Stalled. The Indiana senate will hold their “final” vote on it December 8.

Ken Klippenstein agrees, but for a different reason. He’s examined the bill’s language and thinks transparency was doomed from the start:

“National Security” Blocks Epstein Files Release

Beyond ignoring the fact that legal testimony is tightly limited in scope by both sides, you have your sworn evidence and non-sworn evidence entirely confused.

But she did give interviews, talk to friends, and even write a book. This is not sworn testimony. But it is still evidence.

There are zero indications Virginia Giuffre ever lied under oath, or committed perjury. Rather, those who spoke with her tended to find her genuine, and her attorneys were willing to go to bat for her all the way, which they would not have done had she been unbelievable.

Counting both sworn and non-sworn statements made over the course of the last thirty years or so, can YOU prove she did, or did not, reveal all she knew?

No. You cannot. And jumping from that to “She committed PERJURY!” is frankly just insulting to what she stood for. It’s becoming apparent that you are not writing in good faith, twisting a definition of perjury to cover all statements made everywhere at any time, so peace out.

And you’ve not even touched on the domestic abuse from the last few years.

Why would I? My comment is limited to the unlikelihood that Virginia Giuffre “submitted all the evidence she had,” and nothing else you’ve said changes that. I do not believe she told all she knows.

Nor do I believe that we, the public, have any right to expect anything from victims of trafficking, even the “full truth” at their own expense and with no personal guarantees of safety from those who use them, because if we were doing our collective job as a society, it would never be needed.

If Ms. Giuffre withheld names and/or information for her own safety, good on her. It’s not like anyone else was looking out for her.

She had already submitted all the evidence she had

That is a stretch, and probably a longer stretch than you might think.

Most, if not all, of her “evidence” was secondary to legal actions both by her and against her, and in that context would necessarily have been limited to the subjects of the lawsuits.

I do not for two seconds think she ever publicly, or in court-related documents or records, named ALL the names. Not every bigwig she saw on Epstein Island or in Epstein’s parties directly interacted with her, much less specifically participated in her own abuse, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t see them there as well.

Also, for someone who was in Epstein’s inner circle, day in and day out, she very obviously saw people who have now denied ever being there, or even denied being a friend of his since then, but which emails written by Epstein now demonstrate were there and friendly all along. Consider also that Epstein and Maxwell both were very big on threats throughout, to the point that at least one of the victims (Maria Farmer) informally changed her name and moved house frequently for the next twenty years after having gone through all that, and still got threatening calls to remind her they knew how to find her.

Thus it’s not impossible that, in an abundance of concern for her own and her family’s personal safety, Virginia Giuffre minimized or even denied the presence and participation of certain individuals who really were there, a silence she could revoke at any time. Unless she were dead, of course, and now she is: the silence is permanent.

That is absolutely perfect. YES. Thank you for the link.

He explained in three lines what took me a few paragraphs in another comment. I should have seen this first, lol.

Be VERY wary when you encounter a person trying ever so hard to lean into that invisible line between pedophilia and hebephilia or ephebophilia, because chances are excellent you are talking to a person who does not or will not understand the very real and lasting harm done by any of these acts, and possibly approves of one or more strongly.

To be clear, I’m not talking about a sixteen year old who looks twenty-five; to me that’s an entirely separate issue. If you genuinely believe you are looking at an adult, IMO there’s neither harm nor foul in having thoughts there.

Instead I am referring to looking at an obviously underage, clearly pubescent or pre-pubescent boy or girl and finding that sexually attractive.

People who defend that by slapping the label of ephebophilia on it, when clearly the age and/or appearance of the victim does not rise to that standard, are hoping you don’t already know exactly what ephebophilia means, that it is different than hebephilia and pedophilia, and that it, too, is incredibly questionable.

As a reminder for anyone not sure (definitions extracted from the first paragraph of the Wiki article for each):

Pedophilia: sexual attraction to prepubescent children; psychiatric diagnostic criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13

Hebephilia: strong, persistent sexual interest by adults in pubescent children who are in early adolescence, typically ages 11–14

Ephebophilia: primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19

It’s possible, if unlikely. Dershowitz’s first wife died of “suicide” by drowning herself in the East River after a shitty contentious divorce that apparently started when he left her for a much younger law student.

