A man suspected of killing four people at a Montana bar and evading capture for a week while hundreds of law enforcement officers searched for him in the nearby mountains faces four counts of murder, according to court records....
"Authorities have not commented on a potential motive for the 45-year-old former soldier. His niece has said Brown long struggled with mental illness."
"David Taylor, 53, and Michelle Brannon, 56, were arrested in North Carolina and Florida on Wednesday for their roles in what authorities are calling a "forced labor organization." The crimes victimized individuals in Texas, Michigan, Florida and Missouri."
It was a vaguely Christian cult enslaving workers and sexually abusing members.
The US economy’s rebound in the second quarter was stronger than previously reported, thanks to consumers who stepped up their spending despite jitters over President Donald Trump’s trade war.
"Gross domestic product, which measures all the goods and services produced in the economy, registered an annualized rate of 3.3% from April through June, the Commerce Department said in its second estimate released Thursday. That’s up from the 3% rate in the first estimate."
Rising GDP does not necessarily mean increased federal revenues, but it seems a good bet. Budgeting based on presumed Laffer Curve results is not wise, but Trump’s audacious gamble may work.
The bad news keeps coming. 8/28/25 AP:
" WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans sought unemployment benefits last week as employers appear to be holding onto their workers even as the economy has slowed.
"Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 23 dropped 5,000 to 229,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday."
"The writer expresses a desire to “catch a big assembly on the first day of school” and the intention to avoid parents as they may be armed."
Be armed wherever you go. Mass murderers are afraid of victims returning fire.
"I look pretty, smart and modest. I think I want to wear something like this for my shooting," added the 23-year-old, who identified as a transgender woman. "I hate my face. I hate when I can see it. I don't want to be seen.""
I think the word they wanted was transliterated, not translated. Someone needed to be steered away from this confusion a lot earlier.
"The analysis, reviewing every crime incident reported to the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department from Aug. 7 through Aug. 25, also shows violent crime is down in comparison to the five-year average for the same dates... "
I am guessing this must be pretty persuasive evidence for CBS News to admit that Orange Man Bad did something right.
Rather than use the TurboTax software in 2022 and 2023, wed hired one of their "experts." For 2024, we went back to using TurboTax Desktop. Their "expert" misfiled both years. We oweed Idaho about $3000 in taxes, interest, and penalties.
I complained about paying hundreds of dollars to have their "experts" do it wrong and asked them to refund those fees and the interest and penalties. After several not entirely useful exchanges of emails, they needed to talk to me on the phone. This should have been a warning.
Their tax expert essentially started listing defects in the return their "experts" screwed up. Among them was that a PTP (publicly-traded partnership) has income in many states besides Idaho. I need to file state income tax returns in all 40-something states. The income in each state is below $400. It seemed unlikely that these states really cared. He was insistent that New York and California required a filing even for $1 of income by a nonresident, So I looked up the New York State webpage on this:
If you are a New York State nonresident you must file Form IT-203, Nonresident and Part-Year Resident Income Tax Return, if you meet any of the following conditions:
- You are a nonresident with New York source income and your New York adjusted gross income Federal amount column (Form IT-203, line 31) exceeds your New York standard deduction.
- You want to claim a refund of any New York State, New York City, or Yonkers income taxes withheld from your pay.
- You want to claim any of the refundable or carryover credits available.
- You had a net operating loss for New York State personal income tax purposes for the tax year, without having a similar net operating loss for federal income tax purposes.
The standard deduction:
2024 standard deductions
Standard deductions Filing status Standard deduction amount ① Single (and can be claimed as a dependent on another taxpayer's federal return) $3,100 ① Single (and cannot be claimed as a dependent on another taxpayer's federal return) $8,000 ② Married filing joint return $16,050 ③ Married filing separate return $8,000 ④ Head of household (with qualifying person) $11,200 ⑤ Qualifying surviving spouse $16,050
When I pointed this out to him, he insisted that he was an expert on this. Of course, their "experts" have already shown themselves not experts at all. The goal of this guy was to waste my time and intimidate me into abandoning a claim for less than $1000.
UPDATE: Refund on the way.
There are now more than 4m guns in the community – almost double the number recorded in the years after the Port Arthur massacre that prompted a national crackdown"
8/25/25 Federalist discusses evidence of fraud in both Obamacare programs and Medicaid:
The first data point came via the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which released data from exchange insurers’ risk adjustment submissions. The spreadsheet contains enough numbers to make one’s head spin, but two sets of numbers — lines 4 and 7 of the spreadsheet — stand out. Those two lines show that the percentage of enrollees in Bronze and heavily subsidized Silver plans without claims rose from roughly one-quarter (29 percent and 23 percent, respectively) in 2019 to 40 percent last year.
