THE ANTI-TALARICO RUMORMONGERS SEEM A LITTLE DESPERATE

James Talarico spent nearly two weeks off the campaign trail, sidelined, the candidate says, by a really bad flu. On Friday he returned to the campaign trail, making an appearance at the Austin City Limits music festival.

Talarico's absence from the campaign trail didn't interrupt his string of positive polling -- even the right-leaning Trafalgar Group says he's winning the race by 3 points -- but it did lead to some right-wing rumormongering, though not in the form I would have expected:

Talarico’s return comes after right-wing talking heads, including failed Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, cited anonymous sources insisting the Austin-area state rep was locked away in a mental health facility after a breakdown.

One Twitter account even baselessly speculated that Talarico had attempted suicide.

Pratt -- who still hasn't made good on his promise in June to release damaging audio about one of the remaining L.A. mayoral candidates -- tried to make this about strength and weakness:

"You want to win these fights on the battlefield of ideas, not the minefield of poor health." But Talarico is winning -- unlike you, Mr. Allegedly Healthy Loser.

That's a tack also taken by Talarico's Republican opponent:

Jimmy appears to be having a full-blown mental Tala-freak-out on the national stage. My campaign has a simple request: proof of life. https://t.co/pzCXWmpbdN

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 8, 2026

"Talarico is mentally fragile, easily overwhelmed, and prone to illness." That's the message here -- that Talarico is weak and therefore unelectable.

But will that be effective at all? Talarico leads this race even though he can't out-macho the Republicans and isn't trying to. They call him gay. They call him a vegan. I'm sure that the people who won't vote for him believe both of those things, and despise him as a result. This is more of the same. But are there any voters who were planning to vote for him and now won't because of this rumor? Are there any voters who were planning to stay home, but now will turn out for Paxton? If months of "Talafreako" talk haven't gotten the job done for Paxton, why would this?

The rumormongers have a very elaborate narrative. They claim to have identified a private plane, presumably carrying Talarico, that traveled to Austin from Ohio, not far from the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health facility where Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, received seven weeks of treatment for depression back in 2023.

It appears to be very likely that James Talarico flew to Ohio to seek mental treatment at the same facility Lina Hidalgo went to back in 2023 during her meltdowns. He flew back this morning to attend a music festival. This confirms my theory--he was sick two weeks ago, but there is no middle ground for any "flu" of that magnitude to impact a diabetic with a flu shot for two weeks without requiring full hospitalization. Something came up in between that caused this, and I have a feeling we are going to find out what that is next week. (And no, I am not suicidal)

— Red Eagle Politics (@RedEaglePatriot) October 10, 2026

Even if it's true, would Talarico's voters care? In 2022, John Fetterman struggled through debates after a powerful stroke and still won his Senate election. I'm not convinced that even a mental health crisis would necessarily slow Talarico's momentum. (And his explanation still remains plausible -- he is a Type 1 diabetic, and there are some powerful virus out there in the Age of RFK Jr.)

I think Talarico's haters can't believe that their efforts to dehumanize him and sink his campaign aren't enough. Maybe this will work! I don't think it will. There are voters who fall for this kind of he-man chest-thumping and they're likely to be Paxton voters, and then there are normal people, people who understand that human beings can have physical and mental health issues sometimes. I think there are enough of those for Talarico to win.

READ SOME BREITBART COMMENTS ON THE UPCOMING EXECUTION AND LOSE YOUR FAITH IN HUMANITY

Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, will die in December in a livestreamed execution. If you don't believe that America is two irreconcilable nations, I think the right-wing response to this execution might change your mind.

Here's a reaction to the planned livestream that I found in a Breitbart comments section:

This won't be any surprise to those who know that lynchings often became joyous public spectacles in twentieth-century America.

I think there'll be quite a few watch parties in America. Most will be voluntary and celebratory, but I also think some institutions -- red-state prisons, religious-right private schools -- will make viewing of the execution compulsory.

