Unfortunately, this simple statement often achieves its goal of obstructing efforts by Congress to obtain information. While Congress may be upset with the response, many times, it is cowed into accepting presidents can protect their people from being investigated for criminal conduct. Fortunes, however, can be reversed. If Republicans win the White House with a presidential candidate who sincerely wants to uphold the rule of law, restore justice to the legal system and hold the “Deep State” accountable, that president can make it happen.

The leading Presidential candidates for the Republican nomination have promised to fire the FBI director and clean house at the Department of Justice. If a Republican wins the presidency in November 2024, FBI Director Wary and AG Garland will resign long before they can be fired. So, candidates, please, stop pandering. No one will be fired. All pablum, worthless and oversimplified promises.

Suppose a new president truly wants to clean up the deep, dark, corrupt state at the DOJ and FBI. In that case, the Republican president need only waive Executive Privilege and issue an Executive Order declassifying all investigatory materials sought by the current Republican House of Representatives. Let Congress bleed the truth out of those subverting the Constitution.

Executive compliance is simple. When Congress requests documents, the Executive should order them produced. When testimony is sought, provide it without asserting objections. Cooperate with the Republican House to find the truth.

Since the Nixon administration, presidents have asserted Executive Privileges thirty times to block congressional investigations. Presidential assertions included protecting the president’s brother (Billy Carter), girlfriends (Monica Lewinsky), mismanagement of funds (Solyndra), foreign affairs (Benghazi), gun running (fast and furious), and the Watergate tapes. Democrat and Republican administrations act as if providing Congress with requested information concerning an investigation will somehow diminish their manhood.

Finding and eliminating corruption is for the benefit of the nation. Hiding corruption does not assist the president in the faithful execution of the law. The DOJ/FBI’s long-running minuet of never sharing information with congressional committees is a mechanism of deceit, not of protecting the independence and effectiveness of law enforcement, the identities of informants, avoiding pre-trial publicity, or interfering with prosecutorial discretion. The Supreme Court has long recognized the “…implied power [of Congress] to investigate and to compel the production of information” from the Executive branch.

“Executive Privilege for presidential communications is limited to the quintessential power and nondelegation of Presidential power, and those are the core functions in the Constitution.” It should only be asserted to preserve those core constitutional functions. Claiming it beyond the core constitutional functions is a delaying tactic that often allows illegal conduct to continue.

As to declassifying all documents related to alleged criminal activity in the Executive branch, no president should ever be intentionally or unintentionally covering it up. The American Bar Association writes, “Under the U.S. Constitution, the president as commander in chief is given broad powers to classify and declassify such information, often through executive orders.” While there are procedures for declassifying the materials, a president, except for certain materials such as nuclear secrets, has almost total control to declassify records by Executive Order. Presidents at all times have the power to put sunlight on government corruption. When they choose not to expose corruption, it is an intentional coverup.

Unfortunately, since the Nixon administration in the early 1970s, the Executive branch has forced Congress to issue subpoenas to secure requested documents. Presidents achieve their goal of protecting corruption by requiring years of legal battles to enforce the subpoena.

Hopefully, there will be a Republican Congress, or at least a Republican House sworn in on January 3, 2025, and on January 20, 2025, a Republican president. Between January 3, 2025, and January 20, 2025, the Republican Congress can prepare the appropriate investigative letters to the incoming president requesting the information needed to root out corruption in the DOJ/FBI. On January 20, when the Republican president enters the White House, his first order of business should be to issue an Executive Order waiving Executive privilege and formally declassifying the documents relating to all congressional investigations. These waivers should encompass all alleged DOJ/FBI corruption as described in the Durham Report, Mueller and Horowitz Reports, payments received by Joe and Hunter Biden from foreign countries, all matters associated with the development of a two-tier system of justice, efforts by the federal government to force social media companies to manipulate information distributed to the public and all other matters of high-level DOJ and FBI corruption.

By taking this approach, the president will tremendously assist the congressional investigation of the DOJ/FBI misconduct without investigating the departments he leads. If Congress finds evidence of criminal activity, it will refer the evidence to new appointees at a DOJ for appropriate prosecution.

Suppose Executive branch personnel refuse to testify or take the Fifth to protect their constitutional rights. In that case, Congress can grant the Use Immunity, which compels their testimony but provides immunity to the witness for the new information provided. A witness that refuses to testify after being given Use Immunity can be cited for contempt of Congress and imprisoned.

