AcidiclyBasicGlitch

Republican senator joined Capitol Police as they violently ejected an anti-war protester and U.S. Marine veteran from an Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, appearing to break his arm as the group tried to wrestle him out of the chamber.

Video of the incident shows Sen. Tim Sheehy, a Republican from Montana, rushing over to help police as they try to tug and push the protester out of the chamber, as the protester yells, “no one wants to fight for Israel.” The protester appears to be wearing a U.S. Marine Corps dress uniform.

The protester, Green Party candidate Brian McGinnis, has his hand stuck in the door frame, with his arm hooked around the adjacent open door panel as several police try to force him out of the room. Sheehy lifts up McGinnis’s leg as police officers grab his torso and tug.

As Sheehy is moving over to dislodge the protester’s hand and tug on his arm, McGinnis’s forearm can be seen appearing to snap in half. There is a loud cracking sound, and bystanders begin to yell at the police to stop. Shortly after, officers let up on their tugging, and begin to work to dislodge McGinnis’s hand, as Sheehy returns to the front of the room.

“The senator broke his hand. A sitting U.S. senator just broke the hand of a Marine,” one person yells. One bystander asks McGinnis, “is your hand ok?”

"No it’s not,” McGinnis responds. McGinnis is running for Senate in North Carolina, and is a Marine who fought in Iraq, according to his campaign website.

Police arrested McGinnis and have charged him with three counts of assault on a police officer, and three counts of resisting arrest and crowding, obstructing, and incommoding for his demonstration.

In a statement posted on McGinnis’s X account, his family expressed gratitude for the well wishes. “We are taking a necessary step back from the public eye to allow him to focus fully on his recovery in private,” the statement said.

The protest occurred during a hearing by the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support, held to hear testimony from military officials on the readiness of various military branches for combat. The hearing was scheduled before the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28.

“America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel,” McGinnis said as he protested the hearing. “This is wrong.”

Sheehy called McGinnis an “unhinged protester,” and claimed on social media that he was trying to “help out and deescalate the situation,” ignoring that he helped lift McGinnis off the ground, potentially helping to break his arm.

“This gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one,” Sheehy said, though McGinnis was merely protesting the hearing.

The Epstein files name the Crown Prince 97 times, references that include news clippings and emails from the convicted pedophile’s longtime assistant, Lesley Groff. In one dated Nov. 1, 2016, Groff told Epstein that he needed to go to the Saudi Consulate and drop the Crown Prince’s name to update his visa for a planned visit, writing: “Aziza suggests we go to the Saudi Arabia Consulate today with your passport and ask to speak with Nageete re your visa…she says to tell them when we arrive at gate that you jeffrey Epstein, has an invitation from His Royal Highness: PRINCE mohammed bin salman.”

Another email sent to Epstein by a redacted sender talked about the Saudi government’s connection to journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal torture and death in Oct. 2018.

The email read: “A Turkish opinion columnist on Thursday said the CIA had wiretapped a phone call in which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called for the Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi to be silenced ‘as soon as possible,” and was dated Nov. 18, 2022 – a month after the journalist’s brutal murder by Saudi intelligence agents in Istanbul.

In the same email exchange, the redacted sender added another message for Epstein: “I am so grateful for the years that I had with you and for your guidance, love, and naughtiness. Big hug.” Despite the Crown Prince’s association with the journalist’s death, Epstein planned to visit him in 2019, a trip that was canceled after his arrest on federal human trafficking charges and subsequent death in a Manhattan federal lockup.

By then, investigators had recovered an Austrian passport that listed Epstein’s nationality as Saudi.

Recently declassified FBI documents about the Saudis’ connection to 9/11 are at the center of new evidence regarding the hijackers’ arrival in Los Angeles, where they were supported, lawyers argue, by high-ranking Saudi officials linked to a Culver City mosque named for the Crown Prince’s paternal uncle King Fahad, who paid for its construction before his death.

The allegations, and the alarming trove of evidence cited by a federal judge overseeing the federal suit Ashton et al v. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, were the subject of an investigative piece by Los Angeles published Monday. The families behind the lawsuit were apoplectic when President Trump invited the Crown Prince to the White House late last year. National Chair of 9/11 Families United Terry Strada argued in an op-ed that any agreement with Riyadh must recognize the ongoing litigation and the established links and still mounting evidence of the Saudi Kingdom’s involvement in the September 11 attacks.

Today, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) shared his reaction with reporters following the briefing: “I’m more convinced now that this is going to be open-ended and forever.”

He added, “This feels like a multitrillion-dollar open-ended conflict with a very confusing and constantly shifting set of goals. They clearly seem fine with hard-line elements being in control of the country, because they plan to permanently run air operations in order to chase [Iran’s] missile-making capability, drone-making capability, and nuclear capabilities.”