(The Breitbart commenter says that his church is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church in middle Tennessee. Another commenter says, "My kids and I will be cheering from our church pew. Pastor is going to put it on the projector!")

The comment thread I'm quoting is in response to a Breitbart story about J.D. Vance's assertion that if the execution is "ultimately live-streamed, I’m not going to be watching it." I'm surprised he's taking this position when he has Republican primaries to win two years from now, but I guess he's calculating that this will be acceptable to some of the base, and will make him seem like a "reasonable" conservative to middle-of-the-road general-election voters.

Some of the commenters call Vance a "soyboy," and many say that his reluctance to watch the video makes Marco Rubio look like a better presidential pick.

Rubio is so much of a tougher SOB than JD

****

As for JD Vance...man up cupcake. Marco Rubio is looking far better than you in 2028 anyway. Go ahead and go away like Pence.

****

Can Vance watch a firefight that matters? Can Vance order an action that needs doing?

I am afraid Vance looks at the world through "Neville Chamberlain" glasses.

But most aren't interested in Vance. They just see the story as an excuse to vent their bigotry, bloodlust, and (of course) hatred of Democrats.

The Demonrats have their tail feathers in a knot over one of their admired terrorists being publicly executed.

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They're trying to make us feel uncomfortable about it and they're so far from doing that.

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He is an evil man on his way down into hell.

They want Hasan's body desecrated.

I don't mind if it's a public execution but i may not watch.
All i want is, to see that NASTY Islamist Muslim POS get executed!

Then before he is berried with a tombstone saying he is a nasty Islamist Muslim traitor...they put a BIG pork sausage in his you know what.

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Show some class...bury him with bacon.

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Why waste perfectly good bacon, pork fat will do the trick.

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Only after the whole pig roast celebration !

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I’m going to visit Fort hood that day and deliver Hasan an emotional support pig to keep him company.

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Make his burial spot a roadside urinary relief station where you let it go right into the soil he’s buried in.

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If they bury him make sure it’s an unmarked grave and he is wrapped in a pig skin.

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I would still put a crucifix on his chest ... in case he saw the light before his soul goes forever into the decent into the maelstrom of Hell.

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Agreed. Maybe remove his head and drive a stake into his heart just for fun. I’m cool with that.

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I agree in live streaming the event and in lieu of a firing-squad I would suggest the guillotine with a dozen camera angles to include looking down into the basket. I want to see him wink.

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May I suggest using a wood chipper feet first ? That would be very entertaining !

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Make him dance too while shooting at his feet.

(Hasan was shot by law enforcement during the Fort Hood attack and is a paraplegic.)

There are the usual "72 virgins" jokes.

I hope that his 72 virgins are all transvestites

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In Nidal Hasan's case he has 72 goats waiting on him. LOL

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No not goats please - they are sweet creatures like dogs. How about 72 rattlesnakes or polar bears?

Also, this is fine because Charlie Kirk.

We had public executions for most of our history. You just don't like the fact that it's your buddy getting 86d. You losers celebrated Charlie Kirk's public execution. Reap what you sow, terrorist.

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Charlie Kirk's assassination and the demoncrats cheered.

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Charlie Kirk never murdered anyone, and the satanic left loved watching and cheering for his death.

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Charlie Kirk was executed live on camera. Democrats laughed and cheered. Spare me the tears.

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Yep. And the execution of that health insurance CEO was also streamed and all the leftists threw huge parties and celebrated it too.

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And wanted to **** the shooter. And wanted to **** the Boston terrorist. The leftist men are really lacking to have their women that desperate.

And what about abortion?

It’s barbaric! Barbaric, I tell you!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get a partial birth abortion.

****

Maybe abortions should be live streamed. I think it would make many people know just how brutal it is. At least this azz-clown is just going to be shot. Not torn to little pieces by a vacuum cleaner.

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Agreed. No sane person would approve of abortion if they were to watch the murder scene with the fake surgeon and other evil MFs (nurses, anesthesiologists, other trash) participating in the Devil Worship Ceremony.

