u/D-R-AZ

Interesting and solid listening. Yes we live in very unusual and very disruptive times.

Excerpts:

Trump fired Pam Bondi, maybe the most destructive AG in the history of the United States, because she wasn't able to magically and lawlessly jail his political enemies. On Wednesday night, he told Americans that gas prices would naturally go down when he was finished with his war—much like the way he told the country in March 2020 that COVID would just go away. In reality, China may end up in control of the Strait of Hormuz and with freight passage paid with the Chinese Yuan. America and the world are paying for the incompetent (and petrified) advisers Trump has surrounded himself with. Plus, POTUS threatened war crimes on national television, the Iranian diaspora bet on the wrong horse, and who will be the next Barbie to get the ax?

A man who participated in a training session at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office was arrested for stealing sensitive computer equipment, authorities announced Sunday.

John Panicci was taken into custody Saturday at his home following an investigation into the theft of an encrypted access key from a voter registration terminal at the elections office.

The incident occurred during a volunteer training session on March 19 for the March 24 election. According to detectives, Panicci stole the encrypted access key during the training at the elections office located at 4301 Cherry Road.

While the stolen key was configured only for training databases, officials expressed concern that someone with technical knowledge could reverse-engineer the encryption and reintroduce it into a voter registration kiosk for malicious purposes.

The theft was reported to authorities on March 27, prompting an investigation by Palm Beach County detectives. After identifying Panicci as the suspect and establishing probable cause, investigators obtained both an arrest warrant and a residential search warrant.

During the search of Panicci’s home, detectives recovered the stolen items along with a substantial amount of electronic and digital storage devices. Panicci was transported to the Palm Beach County Jail and booked on charges.

He made his initial court appearance Sunday morning. 

Online jail records show he is being held on a $6,000 bond.

The investigation highlights security concerns surrounding election equipment, even when configured for training purposes only. The elections office had been conducting the volunteer training session in preparation for the March 24 special election.

The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections said Monday that Panicci was a paid poll worker who worked three previous elections — 2016, 2018 and 2024. Panicci was invited back to work on the March 24 election. 

Panicci was terminated the same day as the training session after the encryption key was missing, and officials reviewed surveillance cameras. The supervisor of elections said Panicci never worked the polls during the election held on March 24.

Excerpts:

You needn’t be a law-of-war expert to render judgment on Trump’s threat this week. If he wants to bomb power plants and clean-water facilities, seemingly to punish the Iranians as a way to get leverage over the regime, it’s obviously immoral. But there’s also a term in international law for deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure to inflict suffering on a population. That word is “war crime.”

And if he carries out war crimes with impunity, the West will have lost whatever moral authority remains in its grasp. The Geneva Conventions, the laws of armed conflict, and the architecture of rules designed to spare civilians from the worst of war are symbolic of all that we stand for in the West — of how democracy restrains our inner demons. But those principles are not self-enforcing. They’ve endured because Western nations, led by the United States, treated them as binding on themselves first. The moment America becomes the country that bombs desalination plants and calls it diplomacy, we have not merely broken a rule. We have announced the rules are dead. Every authoritarian watching in Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang will take notice.

Excerpts:

He wanted it big. He wanted lots of gold, lots of marble. He wanted visitors awestruck by his architectural expansion of the country’s symbolic seat of power. “They should sense the strength and grandeur of the German Reich as they walk from the entrance to the reception hall,” Adolf Hitler told his chief architect, Albert Speer, outlining his plans for an extension to the old Reich chancellery, at Wilhelmstrasse 77 in Berlin.

Hitler wanted a Triumphbogen, a triumphal arch, twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

In the coming years, Hitler would employ his Reich chancellery extension as a marble-and-gold-gilt symbol for impressing celebrities, most notably film and stage actors, and for intimidating foreign dignitaries.

"Trump has demanded Republicans send him a bill to fund DHS by June 1. Do Johnson and his party plan to drag out the shutdown, and the problems with ICE and Border Patrol, until then?"

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Trump has been frustrated with Bondi on multiple fronts, sources said. In particular, he is upset over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and he has also fumed that she has not investigated or prosecuted enough of his political opponents.

Excerpts:

In the Battle of Copenhagen, Nelson and the British fleet attacked and defeated Denmark’s navy as it formed a protective blockade outside the harbor.

At the center of the fighting was the Danish flagship, the Dannebroge, commanded by Commodore Olfert Fischer.

Marine archaeologists began surveying the area late last year, targeting a spot thought to match the flagship’s final position.

Experts say the sizes of the wooden parts found match old drawings. Dendrochronological dating, the method of using tree rings to establish the age of wood, match the year the ship was built. They also say the darkened dig site is full of cannonballs, a hazard for divers navigating waters darkened by clouds of silt stirred up from the seabed.

