I thought the winds were bad here Christmas Day, but yesterday they were just outrageous. They hit 100 mph in Colorado Springs.

The Colorado Springs Airport recorded an all-time record wind gust of 80 mph at 12:02 p.m. and a gust of 101 mph was recorded at Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station earlier in the day.

The El Paso County Courthouse was evacuated and closed for the day after the powerful gusts ripped chunks of roofing from the top of the 5-story building. Tejon Street and Vermijo Street were closed, and deputies used shields to protect people from the debris as they escorted them out of the building. The courthouse is scheduled to reopen at noon Tuesday.

The photo above is from a news video (available here) that aired on KRDO, Channel 13, the local ABC affiliate in the Springs. The good stuff starts at 39 seconds in, after the reporters stop yakking. In the video you can see the wheels lifting off the ground as the truck sways on the highway.

There's also a viewer taken short clip in the video of a big tree going from standing upright, to swaying, to boom, it's yanked out from the ground by its roots. Below are screengrabs of the three stages. [More...]

Update: Thank you, Meryl Streep. You made the entire 3 hour show worth watching. In accepting a lifetime achievement award, she blasted Donald Trump for his positions of foreigners, Hollywood, the press and especially the disabled, without ever mentioning his name. She called on the foreign press to support the Committee to Protect Journalists and hold Government accountable. The audience cheered her. If you get a chance to watch her speech, please do.

“You and all of us in this room belong to the most vilified segments of America right now: Hollywood, foreigners, and the press,” she said, with a hoarse voice, as the crowd roared.

....“Hollywood is crawling with foreigners and if you kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

...Slamming Trump without actually naming him, she said “disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence,” after recalling an incident in which the now-president-elect in November appeared to mock the appearance of a New York Times reporter with a physical disability. “When the powerful use their position to bully, we all lose,” she added

The TL Kid's fiance (and yes, Nic and Kaitlin officially got engaged over Xmas) said these are the greatest chocolate cookie: No gmo, no wheat, no butter,granulated sugar and they taste delicious.They do have carob powder (fair trade) and some organic chocolate chips. Here's the recipe if you want to try them.

The recipe is from fellow Denver-ite Julie Baer's cookbook, PaleOMG!

No pots to clean, just one bowl, they take 5 minutes to make and 10 minutes to bake. I'll be curious to hear what you think if any of you make them. The Recipe is below.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome. [more]

I've been in court hearings this week so I'm behind on the news. Mr. UnPresident Elect is asking Congress to pay for his border wall (claiming he'll get the money back from Mexico.)

He gets his Russia intelligence briefing today but prefers to tweet about Arnold's lower ratings for Celebrity Apprentice. (The reason the ratings are lower in my view is not that he's more popular than Arnold -- just the opposite-- fewer people are watching now as people are boycotting the show because of Trump, knowing he remains on the credits. (Also it faces much stiffer competition from the Bachelor. Was Trump's Apprentice ever on the same night as the Bachelor? )

The U.S. has added Osama bin Laden's son, Hamza bin Laden to the designated terror list.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

1,100 law professors have signed a letter to Congress urging that Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) not be confirmed as Attorney General. The letter is here.

In my view, Jeff Sessions has always been a disaster for criminal justice. (The NY Times declared him an "insult to justice" after Trump picked him.)

On a related note, UnPresident-Elect Donald Trump, who has no say in the matter yet, yesterday opposed the release of more detainees from Guantanamo. President Obama, meanwhile, is pressing ahead with plans to release another 19 detainees.

“There is one commander in chief at a time, and the secretary of defense will continue to carry out his responsibilities as he sees appropriate,” said Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook.

For some reason, China has always been more interesting to me than Russia -- maybe because I've been there twice. In any event, while almost everyone is writing about Russia, a new media network has launched in China -- in English -- that I think is really good. It's called the China Global Television Network, or CGTN, and it launched New Years Day, replacing what was called CCTV.

CGTN will be a multi-language and multi-platform media grouping. It will consist of six TV channels, a video content provider and a digital media division.

China's President wishes them well:

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent his congratulations during the opening ceremony held at the CGTN headquarters in Beijing on Saturday. Xi said that the relationship between China and the world is changing, adding that China needs to better understand the world, and the world needs to better understand China.

