Discuss: Political Madness All the Time


Lynna is your curator. How are you all holding up, America? Not well, I guess, since this is the hardest working thread ever.

(Previous thread)

Comments

  1. says

    “United States added to list of most dangerous countries for journalists for first time”:

    The murder of the Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi — in a year when more than half of all journalists who were killed around the world were targeted deliberately — reflects a hatred of the media in many areas of society, a free-press advocacy group said Tuesday.

    At least 63 professional journalists were killed doing their jobs in 2018, a 15 percent increase over last year, said the group, Reporters Without Borders. The number of deaths rises to 80 when all media workers and people classified as citizen journalists are included, it said in its annual report.

    The world’s five deadliest countries for journalists include three — India, Mexico and, for the first time, the United States — where journalists were killed in cold blood, even though those countries weren’t at war or in conflict, the group said.

    “The hatred of journalists that is voiced … by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen has tragic consequences on the ground, and has been reflected in this disturbing increase in violations against journalists,” Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.

    Reporters Without Borders said 348 journalists were being detained worldwide, compared with 326 at this time in 2017. China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt hold more than half of the world’s imprisoned journalists, it said.

  2. says

    Daily reminder: No right to counsel in immigration cases. Most asylum seekers go against gov’t lawyers alone. Only 1.6% of parents w/ children prevail. Imm lawyers, when rarely funded, literally save lives. Success jumps to 26%. Fund access to counsel:…”

    Link to where people can donate at the link.

  3. says

    “Richest 3% Russians Hold 90% of Country’s Financial Assets – Study”:

    The wealthiest 3 percent of Russians owned 89 percent of all financial assets in 2018, according to joint research by the Higher School of Economics and the state-run VEB Bank.

    This is the first time a comprehensive study of wealth inequality has been attempted in Russia, the Kommersant business daily reported on Friday. Last month, Forbes magazine reported that fewer than 100 Russian billionaires’ combined wealth exceeds the entire population’s bank savings.

    An estimated 13 percent of the Russian population lives in extreme poverty by developed-world standards. Russia placed behind all of its Eastern European neighbors last year in an Oxfam aid agency rating of 157 countries’ commitment to reducing poverty.

    Independent polling has also found that Russians were most unhappy with President Vladimir Putin over the unequal distribution of income.

    (I have a pet peeve about people conflating income and wealth.)

    Bill Browder: “(And this is just what’s based on declared wealth, the real numbers are far worse). Not sure if any other country in the world has this inequitable a concentration of wealth.”

  4. says

    Ilhan Omar:

    This country was founded on the ideas of justice, of liberty, of the pursuit of happiness. But these core beliefs are under threat. Each and every day. We are under threat by an administration that would rather cage children than pass comprehensive immigration reform.

    An administration that would rather give billionaires tax breaks than provide a little cushion for working people. An administration that would rather attack fellow Americans who are transgender and wear our country’s uniform than fight for equality and opportunity for all.

    I did not run for Congress to be silent. I did not run for Congress to sit on the sidelines. I ran because I believed it was time to restore moral clarity and courage to Congress. To fight and to defend our democracy.

    No one person – no matter how corrupt, inept, or vicious – can threaten my unwavering love for America. I stand undeterred to continue fighting for equal opportunity in our pursuit of happiness for all Americans.

    Thank you for standing with me – against an administration that ran on banning Muslims from this country – to fight for the America we all deserve.

  5. blf says

    David Lammy says comparing ERG to Nazis ‘not strong enough’:

    Labour MP defends comments likening group to Nazi party and white supremacists

    David Lammy has said comparing the hard Brexit European Research Group of Tory MPs with Nazis and proponents of South African apartheid was “not strong enough”, and suggested that the Brexit debate has allowed proponents of hard right views to flourish.

    […]

    Lammy pointed to the contact between the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson and Donald Trump’s former senior advisor Steve Bannon, as well as a tweet from the ERG chair, Jacob Rees-Mogg, quoting the Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party.

    “We must not appease. Let me just be clear, I’m an ethnic minority. We have, in the ERG, in Jacob Rees-Mogg, someone who is happy to put on to his web pages the horrible, racist AfD party, a party that’s Islamophobic and on the far right,” he said.

    […]

    Rees-Mogg has defended his decision to tweet a video of a speech by a senior member of the AfD, saying he did not endorse the party’s views but that the opinions expressed had real importance.

    […]

    Asked if he was saying that Rees-Mogg and Johnson were the modern-day equivalent of Nazis, Lammy said: “Ask Boris Johnson why he’s hanging out with Steve Bannon.”

    Danny Lammy has form, from earlier this year, David Lammy accuses government of ‘pandering to far-right’ (video). And a short interview with him last year after he was named the Politican of the Year, David Lammy: ‘I bounce out of bed to do the job’: “The politician of the year on his Guyanese roots, faith in millennials […]”.

  6. tomh says

    I like this idea, from the NYT Opinion page.

    EVERYONE’S INCOME TAXES SHOULD BE PUBLIC

    Disclosure of tax payments would make it easier to hold politicians accountable. It also would help to reduce fraud and economic inequality.

    By Binyamin Appelbaum
    Mr. Appelbaum is a member of the editorial board.

    April 13, 2019

    In October 1924, the federal government threw open for public inspection the files that recorded the incomes of American taxpayers, and the amounts they had paid in taxes.

    Americans were gripped by a fever of interest in the finances of their neighbors. This newspaper devoted a large chunk of the front page to a list of the top taxpayers in Manhattan under a banner headline that read “J.D. Rockefeller Jr. Paid $7,435,169.” One story reported that a number of wives and ex-wives had lined up at a government office in New York to seek information about their present or former husbands. Journalists soon began to note the curious absence of some conspicuously wealthy people from the lists of top taxpayers.

    Congress had ordered the disclosure as a weapon against tax fraud. “Secrecy is of the greatest aid to corruption,” said Senator Robert Howell of Nebraska. “The price of liberty is not only eternal vigilance, but also publicity.”

    There is every reason to think that sunlight served the desired purpose. One important piece of evidence is that wealthy Americans absolutely hated the disclosure law, and soon persuaded Congress to execute a U-turn.

    Almost a century later, it’s time to revisit the merits of universal public disclosure. Democrats in Congress are fighting to obtain President Trump’s tax returns under a separate 1924 law, written in response to related concerns about public corruption. That issue could be resolved, at least in part, if Congress embraced the broader case for publishing everyone’s tax bill.

    Now as then, disclosure could help to ensure that people pay a fair share of taxes. Americans underpay their taxes by more than $450 billion each year, more than 10 percent of total federal revenue. Publishing a list of millionaires who paid little or no taxes this year could significantly reduce the number of millionaires who pay little or no taxes next year.

    In Norway, where tax records have been public since the founding of the modern state in 1814, a newspaper put the records online in 2001. One study estimated that the records’ greater availability caused a 3.1 percent increase in the reported incomes of self-employed Norwegians over the next three years, perhaps because they feared exposure.

    Disclosure also could help to reduce disparities in income, as well as disparities in tax payments. Inequality is easier to ignore in the absence of evidence. In Finland, where tax data is published each year on Nov. 1 — jovially known as National Jealousy Day — people treat the information as a barometer of whether inequality is yawning too wide.

    Consider that public corporations are required to report the compensation of top executives — who check disclosures of rival companies to ensure they are not underpaid.

    Another benefit would be identifying patterns of illegal discrimination against women or minorities. Lilly Ledbetter, for whom the 2009 fair pay law is named, would have learned a lot sooner that she was making less than her male colleagues at a Goodyear plant in Alabama if she could have looked up their annual incomes on a government website.

    Transparency could even help to increase economic growth. People who know how much their co-workers are paid — and how much people are paid at other companies, and in other industries — can make better career decisions.

    Tax data also is a rich source of information about American life. The I.R.S. tightly limits access, but one of the few researchers allowed to work with that data, the Harvard economist Raj Chetty, has produced a series of important studies illuminating the mechanics of economic inequality. He and his collaborators have shown that Americans have a dwindling chance of making more money than their parents, and that living in a good neighborhood as a child has a lifelong impact on earnings. One can only imagine what others might learn from the data.

    Calling for more disclosure may seem discordant at a time of growing concern about privacy. But income taxation is an act of government, not an aspect of private life. Property tax records provide a reasonable model. Local governments disclose the name of the property owner, the value of the property and the amount of taxes owed and paid. The same information should be available for income taxes — nothing more is necessary.

    Another reasonable rule: In Norway, it is a matter of public record when someone looks at tax records. Everyone can see who is nosing around. Wisconsin, which makes income and tax information available on request, imposes the same requirement.

    Income taxation in the United States began in public view. When Congress imposed the first income tax in 1861, during the Civil War, it required the disclosure of names, incomes and tax payments. Over the following decade, before Congress ended the tax, this data was posted in public and printed in newspapers.

    That practice was briefly revived in 1924. It’s time for another revival. The question is whether Americans are willing to endure a little sunlight in the interest of fairness and equality.

  7. says

    BBC – “Police open fire after car ‘driven at officers’ in London”:

    Officers opened fire in west London on Saturday morning during an incident involving a car that was colliding with vehicles.

    The Ukrainian embassy said its ambassador’s vehicle was “deliberately rammed” as it sat parked outside the building in Holland Park.

    When officers arrived on the scene, a car was “driven at them”, the Met said.

    Officers used firearms and a Taser before arresting a man in his 40s on suspicion of attempted murder.

    Police said the uninjured man was “taken to a central London hospital as a precaution”.

    They added that the situation was neither ongoing nor being treated as terror-related.

    The embassy said none of its staff had been injured and that police were now investigating “the suspect’s identity and motive for the attack”.

    The police arrested the man on suspicion of the attempted murder of police officers and criminal damage….

  8. blf says

    tomh@8, I’ve also been coming around to the idea of the Finnish model — tax “returns” / data (and the absence thereof) — are public, easily downloaded, and easily searched. The States is also one of the (relatively few?) countries in the world which taxes on world-wide income regardless of where it was “earned” — so publicly-available USAian federal returns should have an extensive knock-on effect. And all taxed entities are included, be they individuals, corporations, NGOs / similar, and so on…

    There are a few caveats about the data which is to be released. For example, spies working undercover overseas should not be exposed. Minors are problematic — most should be shielded — but there is a well-known series of tax dodges involving one’s children. Arguably, since the children didn’t necessarily agree-to, or are even (legally-speaking) competent to agree-to, the “deal”, they should still be shielded, but that does not mean suppressing the information “forever” — perhaps until they are old enough to be eligible for the draft, or else 18 (old enough to vote), whichever occurs first…

    And so on. However, the plausible benefits of even just summary data are well worth discussing, along with the handful of exceptions and the relevant safeguards. Plus the issue of returns / data for individual states…

  9. blf says

    Trump fixed on sanctuary city idea amid opposition and doubts over legality (the Grauniad’s edits in {curly braces}):

    […]
    Donald Trump appears determined to send migrants held at the southern border to “sanctuary cities” around the US in a scheme meant to exact revenge on his Democratic foes, despite fierce political opposition and doubts over the legality of such a move.

    On Saturday night, to widespread consternation, the president tweeted that it was: Just out: the USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to sanctuary cities. We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the state of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!

    […]

    “He has no right to spend money appropriated by Congress for other circumstances,” the New York Democrat [& House judiciary committee chair Jerrold Nadler] told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “{He should not} use immigrants or people who are claiming asylum as pawns in a fight with political opponents … it’s another misuse of presidential power against the law.”

    […]

    According to new research, meanwhile, if the administration does attempt to send migrants to sanctuary cities, it would be doing the migrants a favour.

    According to a team from Syracuse University in New York, such a move would put thousands of migrants in cities not only welcoming to them, but more likely to rebuff federal officials carrying out deportation orders.

    Furthermore, many such locations have more resources to help migrants make their cases to stay in the US than smaller cities. Some of the nation’s biggest immigration advocacy groups are based in San Francisco, New York City and Chicago.

    In effect, Trump could end up placing migrants in locations that make it easier for them to put down roots and stay in the country. The downside for the migrants would be a high cost of living.

    The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse announced this week that an analysis found that migrants in cities such as New York and Los Angeles are 20% less likely to be arrested than in cities without sanctuary policies.

    George Gascon, district attorney for San Francisco, told the Associated Press: “With immigrants being less likely to commit crimes than the US-born population, and with sanctuary jurisdictions being safer and more productive than non-sanctuary jurisdictions, the data damns this proposal as a politically motivated stunt that seeks to play politics with peoples’ lives.”

    […]

    The plan would raise financial, logistical and legal issues. The transportation of migrants to large and faraway cities would be costly at a time when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is stretched, having released more than 125,000 migrants pending court dates since 21 December. Migrants are currently being released mainly in border states.

    Flights chartered by Ice cost about $7,785 per flight hour, according to the agency, and require multiple staffers including a medical professional. The agency also uses commercial flights. Longer transports would increase liability, especially considering that many in Ice care are families with young children.

    […]

    It is also unclear how long the migrants would stay in sanctuary cities, because under current law they are required to provide an address to federal authorities, typically of a family member, as a condition for their release.

    […]

  10. says

    Updated list of upcoming political events (nice not to have to include the Brexit deadline):

    Apr. 11 – May 19: Indian general elections
    some day this week: Barr to release some version of the Mueller report
    Apr. 14: Finnish parliamentary election
    Apr. 15: self-imposed deadline for Bernie Sanders to release 10 years of tax returns
    Apr. 17: Indonesian general election (some more information)
    Apr. 21: Ukrainian presidential election runoff
    Apr. 23: new deadline for IRS to furnish Trump’s tax documents to the House Ways and Means chair (their refusal to provide the documents is a felony)
    Apr. 26: Maria Butina sentencing
    Apr. 28: Spanish general election
    Apr. 30: Roger Stone status hearing

    May 5: Panamanian general election
    May 6: Michael Cohen scheduled to report to prison
    May 13: multiple elections in the Philippines
    May 23: results of Indian general elections announced
    May 23-26: EU parliamentary elections

    June 26 and 27: first Democratic primary debate (Miami)

    Re today’s Finnish elections:

    Finland is tipped to turn left in Sunday’s election, with the Social Democrats leading in polls.

    Should they be successful, the country will have its first left-wing leader in 20 years.

    But with several parties, including the right-wing Finns, jostling closely for second place, the Social Democrats’ ability to govern could be curtailed and coalition-building lies ahead….

    Climate change was the major issue in the elections.

  11. says

    “Judge orders Ukip to reveal Brexit referendum data use”:

    Ukip has been ordered to fully reveal details of how it used nearly £300,000 of political data services in the run-up to the Brexit vote and the 2015 general election after the party lost a two-year legal battle to block disclosure.

    An appeals tribunal found the political party, led at the time by Nigel Farage, failed to properly answer the information commissioner’s questions. It is now legally obliged to provide detailed answers to questions about how it spent political donations and used polling companies and data.

    The ruling is the latest watchdog finding to cast a shadow over the 2016 EU referendum and to raise concerns about the use of political and social media data.

    When the investigation opened in 2017, the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, said more than 30 organisations were under scrutiny. While some were cooperating, she said, “others are making it difficult.”

    In the latest ruling, Judge Nicholas Wikeley criticised Ukip’s failure to cooperate with the ICO, saying: “Its answers arrived late and were brief and unsatisfactory, not least in being inconsistent with publicly available information previously supplied by Ukip itself. Overall, Ukip’s response gave the commissioner the clear impression that the party was not taking the request seriously.”

    When the commissioner first wrote to Ukip, the party replied: “It turns out we hardly use data at all.”

    It specifically denied using the services of Constituency Polling Ltd, which is linked to polling firm Survation, even though the Electoral Commission’s register showed that Ukip spent £186,613.13 with the company during the 2015 general election.

    Ukip also spent a small sum – £72.00 – on the unofficial Leave.EU campaign during the referendum, and directed much larger sums to companies whose owner Arron Banks was a major Ukip donor and founder of Leave.EU. “Better for the Country”, which was used to finance Leave.EU, received £67,236 during the EU referendum and Rock Services Limited was paid £64,762.73 during the 2015 general election.

    The National Crime Agency is investigating allegations of multiple criminal offences by Arron Banks and Leave.EU in the Brexit referendum. One focus of the investigations is £2m reported to have been lent to Better for the Country….

  12. says

    Followup to SC’s comment #2.

    Links back to the previous chapter of this thread:

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/04/01/discuss-political-madness-all-the-time-10/comment-page-1/#comment-1993082

    Overcrowding, too few judges, too little time, too little appropriate legal representation … and now an 11-year-old girl is being deported to El Salvador, where she is likely to be killed. […]

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/04/01/discuss-political-madness-all-the-time-10/comment-page-1/#comment-1993085

    […] it sure would be messed up to take an 11-year-old fleeing gang violence and drop her right in the middle of El Salvador with no home or family because of a mistake by the court.

    More at the links.

  13. says

    History has shown that Saudi, the Gulf states and Egypt do not want to see the emergence of a truly democratic parliamentary system in the region, so they are always supportive of military dictatorships like their shameful stance now for what is going on in Sudan.”

  14. says

    SC @13, Sarah Huckabee Sanders considers herself smart enough to comment disparagingly about the intellectual capabilities of Democrats in the House of Congress? She’s joking, right?

    House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, and others, have set a new deadline of April 23 for the tax returns.

    […] In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked Sanders whether Trump would “demand that the IRS not turn over his tax returns” or, rather, “live with whatever the IRS decides.”

    Sanders responded by repeating an irrelevant line from Trump, saying that as long as the President’s taxes are supposedly under audit, he will not release his returns. (Trump has never shown proof that he is under audit, and even if he is, he can still release his tax returns.)

    Wallace pressed: “Will he tell the IRS not to release them though?”

    “We’ll have to see what happens on that front,” Sanders replied, not ruling out the possibility.

    She added later: “Frankly, Chris, I don’t think Congress, particularly not this group of congressmen and -women, are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump’s taxes will be.”

    “My guess is most of them don’t do their own taxes, and I certainly don’t trust them to look through the decades of success that the President has and determine anything.”

    From readers comments on the story as presented by Talking Points Memo:

    Well, Dumbass SHS, if they aren’t smart enough (they are…), they are certainly smart enough to have a team of forensic accountants on hand to do that work for them.
    ———————
    Does she know how Congress works? I know she is not this stupid. It is highly likely that a forensic account was hired by Congress to evaluate the returns -line by frickin’ line.
    ———————
    So Sarah claims Congress is too stupid to review Trump’s return.

    Did Trump prepare his taxes on his own? Or was he too stupid to do so?

