Pulaski County (AK) circuit judge stays execution of six Arkansas men who were part of an "execution blitz" planned by the Arkansas Governor. (Other court decisions had stayed the execution of two other men.) Judge Griffen's decision deferred to the manufacturer of vecuronium bromide (the drug Gov. Hutchinson says would expire on April 30, thus "necessitating" the execution of eight men over 10 days), which said it did not sell the drug for execution purposes, and also said the state had said it would return the drug, but didn't. This tale sure got strange awful quick. The U.S. Supreme Court could intervene in the matter as early as today.
President Trump says "(s)omeone should look into who paid for" all those Tax Day rallies on Saturday calling for him to release his tax returns. That's typical right-wing hypocrisy -- accuse other people of doing the nasty things you're doing. Besides which, why can't the President of the nation that spies on everyone and doesn't want anyone to have any internet privacy figure this out on his own? Maybe because protestors are actually in it for love of country, and not money? I wonder why that wouldn't occur to him.
Ho hum, the Washington Post utterly fails to disclose that a pro-Syrian strike writer works as a lobbyist for the corporation that made the missiles used in the strike. Worse, they've done this before with this very same writer, only revealing his work on behalf of fossil fuel corporations after he'd peddled climate change denialism in those pages. Wait, let me guess: the "liberal" media needs corporate PR flags because of their expertise! But why should we respect "expertise" in shilling for one's paymaster?
Florida health inspectors have cited the President's Mar-a-Lago resort -- you know, where he conducts official government business, as it were, on the weekends? -- no less than 78 times since April 2014, including 15 times in late January of this year alone. Violations included poorly-refrigerated meat, dirty cutting boards, and a "black/green mold-like substance" in ice machines. And so we learn why he hates regulations -- because they're always showing him up.
Timothy Noah at Politico reminds us that cutting more federal jobs, as the President is so hot to do, would most likely result in outsourcing federal work to more (and more expensive) contract employees. You know, since that's what always happens -- I mean, it'd have to when a nation has roughly the same number of federal workers over half a century while its budget increases more than sixfold. Maybe OMB Director/"wealth transfer" expert Mick Mulvaney will demand 24-7 bodyguards soon, as Mr. Pruitt has done.
Finally, Naomi Klein tells us how to resist President Trump by thinking of him as a brand. You'll see a video (total running time: seven minutes, 31 seconds) that describes the "vulnerabilities" of being "a brand first, and a politician a distant second" -- that brand being "the boss who is so rich he can do whatever he wants." I don't think making Mr. Trump look like someone else's puppet is a good idea -- it makes him seem less threatening! -- but I'm all for boycotting his products, using the Big Stick of Bad PR to get buildings all over the world to dump his name, and generally "being a nuisance" in such a way that he has a much harder time making money. And I'll feel this way even after he bombs his next country! Hey, I'm not doing the bombing, and he's got choices.
UPDATE. The Arkansas Supreme Court has taken Judge Griffen off of that state's death penalty cases, and Gov. Hutchinson still plans to execute two of the eight aforementioned convicts tonight. Also, I erred in saying the vecuronium bromide was the expiring drug; another drug in their execution cocktail, midazolam, is the one that's expiring at the end of the month.
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