

Andy Dollahite
7.5K posts

@AndyDollahite
Prolly less exciting than you think.



.@BarackObama: "When I was president, I suppose I could have simply unilaterally ordered the military to go into some red state and harass and intimidate a governor there or cut off funding for states that didn't vote for me... but that is contrary to how I think our democracy is supposed to work."


🇬🇧 The UK Ministry of Justice has ordered the deletion of Courtsdesk's extensive archive of magistrates' court records, a tool used by over 1,500 journalists to monitor cases and expose systemic issues, citing data protection breaches and unauthorised data sharing. Opposition MPs and critics, including Conservatives and Reform UK figures, accuse the Labour government of risking future cover-ups, warning the move could hinder scrutiny of scandals like grooming gangs by limiting searchable historical data, even as ministers insist official court records remain intact and the decision protects victim privacy. The archive must be wiped within days following a final government refusal last week.




The progressive right is following the same pattern of the progressive left 100 years ago insisting churches must speak to contemporary political issues and be political activists as a church. Their churches will suffer the same fate, death. But Christ will prevail.

John Ekdahl was my best friend. He died today of cancer, at 47. I know that some of you knew and loved John, so I thought I’d let you all know. I have set up a GoFundMe for his family, which is linked in this tweet. John and I “met” on Twitter about 13 years ago, and then, a couple of years later, met in person at the 2014 NRA Convention in Indianapolis. We quickly realized that we had a lot of the same interests—technology, amusement parks, baseball (we were both Yankees fans)—and soon started texting about everything and nothing. In 2015, when I published my book, the first stop on my promotional tour was in Jacksonville, where John lived. I asked him which hotel I should stay at, and he said that, instead, I should stay with him and his family. So I did. From that moment on, he and his wife (and their two kids—one of whom had just been born) became my closest friends. When, in 2017, my wife and I decided to move to Florida, John barraged me with propaganda about Jacksonville, and invited us to stay for a few days so that he and his wife could show us around. We were sold. John was like that. For the first few years after I moved to the United States, I wasn’t into the NFL. In 2016, this started to change, so John began a remote campaign to turn me into a Jaguars fan. “Jags are on,” he’d text apropos of nothing on a Sunday, even though he knew that, from Connecticut, the chance of my getting the game was close to zero. As part of this effort, I got weekly AFC South updates, a series of memes about Blake Bortles, and an introduction to the perfidious cabaret act that is the Tennessee Titans. John even invited me down to see a game against the Colts—which the Jaguars won 30-10. In my first real season as a fan, the Jaguars made the AFC Championship game, and were minutes away from making their first Super Bowl. After I moved down to Florida, John and I bought season tickets together, which we kept until the end. I had hoped devoutly that the Jaguars would make the Super Bowl this season—which was destined to be John’s last. During the pandemic, John and I started a business together that, relative to our expectations, did pretty well for a while. As is typical, most of our ideas didn’t pan out, but that didn’t matter. We had fun coming up with them at the bar, adding “just one more drink” to the tab to make sure that we hadn’t missed an angle or forgotten to write something crucial down on the back of an increasingly ragged napkin. I am 41-years-old and, with the exception of my wife, I’ve never met anyone who was easier to talk to than John. If we went for lunch, we’d go for hours, chatting about sports and rollercoasters and our kids and the new iPhone and the unforgivable changes that Disney made to Epcot in 1999. I shall miss that immensely. There was one thing we didn’t talk about: At no point since his diagnosis, did John and I ever acknowledge with each other how serious his condition was, or that, all things being equal, it was likely to take him before his time. From the start, it seemed that John silently picked me to be the person with whom he could pretend that everything was normal, and I fulfilled this role until the last. Even when things were clearly terrible, we’d make plans—to take a trip to New Hampshire with our families and friends; to ride the new rollercoaster at Epic Universe; to go to opening day at the new Jaguars Stadium in 2028; and more. The last time I saw him, I said the same thing as I said every time I'd chatted with him over the last 11 years: "Talk to you in a bit." gofund.me/20cbdce0f

Afghan asylum seeker found guilty of abducting and raping 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton, UK bbc.in/4qrEYcQ


WTF. Tracy Davis, a Jefferson County Judge in Kentucky, has cut the jail sentence of Christopher Thompson IN HALF from 65 years to 30 years, after he was convicted of kidnapping, robbing, and R*PING woman. Her reasoning? Because Thompson is black and is a victim of society. You can't make this sh*t up.



Child rapists should be chemically castrated. All of them. No exceptions.

For the record, Memorial Stadium was dedicated and named for the 112 University of Missouri students and alumni who died fighting for our country in World War I. #MIZ

This isn’t an over-dramatization, but the reality for many surrogates in the United States. Brittany Pearson experienced this first hand in 2024 when the intended parents chose to withhold medical care to their premature baby rather than raise him… and stop paying her.