    SO MUCH BULLSHIT
    ——————-
    Trump isn’t smart enough so he has to hire SHS as his press secretary.
    ————————
    Says the woman who believes our planet is 6,000 years old.

    That evolution is a lie.

    That a bearded sky fairy is gonna rapture her.

  15. says

    https://twitter.com/NPRHealth/status/979645665994158081

    Time’s running out for many frail, older people in Puerto Rico … and for disabled people.

    https://n.pr/2GAdUX9

    […] After a lifetime of work on the U.S. mainland picking corn and asparagus and processing chickens in poultry plants, Maldonado returned to Puerto Rico a decade ago to help care for his ailing mother, who has since died. Today the retiree finds himself living day-to-day on the island. He receives $280 a month in Social Security and $89 a month in food stamps — or about $3 a day for food. […]

    The emergency government support that helped pay for some health care and medically related transportation needs of Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria is running out. Private donations of water and food have slowed. And it’s not clear who, if anyone, will carry on with that work.

    Maldonado opens the cupboards in his tidy kitchen. There are a few cans of corned beef, SpaghettiOs and beans. […]

    Though the light in Maldonado’s refrigerator still works, power outages during Hurricane Maria broke the mechanism that helps keep food — and the insulin he depends on — cold.

    […] It has been months since Maldonado has had fresh vegetables in the house.

    “When there’s very little, then I kind of go on a diet,” he says. […]

    Maintaining a decent diet isn’t simply about staving off hunger; diabetes is consuming Maldonado’s foot, and unless he eats healthy food and takes his insulin, doctors have warned him, his foot will need to be amputated.

    Maldonado opens the door to his broken refrigerator and points to a vial that holds a few drops of insulin — the last of his supplies until he can afford the $3 copay for his refills and find a ride to the pharmacy. […]

  16. says

    Followup to comment 19.

    Kamala Harris released 15 years of her tax returns. Meanwhile, Trump has his lackeys appearing on Sunday TV shows to claim that if his tax returns are given to a Congressional committee, (per a lawful request to the IRS), the privacy of all U.S. citizens will be threatened.

  17. says

    In a response to Trump’s threat to transport “Illegal Immigrants” (Trump’s capitalization) to sanctuary cities, Jenny Durkan, the Democratic mayor of Seattle, wrote this op-ed:

    Here’s a message to President Trump: Seattle is not afraid of immigrants and refugees. In fact, we have always welcomed people who have faced tremendous hardships around the world. Immigrants and refugees are part of Seattle’s heritage, and they will continue to make us the city of the future.

    What does scare us? A president and federal government that would seek to weaponize a law enforcement agency to punish perceived political enemies. A would-be despot who thinks the rule of law does not apply to him…

    It’s clear he hates the fact that the very cities he scorns are engines of innovation, opportunity and economic power. But we will not be deterred. The president’s threats won’t intimidate me […]

    This president believes that immigrants and refugees burden our country and burden cities like ours. But he could not be more wrong.

    In Seattle, we know that our immigrant and refugee communities make our city a stronger, more vibrant place. Our immigrant neighbors make up more than 18 percent of our population, and 21 percent of our population speaks a language other than English at home. They create businesses and jobs. They create art and culture. They help teach our kids, serve in law enforcement and the military, and lead our places of faith…

    Our city has already taken on this president and won. When Trump and the Justice Department threatened to withhold federal funding over our policies, we beat him in court. When he announced his cruel plan to separate children and families, Democratic mayors stood up to say we are better than this as a country.

    So if this president wants to send immigrants and refugees to Seattle and other welcoming cities, let me be clear: We will do what we have always done, and we will be stronger for it. And it will only strengthen our commitment to fighting for the dignity of every person. We will not allow any administration to use the power of America to destroy the promise of America.

  18. says

    From Democratic presidential candidate Eric Swalwell:

    [Trump] certainly acts on Russia’s behalf. And it’s a claim from someone who also worked as a prosecutor for seven years and had the responsibility of looking at evidence and putting it before a jury.

    He also acts like Russia’s leade. He attacks our free press. He acts in such a lawless way, and what we’re seeing most recently, telling a Customs and Border official that he would pardon him if he broke the law. And he puts his family in charge and in positions of power.

    The excerpts above are from an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

  19. says

    Neera Tanden: “For someone like @aaronmate who championed the Barr letter to ignore its contents, which found that Russia was behind the hacks of the DNC and the Clinton Campaign. That makes Assange their agent. You may take kindly to Russia undermining democracy — you have for years- I do not.”

    I’m still amazed that no one’s been able to pin down Greenwald and the others on their affirmative claims. Are they claiming:

    The GRU didn’t do the hacking?
    The hacking wasn’t part of a Kremlin effort to hurt Clinton and help Trump?
    The effort didn’t involve support for Sanders as a means to divide Democrats and suppress the Clinton vote?
    Assange didn’t get the data he released from the GRU?
    Assange didn’t orchestrate the releases so as to do the most damage to Clinton?
    Assange wasn’t communicating with the Trump campaign?
    The extensive public evidence of Trumpworld doing the Kremlin’s bidding doesn’t exist?

    Some of these? All of these? What specifically are they claiming constitutes the “hoax” or “conspiracy theory” to which they keep referring?

  20. says

    Finally something: “JUST IN: Speaker Pelosi says President Trump ‘must take down his disrespectful and dangerous video’ featuring Rep. Omar, and she has spoken with the Sergeant-at-Arms to ensure Capitol Police are conducting a security assessment to safeguard Rep. Omar, her family and her staff.”

  21. says

    “Cummings moves to subpoena Trump financial records”:

    House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) is moving to issue a subpoena to obtain 10 years of President Donald Trump’s financial records from accounting firm Mazars USA, the chairman told members of the panel in a memo on Friday.

    Cummings plans to issue the subpoena on Monday after Mazars asked for a so-called “friendly” subpoena, so that it could comply with the committee’s document demands.

    In his memo, Cummings explained that the committee asked for the records as part of its efforts to corroborate allegations made by Trump’s former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen, who told lawmakers in February that Trump artificially inflated and deflated the value of his assets to his personal benefit.

    Cummings said the full committee will not hold a vote on whether to issue the subpoena because of the two-week congressional recess which begins on Monday. Instead, Cummings is giving the committee’s top Republican, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, 48 hours’ notice before issuing the subpoena.

    Cummings asked members of the committee to “inform my office of their views and positions on this subpoena.”

    The chairman also used his memo to criticize Jordan for his “troubling actions,” accusing the Trump ally of urging Mazars not to comply with Cummings’ request for documents.

    “Obviously, such actions undermine the authority of the committee and impair its investigations,” Cummings wrote….

  22. says

    Pelosi’s full statement (from London):

    “Following the President’s tweet, I spoke with the Sergeant-at-Arms to ensure that Capitol Police are conducting a security assessment to safeguard Congresswoman Omar, her family and her staff. They will continue to monitor and address the threats she faces.

    “The President’s words weigh a ton, and his hateful and inflammatory rhetoric creates real danger. President Trump must take down his disrespectful and dangerous video.”

  23. says

    I mean, seriously, if House Democrats don’t impeach this president then they might as well remove the impeachment clause from the Constitution. It’s this simple: if the openly corrupt & lawless President Trump isn’t worthy of impeachment then no president is – or ever will be.”

  24. says

    Watching part 3 of CNN’s Tricky Dick (part 4 is on shortly). It’s just incredible – the more you’re reminded of Nixon’s behind-the-scenes comments, the more awful he appears.

    On his visit to China (it should be noted that Nixon and his fellow Republicans were responsible for the fact that China was so closed off to the US in the first place):

    Kissinger: For every reason, we’ve got to have a diversion from Vietnam in this country.

    Nixon: That’s the point, isn’t it, yeah?

    Nixon: It’s the hope thing…. The American people are suckers. Getting to know you, all that bullshit. The grey middle America, they’re suckers.

    On bombing the Vietnamese: “You’re so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.”

  25. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    As to the impeachment thing, I’m of two minds. Certainly, the current occupant of 1600 Penn Ave. is too stupid and corrupt to do the job. However, impeachment is a political, not a legal remedy, and unfortunately, the ‘Merican people are not sufficiently upset for impeachment to have a reasonable chance of success. Republicans in the House and Senate will stop at nothing because Darth Cheeto’s incompetence means they can implement their own agenda as long as they buy into his New Cruelty. There is literally no cost to them. The only way to change that is to make it more costly. The Rethugs have to be bludgeoned with the corruption, incompetence and moral bankruptcy of DJT. They have to fear for their political lives.

    Do we want them to release the Meuller report. Then we have to project on the blank space left by the report’s absence a picture that is uglier than anything the report could say. We want the report without redactions? Then remember that each redaction is a blank space where we can fill in the blanks with whatever makes grammatical sense.
    Ultimately, Nixon wasn’t wrong. Americans are suckers. They were gullible enough to believe a reality TV version of Trumplethinskin over the reality. The only way to get them to accept the truth is to make the lies too costly.

  26. says

    “Documents Link AfD Parliamentarian To Moscow”:

    …After the opening of the forum, [German MP Markus Frohnmaier] gave an interview to the Russian international broadcaster RT in the lobby of the luxury hotel. Frohnmaier said that when you drive along the switchbacks in Crimea, it feels like Verona: the architecture, the wine, the seaside location. “What more could you want?” The sanctions, the member of the German parliament said, finally need to end: “It is simply fact that Crimea is now Russian Crimea. The people who view this highly critically won’t be able to change that. Crimea isn’t coming back, and I think people just have to accept that now.”

    Frohnmaier sounded like a PR agent for the Russian president. He often sounds like that on many days.

    The AfD, which was founded six years ago as a euro-skeptic party, has proved to be a stroke of luck for Putin. It shares the Russian president’s goal of attacking the establishment. Putin wants to break the West’s power by driving a wedge through it. The AfD and the Kremlin also share a pronounced anti-American stance, as well as a disdain for modern values and marriage equality for same-sex couples.

    The Russian leadership sees the biggest opposition party in the Germany parliament, the Bundestag, as an ally in the war against “degenerate Europe,” as neo-fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin once described it. Their common goal is to weaken the enemy. Exclusive documents from the Moscow state apparatus show how this goal is to be attained. They also show how AfD politicians are, in this sense, turning themselves into Putin’s pawns.

    Reporting conducted jointly by DER SPIEGEL, German public broadcaster ZDF, the BBC and the Italian newspaper La Repubblica has uncovered how Moscow is weakening Western European democracies and trying to enlist right-wing parties to help it do that. The leaked emails and documents provide telling insights on how these kinds of strategies for attaining influence in the West emerge, how these parties came into Putin’s political sphere of influence and which instruments are being used to carry out the plans.

    The new findings are worrisome, given that many in Europe are concerned Russia might try to influence the elections for the European Parliament in late May. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the head of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), recently warned on ZDF that the Russian government is “putting a lot of effort into weakening, into destabilizing the countries in the EU and its close neighbors.”

    The emails include, for example, a strategy paper created before the 2017 German federal election that describes several “foreign-policy activities,” ranging from the “organization of meetings, vigils and other protest actions in EU countries to the successful support of resolutions in the national parliaments of the EU and to media campaigns.” The goal was to promote Russian interests and enable the “discrediting” of Moscow’s opponents.

    Who could be better suited for this than the AfD’s people, who are almost all foreign-policy novices? Experts unanimously agree that, for years, Russia has been seeking to exploit right-wing populists as a megaphone for its strategy of expansion in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine, to provide legitimacy for dubious elections and as agitators in German town squares. Previously, there hasn’t been any evidence that this kind of planning had been linked to the higher levels of the Russian state apparatus.

    Now these activities can be documented in detail. The revelations are particularly vivid when it comes to AfD lawmaker Markus Frohnmaier. He plays a central role in the strategy paper, which was sent from the Russian Duma to the highest levels of leadership in the presidential administration. The people behind it made no secret of how they view the now 28-year-old political neophyte: as a useful idiot.

    The document states, “we will have our own absolutely controlled MP in the Bundestag.” An AfD member of the Bundestag willing to help fulfil Moscow’s aims — does this still represent a free, independent mandate?

    DER SPIEGEL is also in possession of a draft of an English-language “action plan” for Frohnmaier’s election campaign in which “material” and “media support” for Frohnmaier is requested in exchange for a promise that the candidate would diligently work to promote the issues most important to Moscow as a parliamentarian in the Bundestag…. [I wish someone would explain why this document is in English. – SC]

    Much, much more at the link. Here’s the BBC Newsnight report from earlier this month (about 16 minutes long).

  27. Akira MacKenzie says

    They have to fear for their political lives.

    However, thanks to gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the general level of stupidity and bigotry of the garbage people who live in the Redneck States, they won’t. Congressional Republicans are snug as a bug in a rug.

  28. blf says

    the general level of stupidity and bigotry of the garbage people who live in the Redneck States

    Don’t. Just don’t. Referring to a specific individual as, e.g., “hair furor”, or a well-defined group as, e.g., the “tory ultras” is one thing, but referring to an indeterminate, probably large, population is not that thing. To see this, replace “garage people” with, e.g., “hijab wearers” or “people of colour” or “cis males” or “pharyngula’s horde”.

  29. lotharloo says

    @SC:

    As far as I know Greenwald’s main objection is to the following theories, or in general theories of similar nature:
    A) Trump is a puppet government of Putin.
    B) Trump is a Russian agent working for Russian interests.
    C) Putin has highly incriminating evidence again Trump and thus Trump is actively working to appease Russian interests.
    D) There is so much illegal involvement between Trump campaign and the Russian government that they would eventually escort Trump on handcuffs from Whitehouse.

    His main point is that since Mueller did not charge anyone from immediate Trump family, Trump Jr, Ivanka, Jared, etc. most of these theories are bunk. As a side point, he also blamed Democracts as well as various mainstream Democratic venues of fear mongering and building conspiracy theories without any evidence.

  30. says

    “Barr’s Playbook: He Misled Congress When Omitting Parts of Justice Dep’t Memo in 1989”:

    On Friday the thirteenth October 1989, by happenstance the same day as the “Black Friday” market crash, news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in “unusual secrecy” and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama’s leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.

    Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would “summarize the principal conclusions” of the special counsel’s report for the public.

    When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr’s position was “particularly egregious.” Congress also had no appetite for Barr’s stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.

    What’s different from that struggle and the current struggle over the Mueller report is that we know how the one in 1989 eventually turned out.

    When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr’s summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion’s principal conclusions. It is better to think of Barr’s summary as a redacted version of the full OLC opinion. That’s because the “summary” took the form of 13 pages of written testimony. The document was replete with quotations from court cases, legal citations, and the language of the OLC opinion itself. Despite its highly detailed analysis, this 13-page version omitted some of the most consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion. And there was evidently no justifiable reason for having withheld those parts from Congress or the public.

    When first asked by reporters about the OLC opinion that Friday, Barr said he could not discuss any of its contents. “I just don’t discuss the work of the office of legal counsel,” he said. “The office … provides legal advice throughout the Administration and does it on a confidential basis.”

    The idea that Barr and the administration would not even discuss the content of the opinion could not withstand public pressure. Barr’s stance was especially untenable because his OLC opinion reversed a prior OLC opinion (an unusual event), and the Justice Department had released that prior opinion in full to the public just four years earlier….

    Much more at the link. The content of the opinion is also highly disturbing, in my opinion.

  31. says

    lotharloo:

    As far as I know Greenwald’s main objection is to the following theories, or in general theories of similar nature:…

    But that’s not a response to what I asked. I asked not about any “theories” or “theories of a similar nature.” These are just words people are throwing around with no grounding in agreement or disagreement about the known empirical evidence. I asked which of those specific factual claims Greenwald, Taibbi, and others are disputing. There’s no point in having a discussion if people refuse to state clearly what they believe happened and didn’t happen. Otherwise, they could be acknowledging that everything I listed @ #24 above and #146 in the previous iteration is true but still talking about a “hoax” or “conspiracy” that’s based on other claims. I’ve seen a couple of indications lately that Greenwald and Taibbi might not believe the Russians hacked the Democrats. If that’s the case, I want them to be straightforward about it. Personally, I would consider that stubbornly irrational and really the end of serious debate. Like someone who claimed well into the Watergate investigation that the break-in hadn’t occurred. Imagine a trial in which the defendant’s lawyers simply assert that the whole case is a hoax and a conspiracy theory, but without disputing any of the evidence. It’s ridiculous.

  32. says

    Update to #26 – “Trump attorneys warn accounting firm not to hand over financial records”:

    President Donald Trump’s attorneys are warning of potential legal action if an accounting firm turns over a decade of the president’s financial records to the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

    Trump attorneys William S. Consovoy and Stefan Passantino are urging Mazars USA not to comply with a subpoena that Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) plans to issue on Monday for Trump’s financial documents, calling it a politically motivated scheme to take down the president.

    “It is no secret that the Democrat [sic!!! – SC] Party has decided to use its new House majority to launch a flood of investigations into the president’s personal affairs in hopes of using anything they can find to damage him politically,” Consovoy and Passantino wrote to Jerry D. Bernstein, Mazars’ outside counsel.

    The attorneys said they were formally putting Mazars ”on notice” — an implicit threat of legal action. They also urged Bernstein to hold off on providing the documents to Cummings until the subpoena can be litigated in court, suggesting that a protracted legal battle is likely to ensue….

  33. lotharloo says

    @SC:
    As far as I can tell, and I need to refresh my memory on this, I don’t think Greenwald denies the Russian involvement in the hacks. However, their point is that:
    A) US already meddles in elections all over the world, so for Democrats to suddenly be so surprised and riled up is highly hypocritical. Or in general, everyone meddles in everyone’s elections
    B) Wikileaks are journalists and if Russians hacked some emails and gave it to them, they can share it with Trump campaign or publish them.
    C) Since there were no charges against Don Jr or anyone involved in the Trump tower meeting, Mueller must have decided that those meetings did not raise to the level of criminality.
    D) Many aspects of the story is overblown. There might be some connection between wikileaks and Trump campaign but it was not coordinated. His primary evidence is that the campaigned sniffed that wikileaks has info on Hillary and as response they sent Roger Stone to find out but Stone at some point claimed incorrect leaks (some bullshit John Pedesta claims) which shows there was not that level of connection between wikileaks and the campaign.

  34. says

    More re yesterday’s elections in Finland – “Finland’s SDP tries to build coalition after narrow election win”:

    Finland’s Social Democrats will try to form a coalition government after a narrow win in parliamentary elections that saw left-leaning parties make sweeping gains, despite a stronger than expected showing from the far right.

