular decisions. Certainly, it is the case that sometimes judges are obligated to hand down rulings they know will be unpopular. An unpopular rulings is not, on its own, a marker of illegitimacy. That said, in my Sadomasochistic Judging article I observed that it's too easy for judges to swing out to the other extreme, and begin viewing their unpopularity as a marker of legitimacy -- they know they're right by how much they're hated. If good judges sometimes have to do unpopular things, then a judge who's always doing unpopular things must be a great judge! Who can argue with that logic?

Nonetheless, I don't disagree that among the duties of the bar to remind the public that judges sometimes have to issue decisions that they know will be unpopular but which are legally correct. And, as Justice Alito alludes to, historically, the bar has fulfilled that obligation and offered those explanations.

Which might be taken to suggest that, if these defenses are not on offer today, it's because the bar today does not see what's going on at the Supreme Court as unfair attacks stemming from a few unpopular rulings.

Indeed, it's noticeable that the criticism of the behavior of the judiciary isn't just stemming from the highest-profile, hot-button issues. There are increasingly dire complaints from specialists in the more "boring" sectors of law -- administrative law, standing doctrine, remedies -- that things are getting out of control, that the Supreme Court (and some lower court wannabes) are blowing past longstanding doctrinal principles in service of results-oriented judging in service of right-wing extremism. The era of conservative legal formalism is over. The stampede of cases come from every quarter and every issue -- guns, abortion, voting rights, religious freedom, gerrymandering, racism, environmental protection. And what unifies the conservative faction's voting pattern in those cases isn't textualism, or originalism, or precedent, or prudence, or deference to democracy, or professional consensus. The best -- not perfect, but best -- way to predict what the Court will do in nearly any legal arena is to ask "what do Republicans want."

The legal community, as Justice Alito says, may be obligated to defend the Court from unfair attacks. It is under no similar obligation to defend the Court from attacks it thinks are entirely fair. The most consilient explanation for why the bar is withholding defenses it has historically proffered in circumstances of mere political unpopularity is that it does not identify the problem as political unpopularity; it has judged that the Court really is deviating increasingly sharply from basic rule of law principles in service of sloppy, results-oriented right-wing caprice.

A modest Court would take this reaction from the bar as a warning. Recognizing that it does not have a monopoly on, or even a superior vantage towards, legal truth, it would take very seriously indications that its peers in the legal community think it is going astray. By design, the Court has few formal guardrails that prevent it from simply becoming a blunt instrument of factional caprice. The collective feedback of the legal community is an informal mechanism for assessing the risk. When the bar is generally saying "look, we understand people might disagree with this decision, but sometimes unpopular decisions are part of a functioning legal system", that's a sign things are healthy. When the bar no longer feels capable of credibly making that apologia, that's a sign of rot. And in that register -- the register of professional assessment -- the Court cannot lay claim to special prerogatives because it is "higher". The Court is not necessarily right just because it is higher, and should take a long and deep pause if its professional peers are increasingly emphatic about how wrong it is.

But this Court is not modest. If the bar no longer has confidence in judicial legitimacy, then it's the bar children who are wrong.

One can, of course, explain all of this away by deciding that the entirety of the federal bar has suddenly and en masse decided to abandon its historic commitment to American legal institutions in favor of blinkered ideological partisanship. But every bit of political theory and common sense we possess suggests that we're seeing the natural results of six individuals with life tenure and virtually nothing in the way of formal checks on their authority becoming power-drunk.

It is among the prerogatives of that drunken, unfettered power that Justice Alito does not need to be "popular" to continue to impose his personal will onto society. Formally speaking, the bar can scream as loud as it wants that what he's doing is not normal, and is not compatible with the professional consensus on what the law is. Indeed, at one level, I think that -- protestations notwithstanding -- the lawlessness is the point. Judges are specialists masquerading as generalists; there might be a few issues where they really do know more than the rest of us, but most legal cases turn on doctrines that judges know virtually nothing about until the minute they open the first brief. But if one holds the legal community in the sort of open contempt that Justice Alito clearly does, there is a sort of thrill in defying of them -- of making it painfully clear that you do not care and it does not matter what the legal community say the rules are in a given case. L'etat, c'est moi. I decide what the law is.

