
Trump’s coterie of dishonest legal advisers — John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Jenna Ellis and [Jeffrey] Clark — weren’t careful. In their attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, they said things that were demonstrably false and were personally involved in lies told to government officials. If prosecutors can prove that one or more of them created the false certificates, and knew that doing so was illegal, they may have criminal liability. If they knew about the false statements and advanced the scheme to transmit them to the U.S. Senate, that may also be enough. Clark is facing the same criminal liability for writing false statements in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch…
As attorneys, it will be hard for Eastman, Giuliani and Ellis to claim that they had no idea that they were acting outside the four corners of state law by convening “alternative” electors and submitting them to the Senate even though the state had already submitted official electors. It will also be hard for Clark to argue that he had no idea that what he was doing was illegal, given that his superiors forcefully told him so.
… Any prosecution of Trump would not be easy. But the committee has made DOJ’s job easier by developing evidence of a straightforward, readily provable crime and revealing how careless dishonest lawyers like Giuliani, Eastman and Clark were, making them ripe targets.
For years UD has gazed, appalled, at the doll army of Japanese royal women — all of them kitted out in the same sick uniform: tight little pastel pillbox, hair tightly pulled in, supremely vapid tight smile, weeny uniform earrings, cheesy pastel body-covers, white gloves tightly suspended above any suggestion of sexual life, dead white pumps.

So how great to read that the third from the left automaton in this photograph decided that instead of a life of pilled up psychosis she would ditch the whole sick thing, fall in love with a guy who wears a ponytail, and move – where else? – to New York City. Look at her now!
UD is a sucker for these liberatory tales, especially tales that feature people who have the guts to suffer all the anguish that powerful perverted institutions can make them suffer for revealing/rejecting the perversion. There’s a word for women like Mako: pioneers. Because of her, the sick palace parade will perhaps die of its sickness.
Meanwhile, though, what a pleasure to watch her in that greatest of liberatory cities, New York, as she strides the open streets openly in her flowing hair and skirt and boy shoes!
I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE FETUS
JUST LIKE THE ONE GOD’S MOTHER USED TO KNOW
WHERE HIS BLOND HAIR GLISTENS
WHEN HE GETS CHRISTENED
IN TEMPLES WHITE AS FALLING SNOW…
MAY YOUR DAYS BE MERRY AND BRIGHT
AND MAY ALL YOUR FETUSES BE WHITE
For UD, this is the most important exchange, so far, reported to the January 6 committee.
From Lara Trump’s giggling dismissal of a reporter’s question, long ago, about violent chants at Trump rallies (People are just “having fun.”) to Eric Greitens’ RINO butchery (Like Lara Trump, he says the ad was all in fun.), violence – and now escalating violence – has run through Trumpworld. I think we owe a debt of gratitude to John Eastman for cutting out the all in fun bullshit and simply stating the obvious. Far from disavowing violence, Eastman here schools Herschmann on the excellent history of violence in America. Indeed you can sort of see Eastman shrug and then smile patiently at Herschmann as he explains, in the way of Robespierre explaining things to less bloodthirsty comrades, that you’ve got to break some eggs to make an omelette.
… established by UD‘s Montgomery County.
“… Congress can impeach and there has to be a basis to do so… Justice Thomas, who is now saying that marriage equality, that birth control, that all these rights suddenly are at risk, should be impeached for his involvement in election-related cases. He has breached the public’s trust. His wife literally was involved in the attempted violent overthrow of the U.S. government.”
— Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State
Sign here.
Discussion. This article was written a week ago and noted that there were 236,000 signatures. There are now 248,205.
… Five minutes later: 248, 337.
… Five minutes later: 248, 437.
***************************
Later, that same day: 251,075.
Quotation of the day.
Though this one ain’t bad either.
Without the intimidation factor so central to Trump’s hold on power, influential Trump critics such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) may seize the opportunity to deepen the break with the rapidly toxifying Trump. If that happens, Republicans will face an enraged, burn-it-all-down Trump in the run-up to the 2024 elections. That may be beleaguered Democrats’ best hope of returning Joe Biden to the White House.
**************
There’s violence against others (setting a mob on your VP; spawning terrorists like RINO-butcher Eric Greitens), and there’s violence against oneself. I’m going to predict that toxifying Trump will attempt to pull off one final mass murder, with boy soldiers – who are, notoriously, the most unrestrainedly vicious of all – at the front lines. Specifically, Donald Trump Jr and Andrew Giuliani will co-captain a coordinated Proud Boys assault on Martha’s Vineyard. If that fails to decimate the elites, Trump will kill himself.
Mo Brooks, body-armored rouser of insurrectionists, Trump’s La Pasionaria— until betrayal and defeat twisted her within so badly that she has now agreed to cry her a river to the committee — promises to keep us occupied with her long weepy plaints to anyone who will listen. Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned would seem the appropriate quotation here.
As for Stasigirl: Over the course of two days, would-be Justice Department czar Jeffrey Clark
- watched several people describe her as a desperate pathetic lying traitorous idiot in front of the entire world, and
- stood outside in her pajamas in the street in front of her house as the FBI searched it for documents related to her treason.
