No, QAnon Shaman Not Released Early Because Tucker Carlson Exonerated Him, You F*cking Idiots
Jesus Christ.
There is a lie on the rightwing internet today. (Can you believe it?)
Charlie Kirk helpfully copy/pasted it from whatever FWD: Fwd: fwd: FWD: FWD: fwd: FWD: email his mom sent him this morning.
\u201cBREAKING: Jacob Chansley AKA "QAnon Shaman" has been freed from prison 14 months early after never-before-seen exculpatory Jan. 6 footage showing him being escorted into Senate by cops was shared with the public by Tucker Carlson.\u201d— Charlie Kirk (@Charlie Kirk) 1680188619
"BREAKING," it reads. "Jacob Chansley AKA 'QAnon Shaman' has been freed from prison 14 months early after never-before-seen exculpatory Jan. 6 footage showing him being escorted into Senate by cops was shared with the public by Tucker Carlson."
No. Just all of it is no. The only part of it that's correct is that the fucking dork secessionist terrorist with the silly hat got to leave the prison to go to a halfway house. On exactly the schedule he was told when he went to prison.
And we guess technically Charlie wrote that cleverly, as it actually does not say Tucker Carlson's dumbfucking edited January 6 early bird menu senior citizen Capitol field trip barebacking orgy video actually brought about this result. It falsely asserts that it was "exculpatory," but doesn't say that's why this loser is leaving prison and on his way to a halfway house.
It's written hoping you'll mistakenly create that impression in your own rarely used brain. The Daily Mail is similarly writing all these facts VERY CLOSE to each other.
That's one way rightwing propaganda works.
Here is the truth:
Tucker did play some footage of the QAnon Shaman/Jacob Chansley that he just swore to Jesus exonerated Chansley. Nobody was convinced, unless they were as dumb as Elon Musk. It was extremely selectively edited, for the benefit of stupid people. Prosecutors called it bullshit.
Simultaneously, as producer and journalist Ford Fischer explains on Twitter, Chansley has now served 27 months of his 41-month sentence. The Daily Mail doesn't say Tucker's footage got Chansley out of prison. It says:
The spokesman [for the Bureau of Prisons] declined to comment on the reason for the transfer, but pointed generally to federal laws that allow for good-conduct sentence reductions, as well as release to a halfway house for the final 12 months of a sentence.
Chansley's release comes weeks after his former attorney demanded he be freed in light of new video from the Capitol riot, but his move to the halfway house appears to be unconnected.
A former federal prosecutor unconnected with the case said it was doubtful public pressure played a role in Chansley's transfer, noting the move appears 'kind of routine' under BOP guidelines.
Of course it's the Daily Mail, so you have to scroll through one million pictures and pop-ups and ads for gold bars made of boner pills to get there. You are not expected to do such work for yourself. Not when the headline so very subtly screams
QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley is released 14 months early from prison after Jan. 6 footage showed him being 'ESCORTED' by cops inside the Capitol
Ahem.
As Fischer writes on Twitter, and as we have written here, the timeline in the Daily Mail headline and the breathless tweets from Charlie Kirk are technically correct, it's just that they're writing them in a way that appears to paint a whole different picture. We'll call it lying through the creativity of language!
Hell, even in the sub-headlines below that screaming Daily Mail headline, it says Chansley's transfer "appears to be routine under federal guidelines."
\u201cChansley\u2019s lawyer explains: \u201cJake is out on schedule.\u201d\n\n\u201cI told him 16 months ago in our first conversation it would be Feb. or Mar. 2023.\u201d\u201d— Ford Fischer (@Ford Fischer) 1680190955
That's his lawyer.
We just wanted you to have this information for the record, for later tonight when your stupid, stupid, stupid Republican uncle starts talking about how all the J6 terrorists are gonna go free because Tucker is leading them to the promised land.
Fuck off.
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Idaho Ready To Ban Minors From Traveling To Free States For Abortions
Federal 'Fugitive Uterus Act' sure to follow.
In Idaho's latest bid to out-draconian all other states' anti-abortion laws, the Idaho House is on track to pass the nation's very first ban on pregnant minors traveling to other states to get an abortion. The bill, Idaho HB 242, would create a brand new crime called "abortion trafficking," defined thusly:
An adult who, with the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion [...] or obtains an abortion-inducing drug for the pregnant minor to use for an abortion by recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking.
The brilliantly sneaky thing about the law is that it doesn't explicitly ban minors from leaving the state to get an abortion, which could end up in sticky multi-jurisdictional litigation. But because virtually all abortions in Idaho are already illegal, the law doesn't actually require someone to cross state lines with a pregnant minor to get an abortion. Rather, it's enough to be "transporting" the minor in the direction of Oregon or Washington, or to an Idaho airport, with the intent of getting an abortion.
The law also prohibits any adult who's not a parent or guardian from obtaining abortion medications for a minor. Yes, it would very much penalize other nonparental family members, like an older sibling or a single aunt who listens to Indigo Girls on her Subaru Forrester's audio system.
The new offense would be a felony, and guilty parties could be imprisoned for two to five years. And just to make sure no wild-eyed feminist DA's in the state's Marxist university towns get any bright ideas about not prosecuting an accused abortion trafficker, the law would let the state attorney general intervene to overrule local prosecutors who decline prosecution.
Even if a parent or guardian gave permission for another adult to help a teen get a legal abortion, the designated trafficker would still have to be prosecuted, but they would be allowed the "affirmative defense" of showing they had the parent's permission. It's similar to Idaho's "life of the mother" exception for abortion. All abortions are illegal, but doctors and nurses can present as a defense their evidence that the pregnant patient was in imminent danger of death, and hope the judge agrees.
David Cohen, a law prof at Drexel University in Philadelphia, told HuffPost that the Idaho lawmakers who drafted the Fugitive Uterus Act were, if not exactly clever, at least possessed of a certain low cunning.
"Technically, they’re not criminalizing people driving in Washington state with a minor. The crime is the time that someone is driving the minor in Idaho. [...]
"They’re going to say what they’re doing is just criminalizing actions that take place completely within Idaho, but in practice what they’re criminalizing is the person helping the minor."
The bill's sponsor, state Rep. Barbara Ehart, happily acknowledged to HuffPost that the bill was aimed at preventing Idaho minors from seeking abortion care outside the state, explaining that
"It’s already illegal to get an abortion here in the state of Idaho. [...] So, it would be taking that child across the border, and if that happens without the permission of the parent, that’s where we’ll be able to hold accountable those that would subvert a parent’s right."
Ehart also insisted that she wouldn't dream of interfering with parental rights, at least not until that seems likely to survive a court challenge:
"A parent absolutely still has the right to take their child across the border and get an abortion,” Ehardt added. “The parent still has the right to cede that power and authority to someone else, such as a grandparent or an aunt, to take that child, should they be pregnant, across the border and get an abortion."
We'll just assume she then faked a coughing fit and muttered "For now."
State Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow (D), who represents Yr Dok Zoom's Boise district, told HuffPost that HB 242 is only one part of an overall Republican strategy of incrementally piling on any abortion restrictions they think they can get past the courts.
"The far right has an incremental plan. It’s death by a thousand cuts on many things, but they’re especially unrelenting on abortion. [...] My colleagues are just rabid about denying all access to abortion care. It’s really harmful to women, and it’s harmful to our state."
HuffPost also points out that the Idaho bill was copied "nearly word for word from a model law published by the National Right to Life Committee," and then written up for Ehart by the Idaho affiliate of the national group.
And of course, for all the talk of "parental rights" and making sure pregnant teens aren't spirited out of the state by an evil adult 'bortion trafficker, HuffPost points out that
Studies show that requiring parental involvement can increase the risk of harm or abuse, delay care and lead minors to seek out dangerous alternatives. The risk of abuse is especially acute for LGBTQ kids.
Still, that shouldn't be a problem, since Idaho's already working to make LGBTQ+ teens illegal as well, the end.
[Idaho HB 242 / HuffPo / Lawdork]
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Manly, War-Winning Non-Loser Vladimir Putin Kidnapping American Journalists Now
Definitely not a weakness move.
We guess Russia was feeling weak and puny with its back stuck up against a wall, because it's taken a journalist from a real country hostage.
