Erin Scott/White House

• President Joe Biden revealed new information about his 3-year-old cat on Thursday.
• At a Lunar New Year reception, Biden said that Willow sleeps on top of his head at night.
• The Biden family adopted the cat after she jumped on stage at a 2020 campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

President Joe Biden revealed more about White House cat Willow at a Lunar New Year reception on Thursday.

Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden hosted the event where the president unexpectedly shed light on the cat’s sleeping habits. Willow is a wild child with “no limits,” and often ends up dozing off on top of his head at night, Biden told the crowd.

“Willow may walk in here any time now. She has no limits,” Biden said at the reception, according to USA Today reporter Joey Garrison. “You think I’m kidding, I’m not. Especially in the middle of the night when she climbs up and lays on top of my head.”

The White House did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for more information about Willow.

The Bidens brought 3-year-old Willow, a gray tabby, to the White House a year ago, after the cat jumped on stage during a presidential campaign stop in Pennsylvania.

“Willow made quite an impression on Dr. Biden in 2020 when she jumped up on the stage and interrupted her remarks during a campaign stop,” FLOTUS spokesman Michael LaRosa told The New York Times last year. “Seeing their immediate bond, the owner of the farm knew that Willow belonged with Dr. Biden.”

It hasn’t been all roses in the Biden animal kingdom, but ultimately, Willow has come out on top.

In September 2021, Willow was briefly in foster care as they tried to acclimate their dog Major to cats, according to The Times.

In December 2021, after Major had several biting incidents at the White House, the dog was sent to live with family friends in Delaware and Willow made her return to the Oval Office.

“After consulting with dog trainers, animal behaviorists, and veterinarians, the First Family has decided … it would be safest for Major to live in a quieter environment with family friends,” LaRosa told The Times in December 2021. “This is not in reaction to any new or specific incident, but rather a decision reached after several months of deliberation as a family and discussions with experts.” 

The Bidens also have a German shepherd puppy named Commander who they brought home in December 2022, months after their longtime dog Champ died in June 2022 at the age of 13. 

The Clintons also had a cat, Socks, who was walked on a leash. Former President George W. Bush owned a cat named India.

Five Chinese citizens were among the victims in a shooting in the California town of Half Moon Bay, the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco said.

The Half Moon Bay shooting on Monday, in which seven people died, was the second of two gun rampages in California in recent days in which a total of 18 people were killed.

“The Consulate General is in communication with the relevant U.S. authorities to follow up on the progress of the investigation,” a spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the Consulate General strongly condemned the violence.

Chunli Zhao, a Chinese citizen and 66-year-old immigrant farm worker, was the lone suspect in the massacre at two mushroom farms in the northern California seaside town.

He was formally presented with seven counts of murder and a single count of attempted murder during his first court appearance in nearby Redwood City on Wednesday.

An Ivy League-educated lawyer who firebombed a cop car during the 2020 George Floyd riots was sentenced on Thursday to just a year and a day in prison, concluding a pair of cases marked by surprising leniency from the Biden Justice Department.

Colinford Mattis’s sentence was the second of its kind delivered by U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan of the Eastern District of New York after Urooj Rahman, a public interest lawyer who joined Mattis in the firebombing, was sentenced in November to 15 months. In a pre-sentencing memo, prosecutors said they viewed “Mattis’s conduct here as equally culpable to Rahman’s conduct” and recommended a sentence of 18 to 24 months—well beneath the initial guideline of 10 years.

Mattis and Rahman leveraged their prestigious degrees, left-wing legal advocacy, and personal connections—including with one former Obama administration official who posted Rahman’s $250,000 bail—to curry favor with the Justice Department. Liberal media outlets like NPR and New York magazine produced fawning coverage of the two after their arrest.