It is the hallmark of an abuser, though, that they simultaneously thrill in degrading their victims and demand their victims consent to the abuse. For all that he enjoys gleefully soaring beyond the confines of legal professionalism, Justice Alito also insists that the legal profession owes him supplication. It's not enough to obey if we don't also recognize that he's right to do what he does to us. In this way, the aforementioned "thrill" is something of a lie Alito tells to himself. He does care and it does matter that the legal community thinks that he's a hack. I'm not saying it'd be better if he truly didn't care. But he does care. He's livid about it.

What Justice Alito wants is a contradiction -- he wants to bludgeon the legal community into freely accepting his preeminence. It's not enough for them to recognize him as higher, they have to recognize that he's right, and the beatings will continue until the morale improves. But this sort of "consent" -- recognition that the Court is right in what it says -- is not one the Court is entitled merely because it is "higher". The people -- whether the people of the United States as a whole or the legal community in particular -- may have to obey the Supreme Court. We do not have to like the Supreme Court. And if it is to be viewed as more than the capricious whims of six radical in robes, that is a public perception it must earn; it is not an entitlement.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/vqJNs23

#judiciary #Samuel Alito #supreme court

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46ten · 6 months ago

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Brockholst Livingston and his duel

I was reading through some different contemporary accounts of NYC lawyers and came across a description of the brilliant qualities of Brockholst Livingston as an attorney.

For those who don't know, he was actually Henry Brockholst Livington (1757-1823), the son of William Livingston (he eventually inherited Liberty Hall). Other interesting facts about him (for purposes of this blog) are that he was briefly a secretary/aide to Philip Schuyler, he got captured by the British, he served as secretary to his brother-in-law John Jay (he and Sarah Livingston Jay are siblings) and had a complete bust-up with him with some rather serious implications (this is really interesting, but I won't get into it now) - the two don't work to resolve it until nearly a decade later, he became an Anti-Federalist, he opposed the Jay Treaty and was the one verbally arguing with AHamilton when the Federalists try to have a town meeting about the treaty in NYC, and then he argued with AH in the newspapers too (writing under the pseudonym Decius), he survived an assassination attempt, but even through all this AH and he acted as co-counsel for the Weeks trial and AH once asked Brockholst to file a case for him, but he also gloats a bit when the court rules in his favor when Brockholst was opposing counsel.

And Brockholst made a major contribution to NY property law while a member of the NY Supreme Court and eventually ended up a U.S. Supreme Court Justice (Jefferson).

But I really want to talk about the duel he fought in 1798 where he killed James Jones. Jones was a Federalist, and in an article supposedly authored by Brockholst, it is stated that he attended a Democratic-Republican meeting. Obviously this was so offensive that Jones physically assaulted Brockholst, caning him on the street in front of his wife and children, and wringing his nose? So they dueled at Weehawken, where Jones's bullet grazed Brockholst's nose while Brockholst shot him in the groin and hit a major artery; Jones bled out and died.

A very funny anecdote, possibly apocryphal but I don't feel like confirming it: supposedly in Niemcewicz's translated travel journey published as Under their Vine and Fig tree, he relates George Washington hearing of this duel and stating something like, "grazed his nose? With that as a target, how could he have missed?" And they all have a laugh about the size of Brockholst's nose.

And gosh, it's great that the Van Rensselaer/Van Cordtlandt/Schuyler/Livington line started marrying out, because yes, there are some STRONG features being passed on in that wreath of a family line otherwise.

#Brockholst Livingston

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dumbestthingiveeverheard · 1 year ago

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Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 7/31/2023

Fifth Place: Erick Erickson

On 7/30/2023, Mr. Erickson tweeted the following:

Starting to see more and more progressives demand public swimming pools. Get ready for the next entitlement program.

Not public swimming pools! Anything but public swimming pools!

By the way, the top reply is somebody pointing out that the city Erickson lives in--has multiple public swimming pools:

I'm sorry, I can't get over this: Erickson is seriously concerned that progressives are going to--what exactly? Use tax payer dollars to make the community better? That's really something you view as a concern? As one Twitter user put it:

i like that the worst thing this guy can imagine is americans collectively deciding to use the wealth they produce and the taxes they pay to give themselves something nice

Fourth Place: Stephen Strang

Right-wing watch posted a clip of him on Friday talking about allowing drag queens to read to children, he says "They would not let someone dressed up in a Nazi uniform go in and read stories to children."

First off, who exactly is the "they" in this case? Second off, there is obviously no comparison between the ideology of the most genocidal and murderous regime of the twentieth century and people dressing in drag, and the fact that you think these two things are on even remotely the same level shows there is something wrong with you.

