(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . L.L. #21, May 12 [1] ['The Geogre', 'View Profile', 'Chitown Kev', 'Chloris Creator', 'Belinda Ridgewood'] Date: 2026-05-12 [Preface:] I’m back, and I didn’t even get to tell you about Alexander Pope’s three epitaphs for the Stanton-Harcourt Lovers and why that illustrates what I love about 18th century British literature. This is Laudable Links — a list of three articles I have found. I will briefly discuss and attempt to contextualize them. Comments are needed, writers are welcome, and members are desired. Today’s group is pretty serious stuff: Ryan Burke, at Just Security, blasts every hole there is in the Pentagon’s continuing effort to prosecute Senator Mark Kelly. There aren’t even shards left. The Donald DOJ wants to prosecute the treatment of transgender children, so Liz Dye tells us it is forum shopping in, of course, the rotten boroughs of Texas. A genuinely massive, and massively important trove of information is being published by Lawfare. Anna Bower writes about/introduces the document dump of grand jury materials from Fani Willis’s indictments of Donald and friends in 2023. The Humingbird Galaxy (from Hubble) What happens when the Sec. Defense has serious impulse control problems? Professor Ryan Burke (USMC) completely destroys the peevish prosecution of Senator/Captain Kelly. The prosecution, he feels, is coming from Pete Hegseth alone, and it is a foot stamping bit of tyranny that the United States was never designed to tolerate: [Quote|] The latest target in Hegseth’s continued purge was former Secretary of the Navy John Phelan. Phelan’s firing reportedly frustrated some White House officials, and it apparently came after the Navy Secretary found himself square in Hegseth’s crosshairs over his refusal to punish Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for his appearance in a video purported to be an alleged catalyst for mutiny. After a federal judge ruled against the Pentagon’s pursuit of disciplining Kelly, Secretary Hegseth reportedly ordered Phelan to ignore the order and issue punishment to the retired Navy captain anyway. [|End Quote] It had always been a mystery why a real estate speculator with no experience in the military but a close connection to Donald would be fired in a day. Failure to obey an unlawful order (to discipline a retired officer who said that officers must defy illegal orders after a court said that it would be illegal) was the utterly recursive reason. [Quote|] The central claim for punishing Kelly rests on the idea that the Senator encouraged troops to reject legal orders. The most glaring problems for DOD are twofold. First, Kelly clearly referred to the ability to refuse illegal orders – a fact in the record that was apparent in the DC Circuit oral argument late last week. “He never did say those words,” Judge Cornelia Pillard, said in response to the government’s attempt to put words in Kelly’s mouth. [|End Quote] This scandal originated on Fox News. The news of the video came out. A commentator said, ‘how dare they tell soldiers to disobey orders.’ The story then became ‘Seditious six instruct military to rebel.’ It’s a common game of “telephone” on Fox After Dark, which exists in a feedback loop with the rage radio, blog boosters, and flagging Donald regime. [Quote|] The second problem, ironically for DOD, is the government can’t point to any specific orders to which Kelly referred. [|End Quote] Dr. Burke says the government has taken a separate speech by Kelly, where he said, “We’re looking forward to heading some things off,” which is vague enough to avoid any possible UCMJ violation in any case, and say that it applied to National Guard going into the cities. The problem? The deployments into cities had all occurred at the time that speech had been made. Mark Kelly couldn’t be “looking forward” to “heading off” something that already happened. [Quote|] So the question lingers: what exactly is the Pentagon trying to pursue as basis of punishment for demoting Kelly’s rank? A nonexistent order? A theoretical violation? A sentence that Kelly never uttered in the form it appears in the video? The more you examine the foundation of this controversy, the shakier it appears. [|End Quote] The Pentagon is showing disorganization and psychotic insecurity. It has swiftly become autocratic, and the tin chamber pot martinet put in place by Elon Musk’s threats to Republican senators has been showing a brittle psyche and trip wire administration from the moment of its arrival. The moment Wobbles Hegseth showed up, he began firing aides because he heard rumors — online — that they were bad-mouthing him. He has fired top officers for their looks. He has fired more for daring to disagree. Senator Mark Kelly pointed out that our military is not supposed to be a Praetorian Guard, that it is loyal to the Constitution, not its commanders, and flatly illegal orders must be disobeyed. Distillery Pete cannot have such. He cannot change the UMCJ, so he will try to prosecute, or at least demote and downgrade the pension, of anyone who points out the truth. A childish man with a broken psyche is spending our common fortune for his private peace of mind. The fish lies from the head down? The Justice Department rots from its DAG up? Liz Dye still has the capacity to be outraged by what the “top three attorneys” at the Department of Justice are doing. She has suggested that a federal court considering sanctions would need to lay the wood across all three of the top appointees. I have pointed, consistently, at Harmeet Dhillon as the worst of the stink. She is the obscenity who has reversed the Division of Civil Rights and led it to pursue “reverse discrimination” cases galore and to attack institutions for having “DEI” as violating civil rights. She has brought cases saying that even trying to have representation in hiring is “illegal.” In “DOJ Forum Shops Harassment Campaign Against Trans Kids And Their Doctors” at Above the Law, Liz Dye tells us that, when courts refuse you, try Texas with your B.S. attempt to endanger trans children. Check out the article for the examples of Woodward, Ensign, and Blanche lying to courts and the likelihood that Blanche is — as Marcy Wheeler reported some time ago — the source of the instruction to “say ‘fuck you’” to federal judges, as the lying to judges seems to be increasing. But let’s get to Dhillon. [Quote|] in July of 2025, when the Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation Branch (EALB, formerly the Consumer Protection Branch) served administrative subpoenas on more than twenty hospitals and clinics around the country, demanding patient records for