    The centre-left SDP, led by Antti Rinne, a 56-year-old former trade union leader, will have 40 MPs in a fragmented 200-seat Eduskunta (parliament) after winning 17.7% of the vote following a campaign attacking the austerity policies of the outgoing centre-right coalition.

    The far-right, anti-immigration and increasingly radical Finns party won 17.5% of the vote and 39 seats – almost exactly the same as its total in elections in 2011 and 2015, but significantly more than they might have hoped for earlier this year.

    On a good night generally for the left, the SDP finished with six more MPs than in the previous parliament, while the Greens gained five and the Radical Left four. Voters chose between 2,500 candidates from 19 political parties and movements.

    The biggest loser was the Centre party of the outgoing prime minister Juha Sipilä, who blamed the slump in its support – to 13.8% of the vote and fourth place – on the “difficult economic decisions” his government had had to make to rebalance the economy after a protracted slowdown.

    “For the first time since 1999 we are the largest party in Finland,” a triumphant Rinne told supporters in Helsinki. “SDP is the prime minister’s party.”

    The result was further evidence of a modest social democratic comeback in Nordic countries, with left-leaning prime ministers now in power in Sweden and Iceland, and the Social Democrats leading in the polls in Denmark, where elections are due this summer.

    However, with no single party winning more than 20% of the national vote for the first time in 100 years, and deep divisions within the mainstream parties over the future of Finland’s widely-admired welfare system – which the left want to preserve by increasing taxes and the right to streamline because of rising costs – the SDP leader may find it hard to build a sustainable coalition.

    Most parties, including the SDP, have said they would find it difficult, if not impossible, to share power with the Finns party and its hardline leader, Jussi Halla-aho, who has shifted the party firmly to the right since a 2017 split that saw half its MPs leave.

    Greenpeace Finland had called Sunday’s vote the climate election, saying “climate and the limits of planet Earth” had “never before been discussed with such seriousness in Finland”. A recent poll showed 70% of respondents felt tackling climate change and reducing carbon footprints should be key priorities of the new government.

    The Finns party is the only group in Finland, which according to the World Health Organisation has the highest air quality in the world, to argue the next government should not speed up cutting carbon emissions to combat climate change….

  35. blf says

    Measles cases up 300% worldwide in 2019, says WHO:

    […]
    Measles cases worldwide rose by 300% during the first three months of 2019 compared with the same period last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, amid growing concerns over the impact of anti-vaccination campaigns.

    Measles, which is highly contagious, can be entirely prevented through a two-dose vaccine, but the WHO has in recent months sounded the alarm over declining global vaccination rates.

    […]

    The agency noted that only about one in 10 actual measles cases were reported, meaning the early trends for 2019 were likely to underestimate the severity of the outbreaks.

    So far this year, 170 countries have reported 112,163 measles cases to the WHO. At this time last year, 163 countries had reported 28,124 cases.

    “Spikes in case numbers have also occurred in countries with high overall vaccination coverage, including the United States,” the WHO said. “The disease has spread fast among clusters of unvaccinated people.”

    […]

    And, As Ebola kills in Africa, in the west lies over vaccines beguile the complacent:

    The epidemic in the DRC has been impossible to contain because of the spread of anti-vax myths

    With the possible exception of quinine […] and antibiotics, vaccines have saved more lives than any other intervention in medical history. Yet, from New York’s Brooklyn to Camden in north London to Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, vaccines are in retreat, shunned by populations who seemingly have little sense of the risks they are running with their own or other people’s lives.

    […] Kivu, in the northeastern DRC, where in the midst of what is officially the second largest Ebola outbreak in history, the rejection of vaccines is having particularly tragic consequences. Initially, it was hoped that the epidemic, which began last August, would follow the same pattern as a previous Ebola outbreak in the DRC, which was controlled by deploying a “ring vaccination” approach — vaccinating and monitoring a ring of people around each infected individual.

    But that has not happened. Instead, in a region where one in four people is convinced that Ebola is “not real” and that the medical response is a scam by those in power to keep humanitarian aid flowing to the government, villagers have been hiding from World Health Organization contact tracers, while militias have been firebombing Ebola treatment centres, impeding the work of vaccination teams.

    […] So far this year, the United States, which eliminated measles in 2000, has seen 465 measles cases across 19 states. The majority have occurred in ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhoods in Brooklyn and Rockland county, New York, where parents have shunned the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, seemingly influenced by claims that the vaccine is not “kosher” because it contains “pig DNA”. In fact, the final product is highly purified and most rabbis accept that vaccines are not prohibited by religious laws.

    […]

  36. says

    lotharloo:

    @SC:
    As far as I can tell, and I need to refresh my memory on this, I don’t think Greenwald denies the Russian involvement in the hacks. However, their point is that:

    D) Many aspects of the story is overblown. There might be some connection between wikileaks and Trump campaign but it was not coordinated. His primary evidence is that the campaigned sniffed that wikileaks has info on Hillary and as response they sent Roger Stone to find out but Stone at some point claimed incorrect leaks (some bullshit John Pedesta claims) which shows there was not that level of connection between wikileaks and the campaign.

    Your first points are irrelevant and I’ve addressed them here at great length over several years, so I won’t engage with them, except to point out, again, that they’re totally fucking irrelevant to what I’m talking about. It’s like asking an AGW denier to state whether they dispute that global warming is happening, that it’s caused by humans, that it’s likely to have particular effects, etc., and having them respond that Al Gore is fat or liberals drive cars or scientists are paid or whatever. I want to know what they’re arguing happened and didn’t happen, what specific claims they’re accepting or disputing.

    Greenwald tweeted this morning: “In an article that raises some interesting points, @AndrewCMcCarthy asks why DOJ didn’t also indict Assange for conspiring with Russia over its hacking, noting that had it done so, it would have been the only time they had to prove Russia hacking in court.” This contains the clear insinuation that he doesn’t believe Russia did the hacking [based on the transparently weak suggestion that this is the only reason Assange wouldn’t be charged with conspiracy, despite the fact that a) they would have to show that Assange knew when he was conspiring with Guccifer 2.0 that Guccifer 2.0 was the GRU (which he might not have; I suspect he did, maybe not in the summer but by October, but that’s beside the point), b) proving this in court could possibly require revealing sources and methods when the existing charges against Assange and possible ones to follow wouldn’t, and c) several other relevant considerations]. Assange’s not being charged with conspiracy with the Russian government, and indeed not being guilty of conspiring with the Russian government, is entirely consistent with the Russian government stealing the emails and giving them to WL using the Guccifer 2.0 persona. They used WL to distribute the stolen documents. Mueller’s team presented in their indictment extensive evidence, added to the evidence that was already public knowledge, that the GRU hacked the Democrats and that they passed the documents to WL. If Greenwald is disputing this, he needs to come out and say it, and to offer a reasonable alternative explanation for the existing evidence. To simply continue to make the same insinuations without putting his foot down anywhere is really shady and intellectually dishonest.

    Regarding this and your point D), I’ll link again to Maddow’s segment in which she quotes from messages between WL and Guccifer 2.0 (the GRU) and between WL and Don Jr. And we know Trump talked about WL 160 times during the closing months of the campaign. But it’s not like the only connection that existed between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign was through WL. It was all of the stuff I listed @ #146 on the previous iteration. I imagine there’s more to the Stone, Credico, Farage part of the story, but whether we’ll know about it anytime soon or not I have no idea; again, no individual aspect is the necessary smoking gun here. There’s a mountain of evidence of willingness to collude, collusion, and covering up (including for Putin!).

    And I’ll say one more thing. People like Neera Tanden and John Podesta were the victims of a plot by a rightwing foreign adversary to interfere in our election and to elect a racist, misogynistic, corrupt, unfit monster who would do Putin’s bidding as president. Their private emails were stolen and then spread throughout the world in the most vicious manner possible, accompanied by misrepresentations encouraged by an army of bots and trolls, which WL and the Trump campaign abetted and which Clinton’s primary opponent did little to condemn or stop. I’ve not only seen no evidence of compassion from Greenwald and crew, but they instead insist on portraying people like Tanden as the primary enemies of the Left. It’s both perplexing and extremely gross and it’s horrifying to see it continue into this election cycle.

  37. blf says

    Does Donald Trump believe his bizarre bluster on immigration?:

    […]
    There is no issue that better illustrates the parallel universe in which President [sic] Trump resides than immigration policy. In the real world, unauthorized immigration is the lowest it’s been in a decade, and violent crime has been dropping since the 1990s. Yet in Trump’s bizarre world, we are experiencing an out-of-control immigrant crime wave.

    Apparently MS-13 members with face tattoos are flooding across an unguarded southern border by the millions and are wreaking havoc in lawless “sanctuary cities”, where they are given voting rights, free healthcare, and the names and addresses of Trump supporters. Immigrants — at least those from whom he does not personally profit — are, in Trump’s words, gang members, drug dealers, human traffickers, and criminals of all shapes, sizes, and kinds. These aren’t people. These are animals. What better way, then, to punish his enemies than to send them people of whom Trump is so personally terrified?

    Such is the logic of Trump’s announcement that he intends to bus undocumented immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities. […]

    Trump’s proposal resembles a perverse re-enactment of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when Fidel Castro emptied out Cuba’s prisons and encouraged convicts to flee to a United States that was welcoming the island’s dissidents with open arms. That Trump’s enemies don’t see today’s asylum seekers — mostly Central Americans fleeing gang violence, a growing proportion of whom are women and children — as the reincarnation of Scarface is lost on Trump.

    […] The only enthusiasm his proposal has attracted has been from the Democratic mayors he imagines he is trolling: the mayor of Oakland, whom Trump tweeted does NOT WANT our currently ‘detained immigrants’, responded that “Oakland welcomes all, no matter where you came from or how you got here.” If Trump were to follow through with his threat, it would probably be better for immigrants, who would benefit from the social support networks that exist in sanctuary cities.

    The reason Trump’s threat (which Trump’s deputy press secretary has clumsily tried to recast as an olive branch) has failed to elicit mass panic and capitulation by Democrats is that they live in those cities, and see sanctuary policies working pretty well. Political science research reflects this. Tom Wong of the University of California San Diego found that sanctuary cities are more likely to see undocumented immigrants report crime to local police, and that sanctuary cities tend to see less reliance on public assistance, and better labor force participation rates, than non-sanctuary cities. And Loren Collingwood of the University of California Riverside and Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien of San Diego State University found that sanctuary cities are statistically no more likely to experience crime than non-sanctuary cities. The then attorney general, Jeff Sessions, subsequently misrepresented their research, claiming it found the opposite of what it actually did.

    […] That [hair furor] actually buys into his own rhetoric is telling. Trump’s belief in an imaginary immigrant crime wave meriting dictatorial emergency powers is so unquestioning that he is genuinely surprised whenever his illegal executive actions get slapped down by courts, or voters react negatively to his policy of stealing children from their parents.

    It’s a common mistake [… to claim] demagogues don’t really believe what they say. They must be hucksters who, behind closed doors, mock their supporters as rubes. Throughout his campaign, Trump benefited from this presumption that he doesn’t really mean it: he’s saying these things to get attention, or to get a better deal with NBC. After years of Trump playing the willful idiot, it’s worth considering that it may not be an act at all.

  38. says

    The man Stephanie Ruhle is talking to cut out for a few minutes as he was saying that debris from the building was coming down like hail. When he called back, he said they had been told to move further away from the building, fortunately.

  39. blf says

    France24 is reporting only that fire MAY be related to the works. They just had an interview with a historian, who pointed out Notre Dame is exceptionally important to France, not just Paris, and then rattled off a series of symbolically important events which have happened there over the last few centuries.

  40. blf says

    France24 reports the police(? fire(? sorry, forgot!)) are reporting there are no known deaths. No word on any injuries. They are also reporting that a official/stated priority is to save the heritage in the interior.

    The works scaffolding is now starting to collapse. The on-the-spot reporter says that whilst the fire is clearly not yet under control, it does now seem to be confined to the central area, “the ends are no longer on fire”.

  41. blf says

    Marcon — who is now reported to be on the scence — twitteringed (in translation), “Our Lady of Paris in flames. Emotion of a whole nation. Thought for all Catholics and for all French. Like all our countrymen, I’m sad tonight to see this part of us burn.” (From the Grauniad’s live blog.)

    The France24 reporter reports there are fireboats and helicopters on-scene.

  42. Akira MacKenzie says

    SC @ 53

    “Fire at Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral was started by accident…

    That’s not going to stop the usual suspects from claiming the fire was started by Muslim immigrants, or something like that. Expect the racist conspiracy kooks to be feverishly posting screeds on Twitter right now.

  43. Hj Hornbeck says

    lotharloo @41:

    A) US already meddles in elections all over the world, so for Democrats to suddenly be so surprised and riled up is highly hypocritical. Or in general, everyone meddles in everyone’s elections

    “Everyone” meddles? When did the Canadian government try to hack the federal Republican party during 2016?

    B) Wikileaks are journalists and if Russians hacked some emails and gave it to them, they can share it with Trump campaign or publish them.

    Assange was charged with cracking passwords, not sharing documents. Journalists are taught never to break the law in the pursuit of their stories, ergo by violating that guideline Assange isn’t a journalist.

    C) Since there were no charges against Don Jr or anyone involved in the Trump tower meeting, Mueller must have decided that those meetings did not raise to the level of criminality.

    Why did Mueller decide not to press charges? Was it because was able to assess what happened, and decided it wasn’t criminal conduct? Was it because he was able to get a good idea of what happened, but didn’t think he could prove it in a court of law? Was it because he wasn’t able to assess what happened, because of a flood of contradictory stories? Was it because he wasn’t able to assess what happened, because nobody would talk to him and/or documents were destroyed?

    You don’t know. I don’t know. The guy who currently does know has a history of releasing misleading memos and burying evidence, as SC pointed out earlier.

    On D), I defer to SC. What little info we got in the indictment against Stone was pretty damning, and there’s no reason to think it’s all of the evidence that exists.

  44. blf says

    France24 is now reporting the Interior Ministry is saying there are no injuries, either.

    The fire apparently started in attic in the centre / rear, which also happens to be where some of the original 13th C woodwork was. (The spire was rebuilt in the 19th C.) They currently have an architectural historian speaking, who points out its very unusual for any cathedrals to still have such an extensive amount of the original woodwork.

  45. blf says

    The Grauniad reports the French civil defence and crisis management agency has just given hair furor’s idiotic suggestion to water bomb the building the reception in deserves (in translation), “The drop of water by air on this type of building could result in the collapse of the entire structure along with the fire fighers who are currently doing their best to save Notre Dame.”

  46. blf says

    France24 is quoting a Notre Dame official as saying “all” of the artwork has been saved. That’s known to be BS; at least one of the (smaller) stained glass windows was clearly broken with flames shooting through it… and the “artwork” he listed was mostly relics…

  47. says

    Two weeks ago, Trump said that Mueller has acted honorably, and he added that it “wouldn’t bother me at all” if the Mueller report was made public.

    Trump also said, without having read the report:

    The Mueller report was great. It could not have been better.

    He was referring to Barr’s 4-page letter, but who are we to quibble over the facts.

    Over the weekend, Trump tweeted:

    Why should Radical Left Democrats in Congress have a right to retry and examine the $35,000,000 (two years in the making) No Collusion Mueller Report, when the crime committed was by Crooked Hillary, the DNC and Dirty Cops?

    Today, Trump tweeted:

    Mueller, and the A.G. based on Mueller findings (and great intelligence), have already ruled No Collusion, No Obstruction. These were crimes committed by Crooked Hillary, the DNC, Dirty Cops and others! INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS! … The Mueller Report, which was written by 18 Angry Democrats who also happen to be Trump Haters (and Clinton Supporters), should have focused on the people who SPIED on my 2016 Campaign, and others who fabricated the whole Russia Hoax. That is, never forget, the crime. Since there was no Collusion, why was there an Investigation in the first place! Answer – Dirty Cops, Dems and Crooked Hillary!

    Yep. A 180 degree shift in tone. As was noted up-thread, the White House has been briefed on the Mueller Report, so Trump’s increasingly bonkers bloviation via Twitter is a result of him knowing that the report, even in a redacted form, will contain plenty of bad news for him.

    Weirdly, Trump keeps upping the number of “angry democrats.”

  48. says

    blf @64, so glad to see that someone called Trump out for the ridiculous and dangerous advice he offered for putting out the fire in Paris.

    In bad campaign news, we see that Trump’s re-election campaign took in $30 million in the first quarter. The campaign now has about $40 million on hand despite having paid out some fairly large sums for legal fees.

    In good campaign news, Mayor Pete Buttigieg delivered an intelligent, compelling kick-off speech for his campaign. NBC News link

    A few excerpts from Mayor Pete’s speech:

    There is a myth being sold to industrial and rural communities: the myth that we can stop the clock and turn it back. It comes from people who think the only way to reach communities like ours is through resentment and nostalgia, selling an impossible promise of returning to a bygone era that was never as great as advertised to begin with. […]

    The horror show in Washington is mesmerizing, all-consuming. But starting today, we are going to change the channel. Sometimes a dark moment brings out the best in us, what is good in us, dare I say, what is great in us. […]

    The idea that security and patriotism belong to one political party needs to end now. […] no issue we care about, from gun safety to immigration, from climate to education to paid family leave, will be handled well unless our democracy is in better shape. […]

    Our conservative friends care about freedom, but only make it part of the journey. They only see “freedom from,” freedom from taxes, freedom from regulation … as though government were the only thing that can make you unfree.

    But that’s not true. Your neighbor can make you unfree. Your cable company can make you unfree. There’s a lot more to your freedom than the size of your government. […]

    A few details from Buttigieg’s résumé:

    […] Buttigieg, the son of two Notre Dame University professors, attended Harvard; went on to become a Rhodes Scholar; did a stint at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.; was elected as the mayor of South Bend at the age of 29; took a leave of absence during his first term to serve in Afghanistan as a naval intelligence officer; came out as gay in a column in his local newspaper a few months before his re-election; was re-elected with nearly 80 percent of the vote; married his partner Chasten in a church ceremony that was live-streamed on the Internet; and wrote a best-selling book.

  49. says

    Akira in comment 33: “[…] the general level of stupidity and bigotry of the garbage people who live in the Redneck States, […]”

    That “garbage people” comment is unacceptable. “Redneck States” is almost as bad. You have branded millions of people with derogatory labels. Less than half of those people voted for Trump, and some of those voted for a myth, or as a result of a con job that was nurtured not just by Trump and Republicans, but by Russian trolls and bots, (not to mention Fox News). You cannot look at the questionable judgement of some people and use that to brand entire populations as “garbage.” Your choice of words reminds me of Trump characterizing migrants as “an infestation.”

