What state politicians think about kids... plus a major breaking NSA fuckup
Now that a number of states have decided women who are pregnant must become parents - even carrying relatives’ and rapists babies to term - I think it’s useful to understand how much some of them care about kids.
North Dakota in early April: Debating free school lunch for low-income kids, State Sen. Mike Wobbema (R) said families are to blame for their hunger: "It’s really the problem of parents being negligent with their kids, if their kids are choosing to eat in the first place."
“We talk about personal responsibility as one of the major principles that the Republican Party Stands on,” Wobbema said. “Yes, I can understand kids going hungry, but is that really the problem of the school district? Is that the problem of the state of North Dakota? It’s really the problem of parents being negligent with their kids.”
(Shown on the left: ND State Senator Mike Wobbema (R) doesn't think his state has any interest in keeping its kids fed.)
The bill would provide food for kids from families at 200% below federal poverty level.
The bill died, 23-24.
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Missouri: House Republicans voted to defund all of the state’s public libraries, in a state budget proposal that moves to a vote in the GOP-controlled state Senate.
The total House budget is roughly $2 billion less than the one Gov. Mike Parson (R) proposed, cutting the $4.5 million Parson proposed for libraries and other costs for diversity initiatives, childcare and pre-kindergarten programs.
The House budget committee chair Rep. Cody Smith (R-Carthage) proposed cutting the library support due to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the state in February.
The suit seeks to declare last August’s Senate Bill 775 unconstitutional, a bill that has resulted in over 300 books getting banned from school libraries many of which include LGBTQ characters or racial justice themes. So the House is taking it to the next step by making all library books inaccessible to everyone.
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Texas: Llano County may close its 3 libraries after a federal judge in Austin ordered them to return banned books to shelves. County residents sued after the book ban, calling it a ‘literary witch hunt’.
Per Axios: The books include "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak, "Freddie the Farting Snowman," by Jane Bexley, "It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health" by Robie Harris, and a history book about the KKK.
"It's a horrible, horrible thing to close a library," Leila Green Little, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, tells Axios. "It's not just three buildings filled with books. … They are places that provide Christmas presents for needy children during the holidays, books and community for mothers and their young children and gathering places for older people."
The decision is likely to come tomorrow.
Meanwhile in NYC, DA Alvin Bragg's office has received over 1000 threats since last Tuesday's indictment of Donald Trump. The rule of law in the US spurs violence and threats of same in Trump supporters. The DA also received a second letter with white powder in it.
So a twenty-something gamer was given a top secret security clearance, revealed a massive amount of it to his gamer friends and after a long period of time, the classified info was leaked to another group and then it went public.
The info had a lot of stuff about the War on Ukraine, but included a whole lot more. This wasn’t any sort of whistleblower effort. The original leaker was just trying to impress his gamer friends.
It’s a massive security breach. That the guy could sneak out notes he’d made and eventually photos of documents - from a highly secure facility - is pretty stunning. The guy told his friends he took no side in the war - he disparaged both - and he was upset to discover the US spied on its own allies.
Well, duh!
His gamer friends expect the FBI will questiion them because they know the leaker's name. But they swear they won’t tell that name b/c they consider him a friend. (Good luck with that).
And that gamer group did include gamers from Ukraine and Russia so - holy shit! The info has likely fallen into the hands of foreign agents long before it got noticed by the NSA and Pentagon.
Why? Who does the background on people entrusted with such secrets? How could anything be moved out of the secure facility so easily? Clearly some people in charge of it all fucked up bigtime. Much more than the War on Ukraine got leaked and it speaks volumes about the weaknesses in our national security agency.
Talk about the weakest link! Washington Post had the story out around 9:30 pm last night and I recommend you read it since it put all of us at risk.