How come a nonprofit group that’s dedicated to opposing torture in such places as Bosnia, Cambodia and Chile is fighting efforts to provide stun guns to Santa Clara jail deputies, who frequently have to defend themselves against dangerous inmates?

An article in the current New Yorker concerns the Trump regime’s “assault on colleges and universities” and explores the thinking of rightwing Christian nationalists who believe that their turn to have power has finally arrived, after decades of being on the outside.

A week ago, with little fanfare, Gov. Newsom signed a reparations bill. As many of you might recall, he’d earlier announced, in no uncertain terms, that he’d never allow cash payments to Black people, not even descendants of slaves. So what does the bill he signed actually mandate?

I was really looking forward to going. Not even rain could have kept me away. I wanted to protest the current situation, to affirm my rights and freedom against a would-be fascist dictator who would make America into a religious theocracy, to express my revulsion for the creepy nationalists and their Biblical nonsense, and to defend my status as a Gay man in America.

[The following is satire.]

During midnight raids, the Oakland Police Department, assisted by the California Highway Patrol, arrested all members of the Oakland Police Commission. The felons were booked into the Alameda County Jail, in Santa Rita, where they await a hearing before a county judge.