Third Place: Donald Trump

NBC reached out to forty-four of Trump's former cabinet officials to see how many of them would support his 2024 run for re-election--only four did. Those four, for those curious, are Mark Meadows, Ric Grenell, Matthew Whitaker, and Russ Vought. A Tea Party holdover who played a key role in the Freedom Caucus until he was made Trump's Chief of Staff and who appeared in a debunked creationist propaganda film, a small time ambassador who once got into a fight with Nick Fuentes over if he was immoral for being a homosexual, a failed Congressional candidate turned Attorney General, and a man who is only known for hindering Biden's transition to the Presidency, respectively.

What I find funny though is not that this group of nitwits have endorsed Trump's re-election, but that they are the only ones who worked with Donald Trump to have done so. If so few of the people who were around Donald feel comfortable giving him a second term, what should that say to the rest of us?

Second Place: Jonathan Chait

What's wrong with this picture?

If you said the fact that it implies the corruption of a Supreme Court Justice is on the same level as the corruption of the son of the President despite one actually having the power to impact people's lives and the other not, you'd be correct. However, this false comparison is the entire basis of New York Magazine's article "The Sleaze Problem: How Democrats can clean up the Supreme Court and address the Hunter Biden affair." Why Democrats need to address the Hunter Biden affair--which is little more than trumped up charges against a private system--I'm not sure.

The column even sees its author admitting that nothing Hunter Biden did was illegal while also accepting the incorrect notion that nothing Clarence Thomas did was illegal.

The article proposes that Democrats should propose an ethics code for the Supreme Court while aiming for Republican support through also creating a stricter ethics code around the actions of family members of politicians. Of course, Chait admits this wouldn't actually work because doing so would indict the Trump kids even more than Hunter Biden--but on the bright side, at least the Democrats now have an answer for the irrational and nonsensical charges against Hunter Biden. If only Democrats would play into GOP talking points, that would show them.

Winner: Samuel Alito

Did you know that nothing in the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate the Supreme Court? Well that's what Samuel Alito thinks--of course, it isn't actually true. Congress specifically has the power to stop courts from ruling on specific issues, to determine who is on the Supreme Court, and various other forms of regulation--but Alito doesn't want to mention that, because that could get in the way of his power grab.

Samuel Alito, you've said the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

#eric erickson #stephen strang #donald trump #johnathan chait #samuel alito

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andiatas · 1 year ago

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Police chief after the criticism of Patrick Sommerlath: "Good cooperation with the Royal Court"

For several days, the police searched for the royal relative Patrick Sommerlath, 52.

They searched for him both at the address on Drottningholm where he lives - and in other places.

He would be charged with purchasing sexual services. But it failed - because he had left the country.

[...]

During the intensive search, Patrick Sommerlath's traces ended at Drottningholm. His car was parked there, and the castle guard stated he was there when the police searched for him.

At the same time, Carl-Henric Svensson Eldmalm, group leader for the serving section of the Stockholm police region, believes that the Royal Court and police cooperation worked well.

- It has mainly been the case that staff from the police authority have requested information and help to obtain information, which has been left by personnel from the Royal Court.

[...]

Then, new information dropped. According to the guard, Sommerlath had left Drottningholm during the morning and said he was on his way to Los Angeles. Shortly afterwards, different news - he had already left the day before.

- We could not get any more information than that he had travelled, but nothing more straightforward about it, like how. It was then that, based on the observations made around his home, we were still interested enough to get into it to see if he could be there, that they continued to request a search warrant, says Carl Henric Svensson Eldman.

That request was denied by the district court.

[...]

Several police officers have expressed disappointment at the lack of commitment from the court to help find Patrick Sommerlath.

- I know that there have been statements in the media that I myself have read where police sources have expressed frustration about the handling, saying that they should know where this person has been, and so on. From our side, the serving section, I do not recognize that anything like that would have been expressed. Then I cannot answer for individual employees, says Carl Henric Svensson Eldman.

The Royal Court did not know where Patrick Sommerlath was at the time of serving last weekend, Director of the Information Department Margareta Thorgren told Expressen on Friday. Only on Thursday, his lawyer announced that Patrick Sommerlath had been abroad since Tuesday, November 7th.

"The whole story is regrettable and sad in every way," writes Thorgren in a comment.

Excerpts from an article by Cecilia Anderberg for Expressen, published Nov. 18, 2023, at 16:44 and updated at 19:00. Translation and then editing for the sake of clarity is done by yours truly.

