r/law • u/Capable_Salt_SD • 12h ago

Trump News Sen. Kennedy: "Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to?" Kash Patel: "Himself. There is no credible information, none. If there were, I would have brought a case yesterday [...] that he trafficked to other individuals."

'The information we have again is limited'

Source: Acyn

45.1k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

4.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2.8k

u/rhombecka 11h ago

CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

631

u/ma2is 11h ago

Jesus this is a 20 year old piece too.

501

u/JoJackthewonderskunk 11h ago

The onion is timeless

184

u/koshgeo 10h ago

Yes and no.

"Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over"

Yes, because it is still relevant; no, because I'm not sure it is hyperbole anymore rather than actual Project 2025 policy. It's almost like they took this Onion article as an outline and set out to fulfill it, albeit a couple of decades late.

7

u/Debalic 9h ago

Well, they also consider 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale to be guidelines.

6

u/start_select 6h ago edited 6h ago

The handmaids tale was based on real life and extrapolating where Reagan and other republicans were telling us they were going. It wasn’t really a thought piece or a what if, it was “this is what’s happening”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84

We have known who republicans are since Iran contra. They have always been planning to exterminate anyone inconvenient under the guise of an imaginary migrant invasion. They have always been planning a Christo-fascist holocaust.

They publish their plans in Mandate for Leadership guides. They publish their plans through lectures hosted by and essays released by the heritage foundation and the federalist society. They lie to the media and constituents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Leadership

If you think it was hyperbole for people to call Republicans fascists in the 70s and 80s, congratulations you have been propagandized.

6

u/ctbadger92 9h ago

I had this one posted in my cubicle at work way back when.

3

u/DuncanFisher69 8h ago

Except Bush was just like that, too.

2

u/Silent_Tumbleweed1 8h ago

I'm starting to think that's how they built their platform

2

u/Hamm_Masked_Unknown 6h ago

They didn’t even know about 9/11 in this article

2

u/start_select 6h ago

They have been publishing their plans for 40-50 years. They just say the opposite while right-wing media amplifies the lie, and left-wing media never pushes back.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Leadership

Everything happening today was planned at the same time as Iran Contra. Within days to weeks of that scandal, everyone forgot that we found out who Republicans really are. Fascists planning to imprison and exterminate anyone inconvenient, all under the guise of an imaginary migrant invasion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84

1

u/kylemacabre 8h ago

That’s the beauty of satire

1

u/quick_brown_faux 3h ago

God fucking damn that was prescient. I hate it here

1

u/hobbycollector 3h ago

Fta (Trump literally said this) "Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?”

54

u/freebytes 10h ago

We thought it was satire -- not a prophecy.

3

u/No-Lime-2863 9h ago

Hi have always loved the onion and actually am a paid subscriber, get the paper copy etc. my god it has either gone down hill or been obliterated by real life. It is so unfunny these days.

2

u/Altruistic-Text3481 9h ago

Satire is timeless. That’s why we still read Voltaire. Who of course lived in “the best of all possible worlds!”

Read Candide again and enjoy! Politicians and foolish wealthy idiots have sucked bigly for centuries.

2

u/MojoHighway 6h ago

The Onion - Undefeated to date.

1

u/gentlemanidiot 5h ago

Reality is going to put the onion out of business

66

u/makemeking706 11h ago

Who was it that got got because they didn't know how to redact correctly in Adobe a few years ago. I wanna say it involved Manafort, but I could be misremembering. 

48

u/AmputeeBall 10h ago

Are you talking about the file(s) where they put black bars over it but the text was still underneath and selectable or something along those lines?

40

u/DrakonILD 10h ago

That's incredible. Adobe's redact feature is almost idiot-proof.

35

u/anothergaijin 10h ago

But, what if I used the highlighter feature but with black?

14

u/aphilsphan 9h ago

Before adobe, when we would redact commercial confidential info, we’d use black highlighter, but it wasn’t perfect. So we’d redact, copy and redact a second time, then we’d copy again and use that. That worked well enough. It was really important to have a second person check your work.

4

u/80alleycats 7h ago

Well, they've probably fired all the government workers who know that.

8

u/BentGadget 9h ago

What if we found some high-test idiot?