    Also, a vote for Trump does not turn a human being into “garbage.” I ask you, I strongly advise you, to avoid such wholesale, demeaning language when posting comments to this thread.

    Even when you are disagreeing with individuals, please try to be specific most of the time.

    Thank you.

  50. says

    Followup to comment 68.

    Cory Booker also formally kicked off his campaign over the weekend. Excerpt:

    […] The president wants a race to the gutter and to fight us in the gutter. But to win, we have to fight from higher ground in order to bring this country to higher ground. […]

    Because the people on my block, the people gathered here and folks all across the country can’t wait. They can’t afford a politics of division that sacrifices progress for purity. They can’t afford to allow this election to become just an exercise in political posturing or a box checking competition that is completely divorced from the realities of so many people who are struggling and hurting. […]

    And I know and you know that we don’t have the privilege to wait for what fits into someone else’s narrow view of what it means to be a progressive.

    Eric Swalwell, also officially launched his campaign for president today. Excerpt:

    […] A year ago, hope died at Parkland. But, in a uniquely American way, owing to the courage and strength of children, hope was reborn at Parkland. Hope has been reborn here in America too. That’s why I started my campaign at Parkland. I pledged to that community what I pledge to you — I will be the first campaign to make ending gun violence the top priority in my campaign.

    [Details omitted: a ban and buyback program for assault weapons and universal background checks for all gun purchases.]

    […] This is not a campaign that will be beholden to special interests. We will accept no corporate PAC money and we’re not going to be driven by the polls. […]

  51. blf says

    Both the Grauniad and France24 are reporting the French deputy interior minister, and also the fire brigades, as saying they are uncertain if they can save it — it’s still burning — with perhaps the next two-ish hours being critical.

  52. says

    Followup to comments 13 and 19.

    From Representative Katie Porter:

    I’ll take that bet any time. I’m trained in tax law, I’m a legal professor. I’m ready to go to take a look [at Trump’s tax returns]

    She was responding to Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ claim that no one in Congress is “smart enough” to look at Trump’s taxes.

  53. says

    Climate scientists slam Breitbart article as ‘nonsensical’ and ‘woefully ignorant’

    “This is quite possibly the worst ‘climate’-related article I’ve ever encountered.”

    […] Breitbart’s latest piece of climate science denial — an article headlined “Scientists Prove Man-Made Global Warming Is a Hoax” — is so inaccurate and misleading that when the nonpartisan site Climate Feedback asked 10 climate scientists to comment on it, they got replies like “woefully ignorant,” “nonsensical,” and “a willful attempt to misguide their readership.”

    Breitbart has an audience of more than 20 million visitors each month, […] meaning its misleading claims have the potential to spread quickly. […] the article was a bizarre rewrite of a recent ThinkProgress article on a major new study that actually shows human-caused global warming is more worrisome than previously thought, not less.

    The study itself found that our current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, 410 parts per million (ppm), were last seen on Earth three million years ago — when temperatures were much higher, the great ice sheets were far smaller, and sea levels were some 65 feet higher.

    But in Breitbart’s Orwellian reinterpretation, it writes: “ThinkProgress reports that scientists have finally proven that the theory of man-made Global Warming is a total hoax.”

    Yet, Breitbart links to the study’s news release from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the first paragraph of which explicitly states, “today, it is the increase of greenhouse gases due to the burning of fossil fuels that is fundamentally changing our planet, the analysis further confirms.”

    So how does Breitbart turn an analysis that confirms society’s burning of fossil fuels is causing climate change into one that somehow proves human-caused global warming is a hoax? By asserting that because slow changes in the Earth system caused high levels of CO2 in the past, fast changes caused by humans can’t be causing them now. […]

    As science has proven, that argument is nonsense, pure and simple. Numerous studies have shown how humans, not natural factors like changes in solar radiation and volcanoes, are the main driver of today’s rising global temperatures. […]

    More at the link.

  54. says

    Pulitzer Prize details:

    Multiple newspapers on Monday were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for their investigations into […] Trump.

    Reporters at The New York Times won the Pulitzer for explanatory reporting for their investigation into Trump’s finances, which revealed that Trump and his family allegedly engaged in tax dodging.

    The Times investigation found that Trump’s parents allegedly transferred more than $1 billion to their children and that the family paid $52.2 million in taxes, a rate of roughly 5 percent. […]

    The #Pulitzer for investigative reporting awarded to @latimesharriet, Matt Hamilton and @PringleLATimes at the @latimes for reporting on a USC gynecologist who was accused of violating young women for nearly 30 years […]

    The Wall Street Journal also won a Pulitzer for national reporting after reporting that, prior to the 2016 presidential election, Trump allegedly directed secret hush money payments to women alleging they had affairs with him years ago. […]

    Other newspapers awarded Pulitzers on Monday were the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which won in the breaking news category for its coverage of the shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, which was awarded the Pulitzer for public service for its coverage of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

    Link

  55. blf says

    More on British MP David Lammy calling nazis nazis (see @6), David Lammy was right to name and shame the ERG:

    […]
    They really don’t like it up ’em, do they? The horrific mutation of Eton, ego and the European Research Group (ERG) that produces the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg must not be called nasty names. Oh, no. It has been suggested that the Labour MP David Lammy went too far on The Andrew Marr Show when he said that comparing the ERG — a group of Tory MPs that supports a hard Brexit — to Nazis was “not strong enough”. […]

    [… L]et’s join the dots. Johnson says he is pro-immigration, and says he has only met Steve Bannon twice. I haven’t got all day to rehearse the racist remarks Johnson has made over the years.

    Rees-Mogg posted a video of the leader of the German political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), although he said afterwards he was not endorsing them. The AfD march alongside neo-Nazis, want refugee boats sunk and say Islam is worse than the plague. In 2013, Rees-Mogg went to dinner with the Traditional Britain Group […] even though he admits he had been tipped off about their views. That group’s Facebook page has called for Doreen Lawrence and millions of others to be requested to return to their natural homelands.

    The BBC has reported that leading Brexiters informally call themselves Grand Wizards. Whether this is a reference to the leaders of the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan is, I suppose, debatable.

    […]

    On that same programme, […] Gerard Batten, the Ukip leader, who claimed his new adviser Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (I refuse to use his made-up name, Tommy Robinson) doesn’t have far-right views. The far right always pretends it is not the far right. That is the game it excels at, and the BBC plays right into it. Lammy refused to play by their rules, and who can blame him?

  56. says

    Followup to comment 68.

    From Wonkette’s coverage of Pete Buttigieg’s speech:

    […] Do not be alarmed by that nearly two-hour timestamp on the video; we have advanced the start point to when Buttigieg actually takes the stage, whew. So it’s right around a half hour. [video available at the link]

    Buttigieg emphasized, as is his wont, that he’s a millennial who won’t be the current president’s age until 2054. He also made several affectionate references to his husband, Chasten, although the word “gay” never appears in the speech. But the announcement definitely acknowledged the historic nature of Buttigieg being the first major-party candidate with a halfway decent shot of lasting past the first primaries. He thanked “Chasten, my love, for giving me the strength to do this and the grounding to be myself as we go,” and later said he and Chasten knew all too well that “you are certainly not free if a county clerk gets to tell you who you ought to marry based on their political beliefs.”

    The speech as a whole is an extended exploration of Buttigieg’s three main themes, freedom, security, and democracy, and boy it’s nice to see someone talking about government as something that provides the basics of freedom, not a terrible tyrannical force that takes away freedom through evil taxes and regulations. Having the means to survive in a complex economy is about freedom, said Buttigieg:

    Health care is freedom, because you’re not free if you can’t start a small business because leaving your job would mean losing your health care. […]

    Racial justice is freedom, because you’re not free if there is a veil of mistrust between a person of color and the officers who are sworn to keep us safe.

    […] He also framed climate as a security issue, because if the world is burning and flooding around us, we aren’t exactly secure, now are we.

    And of course, “democracy” was a chance to talk about voting reform, campaign finance reform, ending the Electoral College, eliminating gerrymandering, full representation for Washington DC and Puerto Rico, and by golly, marriage equality, because the Demos includes everybody, dammit. We can get behind every bit of that. […]

    In one of the more moving parts of the speech, Buttigieg imagined what he’d tell his 17-year-old self if he could go back 20 years, reassuring him that he would someday fit in, and that it would be OK that he was a geeky bookworm who worried about being gay.

    If I found him, and told him what was ahead, would he believe me? If I could tell him that he would see the world and serve his country. That he would not only find belonging in his hometown but be entrusted by its citizens with the duty of leading it and shaping it. […]

    To tell him he’ll be all right. More than all right. To tell him that one rainy April day, before he even turns forty, he’ll wake up to headlines about whether he’s rising too quickly as he becomes a top-tier contender for the American presidency. And to tell him that on that day he announces his campaign for president, he’ll do it with his husband looking on.

    How can you live that story and not believe that America deserves our optimism, deserves our courage, deserves our hope. After all, running for office, itself, is an act of hope.

    […]

  57. says

    Followup to blf @64 and SC @69.

    From Victoria Brownworth:

    Says the guy who didn’t have a sprinkler system in Trump Tower and who ignored the California wildfires.

  58. says

    The redacted version of the Mueller report is coming out on Thursday, as was noted up-thread. That’s the day before Easter weekend, which many people consider to be a holiday. The timing, I think, is not accidental.

  59. blf says

    France24 is reporting one firefighter has been seriously injured.

    And that the fire brigades now believe the structure of the building can be saved. Not the roof or spire, obviously, but they seem to be saying the stones and iconic bell towers might, just might, be salvageable. The Grauniad confirms, “Notre-Dame’s main structure has been ‘saved and preserved’, a Paris fire official has told AFP.”

  60. says

    Pulitzer Prize news, Washington Post update:

    Washington Post critic Carlos Lozada […] reviewed many of the books published about […] Trump.

    […] They named Lozada the winner of the Pulitzer for criticism, bestowing journalism’s highest honor on him for his perspectives on politics and the presidency. It was one of several Pulitzers awarded Monday for journalism that examined Trump’s past and present and his impact on American society. […]

    Two other journalists affiliated with The Post were also cited by the Pulitzer judges for their work during 2018. Lorenzo Tugnoli, a freelance photographer, won in the feature photography category for his stark and gripping portfolio of images from war-torn Yemen that were commissioned and published by The Post. Darrin Bell, a cartoonist best known for his comic strip “Candorville,” won for editorial cartoons about Trump and other topics. […]

    Reuters’s awards were in the breaking-news photography category, for documenting the journey of Central American migrants to the United States, and for international reporting, for accounts of a massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. The latter articles landed their principal reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, in prison, sparking an international outcry. Reuters shared the international-reporting prize with a team from the Associated Press for its coverage of the war in Yemen. […]

    The Post’s reporting and opinion columns about the killing of one of its own contributing columnists, Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, was a finalist for the public-service medal, one of three Post entries to earn finalist status. The others were opinion writer and editor Elizabeth Bruenig’s account of the aftermath of a sexual assault at her high school in 2006 (in the feature-writing category) and The Post’s series on neighborhoods across the country where homicides are clustered but arrests are rare (in explanatory reporting). […]

  61. says

    From John Judis, writing for TPM about Pete Buttigieg:

    […] What accounts for his popularity? I’ll list five factors. First, he is the smartest person in class. […] “Pete Buttigieg is a gay Harvard alum, fluent in Gramsci, Joyce, and Norwegian.” Being thought of as brilliant is a plus in elections. It helped John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Barack Obama in 2008. […]

    Second, Buttigieg’s being gay is probably a plus in the Democratic primary, and not just among gay voters. […]

    Third, he is running as the candidate of the millennials, as my daughter Hilary Judis, a millennial herself and enthusiastic supporter, informed me weeks ago. […] The election, he said, is “not just about the next four years—it’s about preparing our country for a better life in 2030, in 2040, and in the year 2054, when, God willing, I will come to be the same age as our current President.”

    Fourth, he is running as the mayor who brought a rust belt city back to life and implicitly as someone who can appeal to erstwhile Trump voters in the deindustrialized Midwest. […]

    Fifth, he promises to reclaim patriotism and religion for the Democrats. […] recounting that when he was driving soldiers in Afghanistan “the men and women who got in my vehicle, they didn’t care if I was a Democrat or a Republican. They cared about whether I had selected the route with the fewest IED threats, not whether my father was documented or undocumented when he immigrated here. They cared about whether my M-4 was locked and loaded, not whether I was going home to a girlfriend or a boyfriend.”

    Buttigieg also understands that successful political campaigns are based on themes and not on policies. His announcement speech was lacking in bullet points and numbers. Instead of taking a specific stand on “Medicare for All,” he talked about how because of Medicare, when his parents got sick, “all we had to think about was what was medically right for Mom and Dad both. Not whether our family would go bankrupt.” “I want every American to have that same benefit,” he concluded.

    But unlike Beto O’Rourke, whose campaign seems based on his theatrical prowess, Buttigieg can, if questioned, get into the bullet points and numbers. […]

  62. says

    Rep. Ilham Omar said death threats against her have spiked as a result of an inflammatory video that was shared by President Donald Trump on Twitter about a remark she made regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

    USA Today link

  63. says

    From Talking Points Memo: “Jerome Corsi Accuses Roger Stone Of Violating Gag Order In Bizarre Filing”

    In a fringe-figure mad libs of a court filing made public Monday, conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi accused Roger Stone of violating his gag order by using intermediaries to smear Corsi and taint the jury pool in his case. […]

    Corsi told Jackson [U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson] that Stone “is employing surrogates, specifically in this instance his longtime associate Michael Caputo, to continue to smear and defame Dr. Corsi and his counsel Larry Klayman, while directly violating this Court’s February 19 ‘gag’ order.” […]

    The complaint pointed specifically to a Caputo MSNBC appearance last month where Caputo suggested Corsi was not ultimately indicted because he will testify against Stone at trial.

    “In actuality, Dr. Corsi was not indicted because he was truthful; nor did he threaten to kill a material witness and his service dog, as did Stone,” Corsi shot back in the complaint, referring to threats Stone allegedly made against radio host Randy Credico and Credico’s dog Bianca.

    By acting as “joint tortfeasors,” Stone and Caputo are seeking to “coerce and threaten Dr. Corsi to testify falsely if subpoenaed to be called as a material witness in Stone’s ensuing criminal trial,” Corsi alleged.

    “The goal of these defamatory statements is to create the false implication that Plaintiffs are not true conservatives and not supporters of President Trump and are dishonest and underhanded because they were willing to help Special Counsel Robert Mueller try to take down President Trump by having his adviser Roger Stone indicted, among other false implications,” the lawsuit last week said. […]

    Okay. I’m feeling sorry for U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is going to have to read all the mad libs and then rule on this.

  64. says

    Hm… Government says WaPo can’t have unredacted Manafort documents. Key papragraph (p. 8):

    The redactions at issue were undertaken and approved recently – from December 2018, through March 2019. No material changes have occurred in these past months. Although the Special Counsel has concluded his work, he has also referred a number of matters to other offices. The ongoing investigations that required redactions – many of which were already being conducted by other offices – remain ongoing. And the privacy interests that warranted redactions remain the same.

  65. says

    Game-of-Thrones-ish action inside the National Rifle Association:

    The Wall Street Journal brings us an epic tale of an ancient and secretive dynasty struggling for its survival in a changing world, and the palace intrigue that’s erupted into a contentious struggle for power. We only wish there were some ice zombies to up the stakes, though everybody’s pretty white to start with, regardless of where they’re walking.

    It seems the National Rifle Association is suing its longtime ad agency, Ackerman McQueen Inc., and accusing it of not providing details to justify all the money the company has billed the nonprofit, which has been running a deficit for two years now. […]

    The NRA has been losing money since its great big spending spree in the 2016 election, and some board members are wondering what exactly Ackerman McQueen is doing with all the money it gets — $42.6 million in 2017 according to tax filings. The agency is the NRA’s single biggest contractor, and “has been widely credited with helping to transform the NRA from a grass-roots operation to a powerful national advocacy group.” What’s more, Ackerman McQueen actually produces the online streaming outlet NRATV, the source of constant publicity for the parent organization — we were going to say “embarrassment” too […]

    Oh, and then there’s the vague whiff of possible grift involving the ad agency’s contract with NRA’s new-ish president, Upstanding Patriot Oliver North:

    Mr. North was hired last year by Ackerman McQueen to host a documentary program on NRATV—”Oliver North’s American Heroes.” […]

    […] Ah, but there’s even MORE possible fuckery afoot! That “outside NRA lawyer” who’s leading the lawsuit, William A. Brewer III, is “related to Ackerman McQueen’s two top officials, who are his brother-in-law and father-in-law.” The WSJ story calls this “a Shakespearean twist,” […]

    Brewer, of course denies that his worthless cheating dishonest relatives have anything to do with it (we are of course comically paraphrasing for satirical purposes and therefore cannot be sued). Then again, he does seem to have his own fingers well and deeply inserted into the NRA’s proverbial pie (it is a metal-jacketed semiautomatic pie). Brewer’s law firm is becoming a major vendor to the NRA, and is representing the group in that whiny federal lawsuit against Andrew Cuomo and other New York state officials, claiming New York is repressin’ the poor gun lobby. […]

  66. says

    “Bernie Sanders’ Last 10 Years Of Tax Returns Show He’s Now Among The Millionaires”:

    Bernie Sanders grew up in a three-and-a-half room rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn. His father, a paint salesman, “worked hard his entire life, but never made much money.” In the 1970s, as a young candidate in Vermont, he borrowed gas money from friends to campaign in his Volkswagen bug. The windshield wipers didn’t work. He struggled to pay bills. In 1981, after his inauguration as mayor of Burlington, he bought his first suit.

    Decades later, as a two-time presidential candidate and celebrity, he talks often about his years living “paycheck to paycheck.” Unlike Donald Trump, he says, “I know what that is about.”

    Now tax returns from the last ten years, released for the first time by his campaign aides on Monday, show how much Sanders has risen, and profited, from national politics in the three years since an improbable presidential campaign made him one of the most popular politicians in America.

    According to copies of the returns, Sanders earned more than $2.7 million from 2016 through 2018 — an income that puts him among the ranks of the “millionaires and billionaires” he has railed against for years….

  67. says

    NYT – “Congressional Investigators Subpoena Deutsche Bank and Other Lenders”:

    Congressional investigators on Monday issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and numerous other banks, seeking information about President Trump’s finances and the lenders’ business dealings with Russians, according to several people with knowledge of the investigation.

