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Federal authorities have seized more than 350 websites after an undercover investigation revealed that the sites were used to illegally import gun parts into the US from China. To get the illegal items through customs, the sites described the items as toys, necklaces, car parts, tools, and even a fidget spinner.

The sites violated import bans and the National Firearms Act by selling switches—which are "parts designed to convert semiautomatic pistols into fully automatic machineguns"—and silencers—which "suppress the sound of a firearm when discharged," a Department of Justice press release said.

Some sites also marketed counterfeit Glock parts, infringing trademark laws, including a phony Glock switch that Glock confirmed to investigators was "never manufactured."

To mask the illegal sales, some sites used domain names referencing "auto parts," "fuel filters," or "solvent traps," a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) assigned to the Boston Field Office, Adam Rayho, wrote in an affidavit supporting the domain seizures. Further, some sites actually sold legitimate merchandise, including car products and home supplies, seemingly to obscure the illegal sales.

Others further infringed on Glock trademarks by including Glock or Glock products in the domain names, Rayho wrote.

“The seizure of these domains is a critical step in disrupting the flow of dangerous contraband that threatens public safety," Acting US Attorney Joshua S. Levy said in the DOJ's press release. "Those who attempt to exploit online platforms to traffic in highly lethal firearm parts will be held accountable. We will continue to pursue and dismantle these illicit networks wherever they operate to uphold the integrity of our laws and safeguard our communities.”

Feds increasingly seize sites to stop gun part sales

Rayho's focus is on investigating "crimes that have a nexus to the clearnet or dark web" as part of HSI's cybercrimes group. His team's investigation began in August 2023, when the DOJ said that "federal authorities began targeting multiple websites, businesses, and individuals selling, offering for sale, importing, and exporting machinegun conversion devices in violation of federal law."

This followed through on a HSI promise in 2020 to continue seizing websites to "suppress illicit commerce." That's when HSI first used the "novel approach" to shut down a website "wholly dedicated to illegal arms components." Like many uncovered by Rayho's team's sting, that first site seized was disguised as an auto parts site. Previously, HSI had only been "aggressive in the seizure of Internet sites used to facilitate the sale of counterfeit goods."

To shut down more sites masking illegal gun part sales, Rayho alleged that "an HSI agent acting in an undercover capacity" began visiting the targeted sites in August 2023. The agent found that some sites clearly marketed illegal gun parts while others used false descriptions with pictures and videos of the illegal merchandise. Many sites prompted users to inquire about illegal items on Telegram or WhatsApp and enabled payments by credit card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. Some sites asked for payment in bitcoins.

Soon after learning how the websites worked, the agent began ordering gun parts, paying between $30 and $200 for shipments. By September 11, 2023, the agent received the first shipment, which contained a phony Glock switch and a silencer. US Customs and Border Protection confirmed that the cargo description for the package claimed that it contained a fidget spinner. Some sites promoted even faster delivery, promising to ship within 24 hours. Every package used a false description to fool customs, successfully pushing gun parts into the US by simply labeling them as objects unlikely to arouse suspicions, such as a tool, a motor, or a necklace. The most common false label was seemingly "toy."

Also by September, Rayho wrote that HSI had confirmed that several of the seized domains that had been registered on GoDaddy.com appeared to be linked together, "as they had all been purchased by the same Shopper ID." The agents "also identified additional domains purchased by the Shopper ID." Rayho suspected that these additional domains were registered to quickly move sites to prevent forfeitures if the original domains were "seized by law enforcement or otherwise shut down."

"Neither a restraining order nor an injunction is sufficient to guarantee" that sites would be available for forfeiture, Rayho wrote. The site owners "have the ability to move them to another computer/server or a third-party hosting service outside of the United States beyond this Court’s jurisdiction to anywhere in the world," Rayho wrote, supporting HSI's bid to seize the websites to prevent illegal gun part sales.

Federal authorities are unlikely to stop seizing domains, as the tactic has proven successful in improving gun safety in the US. Levy confirmed Wednesday that his office "remains committed to protecting our communities from the dangers posed by illegal firearms and firearm accessories, wherever the evidence takes us."

Ketty Larco-Ward, the inspector in charge of the Boston division of the US Postal Inspection Service (PIS), promised that the PIS is also "committed" to helping federal authorities to "identify those who use the Postal Service to traffic these weapons, remove these illicit items from the mail, and increase the safety of our communities and the Postal Service employees who serve them."

