This Impeachment's Gonna Be Murder!
House Democrat says he's written articles of impeachment to remove Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the crime of murder
Dec. 5: The Boat-iac Killer™ strikes again as his lackeys assure Congress that murder isn’t murder … Video shows two survivors of initial Sept. 2 strike were utterly helpless … Grand jury rejects attempt to indict Letitia James … Jan. 6 pipe-bombing suspect caught (but Trump might have blown up the prosecution with his pardon) …
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Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) said Thursday that he’s bringing articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The offenses, according to Thanedar’s website, are “Murder and Conspiracy to Murder, and … Reckless and Unlawful Mishandling of Classified Information.”
That third one is about the U.S. strike in March against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Defense Department inspector general on Thursday released a report concluding that Hegseth should not have shared classified details about the upcoming attack on Signal and in doing so may have jeopardized U.S. troops, who must never be jeopardized except by stupid U.S. policy or to protect U.S. companies exploiting other countries.
(The fact that the U.S. attacks on Yemen also included a possible war crime, of course, has been reduced to a footnote, specifically, this footnote:1)
The March strike was illegal, too; the Constitution still says it’s up to Congress to declare war, even against enemies that can’t fight back! So, Thanedar is oddly seeking to impeach Hegseth for jeopardizing one illegal mission and for, um, successfully carrying out another. Which brings us to murder!
There’s always debate over which high crimes and misdemeanors merit impeachment. Embezzlement? Pocket rescissions? Beats me! Do I look like Heather Cox Fucking Richardson?
But murder? No debate here!
As TFN has previously discussed, killing civilians in boats is murder according to every single legal and ethical rubric there is. U.S. law, international law, military law, the laws of war, the law of the jungle, the law of the sea, the law of the land, and of course the law of supply and demand — people really like cocaine!
Murder isn’t one of those sins that vary from creed to creed. This isn’t remotely like whether you can eat meat on Fridays. Or with dairy. Or on Fridays with dairy at Dairy Queen or TGI Fridays.
In fact, the only area where Thanedar falls short is that he appears to be limiting his articles of impeachment to the second round of Sept. 2 strikes, the one that killed two survivors of the first strike … as they clung to their demolished boat and tried to de-capsize it before they got decapitated.
MURDER, HE BOAT2 As TFN has said all along; they’re all murders. Including the latest, on Thursday, bringing the death toll of Hegseth and his commander in chief, The Boat-iac Killer™, to 87 across 22 criminal attacks. Hegseth posted video of Thursday’s new killing, because serial killers like to collect trophies.
And he left a disgusting note boasting about these murders.
First, Andrew Kolvet — spokesperson for the Christian organization Turning Point USA — wrote that “Every new attack aimed at Pete Hegseth makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean.”
This from a spokesperson whose boss’s neck was just blown up and sent to the bottom of the morgue.
Hegseth responded to Kolvet by posting his latest snuff video and writing, “Your wish is our command, Andrew. Just sunk another narco boat.” (And, yes, it reflects poorly on me that I’m offended about equally by Hegseth omitting the four deaths and by not saying “sank.”)
Luckily, the lead story of The New York Times this morning is all about the fact that they’re all fucking crimes.
Naturally, the Times doesn’t come right out and say that — who among us can say whether murder is a crime? — because Times gonna Times. But literally it’s straight-up straight-down murder even according to the administration’s own claims about what happened.
The Times frets in its headline that “Second Strike Scrutiny Obscures Larger Question About Trump’s Boat Attacks.” Which is exactly the same point your smarty-pants TFN made four days ago! (The Fucking News: All the news that’s fucked to print, but four days early!)
This is also the Times telling Democrats to wake the fuck up. And a lead New York Times headline is pretty much the only thing capable of doing that.
More Murder Stuff
ALVIN AND THE SHIPMURDERS At some point I’ll probably have to list everyone in the administration who warned that boat murders count as murders even though boat. And now we have a suspected one confirmed.
Remember how Admiral Alvin Holsey decided to step down as head of U.S. Southern Command, which in theory should’ve been running the murder show? Hegseth and Holsey made it seem like Holsey was just leaving to spend more time with his non-murdering family.
Nope!
Hegseth pushed him out. And the Wall Street Journal reports that it wasn’t even because Holsey is Black. At least, not totally. What was it? Holsey objected to boat murders!