This guy started off as contrary and over time, I believe, became truly evil. There are no lows to which he will not sink. He wasn’t just Epstein’s personal defense lawyer against all the various lawsuits involving girls and trafficking, he was also best buddies with Epstein for years. An excellent article (that was published less than two weeks before Epstein died in jail) is this piece by The New Yorker:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/alan-dershowitz-devils-advocate

I didn’t get the usual paywall but here’s an archive link if you need one

“Senator Chuck Schumer, your leader in the Senate, said ‘I cannot support a continuing resolution that fails to address health care, I am voting no.’ Did you do this outside leadership, and was there a big push for you not to join the others and break the 60 threshold?” Kilmeade asked.

“No, we kept leadership informed throughout,” Shaheen responded.

From TNR: Democrat Who Caved on Shutdown Says Chuck Schumer Knew All Along

“Senator Chuck Schumer, your leader in the Senate, said ‘I cannot support a continuing resolution that fails to address health care, I am voting no.’ Did you do this outside leadership, and was there a big push for you not to join the others and break the 60 threshold?” Kilmeade asked.

“No, we kept leadership informed throughout,” Shaheen responded.

From TNR: Democrat Who Caved on Shutdown Says Chuck Schumer Knew All Along

I do not believe this had anything at all to do with hungry people.

As someone far more astute than me pointed out, they caved at the same time flights started to get cancelled, not when people were about to go hungry, nor even when they missed their SNAP disbursements.

It’s the big donor issue of flight cancellations, not the welfare of citizens, that dictated it’s time to end the shutdown now and not a month ago.

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She’s on the list:

In the end, eight broke off on Sunday night to side with Republicans and allow the measure to advance: Mr. King, Mr. Kaine and Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois; John Fetterman of Pennsylvania; Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire; and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both of Nevada.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/us/politics/government-shutdown-senate-vote.html

There are already mechanisms built into the SNAP distribution system for repayment by the recipient. These include reversing the EBT payment to the extent of available funds, withholding the disputed funds from future disbursements, penalizing the recipient by withholding SNAP payments entirely for a certain number of months, and/or, if there are to be no further SNAP payments, simply presenting the recipient with a bill for whatever the state wants back because they think some amount was overpaid, fraudulently obtained, used outside permitted guidelines (traded for other valuables), whatever.

Unfortunately, even if they can’t immediately claw the payment itself back, they can and will try. Whenever the govt releases even the tiniest portion of funds via benefit payments to regular citizens, they always build in a number of ways to get it back. Always.

As anyone can tell you that has ever had to wade through the maze of requirements and jump through all the moving hoops of getting govt benefits they desperately need, the only REAL “welfare queens” left in the US are sitting on corporate boards like WalMart, Amazon, and McDonald’s, training their new hires how to apply so they don’t have to pay their workers a living wage.

Not too many people can sew or do leather repair work.

Truth. (At least not well.) Glad you were able to get out of there.

Really good article. Thank you for posting it.

I can see how it isn’t clear to non-USians, but each state has its own house, senate, and “supreme” or highest court that it elects representatives for at the state level, as well as the federal equivalents you are familiar with.

For example, Warnock and Ossoff, as you rightly pointed out, are federal senators elected statewide in Georgia, to represent Georgia at the federal level in DC. But there are also Georgia state senators who represent various areas of the state in Atlanta at the Georgia State Assembly.

EVERY state has this duplication of representatives for the judicial and legislative branches, and even the executive (governor = state president, if you like) though the names for the state equivalents can vary from the federal.

The way to spot the difference is that the reps will have either US or state in front of their titles, US being federal, and sometimes you have to look closely for it, but it’s always there. Also, there are zero state elected “commissioners” at the federal level, which is another clue: when you hear “commissioner” it’s either state level or a leader specific to a govt agency at any level.

Edited to add: The commissioners mentioned in the article are not state senators, they are representatives on the state’s Public Service Commission, which controls public utilities in the state of Georgia.

A commissioner in Georgia can also be county government, which is another level of possible duplication under the state level (the variation is even wider when you get down to county and city level).

To flip these seats is actually really significant, because local power structures are real, and can be much harder to ever change than even their more visible counterparts at the state and federal level.

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