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For decades, there wasn't a better, more reliably nasty talk-show guest than Mr. Warmth himself, Don Rickles. His whole act, whether on a Las Vegas stage or a talk show, was predicated on the notion that he could (and would) say anything about anyone, no matter their gender, race, or religion, and it would somehow manage to be hilarious even though it was also scabrously offensive. Since his passing in 2017, there has been a splintering of talk shows across broadcast and cable, and only one guest has ably and consistently taken Rickles' torch: Martin Short. 

Although Short has had a career rejuvenation thanks to the funny, whip-smart series Only Murders In The Building, which is in the middle of its fourth season, the actor has been a mainstay on late-night shows since the '80s, with some of his best jabs airing on Late Night With Conan O’Brien and Conan. In spirit, Short's snide remarks to O’Brien are similar to what Rickles said to Johnny Carson, mocking, among other things, the host's pale skin. “You make Mike Pence look like a character in Black Panther,” he once chided, his secret weapon (that thousand-watt smile and grin belying all of the scathing one-liners) always at the ready. (If anything, Short’s spritely air only made his knocks on O’Brien that much funnier.)

Some of the punchlines that Short unleashes on late-night TV are not unlike the ones his Only Murders character Oliver throws at Steve Martin's Charles, many of which boil down to, yes, Martin's paleness. And as was the case with Rickles, the iffier the subject, the funnier the joke, although Short is averse to going to the well of racially tinged zingers. Instead, Short gets creatively personal. He was one of Conan’s final TBS interviews, and on that occasion, he calmly asked, “Who’s your last guest? I assume it’s Jay Leno?” before acting aggrieved that he may have offended the gasping crowd. (O’Brien, unsurprisingly, laughed heartily at the reference and quickly slipped into his well-worn, high-pitched impression of Leno, complete with head waggle.)  

Really, the key difference between Rickles and Short is the latter's sneaky little smile, which can be so disarming as to make audiences all the more shocked when he roasts a host like O’Brien or Stephen Colbert. And some of that surprise could be generational. Whereas audiences of the Johnny Carson era knew immediately what was about to happen when Don Rickles stalked out onstage (that he'd invariably lay into Carson, Ed McMahon, whichever guest was on the couch, or anyone, really), younger crowds can sometimes be a bit more baffled by Short’s nonstop jabbing. In one of Short’s appearances on Conan, he noted that one commenter on YouTube took offense to his roasts, not realizing that O’Brien is an incredibly receptive audience and a real-life friend who's very much enjoying the jokes.

One of the network-TV bright spots this past summer was when Short took over as guest host for a week on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Though he appeared as himself for most of the run, he gave the last night over to his talk-show persona, the outlandish parody of a Hollywood-junket journalist, Jiminy Glick. (In an interview with GQ, Short said The Kids In The Hall's Dave Foley remarked that Glick's celebrity put-downs allowed Short to be “actually as mean as [he is] in real life.”) For Kimmel, Glick sat with Bill Hader, who spent most of the interview laughing so hard that he cried, with non-sequitur questions about Willie Mays’ recent passing and the word “lisp” breaking his fellow SNL alum. 

Short also pulls the curtain back a bit more than Rickles. In that aforementioned YouTube bit on Conan, he admitted that he was reading comments in the middle of the night because he’s “needy and desperate.” Which is all to say that part of  what makes Short’s roasts more palatable to a modern audience is that he is more than willing to turn the target on himself. During his live shows with Martin, one of which was filmed for Netflix's Steve Martin And Martin Short: An Evening You Will Forget For The Rest Of Your Life, he does drop bombs (“Working with Steve is like the movie Deliverance: It’s all fun and games until the banjo comes out”), but he's also able to laugh at his own career. In one one of the pair's standard back-and-forths, he asked Martin what the he'd be doing if he wasn’t a comic legend. The response? “Probably what you’re doing.”

In a way, Short feels like an essential talk-show throwback, as he brings a type of insults-spiked energy and old-Hollywood fascination that has begun to feel sadly out of step. If you find yourself in a YouTube rabbit hole of classic late-night clips, you may stumble upon some of the Carson-era stalwarts like Rickles and the late-great Bob Newhart (the two of whom were best friends, as fate would have it) telling old war stories about their days in the business to Conan, Colbert, Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon. Similarly, Short has been pulling out his own Hollywood stories for years, as in a mid-2000s spot on Late Night With Conan O’Brien where he recounted a tale about infuriating Lucille Ball in the early 1980s (roughly around the same time that Short’s fellow SCTV writers playfully mocked Milton Berle while accepting an Emmy). What Short does so effectively on these talk shows is straddle the line between the old and the new, just as he and Martin do with co-star Selena Gomez on Only Murders.