And then there's this:

For approximately 24 hours after the Charlie Kirk murder, we could see the entire assassination in real time online on multiple channels. After the first 24 hours Globalists and other Leftist trash ordered the videos to be butchered, downsized, or removed. Charlie lost 4 pints of blood before he hit the floor. Our goal is to make all Leftists lose 5 pints of blood before they hit the floor. Everyone needs to see the violence Globalists and their minions have unleashed on Western Civilization. We want to see videos of ferals abducting, slashing, raping, and murdering modern humans. It is the only way to wake citizens up to the assaults the Left is using to destroy the USA and Europe.

MAGA

I don't know what to say in response to that.

I assume it will be easy to find clips of this execution after the fact, though not everywhere. The Washington Post reports:

Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, has prohibited the live-streaming of capital punishment on its platforms since 2019. A TikTok spokesperson referred to its policy on violent content, which says depicting “the moment of someone’s death” is not allowed on the video-sharing service.

Meta, YouTube and X did not respond to questions about how they would apply their policies to streams or subsequent clips of Hasan’s execution.

My guess is that Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit will take down videos depicting the moment of Hasan's death. X will leave them up, as will Truth Social. And that will be the new normal. We'll see if pressure from the White House or threatened right-wing boycotts motivate Meta, TikTok, and YouTube to change their policies.

SOMEWHERE IN HELL, CHARLIE KIRK IS CHEERING ON PETE HEGSETH

I'm sure you know this:

The firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed, the Pentagon said Thursday....

[Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth, speaking to the conservative TV outlet Real America’s Voice on Wednesday, said, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Officials in the Pentagon clarified Thursday that the execution would be livestreamed and that more details would follow.

Predictably, Hegseth was almost gleeful as he announced this to his interviewer, Jack Posobiec.

Hegseth on Nidal Hasan: "He's gonna get a firing squad of soldiers. As it should be. We'll make sure that people are able to watch it. That it's public. Because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 8, 2026 at 2:36 PM

I'm pleased that there's some pushback among Republicans. I don't mean outgoing senator Thom Tillis, who tweeted,

Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting. Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.

Tillis doesn't impress me because he just a published a book called How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents: The Trouble with Sycophants, Courage Outsourcing, and Partisan Groupthink, which he's promoting primarily in the non-conservative media. He may be in search of a job as a professional apostate Republican on CNN or MS NOW, if he hasn't already lined a position up. He's no longer a Republican in good standing.

I'm somewhat more impressed by the denunciation from libertarian Robby Soave, who tweeted:

I sympathize with the thirst for vengeance, and Nidal Hasan certainly deserves to die for what he did… but a public execution is giving a terrorist exactly what he wants: publicity. They fantasize about being martyred like this, in front of a crowd (and a live TV audience???). It’s ISIS recruitment slop.

Soave still some credibility on the right, as do Kathryn Jean Lopez and Erick Erickson, who denounce Hegseth's plan on religious grounds. Between them, they quote the Bible, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Augustine to explain their disgust.

But Erickson also knows he's at odds with the current right-wing zeitgeist:

Over to you, random internet dude who claims to be a committed Christian in the Presbyterian Church in America:

I don't want to overpraise Erick Erickson. He's a right-wing attack dog who sometimes goes through phases of heterodoxy that make him appear reasonable, thoughtful, and moral. It won't last. But it's good to see that there's some room for doubt about this on the right.

But probably not much. Donald Trump was proposing the release of execution videos back in 2023, according to Rolling Stone:

“What do you think of firing squads?”

That’s the question Donald Trump repeatedly asked some close associates in the run-up to the 2024 presidential campaign, three people familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone....

Specifically, Trump has talked about bringing back death by firing squad, by hanging, and, according to two of the sources, possibly even by guillotine....

In at least one instance late last year, according to the third source, who has direct knowledge of the matter, Trump privately mused about the possibility of creating a flashy, government-backed video-ad campaign that would accompany a federal revival of these execution methods. In Trump’s vision, these videos would include footage from these new executions, if not from the exact moments of death.

