Editors’ Blog
Keith Richards at 80
Today Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones turns 80.
For years it’s been impossible to venture onto social media without seeing memes about Richards’ death-cheating immortality: the often gaunt hollowed visage, the legendary drug use, urban legends about recurrent full blood transfusions. Richards’ legendary junkiedom has been decades longer in the myth-making than the reality. As best as the various histories and memoirs inform us, Richards spent about a decade addicted to heroin, from around the age of 25 to roughly 35. There were recurrent clean-ups for tours, relapses, or just decisions to start shooting heroin again. He eventually kicked the habit in stages after a notorious drug bust in Toronto in 1977, which could have sent him to prison for years. In other words, that supposedly central thing about the man actually ended going on half a century ago. Of course, there are drugs and drugs. Richards continued to drink, smoke grass, snort cocaine for years while seemingly weening himself of the vices over time. He even quit smoking at some point during the COVID pandemic.
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Four Deaths, One Story—Examining the Deaths of Three Israeli Hostages 
You’ve likely heard about the incident on Friday in which Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Israeli hostages who had either escaped from their captors or been abandoned by them during fighting in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. The three were two Israeli Jews and one Israeli Bedouin, each of whom had been captured on October 7th. At the most basic level this is a version of “friendly fire” in which soldiers inadvertently kill fellow soldiers from their own army during wartime. In this case, it’s hostages not fellow soldiers. But the nature of the case is comparable.
The incident has produced a firestorm within Israel, both for the inherently tragic nature of the hostages’ deaths but also because of the particular details of how they died. Their deaths have added renewed intensity to arguments and protests about how the government is balancing the imperatives of destroying Hamas and bringing the country’s hostages home safely. Recent weeks have seen various protests in Israel, often led by or featuring families of hostages, demanding the government focus more on making a deal with Hamas to return all the hostages. The controversy has been fueled in part by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s almost total refusal to visit and meet with residents of communities attacked on October 7th or the families of the hostages.
Read MoreJeff Roe, the chief strategist for Ron DeSantis’s official super PAC and top cheese of the DeSantis campaign, has resigned. As usual, there’s lots of talk about cronies getting lavish sums of money. But really it’s never a good situation when your billionaire backers have given you massive amounts of money and your campaign is flat-lining.
A DC federal jury just awarded $148 million in total damages against Rudy Giuliani for defaming Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman.
$148 million.
Listen To This: Where Goes Ukraine Goes Democracy
Kate and TPM’s Josh Kovensky talk with Serhiiy Plokhy, director of Harvard University’s Ukrainian Research Institute, about the Russia-Ukraine war at an inflection point as support for Ukraine fades within the Republican Party’s right flank and future aid is imperiled.
Belaboring The Point is now on YouTube! Check out the latest video episode of the podcast here.
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Leveraged Buyout? Is Christian Ziegler Looking for Cash to Put the FL GOP Out of Its Misery?
News comes this morning that Christian Ziegler, embattled chair of the Florida GOP, accused rapist and one half (or perhaps one third) of the threesoming Zieglers, wants a buyout. Yes, a buyout. Usually we think of a buyout as a cash offer in exchange for some property interest in something, or a job in which someone has something akin to a property interest. It’s not usually something you get when you agree to relinquish an elected political office. But as we noted earlier, the bylaws of the Florida GOP don’t appear to contain any process for firing a party chair. The party can ask him to leave. They can investigate him. But they can’t fire him. So far Ziegler has been adamant in his refusal to resign.
Read MoreWe finally have access to the apology letters written by Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro that they agreed to write as part of their plea deals in the Fulton County election subversion case. There’s another from a guy named Scott Hall. But you’ve never heard of him. So we’re not going to discuss his other than to say his letter was pretty good and ran five paragraphs.
Here’s Sidney Powell’s.
Read MoreAs I reread my post below about staying on the attack, I realized I hadn’t defined what it means to “attack,” perhaps not even entirely to myself. Attacking isn’t saying mean things or criticizing someone or calling them out. An attack is something that compels a response. If it doesn’t do that it wasn’t an attack or not one that mattered. Don’t hold me to a universal definition. Some attacks are designed to overawe an adversary to the point they’re unable or afraid to respond. But this basic definition helps us understand what counts and what doesn’t.
In politics today we spend a lot of time doing things that don’t matter. Criticizing Trump, insisting how outrageous the latest statement is — none of that matters. It’s true. It doesn’t compel a response. A big part of Trumpism is driving cries of outrage. Those cries may be good for other things. It’s not an attack. It’s not an action in any political context.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss some major abortion developments.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.