It’s time the federal government gets serious about corruption in government. More intriguing would be if a president followed this advice. The nation might uncover who is running the Deep State.

William L. Kovacs has served as senior vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, chief counsel to a congressional committee, and a partner in law D.C. law firms. His book Reform the Kakistocracy is the winner of the 2021 Independent Press Award for Political/Social Change. He can be contacted at wlk@ReformTheKakistocracy.com

The post The Big Govt Lie: “I Can’t Answer, the Matter Is Under Investigation.” appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

So just what did the Director try to sneak onto our menu? If you paid attention to his testimony, in between his discussion about online extremist groups organizing terrorist acts like the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and the need to combat online rings of pedophiles, he took a dig at end-to-end encryption.

“We are concerned about end-to-end encryption…We will not be able to get access to the content that we need to keep people safe.” – Director Wray

Just what is end-to-end encryption? It’s a method to scramble data, such as messages, in such a way that only the person sending the message and the person intended to receive the message can view it. Any third party, including hackers, who might intercept the message en route will see only a mess of unusable characters. There are numerous methods, but let’s take a common one known as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 256 bits, or AES-256. Think of AES-256 as a giant digital lock on your data, and only you and the intended recipient have the key. No one else in the universe has this key, so a hacker’s main option is a “brute-force attack.” Basically, they just guess what the key is until the lock opens. If your phone has a 4-digit PIN, there are 10,000 possible combinations from 0000 to 9999. A laptop running password cracking software could crack that in minutes. By using the AES-256 lock, however, you have 78-digit PINs with 2,256 possible key combinations. Cracking that takes a little longer…about 27 octillion years according to some estimates with today’s technology.

If you use a virtual private network (VPN), your Internet traffic is effectively locked in this way between you and the VPN provider. If you use the “encrypt” button on your emails, you’re doing almost the same thing. This is normally no problem unless you’re under investigation by the FBI.

What does the FBI want? Despite claims by Director Wray that they do not want a “backdoor” (i.e., a permanent key for all those digital locks), that’s basically what they’re asking. There’s no denying that it would make life easier for law enforcement if people had no way to digitally lock up their data. It would also be easier if they could conduct constant surveillance on everyone, get rid of that pesky Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and implant us with tracking microchips in the name of public safety—“for the children.”

This debate isn’t new, but as a cybersecurity expert in the field, with the United States still reeling from major security breaches of late, including the SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange Server hacks, I say that demonizing end-to-end encryption is the last thing this country should be doing. If there are break-ins in your neighborhood, you don’t want the police telling you to unlock all your doors so it’s easier for them to investigate, do you? The very idea is ludicrous on its face.

I support the FBI and its mission, and I sympathize with the difficulties they have in helping to prevent terrorist attacks and bring other criminals to justice. We can’t, however, sacrifice civil liberties, personal privacy, or at the very least sound cybersecurity practices in the name of making things easier for law enforcement.

J. Dallas Brooks is an Air Force veteran writer, cybersecurity expert, and adjunct professor of Cybersecurity who lives with his family on their ranch in southern Colorado. Find him on Twitter @GenXCandide or at www.jdallasbrooks.com.

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Robert Mueller concluded his investigation and turned his final report into Attorney General Barr. While we haven’t seen the report yet, we have seen the Attorney General’s summary, stating there was no evidence of collusion. This is substantiated by Mueller’s statement that the investigation is over, and there will be no further indictments. That’s it. No collusion.

To say the mainstream liberal media has egg all over their faces is an understatement. Virtually overnight, Fox News became the most credible outlet in America. The mainstream outlets spent the last 2 years calling every development the beginning of the end, and often teased that the walls were closing in [on Trump].

The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald tweeted out a Greatest Hits reel.

Some Congressional Democrats have insisted they will continue investigating Trump as long as it takes, for the sake of trying to drag out a scandal that is no longer a scandal.

Unfortunately for them, it appears the momentum has quickly shifted.

There will indeed be investigations, but of Democrats.

Republicans have started the calls for Adam Schiff to resign from his role as the Chair of the Intelligence Committee. This is following Schiff’s regular media appearances over the course of the investigation promising evidence of collusion.

Senator Rand Paul tweeted a call to investigate the perpetrators of the collusion hoax.

It appears the bugs have been fixed with Lindsey Graham 2.0 and he is back, newer than ever. In an interview, Graham backed Paul’s motion to investigate Obama administration Democrats and went into further detail.