Trump administration prosecutors had sought a 10-year sentence with a domestic terrorism enhancement for the pair, which was dropped after President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland took office. Mattis and Rahman in June scored a sweetheart deal with Department of Justice prosecutors, pleading guilty to lesser arson and explosives charges that warranted a mere five-year sentence. New York State announced before Rahman’s sentencing that both she and Mattis had been disbarred.

James Trusty, a former federal prosecutor, told the Washington Free Beacon in November that the DOJ’s treatment of the two was “extraordinarily unusual.” Both Mattis’s and Rahman’s attorneys requested sentence commutations before they appeared in court, pushing for each to be released on time served.

On May 29, 2020, hours after Minneapolis’s Third Precinct was set ablaze by rioters, Mattis and Rahman began sharing plans to build Molotov cocktails and firebomb NYPD targets.

“Bring it to their neck,” Mattis, a graduate of Princeton and New York University’s law school, texted on the night of protests in New York City. “Molotovs rollin’,” Rahman, a Fordham law school graduate, responded.

The two also “encouraged others to engage in violence” and “mocked reportedly injured police officers,” according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said it was “troubling” for a licensed attorney to break the law “with little apparent thought for the severe consequences of that decision.” They said it was worse that Mattis’s “crime involved targeting a law enforcement agency charged with enforcing the same law that, as an attorney, he had sworn to uphold.”

Court filings show Mattis bought two six-packs of Bud Light, toilet paper, and a red gas can before driving with Rahman to the NYPD’s 88th precinct in Brooklyn. Rahman took one of the Molotov cocktails and tossed it through the window of a parked cruiser and then ran back to Mattis’s minivan, which peeled off “at a high rate of speed” from the scene of the crime. The two were arrested almost immediately afterward.

Both have agreed to pay restitution for the cost of the bombed-out car, which was valued at $30,137.

The post Ivy League Lawyer Who Firebombed Cop Car Will Spend a Year and a Day in Prison appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Former John McCain disciple and more recent basket case Lindsey Graham never seems to be sure what side of any given issue he’s on, until he’s had a moment to try to figure out how he thinks it’ll benefit him. For instance, ahead of the 2022 midterms, Graham was publicly giddy at the notion of the Republicans winning the Senate so he could launch sham committee investigations into Hunter Biden, the son of his former friend Joe Biden. Fortunately, the Republicans did not win the Senate, and so we won’t have to listen to Graham bloviating about conspiracy theories during hearings.

But in the latest reminder that Graham tends to pick sides based on which way he thinks the wind is going to end up blowing, he’s now telling the media that he’d be “shocked” if there’s anything to the Joe Biden classified documents matter. So why is Graham giving up the opportunity to run with this phony scandal, when so many of his Republican colleagues are all over it?

It’s the latest sign that the Biden documents scandal simply isn’t going anywhere. Some aide likely mistakenly packed some classified documents into some boxes of White House memorabilia years ago that found their way into Biden’s garage, Biden’s own people found the documents and alerted the FBI, and then Biden asked the FBI to come in and search for any additional documents in order to put the whole thing to bed. The end. There’s no scandal here, and no way to even make hay out of pretending it’s a scandal.

In other words, Lindsey Graham is once again displaying his bizarre knack for simultaneously being completely mentally unstable and fairly savvy about which side of any given issue is going to end up being the winning side. Given his track record of viciously smearing Biden, Graham deserves zero credit for admitting that there is no Biden documents scandal. But it is the latest sign that the Biden documents story truly isn’t going anywhere. If there were any opportunity for Republicans to make hay out of it, Graham would be first in line to do so.

The post Lindsey Graham gives up the ghost appeared first on Palmer Report.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images and Samuel Corum/Getty Images

• Elon Musk said he met with House leaders of both parties to ensure fairness on Twitter. 
• The meeting was reportedly unplanned, and was “mostly just an introduction.” 
• The meetings come just as the House is set to hold a hearing about Twitter’s content moderation before the 2020 election.

Elon Musk went to Capitol Hill on Thursday and had a surprise meeting with the House leaders of both parties to discuss Twitter. 

