Random News: November 13, 2024

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s November 13, 2024, and it’s a Wednesday. Waking up today feeling the stress of life, and I’m going to appreciate doing these news bullets today more than usual; it helps refocus my thoughts and distracts from all the other shit, believe it or not.

• A side note before we get started: I’m really enjoying the Bluesky social net. It’s like, the functionality parts I liked about Twitter before I stopped using it, and the lack of insane assholes that I like about Threads.
• They’ve had over a million new people register there in the week since the election. Maybe ya wanna check it out.
• I also found myself thinking yesterday evening about the election itself. It feels both like it just happened and was also 74 years ago.
• I know a lot of you are still feeling super low… I talk to a lot of you, and see even more of your posts from folks I don’t talk to. I’m not going to even try to cheer you up.
• I will, though, say that I’m seeing the starting stages of a lot of people wanting to take their negative energy and find some constructive outlets to use it.
• There may be elements of the future that you haven’t been able to conceive, or are too mad/sad/disappointed to try and consider yet.
• But we will find ways to gather together and fight back. There’s a lot of us. Like, just under half the country. And we’re the smart ones.
• Kidding. Or am I?
• Let’s do some news, starting with breaking info from this morning.
• Special counsel Jack Smith and his team plan to resign before Dumpy takes office. Smith’s office has been evaluating the best path for winding down its work on the two outstanding federal criminal cases against Dump, as the Justice Department’s longstanding position is that it cannot charge a sitting president with a crime.
• Welp, there you have it. There is no justice, something we knew but is still disappointing.
• The only remaining question is whether Smith's final report, detailing his charging decisions, will be made public before Inauguration Day. The special counsel's office is required under Justice Department regulations to provide a confidential report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who can choose to make it public.
• It’s certain that whoever the incoming attorney general is, they won’t release Smith's final report if Garland doesn’t, and I have zero faith in Garland at this point.
• Moving on.
• Yesterday a federal judge sentenced Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guard member, to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to leaking highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine.
• We covered news of this 22-year-old kid when he was first caught. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act following his arrest in the most consequential national security case in years.
• This was the guy who was impressing his other pals with his access to classified docs via the social media platform Discord.
• The 15-year sentence is heavy, but the government tends to set examples of people who were placed in positions of trust and then purposefully violated it.
• Moving on.
• As we assumed would happen in a country that legally separates church and state, a new Louisiana requirement that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public classrooms was shot down by a federal judge yesterday as “unconstitutional on its face.”
• U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles in Baton Rouge ordered state education officials not to take steps to enforce it, and to notify all local school boards in the state of his decision.
• He said the law had an “overtly religious” purpose, and rejected state officials’ claims that the government can mandate the posting of the Ten Commandments because they hold historical significance to the foundation of U.S. law.
• His opinion noted that despite their excuse for the “historical” nature of the Commandments, the law didn’t include requirements for posting any other foundational documents — including the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
• DeGravelles said the law amounts to unconstitutional religious government coercion of students: “As Plaintiffs highlight, by law, parents must send their minor children to school and ensure attendance during regular school hours at least 177 days per year.”
• Good. There’s still some sanity in this country.
• That’s a good transition to the insanity of our incoming executive administration.
• I guess we’ll start with Dumpy’s latest appointee. He’s picked co-anchor of "Fox & Friends Weekends,” Pete Hegseth, to be secretary of defense.
• So this anchor of a weekend entertainment show is about to run the largest, most powerful bureaucracy in the… history of human civilization. I’m not exaggerating.
• I thought Hegseth’s name sounded familiar, and I was right. In 2019, he said on air that he never washes his hands and can’t remember washing them once in the past 10 years, stating, “Germs are not a real thing. I can’t see them.”
• It’s Dumpy’s most controversial nomination yet, and will face major opposition. But with 52 Senate seats, Dump has a pretty good chance of pushing it through.
• Let’s get the other news out of the news in regard to the approaching nightmare. 
• Dumples the Clown announced yesterday that he’s tapped Elon Musk to lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency. Yes, they purposefully made the acronym “DOGE” to have an association with Internet memes.
• That’s the kind of people we’re dealing with now.
• Musk will apparently be working with another extraordinary weirdo, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, in this unofficial government department that "will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform.” 
• It remains unclear if this “unofficial” department will have any actual authority beyond an advisory role, or if any of its budget is being paid by U.S. taxpayers.
• One other note on Dumpy’s appointments. He’s named former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to serve as the next ambassador to Israel.