Link without paywall https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/senator-says-secret-briefing-iran-104446637.html

Elizabeth Warren said a classified briefing about Donald Trump’s war on Iran has confirmed the situation surrounding the controversial conflict is even more dire than expected. The Massachusetts senator was among a number of Democrats who attended a closed-door meeting Tuesday about the president’s war in the Middle East, and warned that the administration has no clear plan to end the conflict, or any real justification for starting it. “Here’s what I can say: It is so much worse than you thought. You are right to be worried,” Warren, 76, said in a video posted online.

In the most recent episode of her podcast New Orleans Unsolved, independent investigator Anna Christie provides details regarding contracts between U.S. cities and the world's largest sex offender database OffenderWatch (parent company Watch Systems LLC).

According to Christie, a contract between Lansing, MI and Offender Watch/Watch Systems LLC, written prior to 2020 specifies that all sex offender data will be stored by a data management company called Rackspace in San Antonio, Texas.

This seemingly minor detail that Christie has uncovered, could actually be extremely significant, given that Rackspace was acquired by Leon Black's Apollo Global Management in August of 2016. (Interesting side note, this was the same month that a Rackspace employee was sentenced to 12 months in federal prison for child pornography):

•Aug 2016: Apollo Global Management Acquires Rackspace, Pins Hopes on Struggling Cloud Provider

•Aug 2016: Rackspace fired Jason Maurice Kirby, 39, from his $75,000-a-year job in November 2014 after an audit turned up the inappropriate activity, and an FBI forensic examination of his work and home computers located nearly 3,400 child porn images. Agents also found he used software to “wipe” his activity and try to cover his tracks, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Thompson.

Leon Black previously stepped down from his position as CEO of Apollo, due to controversy regarding his ties to Epstein. After his departure, a new CEO, Marc Rowen, was appointed to the company. However, as Christie also points out, recently released Epstein Files indicate meetings and communications between Rowen and Epstein continued, including an email from Epstein to Rowan regarding Rothschild funding.

•In February 2016 Epstein and Rowan traded emails about a potential Apollo corporate inversion, a tax maneuver designed to lower a company’s tax rate by reincorporating in a lower-tax country. The two discussed tapping banking firm Rothschild for the potential inversion. “i can join the call if you think appropriate,” Epstein emailed Rowan. “using rothschild for the inversion allows interesting structures.” Rowan replied: “Agreed.”

This past Monday, March 2nd, 2026, a class action lawsuit was brought against Apollo regarding these Epstein ties.

•Legal: Class action accuses Apollo of hiding Epstein ties in SEC filings

The suit, filed March 2 in the Southern District of New York, targets the alternative asset giant alongside CEO Marc Rowan and co-founder Leon Black. At its core, the case claims that what Apollo told investors and regulators — that the firm never did business with Epstein — was false.

The documented business transactions between Rowan, Black, and Epstein, which were previously denied, are disturbing to say the least. It's hard to dismiss the possibility that Epstein (or any of the powerful individuals in his network), could have used this influence to their advantage.

I'm currently searching for a copy of the Lansing, MI contract, and will add a link here once I find it, but I was able to find another OffenderWatch contract mentioned in the episode.

Oddly, as Christie also points out in the episode, an OffenderWatch/Watch System LLC contract with the city of Fort Worth, TX, contains an odd but potentially related paragraph regarding vendors who boycott Israel:

•https://publicdocuments.fortworthtexas.gov/CSODOCS/DocView.aspx?id=221086&dbid=0&repo=city-secretary&cr=1

If you're unfamiliar with the podcast and wondering what any of this has to do with an unsolved murder in New Orleans, it turns out that the OffenderWatch database was created by St. Tammany Louisiana native Lou Luzynski along with former St. Tammany Sheriff, Jack Strain.

Former St. Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain guilty on all sex crime charges

While Christie's podcast began as an attempt to investigate the unsolved 1982 murder of a young boy in New Orleans named Eddie Wells, it soon turned into an investigation of several seemingly related murders in Orleans and St. Tammany parishes, that all involved a former New Orleans police officer and lead detective for the NOPD pedophile unit, Stanley Burkhardt.

Former NOPD detective, convicted sex offender, back in jail facing new charges

Early in her investigation, Christie noticed Wells' death certificate listed an incorrect address in St. Tammany parish rather than his mother's address in Orleans, and she suspected this information may have been intentionally falsified by Burkhardt.

As Christie explains in this episode, the address incorrectly listed on Wells' death certificate, 516 Rutland Avenue in Covington Louisiana, is also the current address of OffenderWatch parent company, Watch Systems LLC.

By reviewing old public records, Christie was able to confirm that at the time of Wells' death and the other unsolved murders, the property listed on his death certificate, was owned by Lou Luzynski, creator of the largest sex offender database, OffenderWatch.