The top 3 of 10 Key Takeaways:

1. Senior officials in Tehran have signaled that they seek to use the Strait of Hormuz and energy flows around it as points of leverage that Iran can use after the war to extract concessions and secure strategic aims. They have also signaled that they will not accept a ceasefire or halt disruptions to international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz unless the United States and Israel cease all attacks on Iran.
2. Iran has continued attacks on shipping amid discussions in Tehran about Iran’s leverage over the strait. Iran attacked the Panamanian-flagged AQUA 1 oil tanker, leased by Qatari state-owned energy firm, 17 nautical miles northwest of Ras Laffan, Qatar.
3. These statements indicate that Iran could continue to use its proven ability to disrupt shipping in the strait after the war ends to deter the United States and its partners or compel them to avoid actions that would have negative impacts on Iran.

hear! hear!

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Preventing nuclear proliferation will remain a defining US interest in Iran. This is where the comparison to Afghanistan is less appropriate; however, the comparison to Pakistan becomes even more so. For several decades, US leaders from both sides of the aisle have worked to manage the challenge posed by nuclear weapons that sit in the hands of a military-dominated, politically unstable state with Islamist currents running through its security services. From addressing the A.Q. Khan proliferation network to contingency planning for loose nuclear material, the Pakistan nuclear problem has demanded a US response with a unique blend of pressure and engagement. If a weakened, IRGC-dominated Iran retains nuclear ambitions, Washington will face a dilemma Pakistan has long posed: how to constrain a nuclear program inside a fragile state resistant to traditional nonproliferation tools.

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"...both Putin and Trump went to war without any authorization from the UN Security Council or any other international organization. When NATO and Middle East partners bombed Libya in 2011, they did so after obtaining UN Security Council approval (UNSC resolutions 1970 and 1973). When President George H.W. Bush led the invasion of Iraq to liberate Kuwait, he also had the blessing of the United Nations Security Council. So too did his son, George W. Bush, when he launched his war against Afghanistan in 2001. Even before invading Iraq in 2003, President Bush and his administration tried to gain approval from the UN Security Council. While they failed there, they succeeded in the U.S. Senate, where a vast majority of the senators (77) voted in favor of war. At the beginning, most Americans also supported the war. Trump and Putin had no support from the United Nations for their wars of choice. Trump did not even bother to try to convince Congress or the American people of the wisdom of his war. Even Putin went through the charade of getting parliamentary approval for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (It was a charade because the Russian parliament is completely subservient to Putin.)"

Excerpts:

The death of a nearly blind refugee from Myanmar who was found on a Buffalo street in February — five days after Border Patrol agents left him at a doughnut shop — has been ruled a homicide, authorities said Wednesday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul similarly called for accountability for everyone involved and said her aides spoke to the district attorney Wednesday afternoon.

Exerpts:

Ukraine's General Staff has decided to scale back overseas training for its troops and—despite the constant threat of Russian missile and drone strikes—move it to Ukraine.

According to Militarnyi and LB.ua on 20 March, General Staff's Deputy Chief for Doctrine and Training Yevhen Mezhevikin cited logistical concerns and a lack of relevant combat experience among Western instructors. "They are disconnected from our realities, from the current combat operations," he said.

Ukraine is evolving its armed forces on the basis of hard-earned experience. Every tactical adaptation is the result of soldiers killed or wounded, equipment damaged or destroyed, territory lost or liberated.

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On Tuesday evening, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ... decided that Trump’s speech to his supporters at the Ellipse and his communications with other officials can all be considered campaign activity. The ruling allows a lawsuit from police officers and Democratic politicians to continue—and opens the door to other similar lawsuits.

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Trump is engaging in election denialism theater. It makes voters of all sides mistrust the election process and the virtues of democracy.

Trump’s executive order, seems aimed to sow chaos in elections and depress turnout.

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“The secretive and uncompetitive nature of ICE’s warehouse contracting not only risks wasting billions in taxpayer dollars but also triggers corruption concerns,”

"... the rush to build the facilities could “exacerbate” the same inhumane conditions at some ICE centers. “These warehouses were built to hold products, not people …"

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The American Heart Association's new nutrition guidance, released on Tuesday, emphasized a dietary pattern rich in vegetables, ​fruits and whole grains, prioritizing plant-based protein over meat. It also suggested limiting the ‌use of sugar, salt and ultra-processed foods and replacing full fat dairy with non-fat and low-fat dairy.

U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year announced a new slate of dietary ​guidelines that recommended Americans eat more protein from both animal ​and plant sources, and encouraged the consumption of full-fat dairy.

In contrast ⁠to the federal government's recommendation of use of beef tallow and ​consumption of red meat, the AHA pushed for plant-based proteins such as legumes, ​nuts and seeds, choosing low-fat or fat-free dairy, and, when consuming red meat, selecting lean cuts, avoiding processed forms and keeping portions small.

Lead Paragraph:

It’s a bit too on the nose, metaphorically speaking, that the latest example of the utter prostration of our national legislature before an unhinged and power-mad executive branch concerns the failure to competently manage air travel. Senseless holding patterns, traffic bottlenecks, unscheduled delays, and pointless marathon waits in line—the many indignities of flying almost perfectly mirror the business model of Congress in the Trump 2.0 era.