Musk tweeted after the meeting: “Just met with @SpeakerMcCarthy & @RepJeffries to discuss ensuring that this platform is fair to both parties.” 

McCarthy was cryptic about his meeting with Musk, who is the CEO and owner of Twitter, telling reporters, “he came to wish me a happy birthday,” according to a report by Bloomberg. 

“We’ve been friends for years,” McCarthy added. He turned 58 on Thursday. 

The meeting was not scheduled, according to CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, who cited an aide to Jeffries. Jeffries was reportedly in a meeting in Speaker McCarthy’s office when Musk came in. 

“It was mostly an introduction,” the aide reportedly said. 

Musk’s meetings with both sides of the aisle come as the tech billionaire increasingly wades into political discussions in recent months. 

Musk encouraged his followers on Twitter to vote for “centrist candidates” ahead of the 2022 midterm election and said he would vote Republican, despite “overwhelmingly” voting for Democrats in the past. 

The Capitol Hill drop-in also comes less than 2 weeks before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee plans to hold a hearing about Twitter’s handling of Hunter Biden’s laptop story. Former Twitter employees are set to testify.

The controversy surrounding Twitter’s decision to temporarily suppress a New York Post story on President Biden’s son’s laptop in 2020 predates Musk’s ownership of Twitter; He officially purchased the social media platform for $44 billion in October 2022. 

Five former Memphis police officers were charged on Thursday with murder in the death of a Black motorist, Tyre Nichols, from injuries he sustained in a violent encounter following a traffic stop, prosecutors said.

Nichols, a 29-year-old father, died while hospitalized on Jan. 10, three days after the confrontation during his arrest by the five police officers.

Officials were expected on Friday evening to release police body-worn camera video of the incident, which a lawyer for Nichols’ family likened to the notorious footage of Los Angeles police officers beating Black motorist Rodney King more than 30 years ago.

“We’re here today because of a tragedy that wounds one family deeply but also hurts us all,” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said at a news conference announcing the charges.

The five officers, who are all Black, were each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression, Mulroy said.

The Memphis Police Department on Friday identified them as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith. They range in age from 24 to 32 and each served on the department for about 2 1/2 to five years.

They were dismissed from the force last Saturday after an internal investigation found they had violated multiple departmental policies, including using excessive force, failing to intervene, and failing to render aid. They were taken into custody on Thursday morning, county jail records showed.

Despite the murder charges, the district attorney revealed few additional details known about the circumstances surrounding Nichols’ fatal encounter with police.

After Nichols was stopped, there was “an altercation” in which officers doused the motorist with pepper spray, and Nichols tried to flee on foot, Mulroy said, describing what followed in highly elliptical terms.

“There was another altercation at a nearby location at which the serious injuries were experienced by Mr. Nichols,” the prosecutor said.

The initial Memphis Police Department statement about the death had said an ambulance was called because Nichols “complained of having a shortness of breath” and that he was taken to a hospital in critical condition.

Mulroy said he would not comment on the legality of the initial traffic stop. He said the investigation would continue, and he would not rule out the possibility of additional charges.

David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, said at the news conference that he was sickened by what he saw in the bodycam videos.

“What happened here does not at all reflect proper policing,” he said. “This was wrong. This was criminal.”

The former officers could not be reached for comment.

Blake Ballin, a lawyer representing Mills, said at a separate news conference that his client was “devastated to find himself charged with a crime.”

Ballin was joined by William Massey, representing Martin; both lawyers said they had not yet seen the video and were still developing their defenses. Their clients were each posting a bond to be released from jail on Thursday, they said.

Mills and Martin both intended to plead not guilty, their lawyers said. Ballin said it might be another two weeks before the defendants make their initial appearance in court because they were charged by grand jury indictment.

Other Memphis officers remain under investigation for policy infractions, Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said. In a statement posted on YouTube, she asked for calm when the police video is made public.

