IN THE NEWS

Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity.

-Joseph McCarthy

Fact check: Michigan GOP legislator posted about ‘illegal invaders’ at Detroit airport. It was Gonzaga’s March Madness team

By Daniel Dale, © CNN
March 28, 2024

A Republican state representative in Michigan, Rep. Matt Maddock, claimed on social media on Wednesday night that he had photo evidence of “illegal invaders” arriving at Detroit Metro Airport.

One of the two photos Maddock posted on the platform called X, formerly known as Twitter, showed an Allegiant Air plane. The other photo showed three buses. Maddock wrote: “Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?”

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No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.

-Edward R. Murrow

Who did Trump borrow his press tactics from? Joe McCarthy.

Marc Fisher, © The Washington Post
August 11, 2017

Joe McCarthy loved to savage reporters, singling them out by name at his rallies in the 1950s. The Republican senator from Wisconsin knew the work of each reporter who covered his years-long campaign aimed at rooting out the communists who were supposedly seeded throughout the federal government. “Stand up, Dick, and show them what a reporter for a communist newspaper looks like,” he’d say, and the crowds would roar their approval as their plain-speaking hero fingered the enemy, the cause of their country’s woes.

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We find the defendants incredibly guilty.

-Jury, regarding Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel in “The Producers” (1967)

Judge recommends ex-Trump election lawyer John Eastman be disbarred

By Katelyn Polantz and Hannah Rabinowitz, © CNN
March 27, 2024

An attorney discipline judge in California has recommended that ex-Trump election lawyer John Eastman be disbarred, according to an opinion released on Wednesday.

Eastman will lose his ability to practice law within days, because the court’s decision involuntarily revokes his license, according to the opinion.

Judge Yvette Roland’s opinion comes after a lengthy trial about Eastman’s actions as he led some of the efforts for Donald Trump to challenge his 2020 election loss. The opinion serves as a recommendation to the California Supreme Court, which will ultimately decide whether to endorse or reject the punishment. Eastman will have the opportunity to appeal Roland’s ruling.

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What do you got instead of a lawyer? Don’t answer. I know: a lawyer.

-Kirk Douglas in “Detective Story” (1951)

The Zone of Interest is a portrait of guilt. No wonder it has divided opinion in Germany

Fatma Aydemir, © The Guardian
March 27, 2024

There is something unsettling about sitting in a German theatre laughing at Nazis. How unsettling depends on the type of humour that prompts the laughter. Is it meant to set the audience apart from the stage action, or does the laughter stem from the discomfort of proximity? When I saw the satire Nachtland staged recently at Berlin’s prestigious Schaubühne (a production also runs in an English translation at the Young Vic in London until 20 April), I perceived the ripples of laughter filling the room as a sort of embarrassed self-awareness. Like a tense moment of getting caught – a feeling that every storyteller ultimately longs to evoke.

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