To some, that change may not seem like a big deal — after all, isn’t it a good thing when people don’t make claims on their health coverage? But it suggests that, after four years of Biden administration policies, a growing number of individuals were being auto-enrolled (and/or automatically reenrolled) into taxpayer-funded “free” health coverage that they did not want, need, or use.
Indeed, the spreadsheet shows that 39% of enrollees made no claims in 2024. There is another explanation. The deductibles on these plans are enormous. The weighted average for 2024 was about $2700. If you are a typical young person, you might well have such a small need for medical care that you decide to not make a claim unless you expect to meet the deductible; you may also take advantage of lower costs from self-pay. Indeed, one of the reasons that ACA mandated insurance for all was that young people would not enroll, because of a perceived lack of need. This would make insurance for older people even more prohibitive than it is.
Another part of the article is more concerning:
According to the auditor’s report, from February 2019 through this March, Louisiana paid at least $9.6 million providing Medicaid coverage to 1,072 beneficiaries after their date of death. Because Louisiana, like most states, runs its Medicaid program through managed care organizations, those insurers get paid per month for every enrollee, whether the enrollee sees the doctor or not. If the state Medicaid agency does not properly report a beneficiary’s death, the insurer will get paid in perpetuity for “covering” that dead enrollee.
That’s exactly what happened in Louisiana. For the cases examined, insurers were paid a median of 418 days — that’s nearly 14 months — after the beneficiary had died. For the 168 deceased beneficiaries the auditor identified via the Social Security Death Master File, insurers had been receiving payments for a median of 799 days — more than two years.
Hughes v. Lee (Tenn.Ch. 2025). (Since I expect to move there next year, this is slightly more interesting._ This is a bit odd. Chancery courts are an odd medieval leftover. Most states no longer have chancery courts, having merged them with their regular courts of law. I am unclear why this is before a chancery court, which normally deals with probate questions. The question in this case was whether Tennessee law prohibiting carry in parks and another ban on "going armed" in public places violated the Second Amendment. Do parks qualify as "sensitive places"?
Accordingly, this Court holds that the Going Armed Statute violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and therefore also violates Article I, Section 26 of the Tennessee Constitution. With respect to the Going Armed Statute, Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment is hereby GRANTED, and Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment is hereby DENIED....
Accordingly, we conclude the Parks Statute violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and therefore also violates Article I, Section 26 of the Tennessee Constitution. Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment is hereby GRANTED with respect to the Parks Statute, and Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment is consequently DENIED.
I cannot find this decision online yet. Chancery court makes me wonder if some clerk is trying to figure out how to translate it from Norman French. /sarc
Higbe v. James (N.Y.N.D. 2025):
Guided by the Supreme Court's holding in Bruen, the Court grants Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and concludes that the New York firearm statute is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment as applied to Plaintiffs Votruba and Harris. As noted by the district court in California, "the State cannot point to a single law from the Founding or framing tradition that wholesale blocked nonresidents from participating in a general firearms licensing scheme." Hoffman, 2025 WL 1811853, at *5. The Court agrees that "[o]pening the application process to nonresidents does not limit [New York's] ability to regulate who receives a [] license based on other measured parameters. Nonresidents are simply afforded the same chance guaranteed to residents to exercise their Second Amendment rights."
The judge did not require New York to recognize licenses from other states but requiring them to process non-resident license applications is a big win for anyone who regularly travels there.
If this seems minor: remember that Florida originally was shall issue for everyone. Over time, I would not discount New York facing reality.
But this 8/21/25 BBC News article make you go hmmm:
A US Navy sailor in California has been convicted of espionage for selling secrets to a Chinese agent who recruited him through social media.
Jinchao Wei, 25, was convicted of six charges, including espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage and unlawful export of classified data about US Navy ships.
He was paid more than $12,000 (£8,920) over an 18-month period by a Chinese intelligence officer who approached him in February 2022 for information about the USS Essex, which he served on, as well as other naval vessels.
Wei, also known as Patrick Wei, was arrested in August 2023 on espionage charges as he arrived for work on the amphibious assault ship.
"The defendant's actions represent an egregious betrayal of the trust placed in him as a member of the US military," US Attorney Adam Gordon said in a statement after the verdict was read.
"By trading military secrets to the People's Republic of China for cash, he jeopardised not only the lives of his fellow sailors but also the security of the entire nation and our allies."...
A text exchange between Wei and his mother was presented to show that he understood he was committing espionage.
"Other Chinese serving in the US Navy are still trying to figure out how to make extra money, and driving cabs. Whereas I am just leaking secrets," Wei texted his mother.
She responded: "Good job!"...
Wei was arrested alongside Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, who was arrested on charges of accepting more than $14,800 for sending sensitive photos and videos to a Chinese intelligence officer.