“I expect you to feel what the Nichols family feels,” she said. “I expect you to feel outrage in the disregard of basic human rights.”

U.S. President Joe Biden, in a statement, said Nichols’ death “is a painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment, and dignity for all.”

Nichols’ death marked the latest in a spate of high-profile cases of police officers accused of using excessive force in the deaths of Black people and other minorities in recent years, sparking public outcries against systematic racism in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Protests against racial injustice erupted globally following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than 9 minutes, after he was arrested on suspicion of trying to pass a counterfeit bill.

The Nichols family viewed the police footage on Monday with their attorney, Ben Crump, who compared it to the 1991 videotaped Rodney King beating by four police officers whose acquittal of criminal charges the following year sparked several days of riots in Los Angeles.

“This young man lost his life in a particularly disgusting manner that points to the desperate need for change and reform to ensure this violence stops occurring during low-threat procedures, like in this case, a traffic stop,” Crump and colleague Antonio Romanucci said in a statement.

The last words heard on the video were Nichols calling for his mother three times, Crump said.

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Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday urged his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, to have France attend the summit of the Amazon countries that he aims to host in coming months.

Lula, who was elected for a third term last October vowing to tackle deforestation in the rainforest, discussed in a phone call with Macron efforts to combat the threat posed by climate change, according to a statement from his office.

He talked about the importance of France attending a summit of the countries of the Amazon forest that Brazil plans to host in the next few month, as it is the only European country to share the biome, through its overseas territory of French Guiana.

Besides Brazil and French Guiana, seven other countries have territory in the world’s largest rainforest.

Macron has meanwhile asked Brazil to attend its own “One Forest Summit” that France and Gabon will host in early March, according to the Brazilian statement.

Lula won a narrow election last year promising an overhaul in Brazil’s climate policy, after deforestation in the Amazon reached its highest levels in 15 years under then far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who undermined environmental law enforcement and pushed for more mining and farming in the region.

Bolsonaro had a strained relationship with Macron, after the French president denounced in 2019 surging fires in the Amazon. Bolsonaro responded by insulting Macron’s wife and accusing him of disrespecting Brazilian sovereignty.

Later on Thursday, Macron said after speaking with Lula that he had reaffirmed his determination to take action “for the climate, biodiversity, our forests and against hunger.”

“We will meet these challenges,” he said.

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“I won’t be ignored, Dan!” This famous line is from the film “fatal attraction.” Ah, who could forget THAT little ball of horror? Alex Forrest was quite the insane bunny boiler, was she not? I use those words — bunny boiler — because that is precisely what Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy called George Santos — to the amusement of many.

Kennedy, not one to hold back, also labeled him: “nutty as a fruitcake.” That just might be the most intelligent thing Kennedy ever said. Santos has a lot of troubles right now, and the bunny boiler nickname is the least of them. Santos has admitted that the loans to his campaign were not from personal funds. That is what he originally said. In a not-shocking turn of events — he lied.

And the problem is — people need to find out WHERE the money came from. If the “bunny boiler” knows — and he does — he ain’t saying. In the meantime, Rachel Maddow was the first to reveal that Santos claimed somebody was trying to assassinate him. Santos also claimed somebody stole his shoes. This shoe thievery reportedly happened on the corner of 5th avenue and 55th – one of the busiest spots in the big apple.

In the meantime, many on Twitter are taking guesses on what lies of Santos will surface next. It’s anybody’s guess. This isn’t something many can predict, as the lies are coming in daily, and they’re also growing more and more distorted.

I will repeat my prediction that this guy won’t make it in Congress for two years. I imagine he is pretty miserable right now, but even if he doesn’t quit, he will be forced out somehow. The drip-drip of Santos bullshit is too embarrassing for Republicans to leave alone, and the man is proving to be a walking calamity to all who know him.

The post Drip drip, George Santos appeared first on Palmer Report.