In October 2025, OffenderWatch announced the company had received a large investment from STG Allegro to expand its reach.

Through this strategic partnership, OffenderWatch® and STG will use the capital to enhance the Company's product offerings, accelerate innovation, and expand its reach to deliver even greater value to law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve.

Shareholders sued Apollo Global Management and its billionaire co-founders Leon Black and Marc Rowan on Monday in a proposed class action for ‌allegedly defrauding them for nearly five years about the private capital firm's business dealings with disgraced sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.

According to a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, the shareholders alleged the defendants falsely denied in several regulatory filings in 2021 and 2022 ever doing business with Epstein, though Epstein "was heavily involved and frequently communicated with Apollo Global's senior leadership" about Apollo's business during the 2010s.

Related: https://www.investmentnews.com/regulation-legal-compliance/legal-class-action-accuses-apollo-of-hiding-epstein-ties-in-sec-filings/265521

A class action lawsuit accuses Apollo Global Management of hiding years of business dealings between its top leaders and Jeffrey Epstein.

The suit, filed March 2 in the Southern District of New York, targets the alternative asset giant alongside CEO Marc Rowan and co-founder Leon Black. At its core, the case claims that what Apollo told investors and regulators — that the firm never did business with Epstein — was false.

Those denials began during an October 2020 earnings call, when Apollo's Head of Investor Relations Gary M. Stein said the firm "never did any business with Jeffrey Epstein." Black echoed that message on the same call. Months later, Apollo released the results of an independent review by Dechert LLP, which found that the firm never retained Epstein for any services and that Epstein never invested in any Apollo-managed fund.

Beginning in mid-2021, Apollo repeated those conclusions across multiple SEC filings, including its quarterly 10-Q reports and 2021 Annual Report on Form 10-K, each carrying Sarbanes-Oxley certifications signed by Rowan attesting to the accuracy of financial reporting and the disclosure of all fraud.

That narrative came under pressure on February 1, when The Financial Times reported that newly released U.S. Department of Justice files painted a very different picture. According to the suit, those files showed that Epstein had requested and received internal Apollo financial documents and had been in direct contact with some of the firm's most senior decision-makers on sensitive business matters.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/56224006

Troops have logged more than 110 complaints about such comments with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Without any clear message coming from the White House with regard to the purpose of the Iran war, U.S. military commanders have turned to Jesus, apparently telling American troops that the war is “biblically sanctioned.”

The U.S. joined Israel in striking Iran early Saturday morning. By Monday evening, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, or MRFF, was “inundated” with complaints, receiving more than 110 grievances from U.S. military personnel stationed at dozens of sites across the Middle East, reported independent journalist Jonathan Larsen.

One such note included an anecdote from a noncommissioned officer, who reported that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

The NCO’s complaint was lodged on behalf of 15 troops, including 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew, according to Larsen. The officer stated that such remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the [C]onstitution.”

Troops have logged more than 110 complaints about such comments with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Without any clear message coming from the White House with regard to the purpose of the Iran war, U.S. military commanders have turned to Jesus, apparently telling American troops that the war is “biblically sanctioned.”

The U.S. joined Israel in striking Iran early Saturday morning. By Monday evening, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, or MRFF, was “inundated” with complaints, receiving more than 110 grievances from U.S. military personnel stationed at dozens of sites across the Middle East, reported independent journalist Jonathan Larsen.

One such note included an anecdote from a noncommissioned officer, who reported that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

The NCO’s complaint was lodged on behalf of 15 troops, including 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew, according to Larsen. The officer stated that such remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the [C]onstitution.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted that the U.S. was forced into the war with Iran by Israel while speaking with reporters on Monday. He explained that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had effectively boxed in the Trump administration, taking the decision out of American hands.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Rubio explained. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Rubio’s disclosure highlights the Trump administration’s unwillingness to rein in the actions of Israel, even when that country’s policies resulted in U.S. attacks that only a tiny minority of the American public supports.

At the inaugural meeting of his self-styled Board of Peace earlier this month, Donald Trump declared peace in the Middle East while simultaneously threatening to plunge the region into devastating conflict by again attacking Iran. Within 10 days, Trump followed through on that promise, teaming up with Israel to unleash a widespread campaign of deadly airstrikes in Iran that have thrust the Middle East into regional war.

It was one of numerous incongruities that surfaced during the bizarre first meeting of Trump’s Temu United Nations.

“In terms of prestige, there’s never been anything close because these are the greatest world leaders, almost everybody has accepted, and the ones that haven’t will,” Trump proclaimed before he grasped a diminutive gold-colored mallet and gaveled out the conclave to strains of the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a member of the group’s executive board, could be seen standing alone in the background as Trump glad-handed some of the assembled world leaders. Rubio skulked off before Laura Branigan’s 1982 hit “Gloria” began to play.