Last month, CNN reported that the most zeitgeist-y Republican in America, Texas railroad commissioner candidate Bo French, repeatedly called for the execution of political figures he doesn't like, including Barack Obama and Adam Schiff; French repeatedly used the hashtag #HangEmHigh. Also:

... February 2025 tweets include multiple calls for executions against government officials he said were exposed by DOGE....

French wrote at the time that DOGE, which was an acronym of Department of Government Efficiency, should actually stand for “Dangle Officials Gallows Expeditiously,” adding in other tweets he wanted “more than perp walks” and “public executions,” for government officials he said were exposed by DOGE.

And then there was the time in 2024 that Charlie Kirk practiced politics the right way by calling for public executions and recommending that children watch them:

On his weekly panel discussion, "ThoughtCrime," Kirk was discussing death penalties....

"Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?" Kirk asked.

Kirk, along with his co-hosts Jack Posobiec, Tyler Bowyer and Blake Neff, continued to discuss at what age should children watch the public executions, with one co-host pointing out as young as 12 years old.

"I think maybe age 12, sixth grade or so when you are old enough... " Neff said.

While Bowyer pointed out that it should be at an age when someone "can embrace the meaning" of the execution.

*****

Why is Hegseth doing this? There might be some truth to this:

Hegseth wants to livestream a public execution for the same reason ISIS livestreamed/posted their public executions: to radicalize & recruit the same demographic of downwardly-mobile, low IQ, credulous 17-27 year old males that ISIS snuff films attracted.

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) October 9, 2026

But I think it's more about cruelty, and about creating compelling television in a Fox News way. (Hegseth is the purest product of Fox News in a Fox-saturated administration.)

I also think we're seeing the right's usual craving for an easy, lazy fix. In the Rolling Stone story about Trump, a source says, of Trump's proposed release of execution videos, “The [former] president believes this would help put the fear of God into violent criminals.” Kirk and his posse agreed:

... Kirk asked whether crime would go up or down if children were to watch public executions, "Here's a question for anyone that might be not persuaded. Would crime go up or down?"

Bowyer said, "It would go way down," with Kirk then asking, "So why is this even a question?"

Republicans believe that their own cruelty is virtuous, and that most problems can be easily solved with the swift applcation of that cruelty. That's why they liked torture in the George W. Bush years. That's why they like ICE brutality and Stephen Miller's deliberately cruel concentration camps. That's why they thought Alligator Alcatraz was an awesome idea.

I think Republicans -- in the reddest states and also in the Trump administration in its waning days -- will execute more prisoners publicly after this execution. I don't think even widespread condemnation from liberals and centrists will stop grandstanding Republicans. And as a country, we might just get used to it.

A POSSIBLE TRUMP OCTOBER SURPRISE IS ALREADY FAILING

I don't know what else President Trump is planning in order to prevent a Republican bloodbath in the midterms, but if all his schemes are as ill-conceived as the one reported by The Atlantic yesterday, we don't have much to worry about.

The White House has asked the Pentagon to develop strike options against Iranian targets that could be exercised ahead of the midterms, according to two administration officials.

How do we know this is intended to be a midterm October surprise? Because White House insiders say it is.

The planning underscores just how much the president wants to reduce gas prices and demonstrate progress in the conflict before the vote, administration officials told us.

... those in favor believe that further action after months of uneasy peace could allow Trump to demonstrate strength and potentially declare some sort of victory, giving Republicans much-needed momentum heading into the election. “It would make the president look like he got a win and that gas prices would start going down,” a Republican familiar with the deliberations told us....

But gas prices wouldn't start going down. In fact, the mere possibility that Trump might do this appears to be raising oil prices right now. NBC News reports:

The price of oil jumped sharply Thursday, as President Donald Trump weighs whether to resume large-scale U.S. military operations against Iran in the coming weeks.