Russia's FSB has detainedWall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, from the paper's Moscow bureau, on what we assume are entirely fictional imaginary espionage charges. The world might be more inclined to take Russia's statements seriously if it were a real country that didn't stifle all dissent, murder (often literally) the free press, and wasn't currently engaged in a genocidal war it started for no other reason but to make the masturbatory fever dreams of its increasingly frail leader come true. Hell, it banned telling the truth about how poorly that war is going. Also, just in general, Russia is a huge fucking liar trusted by no one who isn't an easily flattered idiot and/or traitor.
This is reportedly the first time they've kidnapped an American reporter as a spy since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the first time they've kidnapped a foreign journalist since they barged into Ukraine and started killing children. Obviously they've kidnapped American lesbian basketball stars and ex-US Marines and others. It's a pretty big deal that they've kidnapped an American journalist.
According to the Journal, Gershkovich had the proper accreditation from the Russian foreign ministry, as all foreign journalists working there must. Since he started with the Journal in January of 2022, he's been covering a "variety of Russia-related topics, including the recent visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Moscow, close associates of Mr. Putin and tensions between Kremlin officials and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russian paramilitary group Wagner." He's also worked for Agence France-Presse, the New York Times and the Moscow Times.
Gershkovich was particularly known for reporting like this: "Putin, Isolated and Distrustful, Leans on Handful of Hard-Line Advisers." It was full of the kinds of quotes we've come to expect about a weakened president, disconnected from reality, who blunderfucked himself into the greatest geopolitical miscalculation of the 21st century when he figured he'd have an easy time invading the country next door and that nobody in the world would really do anything about it.
Fellow journalist Max Seddon, Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, says on Twitter that this is "yet another troubling sign of the off-the-charts repression, paranoia, and hostility to the US in Russia right now. A moment of which Evan was one of our finest chroniclers." He links to the article excerpted above.
Gershkovich was kidnapped in Yekaterinberg, in the east of Russia. The FSB says he, "acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.” They are particularly claiming his trip to Yekaterinberg was not journalism-related, but rather espionage-related. Sure you betcha.
His friends say he was doing reporting on the Wagner group there. Apparently it's a big place for Wagner's recruitment of fighters. Are these some of the same ones Russia is sending to get slaughtered on the frontlines and then reportedly hiding that information from their families? Don't know, but Gershkovich reported A LOT on the Russian military.
Putin mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov says:
“We’re not talking about suspicions,” Dmitri S. Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, said in a daily conference call with journalists, adding, “He was caught red-handed.” Mr. Peskov said he could not provide further details.
Eat a bag of dicks. The Wall Street Journal, of course, says this is all obvious bullshit.
As of now he's supposed to be held until May 29. Based on Russia's past behavior, we are sure that day will come and go and they'll still be illegally holding Gershkovich hostage and Russia will tell us as little about it as possible. As the Journal writes, "His case, according to TASS, is considered top secret." He could go to prison for 20 years, according to the New York Times.
\u201cJudging by the way Russian officials are talking about Evan, it looks like the FSB is going to hold on to him until a post-conviction prisoner exchange. In the case of Paul Whelan, who's still in prison on espionage charges, that could take years.\n\nhttps://t.co/aYwrsljnZT\u201d— max seddon (@max seddon) 1680169189
Does Vladimir Putin think he's in a good position to be doing this right now? We know Putin's sidepiece Donald Trump is making sunny predictions on "Hannity" this week that Russia is about to take over all of Ukraine, but back here on Earth #1, Russia is a laughingstock and a pariah. But yeah, sure, take a hostage. Big strong man!
Many are noting that ever since Russia invaded Ukraine and banned all journalism that hurt Putiun's feelings, American and other foreign press outfits have cut back on their presence in Russia. And quite frankly, all Americans should leave that ugly, falling apart shithole of a country and never return. It's not like it has anything to offer to the world, culturally or otherwise. That said, what Gershkovich was doing was by definition what journalists do, and the risks are part of what make the job so vital to the world.
Therefore any commenters who say things like "DURRR DURRRR WHY WAS HE EVEN IN RUSSIA IF HE DIDN'T WANT TO GET KIDNAPPED" will be immediately thrown out of a window. Ha ha just kidding, that's just a little Russia joke for you!
But people who say that should fuck off anyway.
[Wall Street Journal / FT / New York Times]
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