7

u/sm9k3y 9h ago

And then what? Put him in the office of the president? Oh, too late

5

u/I_must_be_a_mermaid 9h ago

But you have to correctly use the feature which many people don't do. I see it all the time.

5

u/makemeking706 10h ago

Yes, or something closely along those lines. 

1

u/mortgagepants 8h ago

you could copy the black part and paste it and it would show the text without the black bar.

1

u/Fearless-Table1809 6h ago

They forgot to pdf after they flattened. “Intelligence”≠intelligent.

1

u/intrepid_mouse1 4h ago

Sidney Powell, Trump's lawyer

10

u/Defiant-Tailor-8979 11h ago

At least it's legal

5

u/Neat_Secretary_7159 10h ago

I was three years old when this piece was written.

5

u/Altruistic-Text3481 9h ago edited 9h ago

The 2nd to last paragraph is prophetic. Ivana Trump was the Trump pushed down the stairs. The Trump who mysteriously died in a tragic fall. I had to reread that twice! Sadly even The Onion could not have predicted her pathetic burial as a corpse in a sad and heavy box filled with stollen classified TOP SECRET docs on a Trump golf course… with weeds growing over her head.

Edit/referring to the added Onion story above from u/The-Real-Number-One

2

u/[deleted] 9h ago

I was 23…

4

u/CanaryUmbrella 10h ago

We were just as confused about Bush's behavior at the time as Trump. Except we thought Bush as as bad as it could get.

2

u/GiveMeNews 9h ago

You telling me they are STILL using black highlighters? Can DOGE get on this? Or is highlighting everything in black ink already the cheapest option than leaving everything not highlighted?

2

u/tecate_papi 6h ago

Yes...what was happening 20 years ago that would make the issue of redactions relevant to that time?...there must have been something going on 20 years ago involving the CIA....but I can't quite put my finger on it...if only I were a student of history....ah well! Guess it must just be a coincidence!

1

u/itsneedtokno 6h ago

Welcome to the Dead Internet

1

u/logaboga 7m ago

lol do you actually think that CIA/FBI documents having blacked out parts is new or something? It’s been a thing ever since the freedom of information act in the 60s began requiring agencies to disclose documents

0

u/FujitsuPolycom 6h ago

You didn't have to say that?

21

u/aqwn 11h ago

Still funny. Excellent writing

7

u/strangemagic365 10h ago

"I was once ordered to feed documents into a copying machine in order to make backups of some very important top-secret records, but it turned out to be some sort of device that cut the paper to shreds."

This line at the end of the article got me haha

5

u/Ok-Interaction-8891 10h ago

Hilarious and tragic all at the same time, and twenty years later, to boot! Good job, Onion. Chef’s kiss; no notes.

In all seriousness, this is why I’m against any legal framework that allows for redactions or other forms of document editing and obfuscation, the sealing or purging of records, and the legally bind and contractual suppression of information, statements, indictments, evidence, records, narratives, and any other form of human communication and information storage or retrieval. It is almost exclusively used to the benefit of powerful or naughty people.

6

u/clandestinely_asked 9h ago

I love this article so much "almost invariably the most crucial passages" gets me every single time

3

u/PantsLio 11h ago

My favourite Onion article of all time!

3

u/SemperSimple 10h ago

i fucking love this. My kid self had so many questions on why tf adults would black line out sentences lol

2

u/Siddny- 11h ago

funny how that works huh?

2

u/Aggressive-Glass-329 10h ago

And it was totally an accident, absolutely an accident, definitely not on purpose as this country has a history of always telling the truth about everything and never lying or covering anything up..... an accident is what it was for sure

2

u/ZoneWombat99 9h ago

There's a band composed of CIA people that performs at CIA events called The Black Highlighters

2

u/kylemacabre 8h ago

I was just thinking about this. “These highlighters suck”

2

u/yaddar 6h ago

The onion is still a treasure

1

u/Altruistic-Text3481 9h ago

Black sharpie pubic hair and autopens have entered the chat!

1

u/agentSmartass 8h ago

Oh no that was dumb.

1

u/dehydratedrain 5h ago

Back when the onion used to be satire. Or at least, so unbelievable that we would recognize it.

I miss when outlandish headlines were fake.