The Hill reports:

“Graham also said the Senate Judiciary Committee should look into a controversial opposition research dossier on President Trump.

‘When it comes to the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign, the counterintelligence investigation, it’s pretty much been swept under the rug. … Those days are over,’ Graham told reporters during a press conference.”

What Paul and Graham are calling for is an investigation into collusion, and conspiracy to undermine and sway the election. This isn’t a new investigation into Trump, but rather into the Obama Administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The very nature of Robert Mueller’s investigation finding no collusion immediately bolsters the plausibility of election fraud by the Democrats and makes this investigation necessary.

The now defunct and salacious Steele Dossier was the product of opposition research paid for by the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the DNC. They hired the firm Fusion GPS who obtained the Steele Dossier from the former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who now runs a private intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence. It is run jointly with Christopher Burrows, also a former MI6 agent.

Orbis Business Intelligence bills itself as a corporate investigation firm, specializing in uncovering money laundering, IP fraud, and so forth. Most notably Orbis Business Intelligence received over $1 million in payments from the FBI by supplying them with information regarding FIFA corruption.

These types of agencies are intelligence contractors, and their customers are typically governments. In the United States for example, 70% of our intelligence budget is paid to private intelligence or private security firms (mercenaries). You know, for deniability when diplomacy is at stake.

Opposition research is a standard practice in political campaigns, even if the information turns out to be illegitimate like the dossier contained. What makes the Steele Dossier remarkable however, is that it was a foreign report paid for by the Clinton Campaign, which was used for the Obama [ScAnDaL fReE] Administration to obtain a secret FISA Warrant, and to spy on the Trump Campaign during the election. This is an egregious attack on our election process.

Now, after more than 2 years into Trump’s first term we have learned there was no collusion. This is following 2 years of Democrats working to oust our sitting President over a conspiracy theory based on a wild fabrication paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, and used by the Obama administration to spy.

If the Democrats want new investigations, I say lets launch them. But launch them into how it was actually the Democrats who threatened our Republic and committed crimes during the election.

But what about the people charged in the Trump probe? The answer is that those individuals were indicted for their own wheelings and dealings, and had nothing to do with Russia Collusion.

Perhaps the most notable indictment was Paul Manafort, arrested for wire fraud and tax evasion for the period of 2010 through 2014 during his time in Ukraine (not Russia). Ukraine, as it turns out, may very well have been trying to influence the election in favor of Hillary Clinton. Let’s talk about it.

Judgement Day is coming, and the timing couldn’t possibly be worse for the Democrats ramping up for 2020.

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The company released a statement saying that customers can go to their account settings to opt out of matching features – keeping law enforcement agents away from their information. However, this also would not allow users to find distant relatives or other potential family members through the service.

“We came to the conclusion that if law enforcement created accounts with the same level of access to the database as the standard FamilyTreeDNA user, they would not be violating user privacy and confidentiality,” president and founder of FamilyTreeDNA Bennett Greenspan said in a statement to Gizmodo. “In order for the FBI to obtain any additional information, they would have to provide a valid court-order such as a subpoena or search warrant.”

FBI agents will still be able to access your identity and will be able to see who is related to you. This is dangerous information to be at the fingertips of any given FBI agent without prior investigation or a warrant. One of FamilyTreeDNA’s competitors, Living DNA, agrees. David Nicholson, founder of Living DNA, told Gizmodo:

“At Living DNA we only allow your DNA to be used for what you have asked us to do with it,” continuing on, “We feel a responsibility to our customers who provide their DNA that they need to be in charge of what happens with their DNA. As with all companies worldwide, we will act in accordance with the law but we do not freely open up our database to any 3rd party.”

From a quick glance, this partnership can offer some benefit to public safety. An benefit to the public, however, will come at a cost to the privacy of nearly 2 million people.

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Chuck Ross 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham is requesting an FBI briefing about the circumstances of a pre-dawn raid of Trump confidant Roger Stone’s home in Florida last Friday.

“I am concerned about the manner in which the arrest was effectuated, especially the number of agents involved, the tactics employed, the timing of the arrest, and whether the FBI released details of the arrest and the indictment to the press prior to providing this information to Mr. Stone’s attorneys,” Graham, a South Carolina Republican, wrote FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday.

Graham is requesting a briefing from the FBI by Feb. 5 into the raid, which he asserted matched the tactics typically used to arrest a violent criminal.