Prosecutors said Zhao transmitted "plans for a large-scale maritime training exercise in the Pacific theatre, operational orders and electrical diagrams and blueprints for a Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar system located in Okinawa, Japan".
Zhao was found guilty last year and sentenced to 27 months in prison.
NEW YORK (AP) — An appeals court has thrown out the massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump, ruling Thursday in New York state’s lawsuit accusing him of exaggerating his wealth.
The decision came seven months after the Republican returned to the White House. A panel of five judges in New York’s mid-level Appellate Division said the verdict, which stood to cost Trump more than $515 million and rock his real estate empire, was “excessive.”
After finding that Trump engaged in fraud by flagrantly padding financial statements that went to lenders and insurers, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him last year to pay $355 million in penalties. With interest, the sum has topped $515 million.
The total — combined with penalties levied on some other Trump Organization executives, including Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. — now exceeds $527 million, with interest.“
While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton wrote in one of several opinions shaping the appeals court’s ruling.
It is an article of faith in some circles that Trump is a rapist and conman. I suspect very little to none of of this weird fraud claim will survive appeals. When the victims offer to testify on behalf of who supposedly victimized them, it is not much of a case.
The Cadillac has a WiFi using the car's cellphone. It is faster than using my own cellphone as a hotspot. Cellphone antennas are a bit less effective than the car's antenna. I get 15 Mbps in here, and I can power my laptop from the USB-C power connector. Deeper into Nevada would like requiring hotspotting from my cellphone's StarLink connection which would likely remind me of dialup.
An Atlanta father of 20 was fatally shot last month while allegedly attempting an armed robbery, police say.
On July 19, D’Anthony Reaves, 44, was killed outside the Greyhound bus station on Forsyth Street around 5:30 a.m. He was shot twice in the face and once in the arm, according to police.
In a Wednesday update, Atlanta homicide detectives said their investigation determined the case should be classified as a felon killed by a private citizen. Police said Reaves was in the middle of an armed robbery when he was shot.
Reaves was shot by someone getting off a bus, his family told WSB-TV. The Independent has contacted Atlanta police for comment....
Reaves’ family plans to start a foundation to support his children and help fathers leave the streets and rebuild their lives.
"We’re fixing to open up the D’Anthony Reaves foundation so we’ll be able to serve his kids so they’ll be taken care of," Deoinetea Hightower Reaves’ brother told the outlet. "We got the Power for the Fathers represented for him as well, where we help the fathers get off the street and get their lives back together."
Hightower added that he is pushing Greyhound to end its policy allowing guns across state lines and urging Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to tighten gun laws to keep firearms away from young people.
Without question, Greyhound should require its customers to be defenseless when they get off the bus.
Also, 12 biological children? Remember the start of Idiocracy where we see the intelligent middle-class couple delay children too long while the redneck's progeny begin the path to genetic hegemony? Let us hope the same high moral character of D'Anthony Reaves has no genetic component.
I was burned by a Breitbart.com article about an illegal alien arsonist. I should have followed it back to its source, a well-known diet supplement fabulist.
This claim about Governor Hochul pardoning a killer turned out to appear in well-known alt-right 8/15/25 New York Times:
In early July, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York pardoned an immigrant from Laos to stave off his deportation, but unlike dozens of pardons she has granted before, the governor did not publicize this action.
The man Ms. Hochul pardoned, Somchith Vatthanavong, 52, had been convicted of manslaughter as a teenager after he admitted to fatally shooting a man in 1988 during a confrontation at a Brooklyn pool hall, arguing that he had acted in self-defense.
Mr. Vatthanavong, who had legally entered the United States as a refugee when he was a child, fleeing the aftermath of the Vietnam War, served 14 years in prison before being released in 2003. He then built a life in New York, marrying and raising two children who are U.S. citizens.
But President Trump’s return to power heightened the likelihood that Mr. Vatthanavong would be deported because of his conviction 35 years earlier. So community groups and his wife and lawyers mounted a campaign to persuade the governor’s office — through petitions, meetings and phone calls — to pardon Mr. Vatthanavong, a move that could result in his deportation order being vacated.
On July 1 — the day before Mr. Vatthanavong had a mandatory immigration appointment that his lawyers believed would lead to his arrest — Ms. Hochul signed a certificate granting him an unconditional pardon, “including offering relief from removal.”
Gov. Hochul explained why:
“One of the toughest calls a governor can make is when another person’s fate is in their hands,” Ms. Hochul said in a statement on Friday. “Unless I believe someone poses a danger, I follow what the Bible tells us: ‘Forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you.’”
Suddenly, it is okay to mix religion and government policy. So no whining about Romans 1:24-26, right?
"And most of all, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seemed to like watching the world burn on their behalf. I never thought that at the time, but looking back on it, I can see how cynical they were, how greedy for power they became. Along with the legacy media, Hollywood, and all institutions and corporations, we were their weapons of war, and they never seemed to care what that would do to us over time."
