2nd Degree Murder sounds about right here. Premeditation would be hard to prove. Neither a slap nor mace are deadly force threats, and we don't know what exactly preceded those (ie, who and what started the fight). But police can talk to witnesses and it seems they have enough to file charges.

The apparent fact that the alleged murderer was apparently operating as paid security without a licence to do so won't help his case.

Photographic proof Joe Biden met with investors mentioned in Hunter Biden's email chain.

Another notch in the President's foreign policy belt.

Glenn has been a pretty strong critic of both censorship and intelligence agency abuse. He co-founded The Intercept. Now he has resigned over censorship of negative information about Joe Biden.

Glenn Greenwald

The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.

The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

If you still believe modern journalism is trustworthy, read the whole thing.

Was there a pre-existing investigation? why was the subpoena issued by an FBI agent whose expertise is apparently in child pornography investigations?

The Biden campaign is still claiming Russian interference while not denying the authenticity of the material. They city a letter from 50 or so former intelligence officials to claim the laptop is Russian interference, none of whom have any access to classified information now. DNI Ratcliffe says it's not Russian interference and no one (looking at Adam Schiff) has been given intelligence making that claim because none exists.

The Secret Service says their travel logs match details in the emails, on top of many other verifications I've written about before.

I see two possibilities.

One is, there was a preexisting money laundering investigation that found out about the laptop when it was reported and grabbed it. This investigation could be about the Bidens, and everything has been kept quiet to keep the prosecution successful...

Two, it could be an FBI investigation into money laundering revolving around Rudy Giuliani, his alleged prior associate Lev Parnas, and other figures alleged to have been feeding information to Rudy of unknown quality and authenticity. We keep hearing rumors of some sort of investigation around that (it apparently flipped Lev Parnas; whether or not he's singing or composing remains to the seen). In this case, the laptop would be seized by the investigative team to protect their candidate and keep a lid on the information. The latter tactic would fit with an investigation that apparently produced nothing for about a year.

I have no idea whether any allegations against Rudy or his alleged associates have any merit. Ditto those against the Bidens, though the evidence in that case is certainly suggestive.

However... I wouldn't get to excited about the laptop being tied to a money laundering investigation. Chris Wray still runs the FBI and he's still trying to sell Russian Collusion. Just sayin'. It may not be the investigation we are hoping for.

But then again, it might. And based on the information that keeps coming out, an investigation certainly seems warranted.

Washington Examiner

President Trump, whose Middle East plan is winning support from Arab nations, is gaining strong support from Muslim leaders and their followers who believe that the Democrats haven't delivered on years of promises, according to a new survey of Islamic leaders.

In a shocking turnaround, 61.48% of the 109 Muslim leaders who “represent two million voters” plan to vote for Trump. That is a slight edge over their 2012 vote for Barack Obama.

The survey of the leaders was done by the Washington correspondent for Aksam Gazetesi, a Turkish news site. It suggested that the Muslim leaders' support for former Vice President Joe Biden was 30.27%.

This is surprising to say the least. I see three points of interest here:

1) Trump has actually succeeded in increasing peace in the middle east, including historical peace agreements between Israel and other nations in the region. Muslims in the US who may not be fanatical in hating Jews may view this as a positive.

2) The article heavily emphasizes that Trump "does what he says", while Clinton and Obama did not. This is certainly true. I don't have the kind of insight into the Islamic community in the US to know if this really matters. I'm guessing "does what he says" refers to avoiding more middle east conflicts, but the speaker doesn't elaborate.

3) Obama was definitely a crypto-Muslim who flashed low-profile signals of supporting Islam regularly. Biden has also tried this but it seems a lot less credible coming from him. I oppose Biden politically and am ready to believe quite a few bad things about him, but not that he's a secret Muslim.

This series of threatening letters is so clumsy it can't possibly be what it appears to be. Maybe it's something similar to this false-flag message from Iran, just in the other direction? In the fine Russian tradition of "Let's you and him fight."

Daily Mail quoted at Daily Pundit

US intelligence officials have confirmed Iran is responsible for a series of threatening emails targeting Democratic voters this week, as they revealed Russia is also playing its part to meddle in the presidential election.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Wednesday identified the countries as two foreign actors that ‘have taken specific actions to influence public opinion relating to our elections.’

Ratcliffe said both countries separately managed to obtain and use voter registration information to target Americans and ‘incite social unrest.’

Yes, THIS election interference plot is confirmed by DNI Ratcliffe to be an actual Iranian plot tied to hacking of election infrastructure (voter rolls and party registration data).

Note that the emails are a false-flag claiming to be from the Proud Boys. Take anything negative in the news about the Proud Boys in the next few weeks with a substantial quantity of salt.

Dirty tricks. Remember, Watergate was just a burglary.

Of course, Fox News may have copies.

UPDATE: I'm tagging this Spygate, because who else could have known about and intercepted this package?

PJMedia

The bill failed in a 51-44 party-line vote, falling short of the 60 votes required, thanks to Senate Democrats.