He is also demanding to know whether the press was tipped off about Stone’s impending arrest. CNN cameras were rolling as a swarm of armed FBI agents and U.S. marshals stormed Stone’s property shortly before dawn on Jan. 25.

Stone was indicted under seal on Jan. 24 in the special counsel’s investigation.

He is charged with five count of making false statements to Congress, one count of witness tampering and one count of obstructing an official proceeding.

The charges center mostly on Stone’s conversations with associates and Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks, which published emails stolen from Democrats during the 2016 campaign.

Stone is not charged with conspiring with WikiLeaks or Russian government operatives, who are alleged to be behind the hack of Democrats’ emails. He is also not accused of making false statements when he told the House Intelligence Committee on Sept. 26, 2017 that he has had no contact with WikiLeaks or its founder, Julian Assange.

Stone, a longtime GOP operative who has known President Donald Trump for 40 years, has complained about what he calls the FBI’s heavy-handed tactics. He’s said that he would have voluntarily turned himself into authorities had his lawyer been contacted by prosecutors.

In an arrest warrant filed under seal on Jan. 24, prosecutors expressed concern that Stone could destroy evidence and that he posed a flight risk. Stone has pushed back on that argument, saying that while he has destroyed no evidence related to the special counsel’s case, he has had two years to destroy evidence if he wanted. He also said that he does not have a valid passport and could not flee the U.S.

Graham wants to know why the FBI chose to raid Stone’s home rather than contact his attorney and if the arrest is consistent with arrests of defendants facing similar charges.

The senator also wants to know whether anyone at the FBI, Justice Department or special counsel’s office tipped off CNN to the arrest.

CNN has claimed that its reporters saw a flurry of activity at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., last week and guessed Stone may have been indicted. The network claims it dispatched a reporter to stake out Stone’s house in case he was to be arrested.

Stone pleaded not guilty to the charges on Tuesday and says he plans to take his case to trial.

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Tim Pearce on January 29, 2019

Stephen Paddock killed 58 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history for “infamy,” but FBI investigators could not uncover any motive beyond that, the FBI told the Associated Press.

“It wasn’t about MGM, Mandalay Bay or a specific casino or venue,” FBI special agent Aaron Rouse, who runs the investigative agency’s Las Vegas office, told The AP. “It was all about doing the maximum amount of damage and him obtaining some form of infamy.”

Paddock acted alone without any apparent personal animus or motivating political or ideological belief. He did not leave behind any explanation, manifesto or suicide note, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

“Throughout his life, Paddock went to great lengths to keep his thoughts private, and that extended to his final thinking about this mass murder,” a 3-page summary of the FBI’s findings stated, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Active shooters rarely have a singular motive or reason for engaging in a mass homicide.”

Paddock opened fire on a crowd of concert-goers in Las Vegas on Oct. 17, 2017. He set up a 23-gun armory in a Mandalay Bay casino suite with a view overlooking the Strip and the Route 91 Harvest Festival.

Paddock used a Mandalay Bay service elevator to stock his room with firepower. Paddock received special treatment at the casino because of his substantial gambling habits, and employees rarely questioned him as he carried bags and cases up to his room.

Paddock fired roughly 1,000 shots into a crowd of roughly 22,000 over the course of about 10 minutes. He killed 58 and wounded about 900 more. He shot and killed himself before police were able to apprehend him.

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If you look back at all the news of 2018, it seems as if everything centered around Trump’s tweets and Russia! Russia! Russia! The news cycles spun so fast that it was hard to remember what happened the week before. We moved from one hysteria to another as the never-Trumpers kept warning that the president would be arrested or impeached or would resign at any moment. Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti dominated for much of the year, but things really got crazy with the Brett Kavanaugh SCOTUS hearings. We had a parade of accusers, a chorus of Handmaids, legions of defenders, and finally a vote.

While we watched the partisan divide in the US grow deeper and more visceral in 2018, we also saw peace breaking out between North and South Korea. We last bombed Syria on April 14, and it looks like that may be the last time. The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi unexpectedly led to an acknowledgement of U.S. assistance in the war in Yemen, and a Senate vote to end it this month.

Trump launched a trade war. We argued about The Wall. We had mid-term elections and recounts that lasted weeks. “Deep State” became a common way to refer to hidden, powerful forces within the government that answer to no one. Many of us are a little more cynical and suspicious about our institutions after 2018. We have good reason to be.