Florida man seeks to create a state counterintelligence unit and claim sweeping surveillance powers over people whose ‘views’ or ‘opinions’ he dislikes.” It’s not nearly as amusing as the usual “Florida man” headline, and it may lead to a blueprint for lawmakers far beyond Florida.

If Florida enacts House Bill 945, it will create a national first – CIA-style structure at the state level that blurs the traditional line between state law enforcement and intelligence work. It likely wouldn’t remain a local experiment. Red states often borrow aggressively from one another’s policy playbooks, on everything from gerrymandering to anti-abortion laws to transporting immigrants to Democratic-led states. A state-level intelligence office empowered to scrutinize residents based on ideology is precisely the kind of proposal likely to spread once normalized.

The bill’s language allows scrutiny based on “views” and “opinions”, a standard that echoes some of the darkest chapters of American surveillance history. In the 1960s and 70s, the FBI’s Cointelpro program infiltrated protest movements, monitored journalists, and targeted civil rights leaders – not for crimes, but beliefs.

Public outrage over those abuses led to the Church Committee investigation and new guardrails, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to prevent domestic spying based on ideology.

Yet even federal agencies with decades of experience, extensive training and formal oversight have struggled to resist overreach. Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures revealed that Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) – designed to monitor foreigners abroad – swept up Americans’ communications and was repeatedly misused to query information about protesters, journalists, and lawmakers. Since then, efforts to enact meaningful reforms have stalled. Congress instead expanded Section 702 authority, for example with 2024’s “spy draft” amendment enabling the involuntary conscription of US businesses and individuals to spy on the government’s behalf.

The first amendment protects unpopular opinions, harsh criticism of government officials, and controversial ideologies precisely because political majorities change. But even if courts ultimately strike down laws that punish speech or association, litigation takes years, and the chilling effect begins immediately. The mere possibility that lawful political expression could land someone in an intelligence database can be enough to deter dissent.

If Florida succeeds, it may take 50 Church Committees and 50 separate reform packages to have any hope of beginning to clean up the decentralized mess.

Shortly before the United States and Israel were poised to launch an attack on Iran, the C.I.A. zeroed in on the location of perhaps the most important target: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.

The C.I.A. had been tracking Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns, according to people familiar with the operation. Then the agency learned that a meeting of top Iranian officials would take place on Saturday morning at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran. Most critically, the C.I.A. learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.

The United States and Israel decided to adjust the timing of their attack, in part to take advantage of the new intelligence, according to officials with knowledge of the decisions.

The information provided a window of opportunity for the two countries to achieve a critical and early victory: the elimination of top Iranian officials and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei.

The remarkably swift removal of Iran’s supreme leader reflected the close coordination and intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel in the run-up to the attack, and the deep intelligence the countries had developed on Iranian leadership, especially in the wake of last year’s 12-day war. The operation also showed the failure of Iran’s leaders to take adequate precautions to avoid exposing themselves at a time where both Israel and the United States sent clear signals that they were preparing for war.

The C.I.A. passed its intelligence, which offered “high fidelity” on Ayatollah Khamenei’s position, to Israel, according to people briefed on the intelligence.

They and others who shared details about the operation spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence and military planning.

Israel, using U.S. intelligence and its own, would execute an operation it had been planning for months: the targeted killing of Iran’s senior leaders.

The United States and Israeli governments, which had originally planned to launch a strike at night under the cover of darkness, made the decision to adjust the timing to take advantage of the information about the gathering at the government compound in Tehran on Saturday morning.

The leaders were set to meet where the offices of the Iranian presidency, the supreme leader and Iran’s National Security Council are located.

Israel had determined that the gathering would include top Iranian defense officials, including Mohammad Pakpour, the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps; Aziz Nasirzadeh, the minister of defense; Adm. Ali Shamkhani, the head of the Military Council; Seyyed Majid Mousavi, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force; Mohammad Shirazi, the deputy intelligence minister; and others.

The operation began around 6 a.m. in Israel, as fighter jets took off from their bases. The strike required relatively few aircraft, but they were armed with long-range and highly accurate munitions.

Two hours and five minutes after the jets took off, at around 9:40 a.m. in Tehran, the long-range missiles struck the compound. At the time of the strike, senior Iranian national security officials were in one building at the compound. Ayatollah Khamenei was in another nearby building.

“This morning’s strike was carried out simultaneously at several locations in Tehran, in one of which senior figures of Iran’s political-security echelon had gathered,” an Israeli defense official wrote in a message reviewed by The New York Times.

The official said that despite Iranian preparations for war, Israel managed to achieve “tactical surprise” with its attack on the compound.

The White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment.

On Sunday, Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, confirmed the deaths of two high-level military leaders whom Israel said it had killed on Saturday: Admiral Shamkhani and General Pakpour.