Photo: Stella Pictures

#swedish royal family #patrick sommerlath #royal reporting #cecilia anderberg #expressen #231118

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asmuchasidliketo · 5 months ago

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Under the cut: a long article by the author about gay marriage

Source

Here’s How 9 Predictions About Gay Marriage Turned Out

Not often—in fact, pretty much never—have I been lost for words in the gay-marriage debate. But the Supreme Court’s national legalization of marriage equality leaves me gaping and gawping like a guppy. For a homosexual man of my generation, born in 1960 and deeply etched with wounds of self-loathing, discrimination, and bigotry, events in America now feel like the end of a Hollywood movie. Or, perhaps, the beginning a classic rock song, by Queen. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Although most people correctly predicted how the Supreme Court would rule in Obergefell v. Hodges, my overriding feeling is still, in a word: surprise. How—how in the world—did we get here? I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about same-sex marriage over a period of two decades, including many predictions. Perhaps there is insight to be had by looking back on nine of them.

How did I do? A mixed bag. Three of my predictions have been wrong, indeed spectacularly (and revealingly) so. Three have been borne out (also revealingly). The jury remains out on three more. Let’s start with those.

1) “A Supreme Court decision imposing gay marriage will spark a fierce backlash.”

For years, I said the federal courts should butt out of the gay marriage debate and leave it to states, where consensus could be gradually and organically developed. I feared that involving the U.S. Constitution too soon would short-circuit a vital process of social persuasion and deprive us of the deeper kind of civil rights victory that comes only from broad public consensus, not from courts.

It’s too early to know how Obergefell will go down. Republican presidential candidates are mostly hostile. But I believe my prediction, although sensible at the time, has passed its sell-by date. A solid national majority now supports same-sex marriage, and holdout states are moving in that direction. When I asked a couple of well-connected social conservatives whether they or others in their world were likely to go to the barricades in a multi-decade campaign of resistance like the one over abortion, both said no. One of them told me, “We could all see that the battle over same-sex marriage was over, and that was true regardless of how the court ruled in this case.”

Here is my guess: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of the court’s five-member-majority decision, is the most astute politician in America (counting Bill Clinton as retired). He has shown a flawless knack for knowing how far he can bend public opinion without breaking it, and I believe he has correctly judged that the country is ready to accept his decision.

2) “Gay marriage won’t lead to polygamous marriage.”

Predictably, the Court’s decision led to another of countless rounds of forecasts that the marriage-rights movement will now expand to multiples. (Like this.) Again, we’ll see, but I’m willing to stand by what I’ve long said: the case for gay marriage is the case against polygamy, and the public will be smart enough to understand the difference.

Gay marriage is about extending the opportunity to marry to people who lack it; polygamy, in practice, is about exactly the opposite: withdrawing marriage opportunity from people who now have it. Gay marriage succeeded because no one could identify any plausible channels through which it might damage heterosexual marriage; with polygamy, the worries are many, the history clear, and the channels well understood.

I won’t repeat the reasons; you can read some of them in this article by me or this new book by Stephen Macedo, among many other places. Predicting politics is hard, but I believe polygamy, if it even gets traction as a matter of public debate, will be decided as a policy question, not a civil-rights question—and the answer, correctly, will be no.

3) “Same-sex marriage will be part of a broader renewal of the culture of marriage.”

I’ve always believed that cultural conservatives misunderstood the gay-marriage movement: far from being an attack on the culture of marriage, it represented a shift back toward family values by a group that had learned the hard way, through eviction by their own parents and suffering in the AIDS crisis, how important marriage and commitment and family really are.

Perhaps same-sex marriage will not have cultural coattails. I hope and believe, however, that gay America’s embrace of marriage has sparked renewed interest and appreciation among straight Americans. And the marriage-equality movement has warmed many on the social left to a pro-family agenda. It’s possible now, as never before, to be pro-marriage without being anti-gay. And the big message of gay marriage—“Pro-marriage is pro-equality”—resonates across the spectrum. More than 100 prominent Americans, of varied political and partisan stripe, have already signed a statement calling for a new Marriage Opportunity movement building on the cultural momentum of gay marriage. This is only a beginning, but it is a breeze in the right direction.

So those are predictions where the jury remains out. Now for three I was right about.

4) “Marriage will transform gay culture.”