When I started looking into compiling this list, there was a lot of low-hanging fruit. I could have filled this list with the war on colloquial language, social media purges, and SJW theatrics. Some of the stories I included were those even I had forgotten about until I started reviewing news stories from 2018. Some events were unexpected, some strange, some unprecedented, and some were just funny.

1. The Great Crypto Crash of 2018

Cryptocurrencies were all the rage in the second half of 2017. Everyone was getting in. By October 2017, cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, had more users than Charles Schwab. Coinbase added another 100,000 users in one day after the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) announced that it would launch Bitcoin futures by the end of 2017.

Prices soared to almost $20,000 on December 17, 2017. It was crypto-euphoria with amateur investors rushing in for fear of missing out. But FOMO was quickly replaced by FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) in early 2018. The first Bitcoin futures contract expired on January 16, at $10,900.

Despite the chorus of Bitcoiners, such as John McAfee and Max Keiser, touting a glorious rise to new heights in the price of Bitcoin, it couldn’t recover from a sideways trajectory and ultimately tanked. By year’s end it has lost 72% of its value in 2018.

A family from the Netherlands sold everything in 2017 and bought Bitcoin. Didi Taihuttu, his wife and three daughters, are now known as The Bitcoin Family. Despite the fall in the price of Bitcoin, they travel all over the world and report their experiences on their blog. The Taihuttus are now living a “minimalist stressless lifestyle.” It is a far cry from the Lamborghini dreams of many crypto investors.

I’m still a believer in Bitcoin. It offers people a chance to possess sound money and escape the control of the global financial system. And it’s on sale, at about $3,800 as of this writing.

2. Elon Musk sold 20,000 NOT A FLAMETHROWERs

Elon Musk has made a lot of headlines this year, and many could qualify as news of the odd and weird. I could almost devote an entire list to Musk’s 2018 antics.

After selling $600,000 in hats—yes, hats—with his Boring Company logo on them, he tweeted, “Hats sold out, flamethrowers soon!”

Many thought it was a joke. Then Boring Company sold 20,000 NOT A FLAMETHROWER flamethrowers in early 2018, raising $10 million.

But in the end, the $500 NOT A FLAMETHROWER was really not a flamethrower. It was sort of a blowtorch, really.

[yotuwp type=”videos” id=”nuIVE7rh8zs” ]

You may be thinking that those who spent $500 on a blowtorch got, well, burned. But not so fast. The Boring Company’s NOT A FLAMETHROWERs are now collector’s items and were selling between $3,000-$5,000 on eBay by mid-2018, making them a much better short-term investment than Bitcoin.

3. Elon Musk launched a Tesla Roadster into space with a dummy called Starman

On February 6, SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy rocket with a test payload consisting of his own Tesla Roadster and a dummy in the driver’s seat. The payload was headed for Mars. It was the maiden voyage for the most powerful rocket on earth.

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Some called the Starman-in-a-Tesla event a publicity stunt, including the CEO of Boeing. One could excuse the executive for a little professional jealousy after watching the Falcon Heavy’s side rockets return to earth and land upright as if in a choreographed dance.

Some predicted that the car and its “driver” would be torn to bits within a year.  Yet, in November, nine months after launch, Starman and the Roadster passed Mars. They are expected to settle into an orbit around the red planet, which Musk hopes will one day be colonized by humans.

If you want to know where they are right now, you can visit https://www.whereisroadster.com/ .

4. Attempted Break-In (or Break-Out?) at the NSA

You may have forgotten about or never even heard this story because it happened the same day as the Parkland school shooting, February 14.

According to the National Security Agency, an unauthorized vehicle tried to enter the NSA campus in Fort Meade, MD just after 7:00 AM.

A National Security Agency police officer opened fire Wednesday morning on a vehicle at an entrance to the intelligence agency’s campus in Maryland, law enforcement sources told CBS News. Three people were injured when the SUV slammed into a security barrier.

A local news chopper was on the scene, and some familiar with the campus immediately noted that the crashed and bullet-riddled SUV was in fact headed for the exit, not trying to enter.

[yotuwp type=”videos” id=”7hT94C0-9OU” ]

The suspects were described only as men and not terrorists by the FBI.

And that’s all the media had to say about that. The Parkland shooting happened only a few hours later and dominated headlines for weeks afterward, launching yet another gun control debate and a few Parkland students to celebrity status.

