We have a lot of frozen territory to cover today. That's because ICE and its superiors at HSI and CBP were on Capitol Hill today for questions from the House Homeland Security Committee.. I watched it so you didn't have to, and I've got clips . Plus the latest on the Epstein files, Spocko on Bad Bunny and more...

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Like taxes and death, Mondays are inevitable. And despite how much we wish this current news cycle would just end already, I'm afraid we're stuck with it until the fascist dick-tator keels over. Luckily, as he does every Monday, Jonathan Larsen will join me for the second half of today's show. Jonathan, of course, writes up the news daily at The Fucking News with the right amount of snarks and, because he still has some to give, an appropriate number of fucks too. Jonathan also shares his original reporting in a more respectable manner at his self-titled substack... And yes, there's so much of it today that I'm already exhausted...

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This was a very strange week. Yes, there were quite a few offensive, disgusting and illegal things done by Dump and his cronies this week, but that's par for this shitty course. However, as I told emptywheel.net's Marcy Wheeler at the start of today's show, somehow the ominous foreboding seemed more intense. I feel that pit in my stomach dancing like jumping beans. Even though we ran even longer than usual today, we still didn't get to everything, but we did cover a lot of territory. 

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Apologies for the headline, but Driftglass is such a talented writer, I thought I should take a shot at a clever headline. Sadly, what that orange pile of narcissism in the White House is doing to us and covering how he's destroying life in what's left of our country has depleted my energy.

I somehow manage to make it through each day, taking it one day at a time. And I don't even drink! As you probably know by now, I seek out guests to join me on the air who also don't hold back. Today it's one of the OGs of the progressive blogosphere, Driftglass. He's been speaking truth to power since the beginning at driiftglass.blogspot.com. And with his wonderful wife, BlueGal Fran, co-hosts the Professional Left Podcast. You can find them at proleftpod.com. It's Driftglass today, hanging here with me!

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It's fitting that journalist and author Brian Karem is my guest today. His latest book, Free the Press, is all about our dying media... and the morning's big news was about the gutting of what's left of the Washington Post by Jeff Bezos (who proves it wasn't about the money at all). And we had a whole lot more to talk about today too...

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Overwhelmed yet? That's their goal. And in that, they're succeeding, but we can't let them win - on any level! Today, it's sort of a potpourri of news and Dumpy Chaos for Chaos' sake. The orange guy in the White House is out of his mind. He shows up 38 THOUSAND times in the Epstein files, but says he's done talking about them. Sorry, he doesn't get to make that call. It's time to put our collective giant foot down. So today, I welcome Cliff Schecter back to the show (He promises he'll be here!). He's a great strategist/idea guy, and the head honcho at Blue Amp Strategies, so let's get to work and figure out how to bring real sense back to our country!

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It's Monday, the day of the week that Jonathan Larsen, the man behind The Fucking News Substack joins me to help unpack the news which, these days, is horrific, terrifying and really fucked up. As glad as I am that January has finally ended, it's now February. Don't let that fact that it's only 28 days make you think it'll go by quicker. At this rate, it's on track to feel like a century.

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Each week seems to be more insane than the last. I think it's even more evident because Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel.net joins me each Friday to recap some of what made news in the preceding week. Just think about it...

Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE this past Saturday. That's how this week started, on Saturday morning. And it kept on sliding downward since. The FBI raided the Fulton County, GA Elections office. Curiously, Tulsi Gabbard was there along with, as Marcy pointed out, Deputy FBI Director Andrew Bailey;

Don Lemon and four others were arrested, the government shutdown may have been averted as Schumer got a two week deal to get Dems' demands on a new funding deal, Greg Bovino is out of Minneapolis and probably out of DHS and more Epstein files were released about an hour before we started recording today's show.

And more... 

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My old friend and Air America colleague Jack Rice is a jack of all trades. When we met, he was a radio host on Air America. Before that, he was a prosecutor, and a Special Agent for the CIA! Since then, he's returned to the law and is a practicing criminal defense attorney in the Twin Cities, so he's been in the thick of the horrors that Trump has set loose on Minneapolis. He was here just last week, but then they murdered Alex Pretti too, so I asked Jack to come back. We talked about all of it, including the toll this is all taking on his hometown and, frankly, the rest of the nation.

And we also touched on some of the other breaking news of the day, which has changed since today's show ended. I'll explain in the longer post on my Substack and tomorrow with Marcy Wheeler on Emptywheel Friday!

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Historian Matt Delmont's new book, Until the Last Gun is Silent:A Story of Patriotism, The Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save America's Soul just hit stores yesterday. I've had him scheduled for a while now, but there's definitely some correlation between his book and the madness confronting us today, which we certainly discussed.

I opened the show with Erica Connell, a familiar face to those who show up at Phone area protests. She was at one such gathering Sunday, at one of 15 Zips Sports Grill locations raided by Ice, and wound up getting sprayed directly in her face, landing her in the hospital! But she's out now, surrounded by friends and fellow activists, already helping to get Friday's nationwide standoff going.

And, there's some excellent new protest music out that I shared today because I could... or thought I could. We'll see....

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