look like it s a layup to convict a number of these five defendants on seditious conspiracy charges. the defense also has a few aces up its sleeve. like what? one of the most well, the most impactful thing that the defense for ethan nordine, one of the defendants came up with, he said they have testimony from fbi informants who were embedded with the proud boys who marched with them towards the capitol that day and was in their text messages. they say that these informants are going to argue that the proud boys did not have a plan previously to storm the capitol, that this was kind of a herd mentality thing that cropped up randomly. i don t know how compelling that testimony will be. i don t know how it will go to cross-examination, but we ll see. it could be compelling and good for the defense. a really important point, again, prosecution has the burden of proof. and although there was the
you ve been on the city council in troy. you were a state representative here in michigan. you ve been in politics and your tenure and politics started before politics felt like the swamp that it can feel like today. you were elected as a republican? correct i still yield towards the republican party but because it s been taken over by donald trump, i don t want to be affiliated with that sort of thing. the truth of the matter is i ve always been of an independent mind, and if you look at some of the things that they ve introduced when i was in the legislature i took a more washingtonian approach to politics. in other words i m not a big fan of political parties. in fact, i think that elected officials should be elected on a nonpartisan basis and stand for what they believe in and the electorate should be able to evaluate them based on the individual. it s a real herd mentality right now. you ve got the democrat votes and you ve got the republican folks, and they get elected, and the
talk to your kids about the apps that they use. keep a conversation going about it. i know it s like not the most fun thing to do but you have got to have that conversation. then always, always, always. use security protection on all your family s devices even phones and tablets that your kids are using. steve: scary thing to a parent about this is it is the people who are responding are within five miles. it s like they are really close. it s not like somebody is, you know, typing in from canada or something. they could be just down the street. well, the problem with it is it is anonymous. so kids can be mean inherently. you know it s targeting teens. and although there is really no age limit online it says hey this is for 17 and older, guess what? there is nothing stopping much younger underaged kids from down loading this except for parents who are often not aware of what their kids are doing with their devices. so, boom, all the sudden you have a bunch of mean kids and that her
there s another one in colorado is falling for this. how are they so gullible? it says a lot about how people process information in a very hyper partisan world, right? i mean, like, one of the things that s the hardest thing about combating this information, or disinformation, is just how strongly people want to believe it when it confirms a prior worldview that they have, and it confirms an us versus them mentality. and then you compound that with the simple fact that everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket where they can communicate with everybody instantly and shred that, and that s, and that s the amazing thing is that you have rational people who sort of search out irrationality when it comes to trying to confirm a lot of their political biases. and it s a very, very difficult problem for politicians. we saw that when we work on campaigns. when i worked on campaigns, this happened back in probably 2008, where, you know, voters would come to us at town halls in new hamps