THE RAID WAS EXACTLY LIKE STASI! she boohooed – until her interviewer, realizing that Fox viewers know fuck-all about Stasi, began calling it Stalinist. Whatever vile authoritarian Thing it was, Clark’s Golgatha (UD advises Clark to switch from historical to religious terminology – much more accessible) will, we have reason to hope, inspire her to unburden herself, at length, to many media outlets.
True, neither of these stopgaps represents our true heart’s desire – it’s Giuliani and Eastman we want, front and center, frothing at the mouth, bleeding from a dye job – but for the moment Mo and Jeff will do fine.
… for photographing spider webs, and UD found a perfectly circular one at the top of her hill; but I felt too unsteady over the thick vines and slippery limbs to get close enough for a good shot. Best I could do.

ÅNGERMANLAND I will arise and go now, and go to Ångermanland, And a vast fortress build there, of rage and madness made; None else will I have there -- my world will I command And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have my rage there, for rage's wind doth blow, Blowing from the hearings, from where the RINOs sing; There Bennie’s all aglimmer, and Jamie's all aglow, And the transcripts full of Liz’s zings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I see old allies dumping me and smirking more and more; I know that court awaits me some not too distant day, I know it in the deep heart’s core.
Chairperson Turd has just issued a video of her crouching, naked, over a picture of Rusty Bowers and defecating on his face. “Ah… That’s better. And now to finish this off the Arizona way!” she yells. Someone off-camera hands her an AK-47. “RINO hunting never felt SO GOOD!” She empties the weapon into his picture, tearing up bits of the floor with the weapon. “Let me say to all true Arizona Republicans,” she concludes: “It’s too late to go after Rusty’s dead daughter. But he’s still got plenty of family and friends left. YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO.”
***********
UPDATE: OOpsie! Smelli gets subpoenied!
*************
Getting where? To the final speech of Ceausescu, in this our own great county, at an enormous Donald Trump rally.
LAST two people I thought would divorce!
*********************
So. Let me tell you the truth. I’m not surprised. The mistake Murdoch made this time was marrying someone so old. He’s on a quest never to die, via marriage with the younger set. (One of his models seems to be Sumner Redstone.) This latest pairing, with Hall already in her sixties, made no sense to me, given the sex serum regimen he’s on. Number Five will be in her thirties, and this one will guarantee that Murdoch will never die.
Well hell’s bells I’ve heard of “deflection” before, but not deflection that involves deflecting attention from your abuse of your family and toward your murder of political opponents. But whatever.
Latest UD posts at IHE
Archives
- 2025 (696)
- 2024 (822)
- 2023 (733)
- 2022 (852)
- 2021 (751)
- 2020 (789)
- 2019 (753)
- 2018 (803)
- 2017 (749)
- 2016 (863)
- 2015 (861)
- 2014 (1052)
- 2013 (1019)
- 2012 (1187)
- 2011 (1399)
- 2010 (1372)
- 2009 (1450)
- 2007 (1)
Categories
- 54: The new elderly (1)
- ADA DOOM (196)
- amy bishop (32)
- AYE (6)
- bad writing (24)
- Balinesia (1)
- be still my heart (198)
- beware the b-school boys (157)
- beach blogging (7)
- blog (98)
- blogoscopy (31)
- blood blogging (12)
- bright red shorts (1)
- chesapeake (4)
- chief inspiration officer (50)
- class (17)
- CLICK-THROUGH U. (6)
- CLICK-THRU U. (126)
- code brown (16)
- conflict of interest (312)
- contest! (8)
- da guy's got balls (13)
- defenses of liberal education (33)
- delillo (81)
- democracy (938)
- demon rum (70)
- diploma mill (119)
- dispatches from the classroom (16)
- end the erasure of women (116)
- evil dr phil (1)
- EVITA (6)
- extracts (191)
- faculty project (34)
- failure to yield pun (3)
- father/son gunnies (10)
- FGM (63)
- floridly overwritten (4)
- foreign universities (159)
- forms of religious experience (750)
- free speech (75)
- fresh blood (58)
- Genius of the Carpathians (220)
- gevalt (4)
- ghost writing (55)
- goathean (2)
- goddess (2)
- Gomer (26)
- good writing (116)
- great writing (148)
- guns (1,020)
- harvard: bar fly (5)
- harvard: foreign and domestic policy (104)
- harvard: gearing up for the winter (7)
- harvard: handouts (10)
- headline of the day (395)
- henry purcell (13)
- heroes (148)
- heroines (107)
- high as a kite (43)
- hoax (269)
- how to make ud happy (22)
- How We Learn (38)
- hymnal (1)
- intellectuals (67)
- it's art (121)
