Men's Lifestyle May 22, 2026 0 Comments

Judges Drop the Hammer on Trump’s Inner Circle—This Courtroom Showdown Will Shock You!

Ever wonder how an 8-minute read can unravel a saga of courtroom drama, political upheaval, and even a sprinkle of ancient Viking mystery? Well, buckle up—because this week’s whirlwind journey takes us from the inside scoop on prosecutorial missteps that could rattle any administration’s confidence, all the way to climate-driven archaeological goldmines uncovering 3,400-year-old loafers (yes, loafers!) and a newly crowned marine dinosaur king. Alongside these riveting revelations, there’s a heartfelt nod to cultural gems, from Woody Guthrie’s legacy coming vividly back to life, to the surprising political activism blossoming in late-night TV—plus a musical pick to brighten your weekend. If you thought the justice system and fossil records couldn’t collide in one post, think again. So, grab your favorite drink, maybe some noise-cancelling headphones, and join me as we dive deep into the chaos, the culture, and the curious tales that make up our world right now. Ready to explore what lurks beneath the surface and beyond the headlines? Let’s go. LEARN MORE

8 min read

Out on the Weekend

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

Now this right here ought to scare any administration official who has plans for the future.

In a rare courtroom appearance, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros told U.S. District Judge April Perry he’d learned of what happened three weeks ago. He said he didn’t believe any member of his staff had intentionally misled the judge. Then, he went on to say the conduct of six protesters who opposed the Trump administration’s deportation campaign was “unacceptable in a civilized society”— even though he’d officially just abandoned any effort to find them guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.

Perry told him, “you are significantly undercutting your mea culpa here by standing behind the charges and continuing to vilify these particular defendants.” She said there might be talk of sanctions for prosecutors down the road. And that’s how the prosecution of the “Broadview Six” came to an end — with jaw-dropping revelations, days before a trial, that could haunt Chicago’s U.S. Attorney’s office for years. The office’s mantra is “Do the Right Thing,” and it has long been considered one of the most well-regarded of its kind in the country.

Well, there’s another thing that this president has ruined.

Perry served in the office and was even once tapped to lead it. But Thursday, she told attorneys she was “incredibly shocked” by what she saw in a set of grand jury transcripts. “I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts,” Perry said. Worst of all, she said, the problematic behavior had been redacted out of transcripts given to her by the feds. “Mistakes happen,” Perry said. “They happen to all of us. But as I tell my children, you own it. You admit to it. You apologize for it, and you move on. What you do not do is hide it.”

Do go on.

Perry flagged three problematic events in the grand jury. First, she said there was “vouching,” in which a prosecutor improperly put “her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges,” according to the judge. Second, Perry said a prosecutor crossed a line by having “substantive” communications with grand jurors outside of the grand jury room.

The judge said a prosecutor also excused grand jurors “who disagreed with the government’s case from the deliberations process.” Finally, it turns out the case had once been rejected by grand jurors, a result known as a “no bill.” Three other Midway Blitz defendants were cleared last fall because of grand jury “no bills” — which were once considered an incredibly rare rebuke of prosecutors.

And in a piece of wonderful synergy, a federal judge in Tennessee dismissed federal human trafficking charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran migrant who became the first poster man of the administration’s brutal anti-immigrant jihad. The administration sent him to a Salvadoran hellhole after an immigration judge ruled that Abrego Garcia should stay here. A District Court ordered his return and the administration did so, but not before it concocted the charges that were dismissed on Friday. From CNN:

“The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution,” Judge Waverly Crenshaw wrote in his opinion dismissing the counts Friday. The judge added that the investigation into the 2022 traffic stop was closed, and “only after Abrego succeeded in vindicating his rights did the Executive Branch reopen that investigation…The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power,” Crenshaw wrote. “Blanche’s words directly confirm that the Executive Branch reopened the criminal investigation because the Judicial Branch required the Executive Branch to facilitate Abrego’s return from El Salvador.”

Ah, Todd Blanche, you will be hung out to dry very soon, alas. Sooner or later—sooner, I hope—the bill for turning the entire justice system into a modern day slave-catching operation is going to come due. I hope all these scurvy twerps pay.

My pal Greg Mitchell has a new documentary on Woody Guthrie coming on PBS. It’s narrated by Rosanne Cash, which alone makes it worth viewing, and Bruce Springsteen makes an appearance as well. I don’t know anywhere near enough about Woody, so I’m looking forward to this. No trailers yet, but the PBS website has a preview in which it seems to involve Guthrie’s relationship to John Steinbeck and the Joad family. I suspect The Boss will not be doing “Thunder Road” but, rather, another entry in his now vast catalogue, and that the film will draw some modern parallels. I’m anticipating that, and I suspect, somewhere, so is Henry.