    The subpoenas, from the House’s Intelligence and Financial Services committees, were the latest attempts by congressional Democrats to collect information about the finances of Mr. Trump and his family-owned company. Another House committee is separately seeking Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns.

    The committees that issued subpoenas on Monday are jointly investigating Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Mr. Trump. Over the past two decades, Deutsche Bank was the only mainstream bank consistently willing to do business with Mr. Trump, who has a long history of defaults and bankruptcies. The bank has lent him well over $2 billion, and Mr. Trump had more than $300 million in outstanding loans from Deutsche Bank by the time he took office, making the German bank the president’s biggest creditor.

    Kerrie McHugh, a Deutsche Bank spokeswoman, said the company was “engaged in a productive dialogue” with the committees. “We remain committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations in a manner consistent with our legal obligations,” she said.

    At multiple other banks — including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America — also received subpoenas on Monday, according to two people with knowledge of the subpoenas. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation.

    The subpoenas seek records related to business the banks did with a list of suspected money launderers from Russia and other Eastern European countries, according to a person familiar with the subpoenas….

  68. says

    David Enrich from the NYT is saying (consistent with what Maxine Waters has described) that Deutsche Bank has been working with congress to help them draft subpoenas narrowly enough that they would be able to respond. He thinks they’ll be turning over the information in fairly short order.

  69. says

    Crossposted with the Notre Dame thread:

    Incredible: “Inside #NotreDame. Only a small part of the vault collapsed. Interior seems relatively untouched. Alleluia!”

    After watching the fire live, I’m astounded at these images. I’ve even seen a(n unsourced, unconfirmed) report that the organ survived. Great news.

  70. lotharloo says

    @SC:

    From minute 24 ish.
    His position on the Russian involvement is that:
    A) It is very plausible Russians were involved, and in fact this is what they do
    B) He wanted to see solid evidence
    C) He does not want to completely trust evidence or selected leaks from agencies that have a history of misleading the public

  71. lotharloo says

    @SC:

    And I’ll say one more thing. People like Neera Tanden and John Podesta were the victims of a plot by a rightwing foreign adversary to interfere in our election and to elect a racist, misogynistic, corrupt, unfit monster who would do Putin’s bidding as president.

    First, so what? US meddles in elections all over the world, including when it’s being lead by fucking Democratic presidents. Hillary was a terrible candidate, she had a hawkish foreign policy and she called war criminals such as Kissinger her “friend”.

    Second, you may say “irrelevant this” or “irrelevant that” but here you yourself are spreading the conspiracy that Trump is doing Putin’s bidding. Care to explain how it works?

  72. says

    “The 21-Year-Old Accused Of Setting Fire To Three Black Louisiana Churches Now Faces Hate Crime Charges”:

    Prosecutors in Louisiana have charged the man accused of setting fire to three black churches with hate crimes.

    Holden Matthews, who was arrested last week, pleaded not guilty to three hate crime charges on Monday, along with several counts of arson involving a religious building, according to the St. Landry Parish District Attorney’s Office.

    The three St. Landry Parish churches, which were all empty at the time, burned to the ground within 10 days of one another, with the first fire occurring on March 26. About 77% of residents in Opelousas, Louisiana, the town the burned churches were in or near, are black.

    The additional hate crime charges confirm that authorities believe that Matthews targeted the churches because of the race of their attendees, District Attorney Earl Taylor explained to BuzzFeed News, a potential motive that investigators had held off on suggesting until Monday.

    Matthews, 21, could face about 65 years in prison, Taylor said.

    The suspect is the son of a sheriff’s deputy and has no history of arrests or violence, authorities say. According to CBS, Louisiana Fire Marshal Butch Browning testified in court that Matthews documented the fires on his phone, even superimposing himself on copies of news reports to claim responsibility for the damage.

    At a news conference last week, the state marshal’s office said investigators believe black metal music may have influenced his actions. Matthews was passionate about the genre, specifically Norwegian black metal music, and was also very active in pagan Facebook groups….

  73. says

    lotharloo:

    First, so what? US meddles in elections all over the world, including when it’s being lead [sic] by fucking Democratic presidents.

    Gah. I started a longform response to this, but I’m not going to bother right now. I’ve written about US global political and electoral interference for years. Look at my damn blog.

    I find your reasoning politically insane and morally repugnant. Presumably you oppose US efforts to interfere in electoral politics in Honduras, Bolivia, Venezuela,…, and that you do so on political and moral grounds. It’s contrary to all democratic values and invariably leads to the entrenchment of authoritarian rightwing client states that aren’t beholden to their people; are corrupt; exacerbate inequality; destroy movements for social justice; roll back rights gains; wreck the environment; use propaganda and lies; imprison, torture, and murder with impunity;… If your response to this happening to the US is to say “Ha, serves those establishment Democratic assholes right – Good one, Putin,” you need to take a long hard look at your fucking commitments. Not only are you saying that you don’t really care about any of the people or countries victimized by this except as a cudgel to use against the US, but that you don’t care about anyone in the US or around the world (including but not limited to the direct victims of the hacking) who is suffering and will suffer as the result of a despicable interference. Your dismissing and condoning the Kremlin (I have to wonder how much you really know about that regime) is also helping enable them to push their fascist puppets in Europe and create chaos in those democracies, but hey, fuck those countries, too, and fuck all of Putin’s enemies in Europe who have their personal information stolen and used against them in a campaign of misrepresentations. That you apparently hate liberal Democrats so much that you would condone fascist electoral sabotage that resulted in a deranged clown as US president says nothing good about you.

    This also points to why it’s so difficult to have a discussion or debate about this with Greenwald and that group. They present it as a rejection of factual claims (a “hoax,” a “conspiracy theory”), but won’t have the discussion at that level because it’s not really about whether any of it is true or not, is it? At root, they don’t care if it’s true because they don’t give a flying fuck what Putin or Trump or his campaign did. It’s all about attacking and laughing at the real enemy, the liberal Democratic establishment.

    Second, you may say “irrelevant this” or “irrelevant that” but here you yourself are spreading the conspiracy that Trump is doing Putin’s bidding. Care to explain how it works?

    So after everything I said in #146 (to which much more could be added: the nomination of Tillerson, the constant attacks on allies, the suggestion that NATO commitments are optional, the suggestion that the people of Montenegro are “very aggressive” and could cause a third world war, the refusal to talk about or address ongoing or future election interference, the calls to investigate the investigators,…) this is all you have. You’re completely proving my point. Won’t respond to the pattern of evidence – just keep shouting the word “conspiracy” and asking the same intentionally vague questions to which you’ve been given the answers dozens of times. I’m done with this conversation.

  74. says

    lotharloo:

    From minute 24 ish.
    His position on the Russian involvement is that:
    A) It is very plausible Russians were involved, and in fact this is what they do
    B) He wanted to see solid evidence
    C) He does not want to completely trust evidence or selected leaks from agencies that have a history of misleading the public

    This is an epistemological shell game, again similar to what AGW deniers do. He’s always willing to be convinced, but the bar for convincing him somehow is never reached to the point where he absorbs that information into his view of the world. I don’t know when this was recorded, but on this question there’s no need to wait for the Mueller report. Mueller has put the evidence (that can be made public) into the GRU indictment. It includes knowledge at the level of the keystrokes of GRU agents, who are indicted by name. He said he trusts the independent investigation, and even if nothing more is put forward in the report that we see that should well be enough. That indictment was filed in July of last year. Greenwald tweeted (see #45 above) “In an article that raises some interesting points, @AndrewCMcCarthy asks why DOJ didn’t also indict Assange for conspiring with Russia over its hacking, noting that had it done so, it would have been the only time they had to prove Russia hacking in court” yesterday. This is not reasonable skepticism; it’s intellectually dishonest bullshit. But neither you nor Greenwald appear to give a fuck what the Kremlin did or who it continues to hurt in any case.

  75. says

    I had missed this:

    Bloomberg – “Trump Immigration Agenda Suffers New Defeat With Ruling on Haitians’ Status”:

    A federal judge blocked the U.S. from ending Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, the second court to find that revoking TPS was improper.

    The decision, the latest in a series of blows to the White House’s immigration policy, comes after the Trump administration planned to remove the protection from tens of thousands of Haitians living legally in the U.S. They gained it after an earthquake devastated the island nation in 2010. The U.S. said conditions had improved enough for their return.

    “The evidence shows the White House exerted significant influence” over Elaine Duke, then acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, “to reach a predetermined decision to terminate TPS and abate the presence of nonwhite immigrants in the country,” U.S. District Judge William Kuntz in Brooklyn, New York, said Thursday in issuing a preliminary injunction blocking the program’s termination.

    “Evidence of their political motivations is replete throughout the administrative record,” Kuntz wrote. He found that Duke “considered how the Haiti TPS decision fit into the White House’s grander “America First’ strategy.”

    The Justice Department didn’t have an immediate comment on the ruling.

    The ruling is the second to block President Donald Trump’s administration from halting the program. A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary order in October stopping the government from ending TPS for immigrants from Nicaragua, El Salvador and Sudan as well as Haiti. The government had already granted an extension of the program after that decision. Kuntz issued his own ruling after a non-jury trial in January.

    It comes after a succession of obstacles to the president’s plans for a wall on the Mexican border and after a ruling Monday barring the administration from forcing Central Americans seeking asylum from persecution to wait in Mexico while their applications are being processed.

    In a 145-page decision, Kuntz cited evidence that administration officials pressured Duke to end TPS for Haitians. He cited a November 2017 meeting convened by John Kelly, then chief of staff, that also included Stephen Miller, an adviser to the president and an immigration hawk, and Jeff Sessions, attorney general at the time. Howard Roin, a lawyer for the Haitians, had argued Sessions “leaned on” Duke to terminate TPS.

    “The manner in which Acting Secretary Duke, DHS and the Department of State undertook the review process also strongly suggests the decision was pretextual,” Kuntz said in his ruling. He cited Kelly’s directives to his staff to “search for criminality and welfare data” as “further evidence the agency was fishing for reasons to terminate TPS for Haiti.”

    Duke faced a deadline in late 2017 to extend TPS for 50,000 Haitians in the U.S. and was leaning toward renewal, Roin told Kuntz in opening arguments. Kuntz said Thursday it was only after the Kelly meeting, with direct pressure from the White House, that she decided to end the program.

  76. says

    “WH Officials Having ‘Breakdown-Level Anxiety’ That Mueller Report Will Show They Ratted On Trump”:

    Multiple current and former White House officials-turned-witnesses for Special Counsel Robert Mueller are fretting that their identities will be exposed in the full report, outing them as the sources of damning information about President Donald Trump.

    According to an NBC News report, many of them have contacted the Justice Department to determine if their names, or at least obvious clues about their identities, will be redacted from the report. The DOJ has reportedly stayed mum.

    An NBC source close to the White House reported “breakdown-level anxiety” among those who shared information with Mueller….

  77. lotharloo says

    If your response to this happening to the US is to say “Ha, serves those establishment Democratic assholes right – Good one, Putin,” you need to take a long hard look at your fucking commitments.

    I’m not celebrating that Putin hacked DNC. I personally don’t care.

    Not only are you saying that you don’t really care about any of the people or countries victimized by this except as a cudgel to use against the US, but that you don’t care about anyone in the US or around the world (including but not limited to the direct victims of the hacking) who is suffering and will suffer as the result of a despicable interference.

    No, I disagree with this assessment. If Hillary Clinton were a candidate who did not have hawkish foriegn policy, who did not have a history of voting for wars, and if she were not the secretary of State, or if she were always committed to a moral foreign policy, I would have cared. Then the Russians would be fucking over an innocent party, and what not. But that’s not what happened. Sure, we can nitpick and say that Hillary Clinton is obviously better than Putin, which is true, but nonetheless, she was always committed to the stupid US foreign policy even if it’s preferable to the more corrupt Russian foreign policy.

    Your dismissing and condoning the Kremlin (I have to wonder how much you really know about that regime)

    I hate the Russian government and the oligarchs associated with it. They are a blight in virtually every they get involved with, from politics, to fucking chess. I actually confess that I have a rather bigoted view towards Russians which is not nice.

    That you apparently hate liberal Democrats so much that you would condone fascist electoral sabotage that resulted in a deranged clown as US president says nothing good about you.

    First off, it is not clear how much the Russian meddling influenced the election. Second, I hate the Democratic establishment with their pathetic politics, their pandering, their meaningless opposition to the Republican, their incompetence, their non-stop submission to the Republican and rightwing agendas in forms of Obama making Bush’s tax cuts permanent, Dems voting for Republican wars, and so on. But I am not condoning Russian actions, I’m just saying this is a back and forth that has been going on for a long while and if both sides have their hands dirty, then it’s hard to feel sympathy for any of them.

    So after everything I said in #146 (to which much more could be added: the nomination of Tillerson, the constant attacks on allies, the suggestion that NATO commitments are optional, the suggestion that the people of Montenegro are “very aggressive” and could cause a third world war, the refusal to talk about or address ongoing or future election interference, the calls to investigate the investigators,…) this is all you have. You’re completely proving my point. Won’t respond to the pattern of evidence – just keep shouting the word “conspiracy” and asking the same intentionally vague questions to which you’ve been given the answers dozens of times. I’m done with this conversation.

    I personally think there’s a financial connection between Trump and some Russian which makes him soft towards them. However, I don’t think it rises to the level that makes Trump a Russian puppet or makes him do Putin’s bidding. You mention a pattern of behaviour that is inline with your theory that Trump is doing Putin’s bidding, however, you are also ignoring other actions by Trump government that goes against Russian interests, e.g., US meddling in Venezuela, bombings of syrian bases, iran deal, Trump’s pressure on Germany to not buy gas from Russians https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-07/germany-wobbles-on-russian-gas-pipeline-as-trump-pressure-tells and so on.

    On top of that, Trump is also unpredictable, incompetent, and loves dictators. He has been saying crazy stupid things about the North Korean regime and its leader but I suppose since that does not serve in the “Trump is a russian puppet” theory, we just ignore it.

    If Trump is doing Putin’s bidding, I personally find it very difficult to believe that Robert Mueller missed it and that after so many months of investigation, he turned up with no inditements on this specific charge. It just doesn’t make sense.

    This is an epistemological shell game, again similar to what AGW deniers do. He’s always willing to be convinced, but the bar for convincing him somehow is never reached to the point where he absorbs that information into his view of the world.

    I don’t agree with Greenwald on this, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Russians hacked DNC but I think his views are fair, given that intelligence agencies have fooled the public in the past.

  78. lotharloo says

    Something that I forgot to add, while it’s true that Trump has been critical NATO and he has done actions that seem to hurt NATO (and obviously these support the theory of “Trump does Putin’s bidding”), he has been pressuring the NATO allies to spend more on their defense budget. How does this fit in the theory? Well, I don’t think it does. The only consistent pattern here is that Trump is a fucking idiot who has no clue what he’s doing.

  79. Oggie: Mathom says

    Resident right-winger in my office was wondering, quite loudly and persistently, wondered how many Muslims were on the construction crew, why they were allowed to work on a church, and will we ever know which one of them set the fire.

    What the fuck is wrong with the world?

  80. says

    If Hillary Clinton were a candidate who did not have hawkish foriegn policy, who did not have a history of voting for wars, and if she were not the secretary of State, or if she were always committed to a moral foreign policy, I would have cared. Then the Russians would be fucking over an innocent party, and what not.

    Mossadegh, Árbenz, Lumumba, Allende, Chávez, Correa, Maduro, Morales, Zelaya,…

    Are/were all of these pure? “Innocent”? What’s the standard for political innocence such that we’re supposed to brush off a person or party’s sabotage by hostile foreign governments? “She had a hawkish foreign policy so I don’t care if the election is sabotaged by Russia in favor of a rightwing would-be autocrat, regardless of who’s hurt in the process” is quite a take.

    Sure, we can nitpick and say that Hillary Clinton is obviously better than Putin, which is true,…

    Sure, centrist Democrat vs. fascistic kleptocrat – nitpick. Are you out of your fucking mind?

    I actually confess that I have a rather bigoted view towards Russians which is not nice.

    It’s worse than not nice.

    …I hate the Democratic establishment

    Yes, I grasp that now. It’s clearly interfering with your ability to evaluate the evidence in the Russia-Trump matter, and to respond to what’s happened, but beyond that I still find it perplexing. Your recent intervention on the subject began with: “I personally think while the Democrats should try to get the full version of the report, they should give up on the ‘collusion’ story as it turning out to be a bullshit conspiracy theory.” That almost sounds like friendly (if ill-founded) advice, but it plainly wasn’t. Your inexplicably intense hostility is coloring your approach.

    “I supported Bernie and so won’t be voting for Clinton” in 2016 was crazy enough. “I hate the Democrats so much that I don’t care about the Russian attack to subvert her campaign and help Trump win the election” is batshit.

  81. blf says

    US deports husband of soldier killed in Afghanistan – then lets him back in:

    José González Carranza was arrested by Ice officers and deported to Mexico, but brought back after an Arizona paper reported on it

    US immigration officials deported the husband of a soldier killed in Afghanistan — then reversed course and let him back into the country.

    José González Carranza […] was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers last week at his home in Arizona and quickly deported to Mexico, he and his attorney told the Arizona Republic.

    After the paper reported on his expulsion, Ice officers let him re-enter the country and brought him back to Phoenix.

    The Mexican immigrant’s wife, Barbara Vieyra, a private in the army, was killed while serving in Afghanistan in 2010 when insurgents attacked her unit. They have a 12-year-old daughter, who is a US citizen.

    […]

    González Carranza entered the US illegally in 2004, but after his wife’s death, he was granted a protection called parole in place, offered to family members of military troops, which allows them to stay in the US without threat of deportation.

    But Ice filed a new deportation case against him last year for reasons that are not clear, his lawyer, Ezequiel Hernandez, told the Republic. […]

    “There are plenty of people you can go after, but not a guy whose wife died in Afghanistan,” Hernandez said.

    […]

    The article says Mr Carranza was brought back to the States in handcuffs! At which point my incredulity detector is beeping… I need some independent confirmation on that one.

  82. KG says

    But I am not condoning Russian actions, I’m just saying this is a back and forth that has been going on for a long while and if both sides have their hands dirty, then it’s hard to feel sympathy for any of them. – lotharloo@106

    IOW: “I am not condoning Russian actions, I’m just condoning Russian actions”.

  83. says

    Channel 4 – “Revealed: How Leave.EU faked migrant footage”:

    The pro-Brexit campaign group, Leave.EU, faked a viral video and appear to have staged photos of “migrants”, shortly before the EU referendum.

    An investigation by Channel 4 News found that images purporting to show “migrants” attacking young women in London seem to have been staged.