Brent crude oil rose more than 5% to more than $105 per barrel in early trading, while U.S. crude oil rose almost 5% to nearly $93 per barrel. Benchmark diesel futures jumped 4.5% in European trading. Heating oil, a proxy for jet fuel, rose more than 4%.

(Heating oil isn't just "a proxy for jet fuel." It's still a primary fuel for heating in the Northeast. Half of Maine residents use oil heat, and they were already expected to pay an average of more than $1,260 per family for heating this winter.)

More from NBC:

The move higher in oil prices also pushed up bond yields. The 10-year Treasury yield, which heavily influences consumer borrowing rates, jumped to 5.35%....

U.S. stock futures dropped in response. S&P 500 futures fell 0.6% and Nasdaq 100 futures slid 0.8%. Futures for the Russell 2000, which tracks small and medium-sized companies, fell 1%.

So this is a disaster and it hasn't even happened yet.

Trump simply doesn't understand that war is a process that has costs even for the winner. Venezuela lulled him into believing that he could simply attack Iran and score a win with little or no cost to America. Boom -- victory! You might imagine that the last seven months were a learning experience for Trump, but Trump doesn't learn. He now thinks he can do Boom -- electoral victory! He can't.

I don't know if the other October surprises Trump is considering, such as the seizure of voting machines, will be similarly ill-conceived, but we can hope. It's quite possible that Trump will try to seize voting machines in locales where the government is likely to push back hardest, both legislatively and in court. There's a good chance that he'll focus on states that get on his nerves, like California, rather than states where key races are taking place. Because Trump is still angry about 2020, he might go after Georgia, where Jon Ossoff is likely to win by such a comfortable margin that Trump's cries of "Fraud!" will be especially implausible, while ignoring other states (Iowa? Maine?) with much tighter races.

I don't want to rule out the possibility that Trump's efforts will be effective, but he often doesn't know how to use the power our system has ceded to him in an effective way. Let's hope that's true in this election season.

WAS MEGYN KELLY EVER ON WOMEN'S SIDE?

Megyn Kelly has concluded that taking the pro-rapist side in the Cornell 7 case is a good career move. First, she body-shamed and slandered the accuser in the case on her podcast Monday:

No one will even consider the possibility that this woman made a decision to get it on with four men total, not seven, and enjoyed it because — I'm just going to be honest, she's not the most attractive gal. She's extremely beefy in her arms and her legs. She has a whole video online talking about her cankles. And she possibly enjoyed being admired. This is how women make these mistakes. Admired, wanted, some women even foolishly say loved by these guys at Cornell. But this is probably a first for her. She's probably thrilled to be so admired because she clearly didn't grow up the incredibly beautiful one.

(Not that it matters, but I've been to X and seen pictures of the woman who's been identified as Jane Doe, the same pictures Kelly has presumably seen. The woman in the pictures I've seen is not "extremely beefy in her arms and her legs." You need to have the twisted grooming standards of Hollywood, Fox News, and Mar-a-Lago to believe that.)

Kelly also said this:

Following Olivia Rodrigo’s statement in support of the Jane Doe at the center of the Cornell 7 lawsuit on Sunday, Megyn Kelly is firing off at the singer, calling her a “know-nothing moron” who should “sit down and be quiet.”

“Olivia, in sum, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Shut up and stick to singing,” Kelly said on a Monday episode of her YouTube show. “I liked you better when you were in front of a microphone singing your weird little depressing songs.” She continued: “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and let people suspect you’re an idiot than to open it and prove them right. Ever hear that saying? It applies to you, sweetheart... We don’t need the participation of know-nothing morons who have been auto-tuned into fame and suddenly think they have something profound to say on the culture wars.”

Needless to say, Kelly's insistence that entertainers should just shut up and sing is situational, as we saw after the Kid Rock halftime show that served as counterprogramming during Bad Bunny's performance at the Super Bowl:

Congratulations @TPUSA, I am in tears at that BEAUTIFUL half time show. Everyone did a spectacular job - it was perfect. THANK YOU!