Stephen Colbert’s oligarchy-induced swan song on Thursday night was a modest, sweet affair, completely in keeping with the host’s personal demeanor. The appearance of the other late night hosts completed the very odd transformation of all of them into one of the most unusual political activist cells of all time. I didn’t go much for the whole wormhole bit but YMMV. Paul McCartney was every bit the charming Beatle he’s always been, returning to the Ed Sullivan Theater stage where he and the other three Fabs turned the world upside down in 1964.

At first, I was disappointed that Colbert didn’t throw at least a little fire at the president, and at the network that so eagerly did the president’s business for him. He did make one crack about CBS’ official explanation about how his cancellation was a financial decision, except that Colbert put it in the mouth of a dolphin. It was a perfect look into the fundamental decency of this brilliant, gentle man. Which is why his skewering of the current president carried so much heat, because it came from such a warm heart.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Happy Livin’” (Jazzmeia Horn): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathé Archives: As a newbie fan of English Premier League footie – Go Forest! Next year – I recognize the significance of Arsenal’s winning the league championship this week. So, as a treat for all fans of the Gunners, here they are, teeing it up against Blackburn Rovers in 1914. I have no idea who’s who, or what the score is, but the pitch looks like the Great Grimpen Mire. History is so cool.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From Smithsonian:

A brown leather loafer came into view on a patch of ice high up in Norway’s Innlandet Mountains. As soon as local hiker and history buff Reidar Marstein spotted it, he knew it was significant. Marstein wrapped the shoe in paper and plastic, carried it down the slope and called a local archaeologist. That perfectly intact item, found on an exceptionally warm September day in 2006, ended up transforming an entire scientific field. It belonged to a Bronze Age Viking 3,400 years ago.

A Viking wearing loafers? What was he, the golf pro? We continue.

The artifact formed the basis for the largest glacial archaeology program in the world: Norway’s Secrets of the Ice. Marstein and Espen Finstad, whom Marstein had phoned that day, founded this joint research initiative with the Innlandet County Council and Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History after the shoe’s discovery. Ever since, the program’s small team of archaeologists have traversed the Innlandet Mountains when ice melt reaches its peak in August and September, scouring the terrain for more hints about the past.

“Everything we’ve found from prehistory had to be carried up by somebody in animal-hide leather shoes. They were quite rugged, because they didn’t have a choice. It was just another day for them,” says Julian Post-Melbye, a glacial archaeologist with the program and the Museum of Cultural History. Now, he adds, it’s humbling “to do fieldwork in lightweight gear and Gore-Tex—everything money can buy to make walking around in the mountains easier.”

This bonanza, of course, is only possible because of the ongoing climate crisis. Which is nowhere making this a lemons-into-lemonade situation. Nothing, not even Viking loafers, is worth the environmental catastrophe that is unfolding around us.

Secrets of the Ice’s archaeologists have collected about 4,500 artifacts so far. Among them are the world’s oldest intact pair of wooden skis; a 3,000-year-old Viking arrowhead shot by a reindeer hunter in the Bronze Age; and textiles, traps and tunics lost along ancient trade routes. The program earned two European Heritage Awards last year for excellence in conservation, research, education and citizen engagement around the world.

Still, not even that.

Hey, LiveScience. Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Scientists have described a new species of mosasaur, a member of a marine reptile group that lived at the same time as dinosaurs during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). The newly named species fits into an already known genus: Tylosaurus. But its new species name, Tylosaurus rex — T. rex, for short — sets it apart from the other mosasaur species in the group. The species name means “king of the tylosaurs,” according to a new study published Thursday (May 21) in the journal Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. The fossils are about 80 million years old and were discovered mostly in northern Texas decades ago. The mosasaur T. rex measured up to 43 feet (13 meters) long, or about the length of a tour bus. It had finely serrated teeth, unusually powerful jaws, and evidence on its fossils of violent combat with its own species.

A T-Rex of the deep. Most excellent. What else is fascinating about this case is that it’s one of those in which somebody checks out some fossils that have been lying around for decades and, through various modern scientific hoodoo, the fossils are discoveries all over again. They all lived then to make us happy now, over and over again.

I’ll be back on Tuesday 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 any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention, and the Epstein victims, whose trauma is back in the news again, and Eric Swalwell’s victims, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and for the families of the victims of the mosque shooting in San Diego, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the brilliant journalists of the Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont,, and for all the people and the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and for the storm-clobbered, flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and in Georgia, and for the people affected by the tornados in Mississippi, and for people suffering from the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius, the outbreaks of measles, a particularly brutal flu, and the Legionnaire’s diseaseoutbreak in Harlem, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.