I supported same-sex marriage for many reasons: its message of legal and civic equality; its promise of support and stability for gay couples and their kids; its potential to broaden and universalize the culture of marriage; and more. Right up there was my belief that the gay culture I grew up in was toxic and that marriage could change it.

In the 1970s, when I came of age, being gay seemed to mean leading life in a Mephistophelean subculture that was obsessed with sex and alienated from love. In that world, gay people could have casual sex with multiple strangers, but publicly holding hands and exchanging vows were unthinkable. Gay culture internalized the legal and social repression of committed relationships in ways that twisted our psyches, distorted our communities, and ultimately fed the tragedy of AIDS.

Today’s national debate about a culture of promiscuity and dangerous sexual behavior revolves around drunken straight frat parties, not gay bathhouses. This is partly because of AIDS, which shut down the baths. But it is also largely because of something I was right about: by tying sex, love, and commitment together into a coherent whole, marriage could heal a broken gay culture. The sexual underworld was not an inherent feature of homosexuality, as our critics charged; it was an artifact of life without marriage, and therefore without a destination for love.

Though casual sex and dangerous promiscuity aren’t dead (and never will be, among gays or straights), they no longer define gay culture—and never will again. Gay marriage represents our time’s greatest triumph of social conservatism, as today everyone except social conservatives can see.

5) “Marriage will heal gay kids like Jon.”

My biggest interest in marriage, though, was very personal. I understood as a young boy, long before I had any inkling about homosexuality or sex, that marriage was not for me. And this knowledge was devastating. Every step I took toward sexual love was a step away from marriage and all the social approval and personal stability that went with it. I had seen my own parents’ marriage fail painfully and harmfully (not least to me), and I yearned for the kind of stability and contentment that I saw marriage bring to my friends’ parents. Desperate to keep that option open, I spent 25 years twisting myself into neurotic knots in an effort not to be gay. (You can read about it here.)

When the idea of same-sex marriage came on the scene, I immediately saw it as a form of vaccine against homosexual self-hatred. I imagined how much different, and better, my life would have been had I assumed as a young child that the path to marriage was open to me: that I could love, and be loved, within adult life’s most sustaining and engulfing institution.

Today, young gay children know from the first whispers of sexual awakening that they can progress from their first crush to dating, committed relationships, and a destination in marriage. And for the most part that’s what they are doing. Marriage has been a miracle cure for gay self-hate. Of course being young and gay will always be difficult and confusing for many people. But now it can also be something it never could be before: normal.

6) “Gays will actually get married.”

Actually, I didn’t quite have the nerve to predict this. In fact, I worried about it. In 1996, when I published a big article on gay marriage in The New Republic, I ended it this way: “The biggest worry about gay marriage, I think, is that homosexuals might get it but then mostly not use it. … It is not enough, I think, for gay people to say we want the right to marry. If we do not use it, shame on us.” Twenty years ago, after all, many in the gay-rights movement saw themselves as sexual liberators, rejecting “heteronormative” straitjackets like marriage.

I’m going to put this in the win column, because in my heart I always believed that gay America would embrace marriage. Before long, I saw I was right. A turning point came on that day in San Francisco in 2004, when same-sex marriage was briefly legalized and the world saw gay couples lining up outside the courthouse and around the block. (There are some marvelous photos here.) Massachusetts, legalizing gay marriage a few months later, saw a similar rush to the altar—a rush that has never stopped.

Irving Kristol, the late conservative editor and commentator, used to joke about gays and marriage: “Let them have it, they won’t like it.” Boy, was he wrong. Gay couples have reminded the straight world how much marriage really matters.

And, finally: what was I wrong about? Here are the biggest three surprises:

7) “Gay marriage will take decades, if it ever happens at all.”

When I published my first words advocating same-sex marriage (for a memorable Economist cover and editorial in January of 1996), I thought I was writing for some future generation. Almost nobody supported the idea or even took it seriously. Getting a gay-marriage bill introduced in even a single house of a single state legislature was unthinkable. The courts were rudely dismissive, except in Hawaii, where their openness to the idea sparked a state and national backlash—led by Democrats, notably President Bill Clinton. This was not an uphill battle. It was no battle at all. It was a flea annoying an elephant.

I was astonished when Massachusetts’ supreme court legalized gay marriage there in 2004, only eight years after the notorious Defense of Marriage Act swept through Congress: and I’ve been astonished ever since. I was not only wrong about the pace of change, I was wrong by an order of magnitude. I forever nagged gay-rights advocates to be patient and go slow. They retorted that I was underestimating the country’s movability. It took a few more years, but starting in 2012, when the tide turned, they proved right. I have never been so happy to be wrong.

