I have been reading about this in places like the Guardian (UK) (Louisiana court halts criminal indictment against state attorney general) but could not understand what was happening.  I am going to copy an email from Senate candidate Jaime Davis which explains it better than the newspapers.

Besieged Louisiana Democrats are now headed into uncharted waters as Louisiana heads into what is now recognized as a full blown constitutional crisis.

In the month prior to MAGA’s unprecedented cancellation of the May 17th Elections in their state of emergency coup to remove Congressman Cleo Fields (D-LA), MAGA did something barbaric that received far less attention.

Calvin Duncan, a wrongly incarcerated Black survivor, won the election for Clerk of the New Orleans Criminal court on a mandate of reforming the system that took 30 years of his life. In response, our MAGA legislature passed a law to eliminate his office entirely rather than allow him to be sworn in this past May.

Democratic New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno moved to correct the injustice by calling for a special election that would see Duncan’s victory restored. In retaliation, Louisiana’s MAGA Attorney General Liz Murrill, threatened to ‘take out’ Moreno in a coup.

Because of her coup threats, a grand jury in New Orleans has indicted Murrill on 16 felonies charges, her bond has been set at $400,000 USD, and an arrest warrant has been issued.

But Louisiana’s MAGA governor refuses to let her face justice. He has promised her a pardon if she is found guilty and has vowed to use the Louisiana State Police to defend her. On Friday his far-right State Supreme Court put a stay on the proceedings, however, in an exraordinary move, the special prosecutor in New Orleans has refused to remove the active warrant for Murrill’s arrest.

Louisiana is now in nothing short of a full blown constitutional crisis.

If the Attorney General steps foot in New Orleans she will be arrested by the New Orleans Police, but with the Louisiana State Police protecting her, what happens when they execute the warrant. How far could this escalate?

From The MIT Press.

American Progress Was an Optical Illusion

A story about the history of New Mexico, on July 4, in the London Review of Books.

Before 1776

Ok I’ll say it. American needs to stop letting these private companies monetize our privacy.  From The Next Web.

The CEO of America’s most powerful surveillance company spent $200 million on places nobody can find him

What could go wrong?  According to Oracles financial statements (via Gizmodo):

overbuilding, customer defaults, excess leases, stranded capacity, credit risk, power shortages, GPU shortages, site shortages, permitting delays, construction delays, contractor failures, zoning fights, environmental rules, water limits, grid strain, fixed-price contracts, volatile power costs, supplier delays, shipping disruptions, tariff shocks, export controls, geopolitical instability, obsolete hardware, service outages, security flaws, AI errors, biased outputs, copyright exposure, privacy risks, patchwork regulation, compute restrictions, cross-border limits, weak adoption, competitor advances, legal liability, and reputational damage

Oracle’s Data Center Warning Is a Worst-Case Scenario for the Whole AI Boom

I’m guessing it’s more than just cooking oil.  From The Guardian (UK).

US cooking oil market shrinking due to Ice pressures on Latino households, Mazola owner says

Seems the US has returned to the Spoils System of the Andrew Jackson era.

Not sure how much attention this anniversary gets in the rest of the country but here in Albuquerque it’s been a sorta big deal.  From The Conversation.

As Route 66 turns 100, what is it that we’re actually celebrating?

It’s often advised that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. It’s also advised not to speak ill of the dead.  I’ll ignore both of these in the special occasion of the deaths of Alan Greenspan and Lee Raymond.

Greenspan was the long time chair of the federal reserve and presided, more ignominiously, during the Bush Administration.  Both Bushes I suppose, but mostly the younger Bush.

Bush started his administration with the biggest tax cuts in US history, all for big corporations and the wealthy.  Then came 9/11 and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And Katrina.  All of this was paid for by debt, papered over by low interest rates, supplied by Mr Greenspan.  This only delayed the inevitable by blowing a massive real estate bubble.

Once Republicans were shown the door by voters in 2008 the plug was pulled and a very predictable crash in the housing market, banking and eventually other financial markets followed.  This has become known as The Great Recession.  This was predicted as early as 2001 and flags raised by observers across the spectrum, including Congressman Ron Paul, a fellow follower of crank economist / philosopher Ayn Rand.

By the time the bill came due, Greenspan had quietly retired.  The ensuing cleanup was mostly a gift to the banking industry with ordinary Americans left paying the price.  The subsequent bad economy also served to hamstring the recently elected Democrats, including Barak Obama, from doing, well, just about anything.

I also heard the former head of Exxon, Lee Raymond,  also passed away.  During his tenure his company profited massively from Bush’s wars in the Middle East. He was also a champion denier of climate change.  The world is an increasingly warmer place, with more erratic weather, because of Dr Lee Raymond.  In the long run his destructive influence  may even rival that of Alan Greenspan.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan dies at 100

Longtime Exxon CEO Lee Raymond’s legacy of climate denial and misinformation lives on

An article originally in Spanish from The Baffler.  About the piping of natural gas from fracking in Texas across Mexico to the Pacific coast for export to Asia.  Even if you don’t care about gas pipelines in Mexico the information on the impact of fracking is worth the read.

Terminal Velocity