Sunday Serendipity

and the guardian:

Pittsburgh cartoonist says he was fired after 25 years for making fun of Trump

Rob Rogers lost his job at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Thursday in move he says ‘goes against what a free press is all about’

by cartoonist rob rogers

jace, thank you.  happy father’s day to you and all our other trail papas

BiD, here’s another
from the guardian:
Prominent Democrat makes urgent plea to end family separations: ‘It’s on us all’

Ted Cruz challenger Beto O’Rourke says nation will be judged on whether it takes action against ‘un-American’ policy

 
Responsibility for the separation of children from parents at the US border is “on all” Americans, a prominent Texas Democrat said on Sunday, Father’s Day, and “not just the Trump administration” which has implemented the controversial policy.
 
“I’d like to say it’s un-American but it’s happening right now in America,” said Beto O’Rourke, a US representative, who in November will challenge Ted Cruz for his Senate seat. Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, he added: “It is on all of us – not just the Trump administration. This is on all of us.”
[….]
O’Rourke organized a Father’s Day march to Tornillo, Texas, to what has been described as a “tent structure” for 16- and 17-year-olds detained at at the border. Some there had crossed the border on their own, O’Rourke told CNN. Others had made the journey with their parents and then been forcibly taken from them.
 
Those minors were now in Tornillo, he said, “with no idea no idea when or if they will see their mothers or their fathers, on this Father’s Day, again”.
 
“This is inhumane,” O’Rourke said, adding: “We will we be judged for what we do or what we fail to do now.”
Earlier this week O’Rourke’s November opponent, Cruz, defended the Trump policy, saying: “When you see reporters, when you see Democrats saying, ‘Don’t separate kids from their parents,’ what they’re really saying is don’t arrest illegal aliens.”
 
Speaking to reporters at a Republican convention in Texas on Saturday, Cruz said: “There’s no doubt that the images that we’ve seen of children, and children being separated from their parents, are heartbreaking. They were heartbreaking when Obama was president.
 
“I visited the Obama camps that he set up to detain little boys and little girls who crossed the border illegally. Illegal immigration produces human tragedies that are wrong.”
 
On Father’s Day, Republicans tweeting messages about their fathers while backing or staying quiet on the Trump separation policy were prey to accusations of hypocrisy. Cruz tweeted a tribute of his own, writing: “My dad has been my hero my whole life. Here’s to wishing a very happy #FathersDay to all the dads out there!”
 

One Republican congressman from Texas, who visited the Tornillo camp, said on Saturday it was “a symptom of a flawed strategy”.
 
“In the land of the free and home of the brave we shouldn’t use kids as deterrence,” Will Hurd said.
 

calling their bluff?

wapo:

FBI agent removed from Russia probe for anti-Trump texts says he’s willing to testify before Congress
The FBI agent who was removed from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election for sending anti-Trump texts intends to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and any other congressional committee that asks, his attorney said in a letter made public Sunday.
 
Peter Strzok, who was singled out in a recent Justice Department inspector general report for the politically charged messages, would be willing to testify without immunity, and he would not invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in response to any question, his attorney, Aitan Goelman, said in an interview Sunday. Strzok has become a special target of President Trump, who has used the texts to question the Russia investigation.
 
Goelman said Strzok “wants the chance to clear his name and tell his story.”
 
“He thinks that his position, character and actions have all been misrepresented and caricatured, and he wants an opportunity to remedy that,” the lawyer said.
If Strzok were to testify publicly, the hearing could be explosive, perhaps exposing new details about investigators’ thinking on some of the FBI’s most high-profile probes.

[….]
Goelman said he had not discussed any dates with lawmakers on when Strzok might appear at a hearing. Politico reported that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) had started the process to subpoena Strzok, though Goelman said that the lawmaker had done so without having asked whether Strzok might appear voluntarily.
 
Goelman, who is with the firm Zuckerman Spaeder, wrote in a letter to Goodlatte that a subpoena would be “wholly unnecessary.”
“Special Agent Strzok, who has been fully cooperative with the DOJ Office of Inspector General, intends to voluntarily appear and testify before your committee and any other Congressional committee that invites him,” Goelman wrote.
 

[…]
Goelman said that if asked to testify, Strzok “intends to answer any question put to him, and he intends to defend the integrity of the Clinton email investigation, the Russia collusion investigation to the extent that that’s a topic, and his own integrity.”
 
He said there was “no question” that Strzok regrets sending anti-Trump messages, but added: “I think what he was doing is expressing his political opinions in what he thought was a private text conversation, and he regrets that this has been weaponized by people with political motivations to try to discredit the Mueller investigation.”
 
Goelman said that Strzok was not willing to use his official position to affect Trump’s chances of being elected and that “his political conviction that a Trump presidency would be disastrous for American national security is not based on his bias, it was based on information that was available to him, and his perspective on American national security.”
[…continues…]

BiD, tip of the iceberg.  he’s just the known victim.  think of all the unsuspecting millions down stream who’ve had Monsanto products wash into their drinking waters and into their food from soils drenched in the stuff.