Hegseth’s response to Holsey’s legal/ethical objection reflected the high-level management training Hegseth received as a weekend co-host on Fox. He told Holsey, “You’re either on the team or you’re not,” which is both tautological and stupid.
SHIPS, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE Pentagon officials went to Capitol Hill Thursday and told Congress that they just had to murder the two Sept. 2 survivors because the two were trying to recover their payload of drugs and radio for help. But the Pentagon also showed Congress video of the murder that doesn’t show what the Pentagon said it showed. Not even a radio.
Reps. Adam Smith (D-WA) and Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrats on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, said in a statement that the video “showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat.” They called on the Pentagon to share the full video, or, in other words, to Release The Boat-iac Killer Files™!
THE MORAL OF THIS STORY Hegseth booted legitimate reporters from the Pentagon in October because they were getting too many stories. Which, he must have noticed, they continue to get.
Reporters don’t get stories at public briefings. They get what officials want to say. Back when I was the living cliché of a cub reporter, I would go to news conferences and not ask questions because (a) I didn’t want to tip my hand about what I was working on and (b) I knew I could get my question answered after/outside the news conference.
I like the demolition of legitimate news conferences. Because that means there’s no more media job of “show up at news conference, get sound bite, produce a tape piece around it” anymore. Now there’s only, “Welp, guess you’ll have to do journalism.”
THOSE WHO FAIL TO LEARN HEGSETH ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT HEGSETH In the book that “he” “wrote” last year, Hegseth bragged about his approach to war crimes. (Which AFAIK didn’t even come up in his confirmation hearing because where is the goddam Democratic oppo operation?!?)
The Guardian catches an anecdote from Hegseth’s 2024 “book” in which a judge advocate general informed Hegseth’s troops that an “enemy” simply possessing a rocket launcher doesn’t justify killing them. Hegseth “writes” what he told his troops afterward:
“I will not allow that nonsense to filter into your brains. Men, if you see an enemy who you believe is a threat, you engage and destroy the threat. That’s a bullshit rule that’s going to get people killed.”
Belief of a threat is, in fact, insufficient basis for murder. Unless, of course, the threat is a Black kid in a hoodie armed with Skittles™.
PS Pres. Donald Trump is the president, owns all of this, made it all happen, and is just as impeachable as anyone else in this grotesquerie.
Grand Jury Refuses to Indict Letitia James
We learned Thursday that Pres. Donald Trump’s personal vendetta against New York State Attorney General Letitia James has run into a brick wall. A brick wall called democracy, motherfuckers!
These days, the only people still so weak that they cave to Trump are billionaires and CEOs. Meanwhile, everyday folks serving on juries great and small are consistently telling Trump to suck a fat one.
First, Trump’s prosecution of James failed because he couldn’t follow rules even Pres. George W. Bush could figure out and appointed a U.S. attorney illegally. That got James’s first indictment tossed.
Then Thursday brought reports that when the Justice Department tried again to indict James, the grand jury refused. They’ll probably try again with another grand jury, making it even easier for James’s lawyers to get it tossed as political prosecution.
But Trump’s goal, I should have noted long ago, is to torment his enemies with the process, even if he fails to get a conviction. Because he has no convictions.
Jan. 6 Pipe-Bombing Suspect Caught
We don’t have any insights yet into the potential motive of the alleged January 6 pipe-bomber, but the Justice Department said Thursday that it had arrested a suspect, 30-year-old Brian Cole, Jr.
Hilariously, because Pres. Donald Trump couldn’t be bothered to figure out which Jan. 6 attackers to pardon, so he pardoned them all, there’s now a legal argument Cole’s lawyers can make that Trump’s Jan. 6 blanket pardon applies to Cole, too.
As MS NOW’s Steve Benen WR ITES, there’s nothing to suggest Trump didn’t accidentally pardon Cole. The two pipe bombs were placed at the headquarters for both parties, near the Capitol. And one of the Capitol attackers also used a pipe bomb. So why shouldn’t Trump’s blanket pardon apply to Cole? No one likes a blanket-pardon hog!
FAKE-MEDIA WATCH Quick reminder that the right wing blamed the pipe bombs on … the FBI. Y’know, because Jan. 6 was a deep-state operation to deep-six Trump.
That was the bullshit served up by Dan Bongino, who called the pipe bombs an FBI “inside job” and now has an inside job inside the FBI. (h/t)
And on Thursday, FBI Deputy Director Bongino was asked about his previous, civilian claim that the bombing attempt was a hoax.
