Weather: Sunny. Highs in the upper 60s. Northwest winds around 5 mph, becoming southwest in the afternoon. Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows in the lower 40s. West winds 5 to 10 mph. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
In Court: Docket sounding is scheduled 10 a.m. before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County Courthouse. Cases include that of Marcus Chamblin, one of two defendants facing a first degree murder charge in the Circle K shooting that killed Deon O’Neal Jenkins in October 2019; that of Marshall Thomas, the former Matanzas High School student accused of sexually assaulting a student during class. Separately, he faces three third-degree felony charges of grand theft, two of them grand theft of a firearm. And the case of Danial Marashi, on charges of aggravated battery and leaving the scene of an accident. See the full list here.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
In Coming Days:
Notably: the E. Jean Carroll verdict, $83 million Trump must pay, once appeals are exhausted, is the bigger deal. But this too happened a couple of weeks ago and shouldn’t pass without notice: Trump sued The New York Times over a 2018 series of articles that revealed he had inherited most of his wealth from his father, and had avoided paying all but $750 in federal taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years. A judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit. But in mid-January, the judge ordered Trump to pay the Times $392,638 in legal fees. This is what elected officials tend to forget when they bluster about suing media or daring media to sue them: when the officials lose, as they almost invariably do, the legal fees are not a laughing matter. AP reported on Jan. 12: “‘Today’s decision shows that the state’s newly amended anti-SLAPP statute can be a powerful force for protecting press freedom,’ Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoads Ha said, referring to a New York law that bars baseless lawsuits designed to silence critics. Such lawsuits are known as SLAPPs or strategic lawsuits against public participation.”
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Do Americans really want to live in a fascist or authoritarian nation? Some may believe it will work out just fine – that the loss of freedom may hurt others, but not them – but most of us don’t want that. Or we wouldn’t if we were fully aware of the consequences. […] [R]ead – for example – Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation, the shocking (and nearly 1,000-page) rightwing plan to dismantle the federal government and install political allies after a Trump election. As the Associated Press wrote: “Trump-era conservatives want to gut the ‘administrative state’ from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing.” Neither politics reporters nor regular citizens need to become full-blown scholars of authoritarianism over the next nine months. But failing to understand and act upon what’s at stake – either out of ennui or because “we’ve always done it that way” – is dangerous.
–From a Margaret Sullivan column in The Guardian, “We must start urgently talking about the dangers of a second Trump presidency,” Jan. 25, 2024.
Jonny says
Why would I watch Random Acts of Insanity when I could just watch our government?