And a Friday summary of CHEETO and the courts:

"New York Attorney General Letitia James requested yesterday that former President Trump’s attorneys or the company issuing his $175 million bond “file a motion to justify the surety” within 10 days. It follows the state’s Supreme Court on Wednesday sending the bond paperwork back to Trump’s legal team for correction without providing any details on the errors. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization said this was “pure harassment,” adding that “the bond is fully collateralized and backed by 100% cash.” A hearing has been set for April 22. Shauneen Miranda reports for Axios.

A federal judge yesterday refused to throw out Trump’s classified documents case, turning aside defense arguments that the Presidential Records Act permitted the former president to retain sensitive records after he left office. The ruling marks the second time in three weeks that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has rebuffed defense efforts to derail the case. Cannon’s order, however, kept open the possibility that Trump could still use that argument to defend himself at trial. Eric Tucker reports for AP News; Hannah Rabinowitz, Tierney Sneed, Sara Murray, Jason Morris, and Zachary Cohen report for CNN. 

The judge overseeing Trump’s Georgia election interference case yesterday rejected his attempt to toss the charges under the First Amendment. Trump and some of his co-defendants argued their charges must be tossed because their efforts to contest the 2020 election comprised constitutionally protected “core political speech.” In a 14-page ruling, Judge Scott McAfee wrote, “Even core political speech addressing matters of public concern is not impenetrable from prosecution if allegedly used to further criminal activity.” McAfee added that only a jury can decide whether the speech at issue was carried out with criminal intent. Ella Lee and Zach Schonfeld report for The Hill."

Dementing has a poster boy-CHEETO!

HeavyG said:

fishlessman said:

Your new night light?

just part of the ensuing eclipse, seems fitting.....the end of times, blood baths, beheadings, sacrifices, earthquakes, floods.......

"A New York appeals court judge yesterday rejected Trump’s bid to delay his April 15 hush money criminal trial. Justice Lizbeth González ruled after an emergency hearing where Trump’s attorneys asked that she postpone the trial indefinitely while they seek a new location. They argued that Trump faces “real potential prejudice” in heavily Democratic Manhattan and that the jury pool has been “polluted” by news coverage of Trump’s other recent cases, including his civil fraud judgment and the E. jean Carroll defamation verdict. Michael R. Sisak, Jake Offenhartz, and Jennifer Peltz report for AP News.

The jury questionnaire in Trump’s upcoming hush money criminal trial was revealedyesterday. The questions range from whether prospective jurors listen to podcasts, to whether they believe Trump should be criminally tried in a state court. Jurors will also be asked about what media they consume and the social media they follow. BBC News reports. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution in the 2020 election case, arguing “no person is above the law.” “The effective functioning of the Presidency does not require that a former President be immune from accountability for these alleged violations of federal criminal law,” Smith wrote in a brief, ahead of the Supreme Court reviewing the case on April 25. A written reply to Smith by Trump legal team’s is due next week. Rebecca Falconer reports for Axios."

From Charles Sykes of The Atlantic:"

"Tom Nichols gave fair warning. In last Thursday’s newsletter, he suggestedthat at least one of the folks who would be sitting in for him this month “will help supply your regular servings of curmudgeonly grousing.” That, I suspect, is me, although compared with Tom, I am a sweet summer child of optimism.

We agree, however, that keeping up with Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is both “enervating and exhausting.” By bombarding the public with threats, falsehoods, and vulgarity, Tom warns, “Trump and his team are trying to burn out the part of our brains that can discern truth from fiction, right from wrong, good from evil.”

Four decades ago, Neil Postman prophesied an apocalypse of moral idiocy in the age of mass media. “When a population becomes distracted by trivia,” he wrote, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, “when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

Postman was prophetic, but he couldn’t have had any idea how bad things would get in the age of Trump and Twitter. Faced with Trump’s behavior, America’s norms of decency and truth proved to be far more fragile than many of us imagined. And we don’t have many of those barricades left now, do we?

But the federal judiciary may turn out to be an endangered democracy’s last line of defense. Here again, Trump—who faces 91 felony charges and massive judgments in civil cases for fraud and defamation—is responding with an onslaught of personal attacks and insults, almost daring judges to hold him in contempt for violating the gag orders they have slapped on him. Over the weekend, Trump declared on Truth Social that he was prepared to become “a Modern Day Nelson Mandela” if he was thrown into jail. “It will be my GREAT HONOR.”

In the short run, Trump is trying to delay, disrupt, and discredit the various cases against him. But his attacks are also part of his larger effort to delegitimize the justice system as a whole and to spread fear within the institutions tasked with holding him accountable."

And this regarding the Baltimore Harbour (nod) project:

April 10, 2024: USACE Releases New Sonar Images

With no update from the Unified Command in three days, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released some new sonar images showing the underwater wreckage across the main Fort McHenry shipping channel. Linked here):

https://gcaptain.com/baltimore-bridge-salvage-and-wreck-removal-megathread/?subscriber=true&goal=0_

Food for thought:

"When the trial starts Monday, Trump will finally face accountability

On Monday, barring a legal miracle, the man who thinks so highly of himself that he autographs Bibles will step into a courtroom and become the first former U.S. president to face a jury of his peers in a criminal trial.

He is terrified of that moment. The narcissism at his core has never met accountability.  If he had a lick of confidence, he wouldn’t be paying attorneys – probably with GOP donor money, not his own – to pull every whack-a-doodle legal trick they can muster to delay, delay, delay.

He wouldn’t be spending hours online and at rallies griping and whining and woe-is-me-ing.

He’d be ready, self-assured and eager to clear his name. He’d be tough.

He’s not."

The New York Judge overseeing Trump’s hush money trial said yesterday that the former President cannot attend arguments on presidential immunity at the Supreme Court. It came after Judge Juan Merchan earlier delayed a decision on allowing Trump to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation in May. Under New York state law, Trump is required to attend the entirety of his trial, expected to last weeks or months, unless he gets special judicial permission to be absent. Meanwhile, Judge Merchan set an April 23 hearing date over the prosecution’s request that Trump be held in contempt of court for violating his gag order, following a string of attacks made by Trump against people involved in the case. Ella Lee reports for The Hill; Sareen Habeshian reports for Axios.

what happens when a Cheeto fan is inspired by @lousubcap?
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he turns into a caveman fan.

There's a POTUS/FLATUS joke waiting to be made.