On Wednesday, Texas Democrats fight to keep a Republican on the ballot. The local GOP officially withdrew Rep. Blake Farenthold‘s from the primary because he won’t seek election amidst a sexual harassment scandal, but local Dems said they pulled his name after the deadline.

“Texas Democrats will not stand idle while Republicans rig the ballot,” Dems said in a statement obtained by the Austin-American Statesman. “Only voters have the power to choose who leads our state and nation, not politicians and party officers in backroom decisions. Last we checked, this was Texas not Russia.” They said that “This is about protecting democracy, not Republican Blake Farenthold’s vile actions. Farenthold has no business serving in public office, but the primary ballot is set and he failed to withdraw.”

Here's what happens when people who don't know how to govern, and care even less about doing it right, try to pass massive legislation. Some time during conference on this tax bill, someone in either the House or the Senate put in two provisions aimed at helping far-right Christians that won't pass muster in the Senate.
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The Senate is still planning on voting on the bill later tonight. At this point it looks like they will just strip the two provisions and pass the bill, then send it back to the House for a revote tomorrow.

The British politician whose Islamophobic videos were retweeted last month by President Donald Trump, and a white nationalist are among the first people kicked off Twitter as part of the long-anticipated "purge" that has concerned Trump supporters for over a month.

Jayda Fransen, the leader of Britain First, the far-right political organization that produced the controversial videos, joined Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a white supremacist publication, in discovering that their ability to use the social media network had been taken away. American Renaissance’s account, which was verified by Twitter prior to the “purge,” was also suspended from the site.

Traditionalist Worker’s Party, a neo-Nazi group; and Occidental Dissent, a white nationalist publication, were also removed from Twitter. Those groups were instrumental in organizing the so-called White Lives Matter rally that took place in Tennessee this October.

In audio flagged at the Friendly Atheist, Father Paul Keller told an unidentified man calling from Nebraska that it would be unethical to do work for the health centers.

“It would be not a good thing to be involved in helping somebody who’s taking a life,” Keller patiently explained. “Think about if you were in Nazi Germany, and you were asked by Hitler to install a fire alarm, or a sprinkler system, in one of the guards’ shacks right next to the ovens that were killing Christians and Jews, and so forth. I don’t think you’d want to even set foot in an internment camp such in that part of the world.”

“Or the Ku Klux Klan,” he continued. “Suppose the Ku Klux Klan asked you to do this similar work in one of their offices, but they are completed devoted to being anti-Catholic and… being totally racist and so forth. So no, you wouldn’t want to do that.”

The Washington Examiner has transcripts of the Department of Justice’s closing remarks in their case against six protesters and one journalist for their participation in Inauguration Day protests. We all realize that the right wing of our country is working diligently to squash all dissent, even if that means trampling on the Bill of Rights. But Sessions’s DOJ isn’t even pretending that they are trying to prosecute vandalism and violence. They’re attacking people for protesting.

During closing arguments Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rizwan Qureshi offered no evidence that the six committed acts of violence or vandalism, or attended planning meetings for an anti-capitalism march that ended in the arrest of about 240 people in downtown Washington.

If you aren’t going to provide evidence or even argue that these individuals did something actually illegal (destroying private property for example), what is it exactly that you are arguing.