River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with WQUD GM Aaron Dail about skateboarding down by the HESCO barriers (good times), the absence of Buried Stories (temporary), and whether TM will make good on an alleged promise and get a tattoo of Julian Assange on his back (will get back to you on that one).

Kevin Gosztola crystallizes the Reader‘s enthusiasm for Assange’s successful plea-bargain deal with the US Department of Justice on 24 June 2024, which allowed him to plead guilty to a charge of “conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information” — in lieu of the courts having to extradite and try him in court for practicing journalism — and have his sentence reduced to time already served. JA, essentially a First Amendment rock star at this point, is now back in Canberra, reveling in all things Australian, and presumably endeavoring to keep as much distance between himself and the US federales. Here’s something to consider, though: Were Assange to screw up his courage, plant his feet down, reach out to new whistleblowers, and engage in another massive data-dump of sensitive cables, what, exactly, would happen? It’s all hypothetical, of course, because JA isn’t keen to sacrifice another fourteen years of his life, enduring unlawful surveillance of his communications and movements and inhumane long-term detention — and that’s when it was eventually established that the US justice system had no legal justification for any of these practices. Say, however, that someone else chooses to take up his mantle. Would s/he be willing to endure what Assange did? Would the Department of Justice be willing to jump through the same hoops as before in an effort to get this whistleblower to cry “Uncle!”? Or would it be inclined to save a little time and find some other, “extra-legal” way of striking at this individual?

Before moving on to suggest that readers reacquaint themselves with The Declaration of Independence, Kathleen McCarthy provides readers with a quiz to identify which forms of government are represented, and by identifying them, knowing (as McCarthy writes) “the trick of most politics: to frame everything through competing political lenses so people don’t notice there is not a hair’s width worth of difference in any of the governing models’ socioeconomic outcomes.”

McCarthy and cartoonist Ed Newman have established the mother of all political metaphors in the “Uni-Potty.” This clever pun purports to celebrate those odd instances of bipartisan legislation, but likens the actual effects of that system as being on the wrong end of a plumbing system. There are many variations of the Uni-Potty’s legislative actions — not to mention the mainstream propaganda organs that perpetuate the myth of a two-party system — but the result remains the same: You wish you had brought an umbrella.

David Hartsuch MD MS’s article about the two cases that got argued, and deliberated over, before the Iowa Supreme Court earlier this month — the Fetal Heartbeat Law and Dr Hartsuch’s own suits against the Iowa Boards of Medicine and Pharmacy — raises a point that no one on either side of the former case want to acknowledge: If you’re pro-choice on the subject of a woman’s right to determine her biological prerogatives, are you also pro-choice as to whether or not she wants the vaccine jab? Pro-lifers don’t like the question, either, though the implications for them are slightly different: If you’re pro-life, does that extend to the patient’s own life vis-à-vis the jab? It’s a nice, new technique to break out at parties whenever that old “pro-lilfe/pro-choice” chestnut gets thrown in. Use it, and watch how tied in knots each side gets.

Just because the organs of government — local, state, and federal — are interfering with our lives doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be living them to the fullest. Check out what the QCA has to offer, and be well.