every minor who had been prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy for gender affirming care. The subpoenas purported to be investigating mislabeled drugs in violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). Court after court quashed them, characterizing the subpoenas as overbroad, legally deficient, or issued in bad faith to accomplish a policy goal rather than to investigate actual crimes. [|End Quote] The subpoenas were obviously a fishing expedition that was a prelude to prosecution of doctors and parents for violating some invented rule from an executive order, and the “maybe there was a drug mislabeled” without any evidence of the same was. . . garbage. Now, meet Rhode Island Hospital. . . of Rhode Island. . . which tried to cooperate. [Quote|] Per the hospital’s motions, lawyers from EALB said they didn’t believe RIH had engaged in any criminal wrongdoing and agreed that the August 7 subpoena deadline was flexible. RIH sent proposed search terms on February 4, 2026 and received no response until April 28, when a DOJ attorney emailed to set up a “conference this week regarding status.” Instead the DOJ filed a petition to enforce the subpoena in Fort Worth, Texas. [|End Quote] Huh? Well, the Rhode Island court would have quashed the subpoena. So would D.C., which is where the government agency operates from. Therefore. . . Texas! [Quote|] where it was virtually guaranteed to draw either Judge Reed O’Connor or Judge Mark Pittman — rabid conservatives whose dockets are a magnet for right-wing litigants looking to tee up a favorable ruling for the Fifth Circuit. That same day, without waiting for any response from RIH, Judge O’Connor signed DOJ’s proposed order verbatim, giving the hospital 14 days to hand over years of sensitive patient records or face contempt. [|End Quote] That’s service, for you! [Quote|] EALB, which is part of the Justice Department, assured RIH that the August deadline was flexible, and then sued while the hospital was earnestly negotiating compliance. In its motion to enforce, the government omitted to mention those negotiations, implying that the hospital simply blew off the subpoena. The DOJ characterized the motion as “fulsome” since it fulfilled its duty of candor by informing the court in a footnote that “a handful of mistaken district judges” had rejected identical subpoenas. [|End Quote] [Quote|] The DOJ even misstates the law it relies on to invade these children’s medical privacy and menace their healthcare providers. EALB’s theory is that drug manufacturers may be violating the FDCA by encouraging doctors to prescribe hormones for off-label uses. But as the Child Advocate notes in her motion to quash, off-label prescribing is perfectly legal.. . That’s why all those doctors who prescribed ivermectin to treat coronavirus aren’t in jail now! [|End Quote] This is part of a political war. . . one that is relatively inexplicable outside of the 2024 election. 0.03% of the population is transgender, and yet, in 2024, two or three transgirl athletes were made into a Pink Menace we have scarcely ever seen. Now that that election is over, the moral panic has faded. The persecution has not. Sorry, but there are people to afflict, and that’s what Harmeet Dhillon’s all about. You should read this all day. “New Trove of Fulton County Case Materials Published” by Anna Bower at Lawfare is an introduction, explanation, and heading for a big. . . trove. . . of . . . well. . . materials, and they’re being, uh, published by. . . You get it. [Quote|] [August 13, 2023] The indictment followed more than two years of investigative work, which included the empanelment of a special purpose grand jury that heard from more than 60 witnesses. Investigators also compiled troves of cell phone records, emails, and text messages. And they conducted dozens of hours of recorded interviews with witnesses, putative targets who reached immunity agreements, and defendants who later struck plea deals. [|End Quote] There is SO MUCH evidence! Look, you don’t think those criminals made plea deals because Willis hadn’t found anything, do you? You don’t think they were willing to testify because the RICO law in Georgia didn’t apply, do you? But evil triumphed. Yes, Fani Willis helped it, but it didn’t need any help. See if you can tell where her foibles — her hamartia — ends and Programmatic Evil from the State of Georgia begins: [Quote|] The prosecution was derailed in 2024, when the Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified Willis following allegations that she had improperly benefited from a romantic relationship with an outside prosecutor, Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to lead the case. A newly appointed special prosecutor, Pete Skandalakis, subsequently declined to pursue the charges. [|End Quote] Alright, so I cheated. I could have bolded the “disqualified,” too. Judge McAfee was not good, but he wasn’t evil. [Quote|] Scott McAfee of the Fulton County Superior Court, lifted a protective order that had prohibited lawyers involved in the case from disclosing certain materials produced during discovery. Lawfare obtained a large tranche of materials from the investigative file and is publishing them. Last week, that began with the publication of 61 special purpose grand jury transcripts. Today, Lawfare is publishing a collection of audio and video recordings from the case file—the vast majority of which have not been previously published. [|End Quote] What follows is a “directory” (for we old DOS/Unix/Linux folks) or “folder” of the new and old files. I haven’t had the time to go through any of them yet, but this is what we’ve needed all along. Yes, I would have preferred a trial, but at the very least a journalist (just one perhaps) can learn to ask a sharp shinned question regarding the upcoming vote thefts. [Conclusion:] So about the Stanton-Harcourt Lovers. They were a young couple in the lesser nobility, and they were young, beautiful, and in love. They were wooing when a thunderstorm came up. They sheltered under a tree, and lightning struck the tree. It killed both the man and the woman instantly. Pope wrote three epitaphs on the couple. The first was very somber and “Modern.” The second was long and formal, modeled after a Greek funeral ode. The third, though, was “Here lie two lovers who had the mishap/ Though very chaste people/ To die of a clap.” The ability to have, with equal sincerity, deep sadness, formal detachment, and ironic wit is what I love about the writers 1670 – 1750. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/12/800037314/community/l-l-20-may-12/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/