    The group – backed by businessman Arron Banks – was also behind a fake video, claiming to show how easy it is for migrants to sneak into Britain. In reality, satellite data shows the men on board had not left UK waters.

    The photographs and video both involved a former SAS soldier, Jonathan Pollen, who works for Banks’ corporate intelligence agency.

    Although the photos were never used, the fake video went viral, garnering hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook.

    Just days before the EU referendum in 2016, Leave.EU published an “undercover investigation” on Facebook, purporting to show how easy it is to smuggle migrants across the Channel.

    But satellite data, seen by Channel 4 News, shows the footage was filmed in reverse. The shots of “migrants” entering the UK were actually filmed before the boat had even left British waters.

    Just days earlier, Leave.EU was also behind a series of seemingly-staged photographs that show a woman being violently attacked by a man wearing a hooded jacket. Another photo appeared to show a woman being grabbed from behind as she walks into a shop.

    One of the attackers seen in the photos is wearing a distinctive grey denim jacket, with black leather sleeves and a white hood. A strikingly similar outfit is worn by one of the “migrants” seen in the Channel crossing video.

    Leaked emails, seen by Channel 4 News, show the pictures were emailed by Mr Pollen to Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s head of communications and Arron Banks’ right hand man.

    Mr Wigmore then forwarded them on to Leave.EU press team, saying: “Migrants beating up girl in Tottenham [on] Saturday… Can we get this ready to go as a press release.”…

  84. says

    Zoe Tillman:

    A judge just heard args in BuzzFeed and @JasonLeopold’s FOIA request for the Mueller report. Judge denied request for an injunction to have the report produced under FOIA by 4/18 — judge wants to wait and see what gets released by AG Barr on Thursday and go from there

    But: The judge indicated he wants to move on the FOIA side of this, which involves litigating redactions, quickly. He said the AG had “created an environment” that caused a sign. part of the American public to question whether there’s been full transparency re: the Mueller report

    The judge told the government that it should start thinking about how he can assess whether they’ve properly withheld information under FOIA. This could mean “in camera” inspection by the judge — aka, the judge gets to read what’s behind the redaction bars

  85. blf says

    US measles cases surge nearly 20% in a week, CDC says:

    […]
    The number of confirmed cases of measles in the United States this year jumped by nearly 20% in the week ending 11 April, in the country’s second-worst outbreak in nearly two decades, federal health officials reported on Monday.

    As of 11 April, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recorded 555 cases of the disease since the beginning of the year, up from 465 cases confirmed by 4 April. The cases were found in 20 states spanning the country.

    […]

    Five parents filed a lawsuit with the New York state court against the city’s health department on Monday, requesting a halt to emergency orders requiring the measles vaccine on the grounds that it goes against their religious beliefs.

    There is insufficient evidence of a measles epidemic or dangerous outbreak to justify the respondents’ extraordinary measures, including forced vaccination, said the lawsuit […]

    Oh for feck’s sake. My interpretation of the ramblings of a stone age imaginary magic sky faerie requires other peoples’s children to get needlessly sick with a dangerous avoidable disease! So there!! Ni!!!

    New York City has confirmed 329 cases of measles since October, including 44 since last week’s emergency order […]

    Mayor Bill de Blasio declared the city’s outbreak a public health emergency last week and ordered unvaccinated people in the affected parts of Brooklyn to get the vaccine or face a fine. It is the worst outbreak seen in the city since 1991 […]

  86. blf says

    Yet more on hair furor’s utterly absurd unsolicited ignorant advice, Experts deride Trump’s Notre Dame firefighting advice as ‘risible’:

    [… analysis of just how stoopid waterbombing would have been…]

    Lt Col Gabriel Plus of the Paris fire brigade said that “everything was against” the first firefighters on Monday.

    “Time and the wind were against us and we had to get on top of it fast. We had to make a rapid choice … and the priority we gave ourselves was to save the two bell towers, and both were saved,” he added.

    “Imagine if the woodwork in the belfries had been weakened, the huge bells would have collapsed, and that might have brought the towers down.”

    […]

    Guillermo Rein, professor of fire science at Imperial College in London, praised the work of the French firefighters.

    “The fire brigade had to be aggressive fighting the big roof fire with the aerial ladders designed for high-rise buildings, but at the same time be gentle with the vulnerable structure of the stone vaults and walls. They did a fine job, and how they tackled this fire will probably be studied in the years ahead.”

    […]

    Indeed. Reports are “A greater disaster was averted by members of the Paris fire brigade who risked their lives to remain inside the burning monument to create a wall of water between the raging fire and two towers on the west facade” — Notre Dame was ‘15 to 30 minutes’ away from complete destruction.

  87. says

    Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, praised Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act):

    Quite obviously, more people have health insurance than would otherwise have it, so you got to look at it as positive.

    Trump still calls the Affordable Care Act a “disaster.” Trump still says that he thinks Republican Senators should repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump still talks about a non-existent replacement healthcare plan.

    Senator Grassley in 2009 raised funds based on “defeating Obama-care,” and he spread the ignorant conspiracy theory of “death panels,” etc.

    From the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake:

    It is worth taking stock of this moment. What we are seeing here is the marking of a willful GOP capitulation to Obamacare. Republicans are essentially admitting it is here to stay, barring unforeseen changes. They are trying to dress it up and put a good face on it for Trump, given that he apparently is not willing to concede the point. But it appears their long-emphasized push to get rid of this allegedly destructive law is effectively over.

    However, even though Republicans like Senator Grassley are now admitting that, overall, Obamacare is a good thing, (or they are at least admitting that they are not going to fight over it), and even Mitch McConnell has made it clear that he is not going to come up with a replacement plan … even with all that going on, we still have Trump’s White House and Trump’s Justice Department backing the efforts of a judge in Texas to destroy Obamacare.

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-admins-insane-health-care-gambit-was-the-white-houses-idea
    Excerpt:

    [March 27, 2019] the Trump administration has a radical new health care position: it wants the courts to not just strip protections from Americans with pre-existing conditions; the administration also wants the courts to destroy the Affordable Care Act in its entirety.

    In terms of real-world impact, the Trump administration, unable to pass a reform law of its own, believes judges should help Republicans take coverage from tens of millions of Americans, and take critically important health care benefits from tens of millions more. […]

    The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the case in July.

  88. says

    As the New York Times reported, Elizabeth Warren unveiled her proposal for the management of public lands yesterday.

    Excerpt:

    […] promises an executive order that would prohibit new leases for fossil fuel drilling offshore and on public lands, calls for the creation of “a 21st century Civilian Conservation Corps” staffed by 10,000 young people and seeks to reduce inaccessible public acreage by 50 percent.

    It also aims to undo some of the environmental actions undertaken by the Trump administration, which she said amounted to “selling off our public lands to the oil, gas and coal industries for pennies on the dollar,” accelerating a “climate crisis” in the process. Under the plan, Ms. Warren said she would reinstate Obama-era air and water protections and wield the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law, to restore national monuments that President Trump shrank.

    “America’s public lands are one of our greatest treasures,” she wrote in the Medium post. “But today, those lands are under threat.”

    “We must not allow corporations to pillage our public lands and leave taxpayers to clean up the mess,” she said. “All of us — local communities and tribes, hunters and anglers, ranchers and weekend backpackers — must work together to manage and protect our shared heritage.” […]

  89. says

    Cory Booker unveils plan to cut taxes for half the country

    The Rise Credit would boost existing tax credits for workers by an estimated $2.5 trillion, according to the 2020 candidate’s campaign.

    […] The Rise Credit, as the campaign has dubbed it, would expand on the existing Earned Income Tax Credit, which supplements wages for lower-income workers.

    Booker’s plan calls for expanding the tax credit’s benefits to higher incomes — from a maximum income of $54,000 to $90,000 for married couples — and raising the maximum benefits as well. Joint filers could receive a 25 percent higher maximum credit, topping out at about $8,000 per year. The plan includes a bigger bump in benefits for childless workers, whose tax credit payout is currently capped at about about $500, but would rise up to about $4,000 under Booker’s plan. […]

  90. says

    Oh, FFS.

    This is from Michele Bachmann:

    I pray according to the scripture, which says we need to pray to expose, ask the Lord to expose the hidden deeds of darkness. And he has remarkable ways of doing this, where you can only say it’s the hand of God who exposes the hidden deeds of darkness.

    She was referring to the so-called “deep state” during an interview on an Olive Tree Ministries radio show. The show focuses on end-times religion.

    More from Bachmann:

    In my lifetime I have never seen a more biblical president than I have seen in Donald Trump. He is highly biblical and I would say to your listeners [that] we will, in all likelihood, never see a more godly, biblical president again in our lifetime. So we need to be not only praying for him, we need to support him, in my opinion, in every possible way that we can.

    Nope, that’s not satire from The Onion. No, that is not an SNL skit. That’s the real far-right evangelical voice of America.

  91. says

    Do we really care? Probably not that much. But this latest plan from Trump does prove that he has thin skin, and that he can’t take a joke.

    […] Trump announced he will head to Wisconsin for the rally he’ll hold instead of attending the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

    His reelection campaign rolled out details about the Green Bay, Wis., event that will take place next Saturday while much of Washington’s press corps heads to the annual journalism celebration Trump has scorned since he became president.

    Though he attended the star-studded event several times before running for office, including in 2011, when he was skewered for promoting the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., he has broken with years of tradition in not attending a single dinner since becoming president. He has instead hosted competing events with his supporters.

    Several weeks ago, Trump told reporters he would again skip the event “because the dinner is so boring and so negative,” saying that “we’re going to hold a very positive rally instead.” […]

    Link

  92. says

    Pete Buttigieg suggested a national service program that sounds sort of similar to Elizabeth Warrens’ plan for a “21st century Civilian Conservation Corps.” Maybe the two candidates can work on that together.

    From Buttigieg:

    We really want to talk about the threat to social cohesion that helps characterize this presidency but also just this era. One thing we could do that would change that would be to make it, if not legally obligatory, but certainly a social norm that anybody after they’re 18 spends a year in national service. […]

    It’s one of these ideas that everybody kind of likes, but it was always important and never urgent. How would that ever kind of hold on its own in a policy debate where we deal with kids in cages and we have to deal with climate change and there are all these pressing, burning issues? […]

  93. lotharloo says

    @SC:

    It’s clearly interfering with your ability to evaluate the evidence in the Russia-Trump matter, and to respond to what’s happened, but beyond that I still find it perplexing.

    Then tell me what do you think is the plausible scenario. Tell me how does it work that Trump does Putin’s bidding. Do they have a code language? How does Putin send his messages? Encryption? Secret emails? Secret meetings? How did Mueller not figure this out?

  94. says

    From The New Yorker, “The Dangerous Dregs of ISIS.”

    A few days before the collapse of the Islamic State’s caliphate, I visited one of the new “pop-up prisons” that had been hastily converted to hold thousands of surrendering fighters in Syria. The numbers wildly exceeded all expectations, including estimates by U.S. intelligence. The most striking sight at the prison entrance was a mound of human hair lying on the raw concrete floor. Clumps of it—some brown, some graying, most of it greasy or matted—had been shaved off the heads and faces of fighters before they were taken to group cells. “Lice,” one of the guards told me.

    […] In just four days, the compound of modest brick and stucco buildings had been filled with fifteen hundred fighters from countries on four continents, including France, Libya, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iraq, and the United States, […]

    After five years of war with the Islamic State, the biggest problem for the winners is coping with the losers. […] there are tens of thousands of captured ISIS members whom no nation wants to repatriate, and the local militia holding them has neither the resources nor the personnel to keep them indefinitely. […] The prisons, the hospital, and the camp are all bursting.

    “There is nothing else in the world that compares to this unprecedented humanitarian and security situation, which is legally complicated and politically fraught,” a senior State Department official told me. So far, the local Syrian Democratic Forces militia (S.D.F.), the U.S.-led coalition of more than seventy countries, and several international relief agencies have been improvising—total ad-hockery, in the words of a senior U.S. military commander involved in Syria. […]

    The pop-up prisons are combustible politically and vulnerable physically, a dozen U.S. diplomats and military officials told me. ISIS has its roots in an earlier prison culture—notably in Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, two infamous prisons in Iraq that were run by the United States between 2003 and 2011. Its founding “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was held at Camp Bucca for nine months, in 2004. He and other future isis leaders created an embryonic network there. […]

    Despite its recent loss of terrain in both Syria and Iraq, U.S. military and S.D.F. officials told me, ISIS underground cells still have those basic capabilities. Prison breaks, they added, are almost certain to be one way that the group tries to rebuild. […]

    The camp for the dregs of ISIS in al-Hawl was one of the dreariest places I’ve seen over forty years in the Middle East. On the morning I visited, it was chaotic and cacophonous. Litter was everywhere. The whole area stank. Trucks were still hauling people in, even though a U.N. agency had declared the camp “extremely above capacity.” More than seventy-three thousand people were living in an area of less than four square kilometres. […]

    Women were among the earliest targets of isis, for slavery and sex trafficking. […]

    Yet thousands of women in al-Hawl were also “suspected foreign fighters,” the U.N. reported. Women played valuable roles in ISIS, ranging from suicide bombers to spies, morality police, and assassins. They were among “the most brutal enforcers,” according to a report by the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. ISIS had all-female units. […]

    Among the people I met, destitution did not deter their loyalty. Salimah Athilayabah, a twenty-two-year-old Chechen from Russia, lived in one of the camp’s few cinderblock facilities covered with a bright-blue tarp roof. It held dozens of women and children, many of them crying. The shelters had no furniture, only mats on the ground; several of them were shared. Athilayabah told me that she had joined isis four years ago. “We and everyone like me came to assist God,” she told me. […] “there’s a caliphate in our hearts.”

    […] Without a longer-term plan, however, U.S. officials fear that the camp, like the prisons in Iraq, will become an ecosystem that perpetuates ISIS ideology—and just breeds another generation. Sixty-five per cent of al-Hawl’s residents—some forty-eight thousand—are under the age of eighteen. Almost a quarter of them are under the age of five. […]

    “All of those people spent five years of their life serving in the isis caliphate,” he [General Mazloum Kobani Abdi, who launched a makeshift rehabilitation program in Syria] told me, at his forward operating base, near the Iraqi border. “All of these people still believe in the ISIS ideology. We are forced to solve this problem with the countries that they belong to. If we don’t, it’s going to be dangerous for all of our futures.”

    Much more at the link. I think the Trump administration is ignoring this problem.

  95. says

    One of the points that Mayor Pete Buttigieg made on Rachel Maddow’s show last night was that Republicans can’t win a fair fight, so they are always trying to restrict voting rights. Yesterday, the Republican-controlled state House in Tennessee proved his point.

    […] The bill imposes fines on registration groups that turn in too many incomplete registration forms, while also allowing criminal penalties, including jail time, if the groups violate certain rules regarding voter registration.

    Great Republican plan: make registering new voters more onerous. This reminds me of the kind of tactics that Stacey Abrams is fighting against.

    Republicans, including Secretary of State Tre Hargett, pushed the bill after local election officials in Tennessee’s Shelby County were sued in 2018 by a black voter group for their handling of voter registration forms.

    Oh, yes, throw in a little revenge against black voters as well. Very Republican.

    Under the new proposal, voter registration groups that turn in more than 100 “deficient” registration forms can be fined up to $2,000, and those that turn in more than 500 deficient applications would face fines up to $10,000. The groups also must be registered in state, are required to submit the registration forms within 10 days of collecting them, and are banned from paying workers per registration completed, under the legislation.

    Violating those rules could land a paid worker of a voter registration drive in prison for nearly a year and also impose a $2,500 fine. The penalties apply only to groups that pay workers for the collection of registrations.

    Voting rights group say that the legislation is geared at chilling voter participation efforts in a state that has one of the lowest registration rates in the country. […]

    In the 2018 litigation, the Tennessee Black Voter Project alleged that the officials in Shelby County, which contains Memphis, had failed to process thousand of applications the group had submitted. The county election commission claimed that the registration group had bombarded officials at the last minute with nearly 10,000 applications […] The group countered that the applications were being deemed incomplete for minor deficiencies, like a failure to check the “Mr./Mrs./Ms” box.

    Right. So, even if citizens work hard to register voters, Republicans will find some excuse to invalidate those registrations. Automatic registration to vote should be a nationwide standard.

    The new legislation now heads for a vote in the Senate, where it has already been approved by a committee. Talking Points Memo link

  96. says

    lotharloo:

    Then tell me what do you think is the plausible scenario. Tell me how does it work that Trump does Putin’s bidding.

    WTF? I described what I think is the actual scenario @ #146 on the previous iteration, and added to the list @ #102 above. That’s just some of the evidence already in the public sphere.

    Do they have a code language? How does Putin send his messages? Encryption? Secret emails? Secret meetings?

    Yes, they have fucking had secret meetings! After which Trump has parroted Putin’s talking points. Do you even follow the news? Of course, all Trump would have to do is follow the Kremlin’s propaganda (and the bizarre Montenegro comments suggest he does) to gather the line of the moment, but that’s not even necessary since it’s all just variations on well-known themes.

    Here’s an article I happened upon just a few hours ago that speaks to some of these questions: “Is Trump a Russian Agent?: Explaining Terms of Art and Examining the Facts.”

    How did Mueller not figure this out?

    I have no idea what you’re talking about. We haven’t seen a full sentence from Mueller’s 400-page report. The fact that he didn’t charge conspiracy with the hacking and dissemination doesn’t make all of the evidence disappear. We know there’s been collusion and Trump doing Putin’s bidding because there’s extensive public evidence of it. Mueller’s report can’t reduce the amount of information we have – it can only add to it, which I’m sure it does. NBC reported that “some [Mueller] team members say his findings paint a picture of a campaign whose members were manipulated by a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation.” Virginia Heffernan has a source who said the Mueller report “really damaging to the president” and bears no resemblance to Barr’s non-summary summary.

    Anyway, it’s clear to me that you’re determined to maintain your chosen posture regardless of what I say, so I suggest we put this off until the Barr-redacted version of the Mueller report is released and go from there.

  97. says

    Followup to comment 130.

    Texas Republicans are also working hard to restrict voting rights.

    Just a little more than a month after a federal judge told Texas not to try purging its voter rolls of suspiciously brown people based on very bad drivers license data, the state Senate is back with a whole NEW load of voter-suppressing fuckery, once again in the name of fighting “voter fraud,” which is exceedingly rare to start with. This time the vehicle for reducing turnout is a steaming pile called Senate Bill 9, which passed Monday and will now head to the state House. SB 9 will treat submitting “false information” on a voter registration form as a “state jail felony,” even if the incorrect information is an honest error — like writing the wrong zip code. And that’s just for starters!