• If you thought things were going badly for Palestinians before — and they were — Huckabee is determined to make things much worse.
• He said recently that Hamas should not be negotiated with and that the only solution for the war would be their complete surrender.
• He said, “This is like trying to negotiate with the Nazis in World War II. You just don’t. You beat them. You defeat them. You eradicate them.”
• Let’s move on.
• In today’s edition of “Hey, You Have Rights!”, let’s take a look at the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Yes, as in, “I’ll plead the fifth.”
• It’s one of the longer ones, and reads…
• “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
• There are five clauses in that awkward sentence. In order: the Grand Jury Clause; the Double Jeopardy Clause; the Self Incrimination Clause; the Due Process Clause; and the Takings Clause.
• It covers a lot of ground, that 5th Amendment. And all have been put before the Supreme Court on many occasions.
• The Grand Jury Clause says that in very serious crimes, you can’t be indicted by some random person who’s out to get you; they need a grand jury to convene, be presented evidence, and only then can the indictment ( a formal legal accusation of crime) be issued.
• The Double Jeopardy Clause says that after you’re acquitted of a crime, they can’t keep putting you on trial for the same crime until they get a guilty verdict.
• The most well-known part of the 5th Amendment is the Self Incrimination Clause. You can’t be forced to incriminate yourself. If you’re unaware, the legal protection against compelled self-incrimination was directly related to the question of torture for extracting information and confessions.
• The Due Process Clause is perhaps the most important here. It deals with the administration of justice and acts as a safeguard from arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property by the government outside the sanction of law.
• Finally, the Takings Clause limits the power of eminent domain by requiring "just compensation" be paid if private property is taken for public use. So, they can’t just demolish your house and put in a freeway offramp; they have to pay you first. And then demolish your house. It’s better than nothing.
• There are many more nuances to the 5th Amendment, and like I said, it’s been brought up in dozens of landmark cases in the Supreme Court over the years.
• And now you know that hey, you have rights!
• In other news…
• A federal jury found that a Virginia-based defense contractor shared responsibility with the U.S. Army for abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, awarding $42 million in damages Tuesday to three Iraqi men who said they were tortured there two decades ago.
• This verdict marks the first time a civilian contractor has been held legally responsible for the inhumane treatment of detainees at the prison west of Baghdad, where U.S. forces questioned hundreds of Iraqis after toppling Saddam Hussein.
• CACI International employees worked as interrogators at Abu Ghraib under contract with the U.S. government. Their interrogators would direct military personnel to “soften up” detainees before they were questioned, leading to abuses across the facility.
• Photographs of Army soldiers gleefully abusing detainees drew widespread condemnation upon their release in 2004.
• Unsurprisingly, the company is expected to appeal.
• And now, The Weather: “Business of the Attitude” by Dana Gavanski
• From the Sports Desk… we haven’t covered the NHL much yet in the start of their 2024-25 season, but there’s a very noteworthy things going on.
• The Winnipeg Jets made NHL history last night with their 6-3 victory at the New York Rangers, becoming the first team to win 15 of its first 16 games in a season.
• This nothing short of remarkable. The Jets became the fourth team since 1967-68 to lead the NHL in goals for and against per game through their first 15 games. They've scored five or more goals in half their games.
• And they've scored five or more goals in half their games. That’s crazy.
• Today in history… Louis VII of France and Adela of Champagne, my 28th great-grandparents, get married (1160). The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, before moving to the other side of Elliott Bay to what would become Seattle (1851). The United States Supreme Court upholds mandatory vaccinations for public school students in Zucht v. King (1922). The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City (1927). The Supreme Court of the United States declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal (1956). The Soviet Union completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles (1947). Anti-war protesters in Washington, D.C. stage a symbolic March Against Death (1969). The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of Vietnam War veterans (1982). Voters in Sweden decide to join the European Union (1994). Hawaii legalizes same-sex marriage (2013). Islamic State operatives carry out a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris, including suicide bombings, mass shootings and a hostage crisis (2015).
• November 13 is the birthday of novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850), SCOTUS justice Louis Brandeis (1856), Mexican railroad brakeman Jesús García (1881), actor Jack Elam (1920), film/TV producer Garry Marshall (1934), musician Ray Wylie Hubbard (1946), actor Joe Mantegna (1947), musician Terry Reid (1949), actor Chris Noth (1954), actress Whoopi Goldberg (1955), NFL player Vinnie Testaverde (1963), TV host Jimmy Kimmel (1967), and actor Gerard Butler (1969).

We’re at a point where there’s so much going on, I find myself getting to the end of this report and being aware that I haven’t covered a multitude of other stories, but simply don’t have the time. I do try and pick and choose what’s most important, but… that’s also a subjective choice. Anyway, try and stay informed, even about the things you’d rather not know about. Thee’s a lot of it. Enjoy your day.