- it's good to be the king (10)
- james joyce (74)
- jesus thinks you're a jerk (5)
- just plain gross (404)
- kind of a little weird (548)
- limericks (170)
- lion's willy (3)
- little hitler (4)
- Little Ick (12)
- march of science (244)
- merchandise (199)
- merkin muffley (2)
- merkins (12)
- Ministry of War (14)
- misconceived literary adaptations (1)
- morning mantra (1)
- newspaper poem (17)
- notes from a broad (1)
- nothing gold can stay (1)
- oedipus madoff (9)
- Of Mice and Men (1)
- Online Makeover (14)
- pill mill u. (7)
- plagiarism (329)
- poem (435)
- PowerPoint Confidential (15)
- powerpoint pissoff (50)
- professors (667)
- program support coordinator (2)
- protect yourself from bad poetry (2)
- satanic two-party system (1)
- Scathing Online Schoolmarm (301)
- screwed (133)
- screwed up (7)
- sentences that make UD laugh (28)
- smackdown (11)
- snapshots from a country (3)
- snapshots from assateague (10)
- snapshots from australia (1)
- snapshots from bath (1)
- snapshots from cambridge (9)
- snapshots from cherry springs (3)
- snapshots from corning (4)
- snapshots from dublin (21)
- snapshots from galway (9)
- snapshots from hawaii (1)
- snapshots from home (1,408)
- snapshots from houston (2)
- snapshots from hungary (1)
- snapshots from hyde park (2)
- snapshots from iceland (1)
- snapshots from india (11)
- snapshots from ireland (16)
- snapshots from kent island (1)
- snapshots from key west (66)
- snapshots from kurdistan (1)
- snapshots from la (1)
- snapshots from lisbon (1)
- snapshots from london (7)
- snapshots from malaga (1)
- snapshots from marbella (1)
- snapshots from mexico city (3)
- snapshots from munich (1)
- snapshots from naples (5)
- snapshots from new york (13)
- snapshots from Paris (5)
- snapshots from phoenix (2)
- snapshots from poland (3)
- snapshots from prague (2)
- snapshots from rehoboth (181)
- snapshots from sanibel (14)
- snapshots from scotland (3)
- snapshots from sedona (16)
- snapshots from shenandoah (17)
- snapshots from summit (30)
- snapshots from thailand (1)
- snapshots from the alps (1)
- snapshots from the azores (1)
- snapshots from the caliphate (1)
- snapshots from the Chesapeake (7)
- snapshots from the dolomites (1)
- snapshots from utah (7)
- snapshots from venice (11)
- snapshots from vermont (2)
- snapshots from Virginia (5)
- snapshots from warsaw (17)
- snapshots from west virginia (2)
- snapshots from zakopane (2)
- soltan inc. (59)
- somewhat baffled online schoolmarm (2)
- sounds and looks very samuel beckett (22)
- sport (2,765)
- Sport (149)
- STUDENTS (440)
- suicide (50)
- swaddled masses yearning to breathe free (8)
- tax syphon u. (2)
- tea (31)
- TEACH NAKED (2)
- TEACHING BEAUTY (2)
- technolust (217)
- THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL ME (3)
- the melnyk chronicles (1)
- the most irresponsible university in america (5)
- the piece that passeth all understanding (4)
- the rest is silence (37)
- the shame of a nation (11)
- the university (426)
- This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (2)
- tiny (2)
- TRUMP DEATH WATCH (2)
- trust me – i'm a doctor (7)
- trustees trashing the place (225)
- ud officially embarrassed to be a woman (7)
- ud's hippie years (12)
- UD/DC (6)
- unhoused (1)
- VERY LIKE A CME. (4)
- We'll get through this. (46)
- what do english professors dream? (1)
- where the simulacrum ends (33)
- you're wrong (1)
- Your Morning Giggle (48)
Bookmarks
- A Don’s Life
- Acephalous
- Acta Online
- Adbusters
- All Things Shining
- Andrew Sullivan
- Ann Althouse
- Ars Psychiatrica
- Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
- Baseline Scenario
- Carlat Psychiatry Blog
- Charles Lipson
- CLIOPATRIA
- Cold Spring Shops
- Colonialist
- Critical Mass
- Culture Industry
- Dank Professor
- Easily Distracted
- Ferule and Fescue
- FIRE
- Grad Student Madness
- GW English News
- Hardscrabble Creek
- Health Care Renewal
- In the Middle
- Inside Higher Ed
- Joanne Jacobs
- John&Belle Have a Blog
- Jonathan Mayhew
- Left of Centre
- Liberty and Power
- Lucky Jane
- Minding the Campus
- MOO 2
- Nobody Sasses A Girl in Glasses
- notes of a neophyte
- Photon Courier
- Polysigh
- PROFANE
- Rate Your Students
- Retraction Watch
- Scenic Overlook
- Sherman Dorn
- Signifying Nothing
- Slaves of Academe
- Tenured Radical
- The American Scene
- The Collegiate Way
- The Cranky Professor
- The Education Wonks
- The GW Patriot
- The Interpreted World
- The Monkey Cage
- The Periodic Table
- The Usual Prophets
- The Valve
- Unabgeschlossenheit
UD REVIEWED
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte