https://x.com/NatlParkService/status/1957532676438569021
Frog Comms
>When you get your DNA results back and find out you’re 3% frog.
That picture has been used as a meme multiple times around these parts.
Top Justice Department official warned Biden administration against sweeping autopen pardons
A top Justice Department official warned the Biden administration that thousands of last-minute pardons signed by autopen were legally flawed and went against President Biden’s intentions by granting clemency to violent offenders who killed children and police officers.
Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer criticized “highly problematic” language used in a single warrant, signed by the autopen, that pardoned hundreds of criminals in the final days of the Biden administration, according to a Jan. 18 email reviewed by The Washington Times.
Mr. Weinsheimer, writing to top Biden administration attorneys two days before Mr. Biden left office, said the wording of the pardoned offenses was too vague and could render the commutations ineffective. The lack of specificity could also result in commutations “in circumstances, including for crimes of violence, that was not intended,” he said.
He also noted that the Justice Department was blocked from playing any role in vetting the candidates for clemency. He said the White House granted some pardons despite “voluminous objections” from the victims’ families.
The Justice Department released the Weinsheimer email to the legal watchdog group Oversight Project amid the Trump administration’s investigation of the Biden White House’s heavy use of the autopen. It shows for the first time that top career lawyers at the Justice Department objected to the volume and scope of the last-minute pardons and questioned their legality.
The mechanical signature was used to sign off on three warrants granting clemency to thousands of criminals on behalf of Mr. Biden, 82, who issued more pardons than any other president.
Among those granted clemency were dozens of violent criminals whom the Justice Department deemed “highly problematic.” They included Russell McIntosh, who fatally shot a woman and her 2-year-old child after she threatened to expose his drug business. Others who received commutations were violent gang leaders and people convicted of crimes involving killings, kidnapping and rape.
Mr. Biden denies he was uninvolved. Earlier this summer, he said he voiced permission for all the clemency warrants and criticized the Trump administration and congressional Republicans for investigating the matter. Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, gave the final sign-off on the huge slate of pardons and sentence reductions. Mr. Biden did not approve each one. Instead, he told The New York Times that he approved “the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence.”
Among those standards, Mr. Biden said, was that those he pardoned had committed nonviolent drug offenses. That claim was repeated in a White House announcement about the pardons issued shortly before Mr. Biden walked out of the White House for the last time on Jan. 20.
Days earlier, Mr. Weinsheimer criticized the White House’s public explanation that claimed the commutations were given to people who committed nonviolent drug offenses.
“I think you should stop saying that,” Mr. Weinsheimer wrote to associate White House counsel DeAnna Evans on Jan. 18, “because it is untrue or at least misleading.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/aug/19/justice-department-warned-biden-administration-sweeping-autopenned/
>must sign in to read
>post the article or us
CEO Loses Most of His Stock After Margin Loans at JPMorgan, RBC Backfire
Dave Schaeffer is running out of options to stave off the collapse of the Washington, DC, property empire he built over three decades.
It was bad enough that his commercial real estate portfolio has lost more than half its value since 2022. But shares of the internet service provider he founded in 1999 — which he’s sold in record amounts to pay down debt on his properties — have also plunged this year. That selloff reached such extremes earlier this month that JPMorgan & Chase Co. and Royal Bank of Canada seized more than $82 million of shares he’d pledged as collateral for loans.
In total, Schaeffer has given up 84% of his stake in Cogent Communications Holdings Inc. this year. Analysts at Wells Fargo & Co. are cautiously optimistic that the worst is over, but acknowledge the margin calls were “optically very challenging.”
Schaeffer, who at times had pledged as much as 80% of his stake in Cogent against loans to cover his tax bills, is weighing his path forward. Schaeffer said that while he doesn’t have a “crystal clear plan,” he’s begun negotiations with his real estate lenders to try to buy more time and change the terms of his debt.
“The sales that I had made had been under duress, most of them completely involuntary,” Schaeffer, 69, said in an interview. “I’m in a particularly tough real estate position because my lenders could actually look to my Cogent holdings and realize that there was a pool of capital that they could access.”
Schaeffer’s experience is a stark example of how margin loans can backfire. He said he tried to keep his two primary assets — his Cogent stake and his property portfolio — separate, but his lenders knew about both. This meant he couldn’t simply “extend and pretend,” a favored practice in the real estate industry when bankers extend the terms of a loan and pretend the asset’s value hasn’t changed.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/ceo-loses-most-of-his-stock-after-margin-loans-at-jpmorgan-rbc-backfire/ar-AA1KS7Tr
Blaze breaks out aboard US Navy ship off Okinawa
A fire broke out on a U.S. Navy vessel off the coast of Okinawa on Wednesday evening, prompting firefighting efforts by Japanese forces, according to local media. No injuries have been reported, said the report by Japanese broadcaster NHK, which cited officials from the country’s coast guard. The report said the coast guard received a call around 5 p.m. that there was a blaze aboard the USS New Orleans, an amphibious transport dock, near White Beach Naval Facility.
The ship is homeported at Sasebo Naval Base, Japan.
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2025-08-20/uss-new-orleans-fire-okinawa-18822804.html
Putin returned the remains of 1000 dead Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukraine returned the remains of 19 Russian soldiers.
As reported yesterday. The numbers speak volumes.