But I still wonder, were the people in that black SUV breaking in or breaking out? And if they were breaking out, what did they have with them that required they be stopped with bullets?

The world may never know.

5. The FBI used Geek Squad employees as paid informants

Last March, we learned that the FBI had been using some of Best Buy’s computer techs to search private computers for child pornography.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to determine whether personal devices were being searched without a warrant.

While in many states reporting the discovery of child pornography on a personal computer is legally mandatory, if computer techs are actively searching personal computers on behalf of law enforcement, and getting paid to do so, this can easily be seen as a 4^th amendment violation.

A key question is whether Best Buy employees “go fishing” in customers’ devices with the goal of helping the FBI.

While most everyone is sympathetic to the goal of eradicating child pornography, the potential of searches into personal computers is problematic. Such searches could be used to investigate personal finances, personal communication and political activism. Using computer techs in this way also invites the temptation of planting evidence, especially if techs are being paid by law enforcement.

6. Every Catholic bishop in Chile offered to resign over sex abuse scandal

In January, Pope Francis defended Chilean bishop Juan Barros, who was accused by victims of covering up sex abuse they suffered at the hands of a Chilean cleric. The cleric, Fernando Karadima, was convicted for sexual abuse by the Vatican in 2011. Francis dismissed the accusations against Barros as slander.

Four months later, after the Vatican investigators compiled 2,300 pages reporting that bishops in Chile covered up and protected pedophiles, all 34 of Chile’s bishops, including Barros, offered (or were asked to offer) their resignation to Pope Francis.

The Church’s sex abuse scandal has been global, but at no time in the past has an entire conference of bishops offered to step down.

In Pennsylvania, a grand jury report said that more than 300 priests sexually abused over 1,000 victims over a period of 70 years.

In Australia, Archbishop Philip Wilson was sentenced to home confinement for covering up abuse.

Sexual abuse of children is not confined to the Catholic Church, however. There were many horrifying stories in 2018, including Oxfam’s sexual exploitation in Haiti, and the story of Joel Davis, who, ironically, founded an organization called Youth to End Sexual Violence.  He was charged with attempting to arrange sexual encounters with victims as young as two years old.

2018 may well be remembered as the year that child sex abuse was finally publicly acknowledged as an ongoing problem to be addressed. It seems there’s much more of it going around than most of us had ever thought.

7. New York Supreme Court threw a 30-year-old out of his parents’ house

Last May, Michael Rotondo became the poster boy for Failure to Launch stories. According to his parents, he didn’t contribute to the household, he refused to do his chores, and his room was a mess. So they demanded that he leave.

Michael refused to move out of his parents’ house when they gave him an eviction letter. His parents took him to court. As it turns out, only a Supreme Court judge can evict a family member in New York, so Michael found himself facing the highest court in the state. Michael argued that he should be given a six-month notice for eviction, but Supreme Court Justice Donald Greenwood disagreed.

Michael was ordered to move out by June 1 by 12:00 noon, and did make the deadline with a couple of hours to spare. But in one final act of what might appear to be vengeance, Michael called the police. Why? He wanted to get some Legos in the attic that belonged to his son.

The moral of the story is this: if your parents are magnanimous enough to keep you at home in your adult years, get a job, contribute to the household, do your chores, and clean your room. Don’t be like Michael.

8. Airport maintenance guy steals plane, flies around, performs aerobatics, then crashes on tiny island after being chased by fighter jets

This, for me, was one of the strangest and inexplicable stories of 2018.

On August 10, Richard Russell, an employee of Horizon Air at SeaTac airport, stole a Q400 aircraft with no one else on board. He made an unauthorized take-off at 7:33 PM and started flying around the Seattle area. The 28-year-old had no pilot’s license and no formal training, but was somehow able to fly the plane. According to the FBI, Russell had made Internet searches for flight instruction videos.

Russell was in contact with air traffic control as he flew the plane.  Through much of the interactions with air traffic control, Russell sounds calm, casual and conversational, even joking that he didn’t need much help because he had played video games.

But Russell never offered a motive or any reason that he stole the plane. At times he seemed to regret what he’d done and made it clear he didn’t want to hurt anyone.

“I’ve got a lot of people that care about me. It’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose I guess. Never really knew it, until now.”

During this time, two military F-15s were corralling Russell, while people on the ground watched his flight and observed him performing loop de loop maneuvers.

After more than an hour in the air, and having been offered several landing opportunities, Russell crashed the plane near Tacoma into Ketron Island, with an area of 221 acres and a population of 17. Russell died, but no one else was harmed.

