Somehow Republicans Are Defending Kristi Noem After the Forceful Removal of Senator Alex Padilla
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)
So, apparently we’re bum-rushing US senators now. From The Guardian:
In video taken of the incident that has since gone viral on social media, Padilla is seen being restrained and removed from the room by Secret Service agents.“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla shouts, as he struggles to move past the men removing him from the premises. “Hands off!” he says at one point.Emerging afterward, Padilla, who is the ranking member of the judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, said he and his colleagues had repeatedly asked DHS for more information on its “increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions” but had not received a response to his inquiries.
This tinhorn governor of a state where nobody lives, this puppy-murdering hack whose political career outside of MAGA World was as dead as Custer, now gets to sic her black-shirted thugs on the senior senator of a state that she and her criminal boss and all their attendant lords have been lying about, and about which she had flown to Los Angeles to lie about some more.
“We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
Dumbass in a ballcap says what? She just admitted they’re blowing up the town to get rid of the mayor and governor. If the courts ever get their teeth back, this gaffe will figure prominently in many filings.
Meanwhile, Padilla is hauled into a backroom and driven to the floor and handcuffed.
“If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the DHS responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers, throughout the LA community and throughout California and throughout the country,” Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, told reporters. “We will hold this administration accountable.”
And not for nothing, but threatening and/or assaulting the holder of any federal office is a felony and could draw you five to ten in the pokey. And these goons are pretty identifiable.
And, of course, the administration’s prevarication mill went into full operation almost instantly. From The New Republic via Yahoo:
In posts on X, the official DHS account and Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin released a statement attempting to justify wrestling Padilla to the ground and handcuffing him. “Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theatre and interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem,” the statement read.
Tricia learned to lie like this at the AEI’s Leadership Institute.
But in a video of the altercation from Padilla’s office, the senator could be heard clearly identifying himself. “Hands off! I’m Senator Alex Padilla, and I have questions for the secretary,” said the California Democrat as a security guard pushed him out of the room.
It’s clear that the goons looked at him and just saw another angry brown face. And by their reactions, Tricia and her boss are similarly afflicted.
"I wished that he would have reached out and identified himself and let us know who he was and that he wanted to talk,” Noem said. “His approach, you know, was something that I don’t think was appropriate at all. But the conversation was great and we’re going to continue to communicate. We exchanged phone numbers and we’re going to continue to talk on we can communicate better.”
This is also all my bollocks. Noem knows who Padilla is and, if she doesn’t, she should, and he did identify himself. Third-rate hack with a fourth-rate alibi.
And what about Speaker Moses? What did you expect?
“That behavior, at a minimum, it rises to the level of a censure. I think there needs to be a message sent by the body as a whole that that is not what we’re going to do. That’s not how we’re going to act. We’re not going to have branches fighting physically and having senators charging Cabinet secretaries,” Johnson said.
That sanctimonious sumbitch wants Padilla censured. And he spent the afternoon hiding. If he’s a Christian, I’m an Ostrogoth.
The day was not without its burlesque, however. In a House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Maxwell Frost asked Chairman James (Jughead) Comer to issue a subpoena for Noem regarding the events of the day. Comer, of course, refused, probably because Padilla was not carrying Hunter Biden’s laptop at the time. And then we were off. From Raw Story:
“You’re out of order!” Comer bellowed, yielding the floor to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
“Oh, Democrats can’t follow the rules, can’t follow the law,” Greene said.
“We need a subpoena,” Frost insisted.
“That’s a privilege of the majority, and that means we’re in charge, not your side,” Greene snapped. “Because you lost the election.”
”Will you commit on the record to subpoenaing Kristi Noem?” Frost asked Comer. “Senator [Padilla] was just thrown to the ground and detained.”
“Democrats can't follow the rules!” Greene exclaimed.
“Shut up!” Comer yelled at Frost.
“You’re not going to tell me to shut up,” Frost insisted.
“He’s been arrested as a former Antifa member, right?” Greene said. “He’s a former Antifa member.”
“Who's a former Antifa member?” Frost asked. “Me?”
“Yeah,” Greene confirmed.
Frost immediately asked for Greene’s words to be taken down and removed from the record. Instead, Comer suspended the committee while Greene decided if she would comply.
“Mr. Chairman, I move to revise my remarks,” Greene said. “Congressman Frost was arrested in 2021 at a voting rights rally.”
“Proudly,” Frost replied.
Assuming it survives this era, the whole country is going to have PTSD for several centuries.
Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click: “Fire Water” (Wild Magnolias): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Here, from 1957, President Eisenhower gets asked a question about his using helicopters to get to and from the various courses. Ike gets visibly honked off and turns away from the camera. Golf makes people angry for the strangest reasons. History is so cool.
On June 12, 1963, John F. Kennedy finally got off the damn dime and delivered a speech supporting the Civil Rights Movement. At her house on Guynes Avenue in Jackson, Mississippi, Myrlie Evers watched the speech with her children while waiting for her husband, Medgar, to come home from work. He was the first field secretary that the NAACP ever had in Mississippi, and he was very good at it. Myrlie heard the car pull into the carport. Then she heard the gunfire.
From across the street, a cowardly back-shooting bastard named Byron De La Beckwith shot Evers to death in his own driveway. His wife and children watched him try to crawl to them while he was bleeding out. He was rushed to an all-white hospital and became the first African American to integrate the place. Then he died.
Everybody and his dog in Mississippi knew who’d gunned Evers down. Beckwith bragged about it at Klan gatherings. He was granted two mistrials in the winter and spring of 1964 because all-white juries deadlocked on his guilt. Finally, 30 years later, Myrlie Evers and a young DA named Bobby DeLaughter got Beckwith sent off to die in prison where he belonged.
Medgar Evers was buried at Arlington because he had been a soldier in World War II. He ferried supplies under fire to the troops landing in Normandy. And now, a pissant named Pete Hegseth, who is not a fraction of the man Medgar Evers was, wants to take Evers’ name off a U.S. Navy ship. Man, just fck these people eternally.
Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From Croatia Week:
Archaeological research, conducted in late May and early June 2025 by curators from the Archaeological Museum of the Dubrovnik Museums, uncovered a rich array of historical artifacts and human remains spanning several time periods. The excavation team was led by curator Domagoj Perkić, with archaeologists Krešimir Grbavac and Paula Knego, restorer Sanja Pujo, and external collaborators archaeologist Karmen Butigan and speleologist Nataša Cvitanović from the Ursus Spelaeus caving club.
Two small trenches covering a total of approximately 6 m² were opened during the excavation, revealing valuable insights. In the Bronze Age, particularly during the second millennium BC, the cave was likely used as a shelter—either as a refuge during times of conflict or inclement weather, or as seasonal housing.From the late Bronze Age into the early Iron Age (9th to 6th century BC), parts of the cave functioned as a necropolis. Fragments of human bones, especially skulls found in a stone mound, indicate burial practices by a prehistoric community.
The most intensive use of the cave occurred in the last centuries of the first millennium BC, when Illyrian communities inhabited the region. During this period, Crno jezero was likely used as a sacred site, similar to the well-known Illyrian sanctuaries of Vilina špilja near the Ombla spring or Spila in Nakovana. A variety of votive offerings were uncovered in the cave’s hidden and less accessible areas, including miniature pottery vessels of both Greek and local origin, typically associated with ritual use in sanctuaries. These included fine, high-quality Greek pottery—amphorae for storing wine and various types of drinking cups. These items, not used in daily life, symbolised wealth and power and were likely used in religious ceremonies where wine played a central role.
Urban renewal is a fascinating process.
Hey, BBC, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
Researchers concluded that two eighty-six million-year-old skeletons they studied belonged to a species that is now the closest known ancestor of all tyrannosaurs - the group of predators that includes the iconic T.rex. The researchers named the species Khankhuuluu (pronounced khan-KOO-loo) mongoliensis, meaning Dragon Prince of Mongolia.
The discovery, published in Nature, is a window into how tyrannosaurs evolved to become powerful predators that terrorized North America and Asia until the end of the reign of the dinosaurs.
Was the Dragon Prince an elective office in Mongolia, or did you have to kill and eat the other candidates?
The new species also shows early evolutionary stages of features that were key to the tyrannosaurs’ tyranny, including skull anatomy that gave it a strong jaw. Jared Voris explained: “We see features in its nasal bone that eventually gave tyrannosaurs those very powerful bite forces.” The evolution of such powerful jaws allowed T.rex to pounce on larger prey, and even bite through bone.
That is certainly some fine evolutin’ being done right there. Just enough to make us happy now.
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 everyone touched by the earthquakes in Myanmar and Thailand, 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 Los Angeles and in Canada, and for all the folks in Ukraine, who stubbornly fight on, and all the folks in Gaza, and all the people in New Orleans, Las Vegas, Nashville, and Queens, 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 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 all the folks we regularly cited here in the year gone by, 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.
esquire
