The Last Word.... 

A Florida mother returning from Las Vegas was met by deputies as she stepped off a plane and was arrested after authorities say she left her four children home alone while she traveled for work. Body camera video shows deputies approaching Irene Miller as she exited the plane Friday morning, escorting her through the airport terminal and placing her in handcuffs. The arrest came two days after one of Miller’s children called 911 to report that a dumbbell had fallen on her 9-year-old brother’s head, according to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies responded to the Kissimmee home shortly after 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 21 and found four children, ages 9, 11, 12 and 14, with no adults present, the sheriff’s office said. Fire rescue crews took the injured boy to Celebration Hospital, where he was treated and discharged. A deputy reached Miller by phone, and she said she was working in Las Vegas and planned to return Oct. 23, according to the sheriff’s office. Deputies learned she had left Florida on Oct. 18. Miller told deputies she had arranged for a babysitter to travel from Tampa in the mornings to help the children get ready for school and check on them afterward. The sitter was not required to stay overnight, the sheriff’s office said.Authorities contacted the children’s father, who agreed to take all four to his home while detectives made plans to meet Miller when her flight landed. Deputies arrested Miller, 50, on four counts of child neglect without great bodily harm and booked her into the Orange County Jail. "The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office will not tolerate child neglect," Sheriff Chris Blackmon said. "These cases will be investigated, and charges will be brought against the parents who are not properly supervising or caring for their children."

A magistrate judge blasted Justice Department attorneys during a hearing Tuesday after the department, in an overnight court filing, added a charge of obstruction to two charges of lying to Congress that were brought Friday against two former FBI agents who investigated Hunter Biden.  The Justice Department on Friday charged Nikki Floris, the former deputy assistant director for FBI's Counterintelligence Division, and Bradley Benavides, another former senior counterintelligence official, with allegedly making false statements to Congress stemming from a probe into whether investigators in the lead-up to the 2020 election sought to suppress or discredit the veracity of material on the laptop of former President Joe Biden's son that included embarrassing photos and videos. The DOJ early Tuesday added an obstruction of a congressional proceeding charge -- but in a contentious hearing, magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui slammed the Justice Department for the overnight filing, which prosecutors posted to the case docket without receiving signoff from the judge. The FBI agent who swore out the complaint also did not include his signature.  "I think they should have filed nothing," Judge Faruqui said. "They never had complaints filed on their record that are unsigned, waiting for a judge to make a probable cause finding. I think that it is inappropriate and harms the defendant. I'm frustrated that I got it in the middle of the night, but I'm much more concerned that it's filed on the public record." 

Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin was one of six Democratic members of Congress whom the Trump Justice Department—at the president’s urging—tried to indict last winter over a video that reminded members of the armed services about their legal duty to disobey illegal orders. The baseless effort failed at the grand jury stage. It was one of hundreds of examples of Trump 2.0’s weaponization of the legal system. At an event at the University of Chicago on Oct. 13, Senator Slotkin suggested accountability for “the people who enabled” Trump in order to deter “people coming out of school” from working for the Trump administration. “I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that,” Slotkin said. “I want that deterrence message sent.” A clip of the claim went viral Saturday and set off a firestorm of indignant, hypocritical reactions from Republicans and Trump supporters, who accused her of weaponization and authoritarian tactics. The episode was a window into our bubbled, mutually recriminatory, tit-for-tat, weaponizing political/legal culture, and a preview of what’s ahead.