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) February 9, 2026

Kid Rock sings the final song, Cody Johnson’s ‘Til You Can’t, under his real name Robert Ritchie, adding a verse in honor of Charlie Kirk and delivering a stunningly powerful performance. Wow.

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) February 9, 2026

Kelly has also offered to bankroll a lawsuit from Riley Gaines, a college swimmer who has turned one competition against a trans swimmer into a career as a right-wing activist.

It's no surprise that Kelly is a hypocrite. But wasn't she more of a feminist once? Isn't her most famous TV moment an attack on Donald Trump during an August 2015 debate?

“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” Kelly began her question....

“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump interrupted with a sneer, earning cheers from the crowd....

“For the record, it was way beyond Rosie O’Donnell,” Kelly said – before launching into a laundry list Trump’s most misogynistic moments:

Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on the Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president? And how do you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton – that you are part of the war on women?

Trump, unchastened, responded with a misdirect: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.”

But Kelly was doing what Rupert Murdoch wanted her to do. Remember, Kelly was answerable to Roger Ailes, but both of them had to do what Murdoch wanted. In his biography of Roger Ailes, Gabriel Sherman wrote:

Murdoch was not a fan of Trump and especially did not like his stance on immigration.... A few days before the first GOP debater on Fox in August 2015, Murdoch called Ailes at home. "This has gone on long enough," Murdoch said, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Murdoch told Ailes he wanted Fox's debate moderators -- Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace -- to hammer Trump on a variety of issues.

Ailes already believed Trump would win the nomination, Sherman writes, but "he didn't fight Murdoch on the debate directive."

We know Murdoch didn't like Trump because it was right there in his Twitter feed:

When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) July 19, 2015

Mexican immigrants, as with all immigrants, have much lower crime rates than native born. Eg El Paso safest city in U.S. Trump wrong.

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) July 12, 2015

But after Republican voters responded positively to Trump's replies to Kelly, and to his subsequent attacks on her ("you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever"), she went to Trump Tower to kiss his ring and lobby him for interview. She got the interview, but, as Sherman writes, "the rating were terrible and reviewers panned her generally sycophantic questions."

I give Kelly more credit for helping to expose Ailes's sexual predation, though, as Wonkette's Robyn Pennacchia notes, Kelly didn't speak up for years and is now attacking Cornell's Jane Doe because she didn't speak up for weeks.

“I'm sorry, but three weeks ...” [Kelly] said on a recent broadcast of The Megyn Kelly Show. “If you were violently gang raped repeatedly over the course of an evening, do you think it would take you three weeks to call the campus police? And do you think you'd call the campus police at all?”

... There are also women out there who take a decade to come forward about something like sexual harassment, and sometimes those women are Megyn Kelly.

Kelly joined Fox in 2004. She said her sexual harassment by Ailes happened "when she was just 12 months into her career at Fox News and working in the network's Washington, D.C., bureau," according to an ABC News story published in 2016, which was when she reported the harassment.

Kelly spoke up after another Fox on-air host, Gretchen Carlson, accused Ailes of sexual misconduct and filed a lawsuit. Other women followed. Sherman, in his book, says that Kelly was "the third or fourth woman to speak to the lawyers."

Sherman says that Kelly had the backing of Rupert Murdoch's sons James and Lachlan, who "both encouraged her to speak" to the lawyers investigating the harassment. I'd still say that it took courage for Kelly to speak up, but it took a lot more courage for Jane Doe to stand up to Cornell because she didn't have powerful allies.

Sherman, in his book, is somewhat cynical about Kelly's motives:

... Carlson's lawsuit presented an opportunity. Kelly could bust up the boys' club at Fox, put herself on the right side of a snowballing media story, and rid herself of a boss who was no longer supportive of her -- all while maximizing her leverage in a contract negotiation.

I'll give Kelly a bit more credit than that. She occasionally does the right thing, though generally it's out of pure self-interest or careerism. And her remarks in the Cornell case make clear that, in the final analysis, she's a garbage person.