Bongino explained that that was when he was paid to give opinions and now he’s paid to give facts. “We evolve,” Bongino said, even though that’s not the official position of his party’s leaders.
They Auto Be Ashamed
If there weren’t so much shit hitting such a wholesale fan outlet, I’d already have written a piece about how acquiring obscene wealth and unwarranted economic/political power turns you into the stupidest, most craven, sniveling worm on/under the Earth.
Some day! But here’s a recent example of it that I wanted to share.
Pres. Donald Trump on Wednesday doubled down on his vile, self-humiliating, racist assault on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), spraying wild attacks on everything from Somalian-Americans to Somalis, Somalia, Suzanne Somers, and Some Enchanted Evening.
Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf wrote a great piece about Trumpf’s performance — and the audience behind him of GOP lackeys and auto-executive hackeys. (h/t)
All of whom remained in park. Then silent as Trump tore downhill to Racistville. Neutral. Idling. A convoy of dunces and cowards as seen below (contempt):
What the rich accumulate doesn’t free them. It obligates them to protect it. To hoard more of it. Their real legacy isn’t wealth, but moral poverty; in the news stories and videos that their kids and grandkids will see and recognize as a legacy of shame.
Three Quickies
Layoffs have soared to their highest levels since the last time we sank to this presidential level. New private estimates — because it’s not like we’d trust federal data anymore — put November layoff announcements at 71,321. We’ve had 1.17 million this year, a 54% increase over the same 11-month period during the terrible Bidenconomy that parents use to scare their kids into behaving. It’s the highest layoff numbers since COVID. Which means Trump is now managing to tank the U.S. economy even without the help of a global pandemic.
U.S. manufacturing decreased in November, for the ninth month in a row, the most recent nine months of Pres. Donald Trump’s 11+ months of presidenting. Also down are new orders for crap, which are what drive the crap-manufacturing sector. It’s now the third month in a row that new orders are down. In fact, they’re near their lowest levels since 2010, y’know, after the last time a Republican president pooped on the economy. Two thirds of companies surveyed by the Institute for Supply Management said they’re “managing head counts … as opposed to hiring.”
Yes, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump-requested Texas gerrymander on Thursday. Yes, it sucks. Yes, we’ve got a lot of work to do to revive the Voting Rights Act. Yes, many Supreme Court justices need impeaching. But lament ye not, faithful Newsfucker, for all is not woe. Remember, the new congressional districts actually weaken Republican seats because they got greedy and spread their voters out into more districts — and the way Latino voters are rejecting the GOP, this might well bite Republicans in their lone star.
Obituary: Charlie Kirk’s Legacy
“Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.”
— John DonneThis is true for me, as well. And yet…
"Some men’s memes amuse me, Because I am involved in my phone." — Me
Point being that the right wing saw the murder of provocateur and hate-monger Charlie Kirk as a uniting moment, with the same galvanizing power as the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., but for assholes.
So how’s that going? Just a few months after Kirk’s death, his legacy is also dead. Unlike Kirk, however, his legacy is taking not just one shot, but millions a day, leaving Kirk’s legacy a tattered joke. Kirk’s meme-ified face and mock-maudlin “tributes” are spreading online among the same young guys Kirk once wooed with cynical nihilism — cynicism they’ve now turned on him — faster than Kirk’s tox-dick masculinity once spread. To wit:
To be clear, it’s not funny that Kirk died. It’s tragic that he died and also that he wasted so much of his life making other people’s lives shitty. What is funny, what we hath come to mock, is the gravity, sanctimony, and majesty the right tried and failed to attach to Kirk’s legacy.
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids! If you didn’t murder anyone this week, you’ve earned yourself a weekend...!
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
As TFN has written before, one of the U.S. attacks back in the spring killed more than 60 African migrants detained on their way to Saudi Arabia seeking work.
Yes, I should’ve thought of this by now and, yes, I’ll probably re-use it. Depending on popular response, of course.
Murder he boat. That’s funny, but I wish I could say I’m too young to know what that means. Same with ships, lies and videotape…
"But Trump’s goal, I should have noted long ago, is to torment his enemies with the process, even if he fails to get a conviction. Because he has no convictions"
Um he has 34 felony counts ...jus' sayin' hon....