Former Special Counsel Jack Smith Is Daring the Trump Administration to Let Him Testify Under Oath

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

Does the administration understand the stakes of taking on Jack Smith in any venue in which people are under oath? Somebody there is very high on his own supply, and Smith seems to know it. From Politico:

In a new letter sent Friday to Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), obtained by POLITICO, lawyers for Smith argue that politics had no influence over their client’s investigations into Trump and agreed it would be unacceptable for any occupant of the White House to leverage law enforcement against a perceived enemy.

“Such political meddling in prosecutorial decision making undermines the credibility of the Justice Department and the integrity of any subsequent enforcement actions,” Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski, lawyers at the firm Covington & Burling, wrote to Grassley. “Political meddling in prosecutorial actions also risks turning impartial law enforcement agencies into partisan tools to protect the President’s allies and punish his perceived adversaries.”

The flying monkeys want Smith in closed session so that they can come out and lie about what he said and what happened. Smith, who did not arrive in D.C. on a melon wagon, wants to testify in public, which likely would cause them to dissolve into the floor like Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz. This is a guy who faced down bloodthirsty Balkan militiamen in court. I don’t think Representative Jim Jordan (R-Van Heusen) is going to faze him.

The announcement that Nancy Pelosi will retire from the House is a moment that chroniclers of that institution will rank as a landmark event in its history. She shepherded the Affordable Care Act through, she stood firm on January 6, 2021, and she managed to temper the insanity of Trump I, which is something her successor couldn’t do. This is because, in her political soul, she was always Nancy D’Alesandro from Baltimore, and that made her a powerful advocate and a fearsome opponent. And, Lord, could that woman count.

Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click

“I’m Confessin’ ” – Kid Sheik

Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives

Here, from 1940, is Mayor Fiorello La Guardia reading the “Funnies” over the radio during a newspaper-delivery strike. You will note that he’s reading the Daily News. And you will also note that it cost a nickel. There is no doubt in my minds that, in the same circumstances, Zohran Mamdani would do exactly the same thing. History is so cool.

James Watson, officially the codiscoverer of the structure of DNA, died Friday. I recently bought my daughter a T-shirt that read, “Watson and Crick’s Greatest Discovery—Rosalind Franklin’s Notebooks.”

Franklin was a remarkable woman, a brilliant scientist who was as central to the discovery of DNA’s structure. However, her contributions were ignored—and, allegedly, worse—by Watson and Crick. It is well established that some of her data was central to Watson and Crick’s discovery and that she didn’t know they had it. It is equally well established that a campaign was undertaken in the British scientific community to marginalize her groundbreaking work for decades.

Tragically, she died of cancer at 37 and never had a chance to fight for her own case. I can only hope she gets a crack at Watson in the afterlife.

Miraculously, Warren Zevon will finally be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this weekend. Wennerland was being idiotic about it for years. So, in celebration, here are a couple of his songs that make all my lights shine. Now let’s get on the stick and induct Little Feat and the J. Geils Band.

Discovery Corner

Hey, look what we found! From The Smithsonian:

A carnivorous sponge researchers dubbed the “death-ball sponge” and black coral are among the bizarre animals already identified in the wake of two research cruises through the Southern Ocean this year. The Southern Ocean Species Discovery Workshop verified the new sponge species (Chondrocladia sp. nov.) in August.

I refuse to believe a) that there won’t be at least one band called Death Ball Sponge by the end of the weekend and b) that I am the only one replacing the chorus of Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” with “Death Ball Sponges” in my head.

Hey, CNN, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Some hadrosaur fossils show evidence of healing from traumatic bone injuries, all in the same location: on their vertebrae past the base of the tail. No soft tissues preserving evidence of dinosaur reproductive organs have been found in the fossil record, and differences observed in fossils are often thought to be due to species or age, rather than sex. Additionally, evidence of dinosaurs containing fossilized eggs has been hard to come by. The authors of a new study published Tuesday in the journal iScience believe the injuries occurred during mating—and they could be used to indicate which fossils belong to female hadrosaurs.

Well, this is an interesting development. Perhaps we must consult that old paleontology text, The Kamasaurus, for details.

They lived then to make us happy now, but they also lived to make themselves happy then.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and the New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the victims of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica, and of the unspeakable violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and for everyone touched by the mass shootings in Michigan, North Carolina, Colorado, Minneapolis, N.Y.C., and Reno, the victims of the Manchester synagogue attack, and everyone recovering from the flooding in Charleston, and in the Roanoke Valley, and in Wisconsin, and in Texas, and in North Carolina, and by earthquakes in Myanmar and Thailand, and in Turkey and Russia, and by the tornadoes throughout the Southeast, and for everyone touched by floods in Kentucky and in West Virginia, and Nigeria, and by the crash in Washington, and by the measles outbreak in the Southwest, and in the wildfire zone around Dallas, and in the fire zones in Napa, and in Las Vegas, Nashville, and Queens, who who were visited by the Crazy before the year had hardly begun, and the folks in Dallas and Tallahassee, who were visited by the Crazy this week. And the people in drought-stricken north Alabama. And the victims of Tropical Storm Melissa in Haiti. And the folks caught in floods and tornadoes in Nebraska, and in Missouri. And the folks caught in “historic floods” in Kentucky. And in Oklahoma. And the folks in L.A., now fighting floods and mudslides exacerbated by the recent wildfires. And the folks in the wildfire zones in Pennsylvania, and in Minnesota. And the folks in Lahaina, who are still rebuilding. And the victims of the nightclub collapse in the Dominican Republic. And especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they’ve been getting. And for all of us, who will be getting exactly what we deserve. Thank you for your attention to this matter.