Not the type of standard that should be set:

In seeking probation for Lloyd, prosecutors noted that she was not involved in any violence and destruction or preplanning and coordination of the Capitol breach. Lloyd was invited by her hairdresser to drive to Washington to hear Trump speak, her attorney wrote in court documents.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said he was giving her a “break,” but didn’t want others to think that probation — and not a stiffer sentence — would be the norm. “Legally, I could give you the six months, but is that really what we want our judiciary to do?” the judge asked.

Actually, that's exactly what we want our judiciary to do. I don't care who "invited" her to DC, or what her original intentions were. She ended up inside the Capitol building, and that act simply must have consequences. Those who planned and plotted the Insurrection would not have (could not have) overwhelmed police and succeeded in breaching Congress without hundreds just like her, and giving her a "break" could easily lead to a future breakdown of our democracy. And I am sick and tired of the excuses and calls for sympathy for these people:

Soon to be renamed "Buck's Clusterf**k":

The committee will be chaired by Buck Newton, a former state senator from Wilson who ran unsuccessfully for attorney general in 2016. Other members include GOP officials, lawyers and political consultants from across the state.

During a panel at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Whatley said the absence of voter fraud in North Carolina last fall was due to the NCGOP’s disproportionate spending on legal resources — the party spent three-quarters of its annual operating budget on legal expenditures, he said — to scrutinize the electoral process.

And a big chunk of those legal expenditures went to arguing in the (US) Supreme Court that a deadline extension on receipt of mail-in ballots, made necessary by Louis DeJoy's relentless attacks on the US Postal Service, was unnecessary and an invitation to voting fraud. Or something along those lines. But guess what? Republican voters were strongly represented in those late mail-in ballots:

All our progress could be at risk:

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy doesn’t line up with the H1N1 polling, nor with standard patterns of hesitancy—for example, crunchy left-wing opposition to childhood vaccinations. But the patterns do line up with resistance to mask wearing and stay-at-home orders.

In other words, the pattern of resistance to the coronavirus vaccines looks less like COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and more like COVID-19 denialism. While a significant chunk of Americans profess to be uneasy about getting shots to prevent COVID-19, most come from the swath of the population that has tended to downplay the disease’s severity and to resist other measures to fight it, rather than the swaths that have resisted vaccines for other diseases.

Bolding mine, because these people have literally painted themselves into a corner. They fought against masks, they fought against quarantine, they fought against closing businesses and schools, and now that a vaccine is available to them, their stubbornness is keeping them from getting it. They've been downplaying this thing so long, getting a shot would feel like admitting they've been a idiot all along. I got my second shot Tuesday (That's me in the pic above), and the place was desolate compared to a few weeks ago. Could just be a coincidence, but I don't think so. More from the idiocracy:

He's pushing people in both directions:

“The Patriot Party is a repudiation of the GOP for the central fact that they weren’t very supportive of the president, they had the majority once upon a time over the last four years, and they failed to do the things that need to be done for the American people.”

GOP leaders do have potentially more serious worries at the center-right of their party, however, as dozens of former officials, including people who have served as White House and congressional staff, met recently to discuss starting a breakaway political party to distance themselves from the Trump wing of the party, according to Reuters.

Go for it, you have my blessing. Split the party into three separate entities, and make sure you run Congressional candidates from all three as well. There will be a run on popcorn at grocery stores that will rival the Great Toilet Paper Crisis. Unfortunately, most of these Pro-Trumpers are pretty stupid: