Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: This Crosses The Line

Tuesday, February 17, 2026

This Crosses The Line

It’s called extortion. Why is the Trump administration creating files on members of Congress and secretly investigating them?

Members of Congress demand DOJ stop tracking lawmakers' Epstein files searches
Attorney General Pam Bondi took a document referring to Rep. Pramila Jayapal's search history to a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday.
NBC News
By Megan Lebowitz, Kyle Stewart and Daisy Conant
Feb 12, 2026

Members of Congress sharply criticized the Justice Department over allegations that it was tracking what lawmakers were searching for as they viewed unredacted versions of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

A Reuters photo showed Bondi at a congressional hearing Wednesday holding a document labeled “Jayapal Pramila Search History.” The document listed Epstein files that the Democratic representative from Washington confirmed she searched.

The DOJ began allowing lawmakers this week to view unredacted Epstein files. The review process could take place in person at the Justice Department on DOJ computers. In a letter from the Justice Department to lawmakers obtained by NBC News, it said that it “will keep a log of the dates and times of all members’ reviews.”

The backlash from lawmakers adds to growing outrage over the department's handling of its Epstein records. At Wednesday's oversight hearing with the House Judiciary Committee, Bondi faced criticism from Democratic lawmakers and two Republicans who accused the department of mishandling survivors' information, improperly redacting files that named prominent individuals, among other concerns.

The Constitution establishes three equal branches of government as a system of checks and balances. When one branch is secretly investigating another, that shattered those checks and balances.

"Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched," Jayapal continued, referring to a stack of documents that Bondi read off of during the hearing. "That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop this spying on members."

Jayapal told NBC News that she spoke to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and confirmed "that that was my search history that she had it in the binder, that there’s a photograph of it that it matched what I searched, and that it was unacceptable."

All the warning signs of a dictatorship are there...

Attacking the press,
Attacking higher education,
Attacking voting rights and limiting who can vote,
Using legal attacks on political opponents,
Using unaccountable paramilitary police,
Replacing nonpartisan career officials with loyalists,
Using government transport for private trips.

"Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!"

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

“A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority.”
― Booker T. Washington

"We will not walk in fear one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason."
– Edward R. Murrow

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Tuesday, February 17, 2026

This Crosses The Line

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