APOCALYPSE NOW'S CHILD MUTILATORS HAVE A KINDRED SPIRIT IN KEN PAXTON

Many Republicans are critical of vaccines these days, but the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, is treating childhood vaccinations as potential crimes. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Paxton has ... implicated the nation’s largest organization of pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, in [an] alleged conspiracy over the workaday task of protecting children from polio, measles, meningitis and more than a dozen other dangerous and sometimes life-threatening diseases.

“I will ensure that Big Pharma and Big Insurance don’t bribe medical providers to pressure parents to jab their kids with vaccines they feel aren’t safe or necessary,” he said when announcing the investigation in January....

As the Times notes, he's legally harassing individual pediatricians, like a doctor the paper identifies by her middle name only, as Dr. Rachel:

Until recently, she had planned to continue her practice for years to come. But this year, she has begun to reconsider amid the stress and legal costs of defending herself in a statewide investigation by Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, who has accused doctors, drug companies and insurers of conspiring to push parents into vaccinating children....

In December, Dr. Rachel received a letter from the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division demanding her vaccine purchase records over the past 10 years. “The division believes that you are in possession, custody or control” of material, “involving potential misleading or deceptive acts regarding incentives associated with the administration of childhood vaccines,” it said, adding that such acts could be in violation of the state’s deceptive trade practices law.

The letter also requested her practice’s vaccine policy, and said that it would not be sufficient to cite the childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

... Dr. Rachel said she did not know why the attorney general’s office targeted her tiny practice in an inquiry that he announced as directed toward the state’s “largest medical providers,” vaccine makers and health insurers. She said that responding to the demand for her records had so far cost her nearly $15,000 in legal fees, and sent her digging for receipts for $18 vaccines given a decade ago.

... She supplied information in response to Mr. Paxton’s office’s request for every “reward, financial benefit, bonus, discount, return, rebate or other consideration” from a vaccine maker, giving details that included a $40 batch of cookies a vaccine maker’s representative brought to her office. She said her most significant discounts were small reductions vaccine makers gave her for paying a bill promptly.

Paxton, the Times tells us, is a pioneer.

So far, Mr. Paxton is the only attorney general to investigate pediatricians for vaccinating children.

How depraved has the Republican Party become when this statement has to be preceded by the phrase "So far"?

The Times is unsure why Paxton would do this.

It is unclear why he opened this investigation, though some people in Texas have speculated that he began it to court Mr. Trump’s endorsement in a competitive primary race (which he eventually received) or to appeal to vaccine-skeptical Texas voters.

“I think aligning himself with Kennedy helped him get an endorsement from President Trump, which then allowed him to win the Senate primary here in Texas,” said Dr. Heidi Russell, a pediatrician and director of the Center for Health Policy at Rice University in Houston.

This is Robert Kennedy Jr.'s pet issue, but it's not Trump's, even though he's vaccine-skeptical. I don't think this mattered to Trump one way or the other when he was deciding which candidate to endorse. It's far more likely that Paxton was in a tight primary with John Cornyn and was looking to appeal to anti-vaccine Republicans in (because this is Texas) the most punitive, heavy-handed way possible. I'm sure he also believes that the anti-vaxx crowd doesn't inevitably vote Republican, and he could add anti-vaxx independents and even Democrats to his coalition if his anti-vaccine crusade was sufficiently high-profile.

This is a sick, sociopathic way to try to win an election.

In the past, I've talked about a horrific scene in Apocalypse Now in which Marlon Brando, as Colonel Kurtz, recounts a Viet Cong response to an American vaccination drive. (This was, fortunately, a screenwriter's invention.)

I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it’s judgment that defeats us.

Ken Paxton isn't chopping children's arms off, but that's a difference of degree only. He's making childhood vaccination in Texas perilous for pediatricians because the Cause -- Republican domination of politcs forever, as well as the advancement of his own career -- is more important than protecting children from contagious and often deadly diseases.

