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If you needed hard evidence the DOJ's heavy-handed response to the church protesters in Minnesota was politically motivated, this should cli

Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian:

Two weeks ago, the Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, was upended by a group of protesters opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s heavy-handed crackdown in the Twin Cities. Specifically, they were upset that one of Cities Church’s pastors, David Easterwood, doubled as a field director for ICE in the Twin Cities. In almost no time at all, Donald Trump’s White House went into DEFCON 1. The head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, claimed the protesters were “interfering with Christian worshippers.” Three of the protesters, including Black Lives Matter activist and ordained minister Nekima Levy Armstrong, were arrested on Jan. 22 for violating the FACE Act, a federal law that bars physical force that interferes with access to abortion clinics and places of worship. Dhillon’s boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, thundered on Twitter, “Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that Armstrong and friends would answer for orchestrating “the Church Riots in St. Paul, Minnesota.” A week later, after a magistrate judge and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ixnayed a criminal complaint against CNN host-turned independent journalist Don Lemon for covering the protest, Bondi took the unusual step of empaneling a grand jury to indict him. Stanford Law professor Matthew Seligman told Greg Sargent of The New Republic that having a grand jury indict someone after having an arrest warrant rejected by a judge is “highly irregular.” Had Bondi been “faithful to the law and the facts,” Seligman said, she would have let the matter drop. The fact that she didn’t, to his mind, suggests “a politically motivated prosecution.”

Lest you think this is hyperbole, the chief judge of the United States District Court in Minnesota, Bush 43 appointee Patrick Schiltz, took the unusual step of writing a letter to the Eighth Circuit saying that there was “no evidence” Lemon committed a crime, and that the government’s claims that the government’s rationale for urgent action “makes no sense.” Translation—to Schlitz’ mind, the government had no case at all. All things considered, I can only agree with Sargent—Lemon’s arrest has nothing to do with protecting the sanctity of freedom of worship and everything to do with an effort to “excite and titillate Trump and MAGA.”

[...] But to my mind, the strongest evidence that this is politically motivated comes not from something that Trump’s White House did, but what it didn’t do. Back in 2020, during the peak of the initial COVID surge, an incident took place in Kentucky that was far, far more egregious than anything that happened in St. Paul. And yet, in the absence of something I haven’t heard or seen, the Trump 1.0 Justice Department did absolutely nothing.

On Easter Sunday 2020, a number of churches around the country decided to throw their doors open for in-person services. They did so in defiance of a litany of stay-at-home orders and bans on mass gatherings that had mushroomed within a few days in late March and early April. More importantly, they did so in defiance of common sense and common human decency. By this time, the science and anecdotal evidence had put it beyond doubt. Even if you took every conceivable precaution, the virus was spreading so fast that large gatherings of any sort were reckless at this point. But none of that mattered to Jack Roberts, pastor of Maryville Baptist Church in Hillview, Kentucky, a suburb of Louisville. Roberts had vowed that he would sooner go to jail than shut down his independent KJV-only church. Never mind that by then, a number of superspreaders could be traced to the doors of churches, including at least two in Kentucky. True to his word, he held a full schedule of in-person services, with people coming from other states to attend. Never mind that Gov. Andy Beshear had made clear that anyone taking part in an indoor mass gathering on Easter weekend would have to self-quarantine for 14 days. Never mind that Beshear had pleaded with him to change course and only have outdoor services. And never mind that the Bullitt County health department had ordered him to shut down in-person services immediately. Once Beshear got wind that Maryville was having in-person church, he dispatched Kentucky state troopers to take down license plate numbers and forward them to county health departments. In hopes of throwing them off the scent, quite a few worshippers covered their license plates. Roberts was one of them. As bad as this was, how somebody—or a whole lot of somebodies—responded to this blatant disregard for public safety was far worse. When Roberts pulled into Maryville’s parking lot, he discovered nails, tacks, and screws scattered around the parking lot. While the nails were clearly visible as the sun rose, they were swept up by the time Sunday school began.

[...] There is one important difference, though. Whatever quibbles you may have about their tactics, Armstrong and her colleagues did not abandon the way of peace. The people who scattered nails in the Maryville Baptist parking lot indisputably did. For that reason, I thought that within days, there would be an investigation, and the people who did this would be tracked down. But unless I missed something, this faded into the ether. Contrast this with the heavy-handed response to Armstrong, Lemon, and friends. Chanting merits shock and awe, but scattering nails in a parking lot gets crickets. This does not compute—at least not in a normal world. It’s more than valid to question the state level response (or lack thereof) to what happened at Maryville Baptist. After all, one would think that people who find it acceptable to scatter nails in a parking lot are not the kind of people you can leave out there. But the silence at the federal level is particularly deafening compared to the response to Cities Church. I have to wonder—is Trump using this to try to dunk on one of his biggest gadflies in this saga, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz? It’s hard not to conclude that’s the case, especially when you throw in the highly unusual way Lemon was indicted.

Maryville Baptist Church in Hillview, Kentucky was subjected to an act of violence that was worth of a DOJ investigation back in 2020.

#GOP Hypocrisy #US Department of Justice #Cities Church Protest #Cities Church #David Easterwood #Operation Metro Surge #Nekima Levy Armstrong #Don Lemon #FACE Act #Patrick Schiltz #Harmeet Dhillon #Pam Bondi #Maryville Baptist Church #Hillview Kentucky #Jack Roberts #Coronavirus #Stay At Home Orders Protests

#Dave Ewers #Jack Roberts #Freddie Burns #rugby

#jack roberts #earthquake

Hi guys! This is my response to a writing prompt set for me by my good friend @drinkyoursoupbitch, where she gave me an instrumental track from the Harry Potter films and I had to write a ficlet from my MC’s perspective using that track as inspiration. My track was “Lily’s Theme” from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows...so yeah, bring on the angst. Referenced in this along with several canon characters are the deaths of Lugh Hopper, who belongs to @thatravenpuffwitch, and Jack Roberts, who belongs to @samshogwarts.

TW: Canon Character Death, Grief

Hope you all enjoy... 🖤

x~x~x~x

Carewyn Cromwell did not fight in the conflict that would become known as the Battle of Hogwarts. She was instead maintaining the Ministry, leading it and its remaining loyal employees in an effort to protect its offices from any Death Eaters that might attempt to re-enter and to capture and incapacitate as many of them as possible. Her efforts were later credited by Kingsley Shacklebolt for being the main reason why the remnants of Voldemort’s Army had nowhere left to fall back to, after the Battle of Hogwarts was over.

When Carewyn arrived at Hogwarts to find Percy -- who, as Junior Undersecretary, was next in line to fill in for the role of Minister until an election could be held -- the violence and devastation had ended. At least, in the physical realm. On the inside...

Where was her breath, as she approached the abandoned gate of the school? The two boar statues crowning the pillars were wrecked, and beyond it...was this the courtyard? No...surely it couldn’t be. This place meant for casual studying, for lunch breaks and get-togethers with friends...surely this cracked, broken battlefield couldn’t be that place...