(1) Judge Hannah Dugan is guilty as sin, but free as a bird (as Bill Ayers might say):

Former Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan won’t face any prison time for her conviction of obstructing federal immigration officials.

In April 2025, the FBI arrested Dugan after video caught her directing agents away from a suspect, an illegal alien, whom they wanted to arrest. Her help allowed him to evade arrest temporarily.

A jury convicted Dugan in December 2025.

At today’s sentencing, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman imposed a $5,000 fine on Dugan.

“I think this is a situation where an otherwise good person, upset by immigration policies in this country, made a bad decision in the moment,” Adelman said, according to The Associated Press.

The jury convicted her, but in this case the judge got to set the sentence and had a lot of leeway in doing so. And yet her violation made a mockery of the law; I guess the judge who sentence her wasn’t especially concerned with that aspect.

(2) The circle of political life:

On Wednesday, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) took to his official X account with a startling announcement; an investigation by Senator Grassley has uncovered that anti-Trump prosecutor Jack Smith and his team, in the course of investigating President Trump for alleged mishandling of classified documents, did in fact carry out precisely the infraction for which they were investigating the president: Mishandling of classified documents, and the possible compromising of national security.

Fancy that.

(3) Scott Jennings wonders why Democrats are bailing on Platner now. He doesn’t seem to have an answer. Jennings is a very very smart man, but I’m surprised that he – and many others – don’t seem to agree with me that it happened now because Platner was sinking in the polls.

The trend over time was clear: Platner’s lead over Collins in polls was getting smaller and smaller and she was even starting to lead. Collins’s opponents have a history of polling better than they deliver, and I’m pretty sure the internal polls were much worse even than the polls we see on the chart at the link. I strongly believe he was dumped for one reason only, as I’ve written before: they started to see him as a loser. That’s the only reason the Politico story about rape came out. It’s not the other way around – they weren’t reacting to the story, they were allowing it to go public.

(4) The Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing is happening in Utah. The evidence against him is overwhelming, and that’s been clear for a long time:

On the second day of testimony of the preliminary hearing, and after a battle by the defense attorneys claiming that it would be prejudicial to Robinson’s case, prosecutors were allowed to show video of him entering the Utah Valley University campus at least four times on the day of the shooting. Some of the video had never before been seen by the public.

And yet much of it had already been seen. The conspiracy theorists ignore that, knowing that their fans are ignorant. Or they just say – as Candace Owens has been busy saying – the videos and photos are of lookalikes dressed as Robinson in order to frame him.

Speaking of long time, is it not amazing that Charlie Kirk was killed less than a year ago? I was unsure enough of that that I had to check the date again, even though I pretty much knew it: September 10, 2025. It seems like he’s been gone for a very very long time, so much has happened since then.

(5) Nigel Farage has announced he’s resigning from Parliament:

“Today I will resign as a Member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, thereby forcing a by-election, which will happen, I hope in short order,” he said in a press conference broadcast from the Reform UK YouTube channel.

“This will be a people vs. the establishment by-election. It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go, and that is why I will be putting my name forward to stand in this by-election,” he said. …

Farage’s resignation followed a series of scandals surrounding gifts he received from wealthy donors while out of office.

Farage denied any wrongdoing, stating: “Let me be absolutely clear. I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken the law in any way at all. I have not misused public money.”

An investigation into Farage’s conduct by Parliament’s Commissioner for Standards is ongoing.

Details at the link.