    The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, is very very concerned about the integrity of the ballot, you see. That’s why his bill will make it a lot easier to turn voters into criminals! Now, we should say from the start that there is exactly one (1) good idea in the bill: It requires that electronic voting machines provide a paper record of each vote, to allow audits of voting after a close election, or if hacking is suspected. A hearty round of applause for that truly essential bit of good government! But the rest of it is a mess.

    […] the bill would also punish people for casting a provisional ballot if they’re not eligible to vote. That’s actually pretty fiendish, and may violate federal law, […]Presently, there’s no penalty in Texas for an ineligible voter casting a provisional ballot […]

    “Under state law, provisional voting ballots automatically serve as a voter registration application,” Menéndez said. “(This bill) would criminalize people who aren’t sure of their registration status and fill out a provisional ballot.” […]

    Another fun provision of SB 9 would crack down on those horrible evil frauders who drive people to the polls with the intent of letting just anybody exercise their legal franchise. […] SB 9 would require anyone who drives someone to the polls to fill out a form stating that the voter is physically unable to get to the polls without assistance, or at risk of damaging their health. Maybe that could be followed up with a provision requiring poll workers to sneak up on any such voters and yell “BOO!” to see if they jump to their feet. […]

    Texas is so bad at letting people vote, in fact, that Jim Jordan is trying to block an investigation of it!

    […] State Sen Menéndez and another Democrat, state Sen. José Rodríguez, both offered amendments that would clarify that people should only be punished if they intentionally broke the voter registration or provisional ballot sections of the new law.

    “If we’re going to make people felons, we should at least make sure they are intentionally committing the fraud and not just checking the wrong box,” Rodríguez said.

    […] the state Senate rejected both amendments, and now the bill goes on to the House. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick sees the bill as a top priority, so it’s likely to pass there as well. Then when Gov. Greg Abbott signs it with a big speech about cracking down on (nearly nonexistent) “voter fraud,” it’ll be time for the lawsuits to start flying, […]

    Wonkette link

  98. says

    Brexit news from Nancy Pelosi:

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leading a congressional delegation to Britain and Ireland this week. What’s being discussed? “Brexit, Brexit, Brexit,” she said.

    In the old days, bilateral U.S.-U.K. talks would be all about counterterrorism, intelligence sharing, NATO, Russia and China — and the special relationship.

    Today, Brexit dominates. And on one particular point, Pelosi is emphatic: Don’t mess with the Irish peace accord.

    The speaker said Tuesday that she had warned Prime Minister Theresa May, Conservative pro-Brexit hard-liners and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that if the churn of Britain’s messy break with the European Union in any way weakens the Northern Ireland peace pact known as the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement, the U.S. Congress will block any trade deals Britain might seek with the United States.

    “Don’t even think about that,” Pelosi said she had warned. “We made it clear to all that if there were any harm to Good Friday accords, no treaty.”

    Pelosi did not have to remind her hosts that the Trump administration can negotiate treaties and trade deals. But she emphasized that Congress has to approve them. […]

    Washington Post link

  99. says

    Some more good news:

    The Maine American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which represents over 160 local labor unions across the state, announced its support Tuesday for the state’s recently introduced Green New Deal legislation.

    This is the first Green New Deal-branded proposal to be backed by a state AFL affiliate.

    “We face twin crises of skyrocketing inequality and increasing climate instability. Climate change and inequality pose dire threats to working people, to all that we love about Maine and to our democracy. The work of moving towards a renewable economy must be rooted in workers’ rights and economic and social justice,” Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO, said in a statement, emphasizing the need for workers and unions to “have a seat at the table in crafting bold climate protection policies.”

    This endorsement comes after the national arm of AFL-CIO, the country’s largest union federation, criticized the federal Green New Deal resolution proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), calling it “not achievable or realistic.” […]

    Think Progress link

    Bolding is mine.

  100. stroppy says

    Trump-Putin

    It’s not rocket science. Each knows what the other wants, and understands well enough the political realities of their respective situations.

    Putin can be relatively satisfied so long as, one way or another, Trump continues to erode American society.

    Trump wants to expand his empire of gilded turds into Russia.

    Putin has the upper hand. He also sees that Trump sometimes has to bend to congress on Russian affairs.

    They needed very little contact early on through intermediaries to make sure they understood each other, so we don’t have much of a paper trail. On the other hand, you don’t need one when actions speak. This is how we know mobsters, and it’s how they get away with things anyway.

    It’s amazing how naive people can be, but that’s why, at the beginning of the Trump administration, we have those sickening images of Russians smirking at the American press as they walked into a closed meeting with Trump.

  101. Hj Hornbeck says

    lothalloo:

    Tell me how does it work that Trump does Putin’s bidding. Do they have a code language? How does Putin send his messages? Encryption? Secret emails? Secret meetings?

    Secret meetings. Haven’t you kept up with the news?

    The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that when Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin during the G-20 summit in November, no U.S. official was on hand to take notes. The only other two people present for the conversation, which lasted roughly 15 minutes, were First Lady Melania Trump and Putin’s translator. The group was reportedly “among the last to leave” their table. Though the White House had acknowledged that the two spoke informally while in Argentina, the conversation was “longer and more substantive” than had been implied previously. The White House also failed to note that no official was present as the two leaders spoke.

    The news comes just weeks after the Washington Post reported that Trump went out of his way to hide details of his conversation with Putin at the 2017 G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Though a U.S. translator was present at that meeting, Trump confiscated her notes and told her not to discuss what was said with any other administration officials (then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was also present). During a dinner that night, Trump sought out Putin for a second, informal meeting that lasted close to an hour. He didn’t tell advisers about this second meeting, and the White House didn’t confirm it took place until after it was reported on days later. While flying home to Washington, D.C., the next day, Trump dictated a false statement about Russian adoptions for Donald Trump, Jr. to give to the New York Times, which was seeking an explanation for why Trump’s eldest met with a delegation led by a Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya in Trump Tower the previous summer. It was later revealed that Trump, Jr., was attempting to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton from Veselnitskaya.

    Trump also closely follows the alt-Right, and the alt-Right has a thing for the Kremlin. This creates a pathway for Kremlin propaganda to land on the presidents’ ears, hence why he keep repeating their talking points.

  102. says

    WaPo – “Trump moves to resist House inquiries, setting up fight over congressional subpoena powers”:

    President Trump’s attorneys and the White House are moving to resist a growing number of congressional requests for information, increasing the likelihood of a protracted legal fight that could test the power of congressional subpoenas.

    The building battle will shape how much material House Democrats will be able to obtain about Trump’s policies and personal finances through multiple investigations launched by various congressional committees.

    White House officials are already digging in their heels on a slew of requests related to Trump’s actions as president. The administration does not plan to turn over information being sought about how particular individuals received their security clearances, Trump’s meetings with foreign leaders and other topics that they plan to argue are subject to executive privilege, according to several aides familiar with internal discussions.

    The slew of demands from the House committees has infuriated Trump, who has told aides that he does not want to cooperate with the inquiries, according to people familiar with his thinking.

    He is particularly angry about the efforts by the Ways and Means Committee to obtain his tax returns, telling aides he will fight that demand all the way to the Supreme Court and adding that, by then, the 2020 election will be over.

    “You’re never going to see his tax returns,” Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House official and Trump adviser, said on MSNBC on Tuesday. “He’s not going to release them.”

    The White House also plans to hold back information being sought about how particular individuals received their security clearances, and will reject requests for notes on the president’s meetings and phone calls with foreign leaders, senior adviser Jared Kushner’s interactions with foreign leaders, and the president’s conversations with Cabinet members about initiatives, among other topics, according to the people with knowledge of his thinking.

    Cabinet agencies have been told to seek White House permission before giving any documents to Congress, and lawyers in the counsel’s office are closely monitoring the requests, aides said.

    House Democrats who have been bracing for a legal battle with the administration said Trump’s stonewalling was maddening.

    “They are fighting us on everything now. They’re fighting us on release of the uncensored Mueller report, they’re fighting us on the president’s taxes . . . they basically have decided that they want to thwart congressional oversight power,” said Raskin. “It’s an assault on the separation of powers and specifically the congressional oversight function.”

  103. says

    ACLU last night:

    BREAKING: Attorney General William Barr tonight directed immigration judges to deny bond hearings to asylum seekers.

    Our Constitution does not allow the government to lock up asylum seekers without basic due process.

    We’ll see the administration in court. Again.

  104. says

    “AP Exclusive: Undercover spy targeted Kaspersky critics”:

    Keir Giles’ first thought was that the man’s cheap-looking suit didn’t seem right for a private equity executive. The man seated in front of him at the London hotel claimed to live in Hong Kong, but didn’t seem overly familiar with the city. Then there was the awkward conversation, which kept returning to one topic in particular: the Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab.

    He also asked Giles to repeat himself or speak louder so persistently that Giles said he began wondering “whether I should be speaking into his tie or his briefcase or wherever the microphone was.”

    “He was drilling down hard on whether there had been any ulterior motives behind negative media commentary on Kaspersky,” said Giles, a Russia specialist with London’s Chatham House thinktank who often has urged caution about Kaspersky’s alleged Kremlin connections. “The angle he wanted to push was that individuals — like me — who had been quoted in the media had been induced by or motivated to do so by Kaspersky’s competitors.”

    The Associated Press has learned that the mysterious man, who said his name was Lucas Lambert, spent several months last year investigating critics of Kaspersky Lab, organizing at least four meetings with cybersecurity experts in London and New York.

    Giles said he met with Lambert twice last year, ostensibly to discuss Giles speaking at a cybersecurity conference that Lambert’s company was organizing. But Lambert seemed far more interested in finding out whether anyone had been paid to publicly undermine Kaspersky.

    Kaspersky Lab declined to answer questions from the AP about whether it had any involvement with the meetings.

    The operation targeting Giles and others came at a sensitive time for the Moscow-based company, which boasts one of the world’s most popular consumer antivirus products and a research unit widely respected for routinely exposing elite hacking groups.

    U.S. officials had occasionally expressed wariness about the firm over the years, but criticism of the company intensified in the aftermath of Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election.

    U.S. lawmakers began calling for restrictions on Kaspersky, contending that a Russian firm could not be trusted to keep American networks safe, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ordered federal agencies to remove the firm’s antivirus software from their computers. Congress later passed legislation banning the software from government networks.

    By the time Giles met with Lambert, Kaspersky was suing the U.S. government over its decision, arguing that it never helped hackers and was being “considered guilty until proven innocent.” U.S. judges have since dismissed the lawsuit.

    The AP learned that Lambert also targeted Michael Daniel, who served as former president Barack Obama’s cybersecurity czar, though it is unclear whether he actually managed to meet with Daniel.

    In an email exchange with the AP, Lambert insisted that he and his company were genuine, but he did not reply to follow-up questions about the multiple discrepancies in his story or make himself available for an interview. The AP could find no evidence of the existence of the firm Lambert said he worked for, Tokyo- and Hong Kong-based NPH Investments.

    Research by Citizen Lab, an internet watchdog group based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, suggests the Lucas Lambert operation is linked to an almost identical one involving a man calling himself Michel Lambert. Michel’s bungled attempt in a Manhattan restaurant to entrap John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the lab, was caught on camera by AP reporters two months ago.

    The two Lamberts appear to be different individuals. A few days after the AP published Michel Lambert’s photo, he was outed as former Israeli intelligence officer Aharon Almog-Assouline. In a Canadian court filing , a Toronto attorney said Assouline “bears a striking similarity” to a man he identified as an operative for Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence firm.

    Black Cube has denied any connection to the operation targeting Citizen Lab or to Michel Lambert….

  105. says

    Michael McFaul: “A @nytimes reporter, @kenvogel, has blocked me on @twitter. 1st time ever. I have interacted with Mr. Vogel in the past, trying to help his reporting. Can someone from @nytimes please justify this behavior? I find it unethical.”

  106. blf says

    Signs of climate change affect White House scenic spot (video):

    Rising sea levels near US seat of government affects Tidal Basin reservoir’s visitors.

    US President [sic] Donald Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax, but rising water levels at a beauty spot near the White House may be making a mockery of his denials.

    So far, he’s not commented on the frequent flooding affecting the area near the seat of his presidency.

  107. says

    In other cheating news… “Intel: Turkey’s future hinges on electoral commission’s decision on Istanbul rerun”:

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) formally demanded a rerun today of Istanbul’s mayoral race in what is seen as a last-ditch attempt to reverse the results that gave the opposition candidate a narrow victory. The move follows two weeks of appeals and recounts in the country’s financial capital amid claims of fraud by the AKP.

    AKP deputy chair Ali Ihsan Yavuz repeated the fraud allegations as he announced the move. AKP officials brought three suitcases full of documents purportedly documenting irregularities to the headquarters of the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) in Ankara.

    Why it matters: The decision for a rerun was clearly made by Erdogan, who seems determined to cling to power in Istanbul. Controlling the city’s mayor office helps finance a multi-billion-dollar patronage network that has allowed the AKP to govern alone since 2002. And it was likely made from the get-go. During the past two weeks of opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu tirelessly campaigning to get his victory recognized, Erdogan’s propaganda machine has run full time to discredit the result and repeat the claims he made throughout the campaign: that the opposition were traitors and terrorists in the service of foreign powers bent on wrecking the country.

    Nicholas Danforth, a senior non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, noted, “When accusing your opponents of treason isn’t enough to win an election, it can still lay the groundwork for trying reverse the results.” The trouble, though, he told Al-Monitor, is that “while not all of the AKP’s supporters appear comfortable with the course the party is taking, they’re no longer able to effectively object.”

    What’s next: The ball is now in the YKS’s court. And on its decision hinges not only the future of Istanbul, but many would argue the fate of whatever shreds are left of Turkey’s democracy.

    A rerun would signal to millions who cast their votes for the opposition that with the system already solidly stacked in Erdogan’s favor, change can no longer come through the ballot. It will also reinforce the sentiment that the AKP will cheat its way to victory. It is then up to the opposition to weigh the benefits of legitimizing the rerun by participating against boycotting the polls. Kurdish support, which helped tip Istanbul in the opposition bloc’s favor, will prove key. Whatever the YSK and the opposition decides, a prolonged bout of instability and hardship likely lies ahead….

  108. Ichthyic says

    How did Mueller not figure this out?

    what makes you think he didn’t.

    the better question is, since the evidence of such is multiple and ALREADY entered into the public record…

    why haven’t YOU figured it out?

    you’re not stupid, so it must be that you don’t WANT to see the obvious.

    how does that make anybody with the ability to actually reason based on evidence wish to discuss this issue with you? I mean, why would they?

  109. says

    Simon Rosenberg:

    Short thread on impending Barr Report. First, recall the Mueller Report is called “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.” It’s abt an attack on nation by Russia. Gravity of the issues at hand here cannot be understated.

    That the President broke American election laws, lied repeatedly abt his connections to Russia during the campaign and cheated his way to the White House HAS ALREADY BEEN ESTABLISHED AND IS NOT IN QUESTION.

    Whatever happens w/Russia and obstruction in the new report, the issue of an Presidential candidate conspiring to break a series of American campaign finance laws and cheat their way to the White House has to be now debated and considered by Congress.

    Congress must also develop a comprehensive approach to protecting our elections in 2020, something Trump has prevented from occurring. This is an urgent priority. Some ideas on what we can do now:…

    Finally, time for us to recognize that our nation was established to prevent people like Donald Trump from coming to power here or anywhere else. His authoritarian ways, contempt for democracy, private and personal over national interest, are an obscene betrayal of our creed.

    In the coming days Democrats must find their voice on just how grave a betrayal of America and what it is has always represented Trump’s Presidency is. No other President has held our democratic ways in such contempt; we cannot let the American beacon go dark on our watch.

  110. Saad says

    The secret meeting alone means there was/is collusion (or whatever the fuck word is being used for it now).

  111. says

    Jed Shugerman:

    Remember when the @nytimes closed down its ombudsman office & invited readers to serve that role on social media?
    Today I called @kenvogel’s tweets on @neeratanden’s mom “gratuitous,” “prurient,” & “unbecoming.” That was it. So guess how he responded? He blocked me:…

  112. says

    William Barr’s record of deception has been well-documented. Last night, Rachel Maddow presented the clearest picture so far of Barr’s habits of obfuscation and deception.

    In 1989 as assistant attorney general, Barr declared documents sought by Congress to be confidential and offered his personal summary of the supposedly confidential documents. The documents were not confidential, and Congress had a right to see them. Barr’s summary of the main points was not just deceptive, it was so far off as to be a pack of lies.

    Barr’s document said that President Bush had the right to arrest General Noriega in Panama, and to then bring Noriega to the U.S. for trial. Barr’s “summary” was that he was just clarifying U.S. laws, and blah blah blah. Barr’s sneaky deception was exposed later when the real document was released. However, exposure years later didn’t really get him in trouble, nor did it get Bush in trouble, since George H.W. Bush was no longer in office then.

    Excerpts from news coverage in 1989:

    The Justice Department, acting with unusual secrecy, has given the FBI legal authority to apprehend fugitives from U.S. law in foreign countries and return them to the United States without first obtaining the foreign state’s consent. The ruling could apply to such cases as the U.S. effort to bring Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega to trial.

    Department officials refused to discuss the broad new grant of power, the legal grounds used to justify it or even to acknowledge its existence. The refusal to discuss the ruling is puzzling because the document does not carry a security classification.

    The new opinion by Barr carries the title “Authority of the FBI to Override Customary or Other International Law in the Course of Extraterritorial Law Enforcement Activities.”

    Excerpts from Barr’s 1989 testimony before Congress:

    Mr. Barr: Although the content of the 1989 opinion, like other advice renewed by the Office of Legal counsel, must remain confidential, I am happy to share with the committee or legal reasoning and our conclusions. Before turning to these legal issues, I think it is important that the committee understand …

    Mr. Edwards [Committee Chairman]: Mr. Barr, may I interrupt? Why does it have to remain confidential? Is this a change in policy? We have a copy of other nonclassified opinion. This is not a classified document, Mr. Barr. Why are you withholding it from this committee?

    Mr. Barr: It has been the long established policy of OLC that excerpt in very exceptional circumstances, the opinions must remain confidential.

    That last statement from Barr is a lie. There was no such policy.

    Barr went on to say, “We have no objection to explaining our conclusions and our reasoning to the committee. My testimony summarizes the principal conclusions of the opinion.” Barr never gave Congress the document. Congress subpoenaed the document about two years later.

    The video is about 27 minutes long. It is worth watching more than once.