In my defense, there is no precedent in American history for so rapid a fundamental social change. The folks at Bloomberg put together this nice graphic illustrating the point. Everything I knew about social change foretold a long, slow battle. Why change came so quickly and dramatically will be debated for generations. It could only happen, I think, because a lot of vectors converged. I’ve tried to explain some of them in this 2013 article. Whatever the reasons eventually prove to be, I stand by what I concluded in that piece:

At the end of the day, however, to me an element of mystery remains. America’s change of heart toward its gay citizens is the greatest awakening of mass conscience in the United States since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but it was achieved with far less bloodshed and bitterness. It is born of persuasion and love, not violence and hate. Witnessing this awakening has been the most exhilarating and humbling experience of my life. Explaining it completely is, perhaps, impossible. Or perhaps I just want completely explaining it to be impossible. It feels, after all, like a miracle.

8) “Marriage will retire the gay civil-rights agenda.”

Marriage, it always seemed to me, was the big kahuna for gay equality: so powerful in its symbolism and social reach as to come about only when there was little or nothing else left to be done. I assumed that traditional civil rights protections forbidding anti-gay discrimination by employers, landlords, and commercial businesses would be much less controversial than marriage and would be settled much earlier.

Oddly, I was wrong. Marriage was indeed much more controversial; today most Americans believe, incorrectly, that discrimination based on sexual orientation is already generally illegal. Yet marriage is now legal nationwide, but a majority of states and the federal government still lack antidiscrimination laws!

Indeed, antidiscrimination laws appear to be growing more controversial, because religious organizations see them as coercing participation in gay marriage. Conservative states are lining up to pass laws that shelter religious organizations, people, and businesses from antidiscrimination provisions. Like it or not, marriage or no, the battle over gay civil rights rages on.

9) “Writing about gay marriage will wreck my career.”

This was my father’s prediction, not my own. In 1995, he begged me to reconsider my leap into advocacy for same-sex marriage because, he said, the whole idea was so nutty that by favoring it I would give up my standing as a serious journalist. Twenty years ago, his qualms seemed perfectly reasonable.

I leapt anyway. And opprobrium never came. Instead I found astonishing receptivity. Never, to my knowledge, have I been punished or marginalized for saying my piece about marriage; time and again, my case has been welcomed in America’s most prominent journals—including some leading conservative ones, such as National Review and the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial positions were very different from my own.

In the wake of Obergefell, I received tweets and emails lauding my heroism. The truth is more like the opposite: after taking some risk initially, I never suffered or sacrificed at all. The real heroism was displayed by the culture and country, which opened its ears and ultimately its mind. For all the talk (some of it justified) of political correctness on the left and epistemic closure on the right and shrillness and polarization everywhere, I have learned that America, today as much as ever, or maybe more than ever, is a place where people can be brought to listen, consciences can be pricked, ideas can matter, and small, marginal voices can make themselves heard. That, to me, is a greater miracle even than gay marriage.

This is really sweet

So for my AP United States History class we have to write a research paper; my topic is the gay rights movement in America. Today I began reading one of the books that I chose as a source

And I opened it up to the dedication page and found this

And if you don’t think that’s one of the sweetest and most romantic things ever then get out of my face

#LGBTQ+#Pride Month #Jonathan Rauch #Dash stretcher #I seem to remember Time blocks access to articles after a few views so you get the full article here #❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

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dankusner · 3 months ago

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BOOKS Legal thriller or legal outrage?

Author details case of Dallas man freed 34 years after wrongful conviction

In the introduction, Barbara Bradley Hagerty sums up her book in one tidy sentence:

“Convicting an innocent person is easy; undoing the mistake is almost impossible.”

And it’s a Dallas case she uses to put a face on this tragic reality.

The very title of her book, Bringing Ben Home , telegraphs the ending.

Yes, Ben Spencer ultimately wins his release from prison.

But can you call it a happy ending after 34 wrongful years behind bars?

Hagerty has written an engaging book in the vein of a legal thriller.

But this genre would be more properly called legal outrage.

The emotions of reading Bringing Ben Home, which publishes Tuesday, were already familiar to me.

As a columnist for this newspaper, I wrote more than a dozen columns about Spencer and his frustrating fight for freedom.

In the end, I felt I had not moved the needle one iota toward justice.