Here's more about who they are and their goals. I've been reading their news articles at their global site CGTN and at CGTN America and following two of their Twitter feeds (CGTN_America and CGTN )since New Year's. Their articles are well-written (and news and commentary are very distinct), their photos are terrific, and best of all, even though it's a a video network, there's no auto-play video. So far, the photos seem to link to text articles, not the video versions. It's easy to follow, well-organized, and the site is very uncluttered. It also loads quickly. [More...]

Charles Manson, now 82, was taken to the hospital today from prison for undisclosed reasons. There are unconfirmed reports he suffers from some kind of gastro-intestinal issue. The prison says he is alive.

Manson's prison, Corcoran, has previously been found to have inadequate health care. The report is here. According to the spokeswoman for the Receiver for California Correctional Health Care Services:

The California State Prison, Corcoran, has medical facilities to treat inmates requiring urgent or emergency care as well as in-patient hospital stays.

“In general, inmates are sent to outside hospitals if they need surgical services, emergency care, or diagnostic services of an acute nature,” said Joyce Hayhoe, a spokeswoman for the federal receiver who controls prison medical care. “These services are not provided in state prison facilities.”

California's medical rules for prisons are here.

I didn't see any of last night's TV performances live, but judging from the videos and news reports, Gloria Estefan and the cast of On Your Feet (a Broadway musical about her and her husband Emilio Estefan) put on a terrific show, while Mariah Carey just imploded.

I especially liked Ektor Rivera's booming voice (see at 3'45" in) and Ana Villafañe, and the child dancers. Gloria still has her powerful voice, and they were obviously not lip-syncing.

So what happened to Mariah Carey? Here's the video. [More...]

Update: New footage here. He wasn't wearing a Santa suit. The death toll is now at 39, most of whom were foreigners. The U.S. did not have intelligence about a specific threat, according to the U.S. Embassy in Turkey.

"Contrary to rumors circulating on social media, the U.S. Government had no information about threats to specific entertainment venues, including the Reina Club, and ‎the U.S. Government did not warn Americans to stay away from specific venues or neighborhoods," the embassy said in a statement.

***

The New Year began in Turkey with a terrorist attack at an exclusive night club called Reina. [More...]

A very happy New Year to all of you, with our very best wishes for a year filled with good health, justice and peace!

Who's cooking? Is anyone staying in and watching TV?

Showtime has begun airing the first episode of Homeland Season 6 two weeks early -- Carrie is living in Brooklyn and Quinn is there too, although he's not in very good shape. The President is a woman, but supposedly a composite of candidates, not a Hillary clone. [More...]

It's the last day of a horrible year for America. Next year will be even worse.

What feelings should an incoming President invoke in us? My answer would be pride in our country, a sense of security, so that when we go to sleep at night we know the world will be there when we wake up, and feelings of trust that our nation's leader will steer the country along the right path, embracing principles of freedom, tolerance and opportunity for all, and act in ways that confirm to the world that the United States is a beacon of liberty, not authoritarianism.

What feeling does UnPresident Elect Donald Trump evoke? You can answer for yourself in comments.

My answer: The feeling I most associate with Donald Trump is the feeling I'd get when I was a kid the instant I realized I stepped in a pile of dogsh*t. Anytime I hear him or see him or think about him or his inexperienced, privileged children being given jobs as anything but pencil pushers in his Administration, I want to start scraping my shoes or take a shower to rinse them all away. [More...]

The Supreme Court of Connecticut has reinstated Michael Skakel's murder conviction. The conviction had been overturned on a habeas petition, with the lower court finding Skakel's attorney rendered ineffective assistance of counsel. The Supreme Court disagreed:

Because we conclude that the petitioner’s trial counsel rendered constitutionally adequate representation, we reverse the judgment of the habeas court and remand the case to that court with direction to render judgment denying the petition.

The Supreme Court said Skakel's attorney's representation was not deficient. Skakel served a decade in prison before being freed pending a new trial three years ago.

One justice dissented, and one justice partially agreed with the dissenting justice but in the end agreed with the majority that the conviction should stand.

The majority opinion is here. The dissenting opinion is here and the concurring opinion is here.

I'm sorry that Skakel's conviction will be reinstated, as I have never believed he is guilty of murdering Martha Moxley, but I also believe Mickey Sherman's representation was not ineffective. [More...]