Another week down in the new world of government trying to work for the people. Here are some of today’s stories you might have missed while you didn’t have to worry about whether or not the current administration had set fire to a hospital.

Do these people think they’re going to turn to stone if they tell the plain truth about the 2020 election? Republicans these days act as if the Eye of Sauron is always looking, looking, looking, and if they dare mention Donald Trump’s name in vain, the Mar-a-Lago Nazgul will be dispatched to pelt them with half-empty Diet Coke cans and partially masticated McRibs.

It was 1957 when Strom Thurmond took to the Senate floor to engage in the longest-standing filibuster in the history of the legislative body, doing so for just one reason: to stop black people from voting. HIs vile, over-the-top antics took to task a small step forward for civil rights under Dwight Eisenhower, a bill that was nowhere near as substantial as follow-up efforts in the 1960s.

In November 2018, the Department of Justice announced that four St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officers had been indicted by a federal grand jury in connection with an assault on undercover Black St. Louis police detective Luther Hall. The assault on Hall, a 22-year veteran of the force, took place during Black Lives Matter protests on Sept. 17, 2017.

Ethan Collins had it all figured out. Like a lot of far-right extremists, he fantasized a lot about committing various acts of terrorism—bringing down the power grid, bombing police stations, that sort of thing—and thought about ways to make them happen. The Colorado man decided his best shot was to try to infiltrate a federal law enforcement agency and pull off his crimes from within its ranks.

Fortunately, Collins is a terrible liar.