The days when people’s lives could be dominated by a particularly memorable talk-show spot have pretty much fallen by the wayside, partially because there are too many options from which to choose. But certain guests promise the closest we can get to old-school, late-night appointment television, and Short is the cream of that crop. If Primetime Glick, which ran on Comedy Central in the early aughts, was just too pure for this world, at least we can rest assured that Short will occasionally grace the couch and kill it for ten minutes every so often, gleefully savaging big names to their faces just like in the good ol' days.     

I haven’t been this surprised by someone’s alleged misconduct since Donald Trump’s last indictment:

Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson has been accused of a 2020 sexual assault in a lawsuit filed Monday in Texas. The lawsuit, a copy of which has been obtained and reviewed by CBS Sports, was filed by attorney Tony Buzbee, who also represented many of the 25-plus women that previously sued Watson for varying degrees of sexual assault.

The prior lawsuits were settled out of court. The NFL penalized Watson with an 11-game suspension ahead of the 2022 season. 

Watson is being accused of sexual assault and battery in the latest lawsuit. The woman, referred to as “Jane Doe,” alleges that an extremely disturbing encounter with Watson occurred at her home in October 2020. 

“This is an extremely serious matter,” Buzbee said in a statement to CBS Sports NFL insider Jonathan Jones. “We intend to pursue this case with the same aggressiveness with which we pursued the others. We want a jury trial. As far as any specific comments on the facts of the case, we believe the lawsuit speaks for itself.”

What is very Cleveland Browns about this is that even leaving aside the moral considerations — which really should have been dispositive — the decision to trade for Watson is probably the worst trade in NFL history solely in football terms. The Browns traded 6 draft picks, including 3 first rounders, and then signed him to an unprecedented fully guaranteed $230 million contract. In return for this investment, Watson has been hurt more often that he’s been healthy, and he has been atrocious when he does play. He ranks #27 in the PFF rankings, between the unemployed-on-opening day Ryan Tannehill and Adain O’Connell (the backup for a bad Raiders team), and he looks equally bad in other advanced metrics — in purely footall terms he’s basically been a QB of the caliber of Kenny Pickett or Mitch Trubisky since joining the Browns, a mid-level backup and unacceptable starter. And not only is he untradeable he is essentially uncuttable until at least 2026. And not only that, the Browns already had a roughly league-average QB who led a team to the playoffs last year for $4 million.

I suppose the Browns could now try to release him for cause, but (particularly in the absence of an actual judgment) I would guess that’s going to be a very, very hard case to make given what they knew about Watson when they traded for him. This is a rare case where an amoral rich white guy actually got what was coming to him.

The post Sometimes it’s who has already been credibly accused many times appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Through the years tiny homes have been innovating like crazy, always surprising us with their unique and clever designs. Another tiny home that recently struck my fancy is the Rubishack by Canada’s Rubitracks. The Rubishack is a one-of-a-kind home with its own engine and off-road tracks, which ensure that it can handle even the most challenging terrains. The Rubishack a motor home amped with a heavily modified truck base and a first-generation Cummins engine which has covered only about 150,000 miles.

Designer: Rubitracks

The tiny home is anchored by four bolt-on tracks which have been constructed by Rubitracks. It is a four-wheel-drive, and can successfully handle rivers, snow, the beach, and muddy terrains. The “home” section of Rubishack is made primarily from wood, and equipped with generous glazing as well as a planter at the front. It measures 16 feet in length and 7 feet in width. The interior is well-designed, and both the driver and passenger seats have been sourced from a 1970s motorhome. Both the seats can swivel at 360 degrees. The double bed has been positioned in front of the driving seat, while the seating area and table have been placed behind it.

The Rubishack tiny home was designed by Rubitracks as a promotional attempt, instead of an actual tiny house that serves as a motor home as well. So, unfortunately, the build isn’t going to be available anytime soon in the market. However, it is an innovative creation that truly pushes the boundaries of what a tiny home can be. The Rubishack can powerfully work through landscapes with different terrains, which is truly a feat in itself.

The post This Motorized Tiny Home Can Power Through Different Kinds Of Challenging Terrains first appeared on Yanko Design.