Hagerty must have felt the same way when she first detailed Spencer’s case in a 2018 article for The Atlantic .

That piece would later turn into a personal crusade to right a legal wrong.

But we should not go another word without acknowledging another tragedy that eclipses even Spencer’s lost decades.

That’s the death of Dallas business owner Jeffrey Young in a brutal assault and robbery in March 1987.

The grief that befell Young’s family was enormous.

It was then compounded by the legal questions swirling again and again around Spencer’s conviction for the crime.

I know because I heard their anguished complaints after many of my columns.

To her credit, Hagerty repeatedly moves the Young family to the fore in her telling of Spencer’s story.

They are the other victims in this legal miscarriage.

And they remain certain of Spencer’s guilt to this day.

In spite of her certainty otherwise, Hagerty is entirely respectful of the Youngs’ position and their long battle to keep Spencer behind bars.

Their belief, after all, is rooted in something we all would like to share — faith in our cops and our courts.

“We believe in the justice system,” Young’s son, Jimmy, told Hagerty.

If only the Youngs could have seen just how slipshod the police investigation was and how indifferent prosecutors were to serious flaws in the case.

Hagerty lays it all out in infuriating detail.

The twists and turns in Spencer’s quest for justice provide the narrative arc to Bringing Ben Home .

But what makes Hagerty’s book important is its wider focus, setting Spencer’s tragedy in the context of rampant wrongful arrests and convictions across the country.

Hagerty documents myriad ways our criminal justice system can jump the tracks.

Several of them came to play in putting Spencer behind bars from age 22 to 56.

“Eyewitness” used to be synonymous with ironclad certainty.

But Hagerty writes that eyewitness testimony is the No. 1 contributor to wrongful convictions.

Sometimes our eyes do deceive us.

And sometimes, as in Spencer’s case, large cash rewards help witnesses see things they couldn’t possibly have.

Except for DNA testing, we might all still have unshaken faith in our justice system.

But its arrival in 1989 led to thousands of exonerations.

The system’s many faults were exposed.

DNA brought trouble, however, to cases like Spencer’s.

There was no physical evidence against him, not DNA or any other kind.

So he and others were left behind in the murky territory of mere legal persuasion.

Somehow Spencer never gave up, fighting for justice in a dignified, determined way.

He could have been released years earlier by making a confession — first as part of a plea-bargain deal, later as a condition of parole.

He never wavered.

“If that is a requirement for me to get out,” he told me during a jailhouse visit, “I will be locked up for the rest of my life.”

Many people were ultimately responsible for Spencer’s release.

Two stand out.

Dogged investigator Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries, considered the father of the innocence movement, believed in Spencer early on.

And at the end, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot stuck his neck out for Spencer when DAs before him wouldn’t.

Hagerty deserves credit, too.

She began with a journalist’s arms-length objectivity to the case, but became an advocate.

She moved to Dallas for a time and walked the streets of West Dallas in search of new evidence.

Her book is for Spencer, but even more for those still awaiting justice. Bringing Ben Home

A Murder, a Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice Barbara Bradley Hagerty (Riverhead Books, $30)

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fahrni · 4 months ago

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Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been a pretty quiet week in the Fahrni household and at work. I’d say we’re in a steady state at both. Of course it won’t stay that way for long so I’m gonna enjoy it while I can.

Our granddaughter is with us this weekend so let’s see how much writing I’ll get done. 😁

I’ve saved so many interesting links this week. I hope you enjoy them.

Caleb Newton • Bipartisan Report

J. Michael Luttig, a widely consulted former federal judge, is among those harshly condemning the recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to give presidents a layer of legal immunity, meaning protection from prosecution, for certain actions taken in office.

Our Supreme Court has done democracy a big disservice. The immunity they’ve granted Presidents basically gives them carte blanche to commit crimes as part of holding the office.

They’re evil idiots.

Jason Koebler • 404 Media

The real Christina Warren hasn’t been writing these new posts on the zombie TUAW, however. The site’s new owners have stolen her identity, replaced her photo with an AI-generated one, and have been publishing what appear to be AI-generated articles under her byline.

Here’s someone using “AI” in an unethical way. Taking someone else’s work, running it through an LLM to change it, and republishing it under the authors name — with a different author picture — is disgusting.

Victoria Namkung • The Guardian

Whenever Cassie Yoshikawa drives through the Central Valley on the former US Highway 99, she looks for the century-old landmark that symbolizes the midpoint of California: the Palm and the Pine.