"So, I guess my question to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and all the Democrats, as well as the legacy media, is this: Was it worth it? Was it worth tearing families apart? Was it worth destroying a once-thriving culture? Was it worth losing to Trump a second time? Was it worth the mass delusion that has destroyed the best minds of a generation?
"Was it worth a cold Civil War that has divided this country, divided families, ended friendships, torn us apart in ways we still haven’t yet processed?"
Yes. Like Obama sitting and chatting with literally Hitler at the Inauguration.
Based on our data, we conclude that SARS-CoV-2 booster vaccination does not contribute to the protection of the healthcare workforce in a post-pandemic setting. SARS-CoV-2 vaccination may even temporarily increase the likelihood of symptomatic infection and workday loss."
All those skeptics may have not been so stupid after all. Blind trust is always bad.
"Under the deal, T1 will source hyper-pure polysilicon and solar wafers from Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) supplier Corning's Michigan campus starting in the second half of 2026.
"Corning will deliver these wafers to T1's under-construction G2_Austin solar cell facility, which will be processed into cells for module production at T1's operational G1_Dallas site."
This is important for several reasons.
1. Break PRC dominance of the photovoltaic panel industry.
2. Create American jobs.
3. Provide competition. I doubt they will provide a lower price, or even an equal price, but if Americans can decide whether to spend $2000 for American panels or $1000 for PRC panels, at least some will buy American. This should pressure the PRC panels down on price and thus reduce profits for PRC companies.
Less profit means less taxes to fiund the military of nation with whom I fear we will be at war in the next ten years.
This also reduces balance of trade deficit, putting less money in the hands of Chinese investors to buy American businesses and politicians.
"The investment — the second-largest in the Louisville-based company’s history — is expected to add more than 1,000 jobs while ramping up domestic production and modernizing plants in the next five years."
8/14/25 Inside Higher Ed reports on how AI is making it easier to manufacture convincing fake university websites. Why would you make a fake university?
One prospective student who was looking for a business degree program almost got hooked by Southeastern Michigan’s con, according to Walter Kraft, a spokesperson for Eastern Michigan University, which is a real, accredited institution in Ypsilanti.
“He came across an institution named Southeastern Michigan University, and it looked legit to him,” Kraft said. “So he contacted them and received a phone call telling him that his total tuition would be, like, $31,000, but he would receive a 90 percent scholarship and would only have to pay $3,100.”
The fake university asked the would-be student to provide documents for his scholarship application, but he never followed up. Two days later, he got a call from a number spoofing Eastern Michigan’s admissions office number, and the person on the other line told him he got the scholarship, despite never receiving any of his documentation.
After that, he received an admissions offer on letterhead that looked similar to Eastern Michigan’s, which raised his suspicions.
I think I would go to campus before writing a check but then again I am not 18.
Let me emphasize that AI is not enabling a new type of fraud, merely allowing criminals to do it at scale. This is analogous to how spam speeded up the number of frauds that used to be done by confidence men in person can now be done with less labor and less risk of arrest. Here is one that is new to me:
The Pedigree Dog A stranger walks into a bar with a dog trailing him on a leash. He asks if the owner can watch his dog for a few minutes while he places a bet or attends to a business deal. While the stranger is gone, a second con artist arrives and notices the dog. He claims to be an expert on dog breeding, and says that this dog is worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. He asks the owner if the dog is for sale because he'll pay top dollar. The entire scam hinges on the bar owner's greed. The assumption is he'll see the chance to buy the dog from the unsuspecting owner for a low price, then sell the valuable dog to this "expert breeder." He tells the dog expert to come back later, then offers to buy the dog when its owner returns. The dog's owner sells it, but the "expert" never comes back to buy it. The two con artists walk away with a few hundred dollars, and the bar owner gets stuck with a "mutt." In Neil Gaiman's novel "American Gods," two characters discuss this con using a violin instead of a dog.
The Central American nation has become an unlikely focal point in the growing rivalry between the US and China, ever since Donald Trump last year targeted its most revered national symbol: the Panama Canal.
"Trump’s unexpected pledge to reclaim the iconic waterway for the US, mentioning Panama six times during his address to Congress in March, sent shockwaves through this nation of 4.5 million, a longtime American ally and a vital hub of global trade.
"But almost seven months into Trump 2.0, a different picture is emerging: The attention from competing superpowers, as uncomfortable as it may be, could prove to be a blessing. In fact, the picture that emerged from my discussions with more than a dozen Panama-watchers, policymakers and business leaders during a recent trip was clear and compelling: If Panama can seize the moment, it has the chance to reinforce the canal’s strategic role, attract fresh foreign investment and overhaul its increasingly creaky economic model."
See Orange Man Bad.
