Author Archives: cleek

Domestic Terrorism

Three men yesterday pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists for their roles in a white supremacist plot to attack US power grids.

"These three defendants admitted to engaging in a disturbing plot, in furtherance of white supremacist ideology, to attack energy facilities in order to damage the economy and stoke division in our country," Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen said in a Department of Justice announcement.

The defendants are Christopher Brenner Cook, 20, of Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of West Lafayette, Indiana, and of Katy, Texas; and Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. They were charged in US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio and face maximum prison sentences of 15 years. The plea agreements recommend post-prison supervised release of 30 years with computer monitoring and a ban on the use of "online encrypted communication platforms."

"As part of the conspiracy, each defendant was assigned a substation in a different region of the United States," the Justice Department said. "The plan was to attack the substations, or power grids, with powerful rifles. The defendants believed their plan would cost the government millions of dollars and cause unrest for Americans in the region."

A statement of facts the defendants admitted to in their plea agreements described their hope to ignite a "race war":

Admitting Reality

It seems as though the right may finally be starting to drop the charade. This weekend, ACU chairman Matt Schlapp confessed to Steve Bannon, “The conservative movement, which I don’t use, I call it the American movement, ‘cause that’s all it is, we are no longer conservatives, we are Americans who love our founding.”

To put that statement in sharp relief: The chairman of the American CONSERVATIVE Union, who runs the CONSERVATIVE Political Action Conference, whose website states boldly, “We define conservatism,” and whose group calls itself the nation’s “oldest conservative grassroots organization,” and who rates lawmakers on scales of liberal-to-conservative, and who tells supporters to sign up for “conservatism in your inbox,” and “Join the conservative fight,” says “we are no longer conservatives.”

Get ready for Wave 4!

The BA.2 virus -- a subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant -- isn't just spreading faster than its distant cousin, it may also cause more severe disease and appears capable of thwarting some of the key weapons we have against Covid-19, new research suggests.
New lab experiments from Japan show that BA.2 may have features that make it as capable of causing serious illness as older variants of Covid-19, including Delta.
And like Omicron, it appears to largely escape the immunity created by vaccines. A booster shot restores protection, making illness after infection about 74% less likely.

Registration

Elect Republicans, get Gilead.

The most radical of the bunch is Senate Bill 1167, filed by [Oklahoma] state Sen. George Burns (R). Titled the Every Mother Matters Act, or EMMA, it would establish a government database for pregnant people looking to get abortions in Oklahoma. Each pregnant person will call a hotline and be connected with a “pre-abortion resource” assistant, but that person is legally not allowed to refer a patient to an abortion provider. The pregnant person would then be assigned a “unique identifying number” in the database, and abortion providers would be mandated to keep the information for seven years.