You’d think being a lifelong Californian I’d have known about this. I recall passing them but I had no idea they represented the center of California. They’re an official unofficial marker. Folks just did it. Pretty nifty.

Of course they’re going to be ripped out for highway expansion. Goodness knows we need more cars on the road.

Noor Al-Sibai • Futurism

Elon Musk is a man with many brands — but for electric vehicle shoppers, his personal brand has become increasingly toxic.

That’s right, folks are not buying Teslas because Space Karen is such a dick.

I’ve given up on The Musk Files. The man is just so toxic and disgusting his crimes against humanity are too many to enumerate.

Janko Roettgers • Lowpass

This is it for Redbox: The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of Redbox’s corporate parent Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment granted the debtors request to convert it from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, effectively paving the way for shutting down the company and liquidating its assets.

Wow. BluRay and DVD renters are out of luck it seems. Before streaming became ubiquitous we’d rent from Redbox about once a week. We had one at our local grocery store. It was easy and cheap.

There’s a bit of irony in this whole thing. I’ve gone back purchasing BluRay + digital download movies. We use the digital version all the time but have that BluRay backup should the license for the digital copy be revoked.

Dalia Faheid, Monica Garrett and Brandon Miller • CNN

Death Valley sets a new daily record with a searing 128 degrees as West Coast heat wave drags on

Poor California, poor planet. If this keeps up how long will it be before California can no longer produce the fruits and vegetables that feed the world? That’s not hyperbole. California’s San Joaquin Valley really is the breadbasket of the world.

Patrick Wyatt • Code of Honor

I’ve been writing about the early development of Warcraft, but a recent blog post I read prompted me to start scribbling furiously, and the result is this three-part, twenty-plus page article about the development of StarCraft, along with my thoughts about writing more reliable game code.

Don’t look at the date this article was published. Yes, it’s from 2012. 😄

You know I love a good discussion about code architecture, especially when presented in the form of an actual product. Not just some sample code to illustrate the point. He links off to another post discussing a linked list implementation and it’s great reading.

Chris Medland • racer

Lewis Hamilton’s victory in his last British Grand Prix for Mercedes is “like a little fairytale,” according to team principal Toto Wolff.

It’s really nice to see Lewis Hamilton pick up a win in his final season the Mercedes.

Manton Reece

Everyone who has implemented ActivityPub from scratch knows that there are implementation-specific quirks that trip up developers, making compatibility between apps more difficult. Some of these issues are being clarified by the Social Web Community Group. Test suites will help too. Micro.blog has had ActivityPub support for years and we’re still finding edge cases.

So many folks are climbing on the ActivityPub bandwagon and that’s a good thing. Providing more integration with other services and allowing those to be displayed in native clients without changing formats is wonderful.

As much as I’d like to finish writing, my granddaughter is up so I’m gonna hit the publish button now and hang out with her. 😃

Steven Beschloss

The dangerously self-important Roberts insisted that the country is “in the process of the second American Revolution” and further noted that this so-called revolution “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Tom Warren • The Verge

Microsoft is finally rolling out spellcheck and autocorrect for its Notepad app in Windows 11, more than 40 years after the simple text editor was first introduced in Windows in 1983.

Skye Jacobs • TechSpot

Big Tech needs to generate $600 billion in annual revenue to justify AI hardware expenditure

Sarah Kuta • Smithsonian Magazine

While visiting his parents’ recently renovated house in Europe, a man spotted something unusual in one of the floor tiles. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be part of a human jawbone—and it still had a few teeth.

Spire Motorsports

Rodney Childers, a 40-time NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) race winning crew chief and one of the sport’s most respected tacticians, will lead Spire Motorsports No. 7 team and driver Corey LaJoie in 2025.

Felix Salmon • Axios

The Slacker generation might have been slacking off when it came to planning for retirement: Gen X consistently ranks in surveys as the least-prepared group for when they stop earning.

John Stoehr • Raw Story

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) declared Monday he is advocating for Christian nationalism, a far-right ideology that claims there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution, and promotes as a national religion Christian fundamentalism, a hardline, extremist brand of Christianity at odds with the religious beliefs of many Christians across the country

Drew Magary • SFGATE

But again, discretion isn’t this car’s job. This is a loud and lonely car for loud and lonely people. And while I enjoyed driving my Cybertruck, I hope I’m never loud and lonely enough to want to buy one.

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