Pelosi’s $3 trillion bill in May included a repeal of parts of the Trump tax cuts, a gambit to tie Trump’s hands on inspectors general, “environmental justice grants,” voting by mail for the 2020 election, LGBT training, a hate crimes bill, and extra unemployment benefits that would cost the economy 13.9 million jobs, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Pelosi’s March COVID-19 stimulus bill included provisions on violence against women, AIDS funding, LGBTQ+ financial literacy programs, onerous carbon emissions reporting for airlines, a $15/hour minimum wage, and sixty pages on elections, among other things.

It's the 60 pages on elections she really wanted, but I think now that the actual elections are happening it's too late to change the rules.

I'm skeptical about even the most basic COVID relief legislation at this point. Open the damn country up. But all the rest of that crap Pelosi wants? No. Just no.

Multiple informants engaging in provocation and entrapment.

The admission is that Facebook will impose fewer rules on content after the election, which just confirms that the restrictions -- which are transparently biased -- are intended to influence the outcome.

The harm created by Facebook's blatantly biased censorship is far greater than the harm they are trying to prevent.

The evidence was allegedly delivered to Delaware police. I'm not going to speculate, since this isn't really about politics. Either it's true, or it isn't. The person directly accused isn't running. It's a major black eye for elder Joe the candidate, especially if he knew and did nothing as is alleged; but it isn't directly criminal on his part (absent facts which would support neglect or some other failure of duty). It just looks really bad.

It may be even more awkward, because the Delaware AG appears to be a friend and ally of the Bidens.

These accusations are bad enough that I hope they aren't true. Sadly, enough external validation has come out regarding emails from the laptop that dismissing all of this as a dirty trick is not justified. We'll have to await the outcome of actual investigations from people with direct access to the evidence -- if the FBI and the Delaware police are willing to conduct them.

Fox News and CBS. So the next question is, what have they been doing with it all this time? The likely answer ("Nothing") demands the appointment of a special counsel.

PJMedia

On Monday, Curtis James Jackson III, better known by his stage name 50 Cent, endorsed President Donald Trump after discovering that Democratic nominee Joe Biden would raise taxes to 62 percent for top earners in California and 58 percent for top earners in New York state. He doubled down on Tuesday, explaining, “I don’t want to be 20 Cent.”

Welcome to the right.

Video and details here Cruz asks Jack Dorsey about the New York Post stories Twitter has been blocking. Dorsey says the story can be shared now. But it can't be. Of course it was unblocked shortly after that.

The case focuses on search engine preloading, which I think has some strong analogous precedents in Microsoft antitrust cases.

4-4 split leaves absurd lower court decision in place. We need Amy on the court to resolve these decisions without absurd ties. And we need Roberts to wake the fuck up and do his job, or else resign and publicly admit that the left has been blackmailing him. Seriously. In what sane universe do you count votes without postmarks that were received after the election? That is an invitation to fraud. And if those ballots decide the presidency... well, that's a nightmare scenario we don't need.

Details in the Daily Mail.

At first glance, I didn't think a special council was necessary -- yet. If Trump wins, AG Barr can handle an investigation into political figures who are not running for political office. There's no conflict of interest there after the election, and no investigation started now could possibly have an impact on the election when the election is only three weeks away.

However, if Biden wins, a special counsel appointment would be appropriate prior to inauguration.

There is a caveat to that, however. The FBI has had this laptop since 2019 and so far as we can tell, nothing has been done about it. AG Barr should demand a full accounting on the status of any investigations opened on the basis of this evidence, and make a determine whether, at this point, a special counsel is required simply to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

Adam Schiff is lying; there is no intelligence to suggest the laptop is part of a Russian disinformation campaign. It's hardly the first time Schiff has lied through his teeth and made up things.

Western Journal

The answer to many of those questions, of course, is no. That’s why the Democracy Institute is weighting things differently. Basham sees three types of shy Trump voters — blue-collar male Midwesterners, suburban white women and people of color.

On that last count, consider this: “The #1 predictor of voting Republican is owning a handgun,” Basham told Forbes. “Black female gun ownership has skyrocketed. Forty percent of new handgun owners are female; 60 percent are African-American.”

According to the Democracy Institute’s model, Trump will end up winning 320 electoral votes this November. That kind of talk would get Democracy Institute pollsters laughed out of most rooms.

[Emphasis added]
Assuming that's true, and I wouldn't question it at face value, it suggests the Republican party has grossly miscalculated what their base cares about and wants to see legislators do. The elected Republicans have for years basically told gun owners to sit down and shut up. The most we have gotten for our trouble and political effort has been nothing -- ie, Republicans sometimes block gun control legislation, and sometimes protect the gun industry from legal abuse (eg, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act). It's very rare for federal legislators to offer gun owners anything positive. Maybe it's time the party tried that.

Read the whole thing for a little bit of insight into polling about Trump, as well.

OK, Bill. You said it. "Simply shutting down" the economy completely, as we did for COVID, is "not enough".

That means no solution is possible short of global suicide. I reject that. So let's go full steam ahead and let the world warm up if it's going to.

I'm betting it won't.