9. Houston, we have a problem: a sex robot brothel

A lot of technology ideas have come from science fiction. Computers, cell phones, rockets, trips to Mars—all of these were ideas from science fiction that ignited the human imagination to bring them into reality.

It’s not exactly the pinnacle of human achievement, but the human-like sex robots from yesterday’s sci-fi movies have been a reality for a few years now. KinkySdollS, a Toronto-based robot brothel business, announced that it planned to open a site in Houston, TX.

Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, wasn’t a fan of the idea, and wanted to find a way to prevent the brothel from opening.

A change.org petition against robot brothels has garnered over 13,000 signatures.

Houston is the only major city with no zoning regulations, and isn’t fond of excessive regulation. But the sex robot brothel was a bridge too far for the city council. They updated a local ordinance to ban patrons from having sex with a device resembling a human at a business, thus banning the sex robot brothel.

This is a win for sex workers—even those who are operating illegally in Houston. Sex robots are a new competitor in the space, and sex workers themselves are arguing against the rise of the sexbot, calling them dehumanizing. The arguments that sex workers make against their AI rivals are reminiscent of traditional arguments against prostitution—that it reduces a woman’s value, interferes with true intimacy, and promotes a lack of empathy.

Leave it to 2018 to find something even those most libertine can disagree with.

10. Qanon and the Great Awakening

By far the most bizarre story of 2018 has been Qanon.

You may have heard of Qanon, otherwise known as Q. You may be following Q. You may be a true believer in Q. You may say it’s a psyop directed at idiots, or you may think it’s a vast, Trumpian conspiracy. I’m a neutral observer of this phenomenon. It’s so over the top that I can’t look away.

Qanon started on 4chan late in 2017. A group of people (Q), wrote their first post on the board on Oct 28, 2017 stating that Hillary Clinton would be arrested between 7:45 AM and 8:30 AM EST on Monday, October 30.

Well, that certainly didn’t seem to happen.

Subsequent posts referred to all manner of Deep State activities: Operation Mockingbird, George Soros, Military Intelligence vs. CIA, FBI and CIA, Google CEO Eric Schmidt taking trips to North Korea, Clintons, Rothschilds, Saudis—you name it. Qanon hinted that their group was military intelligence, and painted a picture of a cabal of Luciferian elites running the world, which had to be stopped. The phenomenon has all of the classic tropes of traditional literature—heroes and villains, virtue and vice, good and evil in an existential battle.

When I first read the posts I dismissed it as a LARP, but an interesting one. So I kept reading. One of the metaphors used is following the White Rabbit from Alice and Wonderland down the rabbit hole. The Matrix became a common metaphor, and Qanon followers talked about being “red-pilled.”

Q asked questions—a lot of questions—and inspired readers (4chan/8chan “autists”) to research the questions posed. Some of the questions were actually pretty good ones. Where does foreign aid money really go? What is the Senior Executive Service? How do people in Congress get so rich? There’s something strange about a government psyop encouraging citizens to investigate the government, and a lot of Qanon followers are learning things they might never have known otherwise.

Qanon asserts a direct connection to POTUS, and that they are working at his direction. In late June, Q challenged reporters and followers to ask POTUS directly if Qanon were real.

When a journalist asked Sarah Sanders about Qanon on August 1, she skirted the question. Maybe Sarah’s not in on it?

How many people are following Q? No one really knows. The phenomenon has garnered enough attention to evoke news stories in major publications. The New York Times has run numerous stories about Qanon. The Washington Post, Vox, NBC News, Newsweek and others have all written about Qanon, but only as a conspiracy theory, which Qanon uses to suggest that the movement is a threat to the cabal.

Many of the articles written (too many to link to – an Internet search for “Qanon” will show you plenty) ridicule those who believe that military intelligence is running a message board communicating directly to civilians, giving them “breadcrumbs” of inside information about world events. Fair enough, but these are the same media outlets that have been pushing the Russia collusion conspiracy in which deep, dark international connections used Internet trolls to subvert American democracy. They tell their viewers every day that Trump’s presidency is over, the tipping point is here, impeachment is nigh, Trump resignation coming soon! We will rid our country of the orange menace!

Personally, I don’t see much of a difference.

I, for one, am happy to see the end of 2018. It was a wild ride, but somehow I don’t think that 2019 is going to be any saner. Happy New Year!

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