Ken Paxton is a moral monster, but the Republican Party as a whole is morally monstrous, so this story comes as no surprise. It will probably take a disease outbreak far more horrible than anything we've experienced in the second Trump presidency to arouse the level of outrage this anti-science zealotry deserves. Meanwhile, for this and many other reasons, Paxton's political career needs to end right now.

ALITO'S KAVANAUGH ASSASSINATION CONSPIRACY THEORY HAS NEVER MADE SENSE

In a softball interview with CBS's Jan Crawford, Samuel Alito once again flogs his favorite conspiracy theory: that the leaker of the Court's Dobbs decision knew the leak would lead to a Supreme Court assassination attempt.

"It was quite a shock," Alito said. "But within a relatively short period of time, the thought occurred to me, and I think to the others in the majority, that this would endanger us. And it made us targets for assassination."

Security, Alito said, ramped up immediately. A month later, in June of 2022, the world would know why. In the middle of the night, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family slept in their Maryland home, a would-be assassin approached their backyard with a bag containing a gun and rounds of ammunition, a knife and nail punch, duct tape, zip ties, a crowbar and other burglary tools, including special shoes to silence his footsteps.

He was intent on killing justices before the Court released its Dobbs decision. With its narrow 5-4 majority, it would only take one justice. He said on private messaging boards he aimed to kill at least three of the conservatives and, as prosecutors later put it, "single-handedly and irrevocably to alter an entire branch of the United States government."

At the last minute, the man spoke to his sister on his cell phone, and she managed to talk him out of it. He was arrested and later convicted for the attempted assassination of Kavanaugh.

"His goal was to change the decision in the case. So that was quite predictable," Alito said. "And whoever leaked it knew or had good reason to know that that would be the consequence of leaking it. And Politico knew, or should've known, that that would be the consequence of their decision to publish it."

This isn't the first time Alito has said this. He made the same argument in October 2022, a few months after the assassination attempt.

The leak to Politico ahead of the decision confirming that opinion overruling Roe v Wade "gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us," Alito said in a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

He made the argument again six months later in a Wall Street Journal interview.

“Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” Alito told the Wall Street Journal in an interview....

“It was rational for people to believe they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.”

Except that the would-be assassin, then known as Nicholas Roske (and now known as Sophie Roske), didn't know it would be a 5-4 ruling. At the time of the leak, Politico reported that five right-wing justices were on board and three liberal justices were dissenting, but

How Chief Justice John Roberts will ultimately vote, and whether he will join an already written opinion or draft his own, is unclear.

It was also reported at the time that this wasn't Roske's sole motivation:

Roske told a Montgomery County Police detective "that he was upset about the leak of a recent Supreme Court draft decision regarding the right to abortion as well as the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas," the court documents say.

The court papers add, "Roske indicated that he believed the Justice that he intended to kill would side with Second Amendment decisions that would loosen gun control laws."

No gun decision had been leaked at the time of Roske's assassination plot.

Please note that Alito hasn't argued that the leaker and the would-be assassin knew each other. In fact, he's implicitly arguing the opposite, because if they'd known each other, the leaker could have given the leaked decision to the would-be assassin privately -- it didn't need to be published. What Alito is arguing is that the leaker's thought process was this: I'll make this draft decision public, secure in the knowledge that someone out there will read it and think, "Okay, that's it, I'm going to start killing Supreme Court justices."

That's quite a leap of faith.

It also supposes that would-be assassins are motivated only by the perceived opportunity to change a specific government course of action and never by anger at a specific past act or series of acts. If you believe Alto's conspiracy theory, an assassination attempt was much more likely to happen happen when the Dobbs decision was pending than when it was on the books -- no one would be murderously angry at that point!

And this isn't how anything works. Powerful government officials will inevitably anger their critics. Some of those critics, inevitably, will want to react to what angers them with violence. In a society with free speech, that's not a justification for withholding important information from the public, although Alito -- whose job it is to defend the First Amendment -- may believe it is. The government (sometimes augmented by private security services) should protect public officials from violence. That's all a free society can do.