Comment on First Draft: Today in Politics

Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show went on site of the Trump trials this week to keep his finger on the pulse of the MAGA nut jobs. And they were plentiful. The prize winner had to be the old lady that Klepper kept going back to in his video. She claimed to be at the J6 insurrection, she thought the QAnon Shaman was particular intelligent, very articulate and was able to smell shit a mile away.

Witchfinder Sam Alito has let stand a ruling from the 5th Circuit that essentially ends mass protests in three southern states: [T]he Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act. The article dryly notes that this is personal: For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rogue police station in 2016. We now turn to the Pod Saves Whatevs newsletter because DeRay McKesson is one of their hosts:read more

Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell reached the pinnacle of hypocrisy when claimed the Senate had reached an "unfortunate precedent" over the House impeachment of Mayorkas, ignoring his own past behavior. After the Senate dismissed two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, the turtle was upset. We've set a very unfortunate precedent here. This means that the Senate can ignore, in effect, the House's impeachment.

In the last week, highly anticipated songs by Drake and Taylor Swift appeared to leak online, sparking enormous reactions. Massive Reddit threads spawned, dissecting musical choices. Meme videos were created simulating other rappers’ reactions to being dissed by Drake. The rapper Rick Ross even responded to the song’s bars about him with a diss track of his own.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Under the Bridge. On the evening of Nov. 14, 1997, 14-year-old Reena Virk was invited to a party near the Craigflower Bridge in Saanich, a suburb of Victoria, British Columbia. She never returned home, and was later discovered to have been ruthlessly beaten and killed by a group of her peers. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Based on late author Rebecca Godfrey’s best-selling 2005 book of the same name, Hulu’s new true-crime miniseries Under the Bridge dramatizes the before and after of Reena’s brutal murder, which sent shockwaves throughout Canada.

Guitar legend Dickey Betts, who co-founded the Allman Brothers Band and wrote their biggest hit, “Ramblin’ Man,” has died. He was 80. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer died at his home in Osprey, Florida, David Spero, Betts’ manager of 20 years, confirmed. Betts had been battling cancer for more than a year and had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Spero said. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “He was surrounded by his whole family and he passed peacefully.