    I will repeat a point I made earlier: Barr is not only a partisan player, he is also not as smart as has been claimed. I don’t think Barr’s brain works well, and that as he gets older, this is even more of a problem. His focus often seems narrowed. He can’t see the big picture and the details at the same time. He lacks integrity. Like Trump, Barr seems interested in being an all-powerful autocrat that makes decisions the little people in Congress are not allowed to question.

    In 1989, Barr misled the Congress. Barr is doing the same thing now. In 1989, Barr’s summary “bore no relation at all to what was actually in the underlying document,” as Rachel Maddow pointed out.

    From Ryan Goodman:

    When the [1989] OLC opinion was finally made public … it was clear that Barr’s summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion’s principal conclusions.

    Keep that in mind when you read Barr’s redacted version of the Mueller report, which is supposed to be made public tomorrow morning.

  113. blf says

    In Italy, Salvini ‘crossed red line’ with refugee boat policy, says military (the Grauniad’s edits in {curly braces}):

    […]
    Italian military officials have accused Matteo Salvini of “unprecedented interference” as tension mounts over the far-right interior minister’s policy of closing ports to rescued migrants.

    Salvini, who is also Italy’s deputy prime minister, sent a letter to the heads of the navy and coastguard reportedly ordering them to maintain the policy by paying close attention to events at sea, in particular the movements of Mare Jonio, a charity rescue ship that was seized in March after defying an order not to bring migrants to Italy.

    […]

    “The {directive} is a real and unprecedented interference in the recent history of the republic that violates every principle and protocol,” the sources said.

    A group of MPs from leftwing parties have called for the issue to be raised in parliament.

    […]

    Salvini said the risk of terrorists infiltrating migrant boats was a certainty and he held authority in terms of public security […] The port is assigned by the interior minister, whether you like it or not, Italians pay me to defend them and I am doing it.

    […]

  114. says

    Oh. FFS. Ken Starr is participating in Fox News propaganda:

    Former independent counsel Ken Starr on Wednesday argued that there was a “fair concern” over whether special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted final report, set to be released Thursday, would be “fair and balanced.”

    In an interview on Fox News, Starr said “the concern, that I think is a fair concern,” was: “Is the report going to be written in a fair and balanced way?”

    Starr blamed Mueller’s “choice of staff.”

    “So many questions have been raised about that staff and their leanings and so forth,” he said, referring without naming him to President Donald Trump, and his characterization of Mueller’s team of prosecutors as “angry Democrats.”

    Some on Mueller’s team donated to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, though Mueller himself and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed him, are Republicans. Justice Department regulations would have prevented Mueller from considering his prosecutors’ political leanings.

    Mueller and his staff, Starr said, have “had the opportunity without any kind of cross examination — and kind of check, any kind of balance — to write whatever they want to write. And that, I think, legitimately raises concern of fairness and balance.” […]

    Link

  115. says

    blf @157, Salvini is closing a “border” to migrants Trump-style. He is claiming “public security” as his excuse, just like Trump does. And, Salvini is working hard to involve military personnel in his bad policies.

  116. blf says

    On the on-going probable travesty of justice in Italy, Sudan secret police ‘worked with UK’ to arrest suspected human trafficker:

    Officials testify before Italian court in case of man who may be victim of mistaken identity

    A member of Sudan’s secret police has said he collaborated with the British National Crime Agency in order to facilitate the arrest of a suspected human trafficker who may be a victim of mistaken identity.

    As millions of Sudanese protesters forced the removal of Omar al-Bashir as president, Italian prosecutors controversially invited two of his officials to Palermo to testify in the case against the arrested man.

    Aid groups describe Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service (Niss) as one of the most brutal forces in the world, accusing it of torturing, raping and killing thousands of people.

    The two officials were part of a joint operation between Bashir’s regime, the Italian police and the NCA responsible for the arrest in Khartoum in 2016 of a 35-year-old Eritrean man who they alleged was Medhanie Yehdego Mered.

    […]

    A documentary last year by the Swedish broadcaster SVT, in collaboration with the Guardian, concluded Mered was “living it up” in Uganda, while the arrested man, a refugee whose name is Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe, was delivered to authorities in Italy.

    DNA samples taken from Mered’s three-year-old son and from Berhe’s mother also suggest it is a case of mistaken identity.

    The prosecutor’s office in Palermo continues to insist the arrested man is Mered, despite the fact it has not been able to provide a single witness to testify against him in the past three years.

    […]

    “We were told we had to arrest a man who was accused of human trafficking,” he said. “They gave us a picture and a phone number. We have just executed the order. The detainee told us he was not the trafficker Medhanie Yedhego Mered, but called himself Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe. He also said he was a refugee and that a trafficker had asked him for $1,800 to reach Europe.”

    […]

    At the end of the hearing, Berhe described being tortured by Sudanese police officers.

    “[…] I had an ID card with me from Eritrea and a document from the refugee camp when I was in Ethiopia. But they took everything. I had a little money with me and they took that too. They told me if I’d had more money, they would have released me.”

    Berhe’s lawyer, Michele Calantropo, told the Guardian: “Today in court, we heard the testimony of a member of one of the most brutal police bodies in the world about how he had arrested my client. I think there is nothing to add.”

    Riccardo Noury, a spokesman for Amnesty International in Italy, said: “In the last days, Niss has been involved in the brutal crackdown on the Sudanese protesters. The fact that today, in an Italian court, a member of Niss was speaking before a judge is totally unacceptable.”

    In the past week, as more than 30,000 signatures have been gathered in favour of Berhe’s release, hundreds of people have been protesting in Oslo, Stockholm, London and Frankfurt, calling for Italian authorities to release the arrested man. They are all Eritreans and many of them were trafficked to Europe by Mered, who appears to be still on the run.

  117. says

    “Alan García: Peru’s former president kills himself ahead of arrest”:

    Former Peruvian President Alan García has died after shooting himself as police arrived at his home to arrest him over bribery allegations.

    Mr García was rushed to hospital in the capital, Lima. His death was confirmed by current President Martín Vizcarra.

    A crowd of supporters gathered outside the hospital and were held back by a line of police.

    Mr García was accused of taking bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht – claims he denied.

    Mr García served as president from 1985 to 1990 and again from 2006 to 2011.

    Officers had been sent to arrest him in connection with the allegations.

    Interior Minister Carlos Morán told reporters that when police arrived, Mr García asked to make a phone call and went into a room and closed the door.

    Minutes later, a shot rang out, Mr Morán said. Police forced the door open and found Mr García sitting on a chair with a bullet wound to his head.

    Four of Peru’s most recent presidents are all being investigated for alleged corruption, with a fifth – Alberto Fujimori – serving a prison sentence for corruption and human rights abuses.

    Ex-leader Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was taken to hospital with high blood pressure on Wednesday just days after his own arrest in connection with Odebrecht charges. Reports said he was in intensive care.

    The current leader of the opposition, Keiko Fujimori, is also in pre-trial detention on charges of taking $1.2m (£940,000) in bribes from Odebrecht.

    In October, an opinion poll by Datum showed 94% of Peruvians believed the level of corruption in their country was either high or very high…

  118. blf says

    Boxer Sadaf Khadem halts return to Iran after arrest warrant issued:

    • Sadaf Khadem fought Anne Chauvin in France on Saturday
    • Boxer defied Iranian rules over women’s sporting dress

    Sadaf Khadem, the first female Iranian boxer to win an overseas fight, intends to stay in France, where she fought last weekend, after an arrest warrant was issued by her country.

    Khadem and her trainer, Mahyar Monshipour, are in Poitiers and had been expected to return to Tehran after the win over Anne Chauvin. The 24-year-old, who works as a fitness trainer in Tehran, had defied her country’s rule that female athletes should dress in line with Islamic laws. Khadem was bare-headed and wore shorts for the bout in Royan.

    “I was fighting in a legally approved match in France,” Khadem told L’Equipe, “but as I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, which is completely normal in the eyes of the entire world, I confounded the rules of my country. I wasn’t wearing a hijab, I was coached by a man — some people take a dim view of this.”

    […]

  119. says

    “APNewsBreak: Ivanka Trump says she passed on World Bank job”:

    White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump says her father asked her if she was interested in taking the job of World Bank chief but she passed on it.

    In an Associated Press interview, President Donald Trump’s daughter said Wednesday she was happy with her current role in the administration. She spoke during a trip to Africa to promote a global women’s initiative….

    Good job, Republicans.

  120. says

    Carole Cadwalladr’s TED talk – “Facebook’s role in Brexit – and the threat to democracy”:

    In an unmissable talk, journalist Carole Cadwalladr digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK’s super-close 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Tracking the result to a barrage of misleading Facebook ads targeted at vulnerable Brexit swing voters — and linking the same players and tactics to the 2016 US presidential election — Cadwalladr calls out the “gods of Silicon Valley” for being on the wrong side of history and asks: Are free and fair elections a thing of the past?

    About 15 minutes long.

  121. blf says

    From the Grauniad’s live blog, Trump administration imposes new restrictions on travel to Cuba:

    Travel to Cuba will only be allowed for family visits and there will also be new limits on money sent by Cuban Americans to relatives
    […]
    National Security Adviser John Bolton denounced Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as the three stooges of socialism as he announced new sanctions on the Latin American countries.

    The US will now cap how much money families in the US can send to relatives in Cuba at $1,000 per person per quarter, the Associated Press reported. The administration is also ordering new restrictions on travel to Cuba by US citizens, except for trips to visit family.

    Bolton, in a speech in Florida to veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, also announced sanctions on the Central Bank of Venezuela and financial services provider Bancorp, which he labeled a slush fund for Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, AP reported.

    The United States looks forward to watching each corner of this sordid triangle of terror fall: in Havana, in Caracas, and in Managua, he said.

    The announcement comes after the State Department said it would allow US citizens to sue foreign companies doing business in properties seized by the Cuban government after the 1959 communist revolution. The move will allow lawsuits against mostly European companies that operate out of hotels and other properties that were nationalized by Fidel Castro’s government, either owned by Americans before the revolution or owned by Cubans who have since become US citizens.

    Some excerpts from the cited NBC article Trump will allow lawsuits over U.S. properties seized in Cuba (link embedded above):

    The move marks a change in more than two decades of US policy on Cuba.
    […]
    The 1996 Helms-Burton Act gave Americans the right to sue the mostly European companies that operate out of hotels, tobacco factories, distilleries and other properties that Cuba nationalized after Fidel Castro took power. The act even allows lawsuits by Cubans who became US citizens years after their properties were taken.

    Canada, France, Spain, Great Britain and other countries with large investments in Cuba have ferociously protested the law and threatened to sue in the World Trade Organization if Washington tries to interfere with the business ties between Cuba and another sovereign nation. US airlines and cruise lines that bring hundreds of thousands of travelers to Cuba each year appear to be exempted.

    Every US president since Bill Clinton has suspended the key clause to avoid those trade clashes and a potential mass of lawsuits that would prevent any future settlement with Cuba over nationalized properties. […]

    […]

    Speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of the official announcement, the Trump administration official said there will be no more waivers to the key piece of Helms-Burton, known as Title III.

    The official said the administration also plans to start enforcing the section of the act that allows the US to deny entry visas to Cubans and citizens of other countries involved in trafficking in the confiscated property.

    That last phrase, “deny entry visas to […] citizens of other countries involved in trafficking in the confiscated property” can be parsed in so many ways I don’t know what it means. The most “sensible” reading is perhaps denying visa to people directly involved with the properties in question (which, I’m guessing, is roughly what the act allows), but it can also be read as (e.g.) denying visas to everyone from somehow-involved countries (i.e., much of Europe). Hair furor and teh dalekocrazy is so batshite I cannot rule out the latter (and similar) readings, whatever the arguably-batshite-itself act says.

  122. says

    “How Farage’s Campaign COLLUDED WITH PUTIN to Weaponise HATE AND ISLAMOPHOBIA”:

    Following Channel 4’s revelations that Nigel Farage’s Leave EU campaign faked inflammatory photos of sexual attacks and staged videos about migrants, Byline Times has evidence of more racist propaganda sourced from the Kremlin.

    By the time of the EU referendum, Russian news agencies like RT and Sputnik were clearly pushing a pro-Brexit agenda, particularly focusing on (mainly false) allegations of rape and criminality by asylum seekers and migrants.

    One of Leave EU’s most popular videos was mainly sourced from Russian propaganda and deliberately portrayed foreign migrants as sexual predators.

    Four weeks before the referendum vote in June 2016, Leave EU created a videos called ‘Worrying Scenes in Europe’ mainly based on clips from RT.

    One disturbing sequence in the video is all Leave EU’s creation. It apparently shows sexual assault by dozens of men (alleged to be refugees). But the clip is actually of an assault that took place in Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2013.

    There’s little doubt Leave EU knew the real source and deliberately doctored the contents to make them ‘disturbing scenes from Europe’ rather than Egypt. The original footage from Lively has been pixelated and cropped the original video to disguise the real location.

    As Britain faces possible European Elections at the end of May, Farage’s new Brexit party is leading in the latest EU election polls.

    The Leave EU/RT video has been viewed 1.4 million times and is still available on its Facebook page which is now devoted to promoting Farage’s Brexit party.

  123. says

    Followup to blf’s comments 64 and 119.

    More comments from professionals in France who know that Trump’s suggestions for putting out the fire at Notre Dame were tres stupide:

    “Everything would have collapsed,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Bernier, a fire chief who speaks for the national civil defence organisation and who described the suggestion as “risible”.

    Releasing even one load from a Canadair water bomber used to fight forest fires on Notre-Dame would be “the equivalent of dropping three tonnes of concrete at 250 kilometres per hour (155mph)” on the ancient monument.

    “It would have been like bowling with the cathedral… the two towers might have fallen.

    Yahoo News link

    In front of the entire world, Trump embarrasses Americans again.

  124. blf says

    Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population:

    […]
    The findings, described as “astonishingly unequal”, suggest that about 25,000 landowners — typically members of the aristocracy and corporations — have control of half of the country.

    The figures show that if the land were distributed evenly across the entire population, each person would have almost an acre — an area roughly the size of Parliament Square in central London.

    Major owners include the Duke of Buccleuch, the Queen, several large grouse moor estates, and the entrepreneur [and brexit supporter –blf] James Dyson.

    While land has long been concentrated in the hands of a small number of owners, precise information about property ownership has been notoriously hard to access. But a combination of the development of digital maps and data as well as pressure from campaigners has made it possible to assemble the shocking statistics.

    […]

    The book [Who Owns England?]’s findings are drawn from a combination of public maps, data released through the Freedom of Information Act and other sources.

    [Author Guy] Shrubsole estimates that “the aristocracy and gentry still own around 30% of England”. This may even be an underestimate, as the owners of 17% of England and Wales remain undeclared at the Land Registry.

    […]

    The public sector — central and local government, and universities — appears to be the most open about its landholdings, according to Shrubsole, partly in order to advertise land it has wanted to sell off in recent years. He concludes that the public sector owns 8% of England.

    […]

    Carys Roberts, chief economist of the left-of-centre thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research, […] said that one effect of the sale of public land is that the public lost democratic control of that land and it could not then be used, for example, for housing or environmental improvements. “You can’t make the best social use of it,” she added.

  125. says

    Barr will be doing a press conference at 9:30 tomorrow morning with Rosenstein, because of course he will.

    Josh Marshall:

    There it is. Barr to hold news conference to add more Trump spin to the parts of the report he chooses to release.

    Barr presser has been under consideration since the weekend. There was some question whether he’d really be so brazen, but why anyone would question that wasn’t clear.

    In fairness there’s clearly a public interest in hearing from the man who had virtually no role in the investigation other than telling the President the whole investigation was bullshit when he interviewed for the job.

  126. says

    Matthew Miller:

    I can’t think of any reason Barr needs to hold a press conference to discuss a report Mueller wrote. He needs to get out of the way.

    And, needless to say, the fact Trump announced this press conference before DOJ did makes it all the more suspicious.

  127. says

    Followup to SC’s comments 169, 170, 171, and 172.

    Here’s what Trump said:

    You’ll see a lot of strong things come out tomorrow. Attorney General Barr is going to be doing a press conference. Maybe I’ll do one after that, we’ll see.

    None of this augurs well. From Trump’s phrasing, it sounds like team Trump has already discussed the contents of Barr’s press conference.

    Trump will, maybe, also preside over a press conference. That sounds like a threat.

    Both press conferences are bound to be spin and propaganda.

    The fairly early morning Barr presentation will not leave reporters or the public time to look at the redacted Mueller report before Barr starts spinning the narrative into LaLa Land.

    There is some speculation that Barr will also announce a reopened investigation into the origins oranges of the FBI investigation into Russian meddling, as well as possibly announcing more investigations into Hillary Clinton.

    It looks like Trump has turned Barr not only into his Roy Cohn, but also into a member of the Sarah Huckabee Sanders communications team.

  128. says

    One more example of the never-ending flood of Republican anti-abortion legislation:

    The Alabama House Health Committee has approved a bill that would ban nearly all abortions in the state. […]

    The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Terri Collins (R), looks to enforce some of the strictest regulations on abortions in the nation. If passed, a person performing an abortion could be charged with a Class A felony, which carries a prison sentence between 10 and 99 years, according to Al.com. The news outlet noted that a Class C felony would be handed out to a person who attempted to perform an abortion.

    Al.com reported previously that the bill would prohibit abortions beginning two weeks after conception. While the bill would let women receive an abortion if they had a “serious health risk,” the legislation does not address cases of sexual assault or incest. […]

    Al.com notes that supporters of the bill expect the measure to be struck down by lower courts. However, Collins said her hope is to force higher courts to revisit Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that said a woman had a constitutional right to an abortion.

    “I don’t plan to take amendments for this bill because this is not what I think is going forward,” Collins said. “This bill is designed to ask the courts to revisit what I think was a bad decision.” […]

    Link

  129. says

    From Wonkette’s coverage of the William Barr fiasco:

    Twas the night before Mueller and all through the house, everybody was pretty sure whatever “Mueller report” we’re getting on Thursday morning is gonna be some bullshit, considering how Bill Barr has been spearheading the most pathetic cover-up we’ve seen in our human lifetime. First he released a “summary” of the report in his own words, which gave Trump a clean bill of health on all Russia-related questions, then he got mad everybody called it a “summary,” then he ignored demands from Congress for the full and unredacted report because “reasons,” and the end result tomorrow will likely be as whitewashed as possible, in order to make Trump look good. […]

    If we were as stupid as Barr and Trump would like us to be, we’d probably ignore tomorrow entirely, considering how Bill Barr already told us that Bill Barr has exonerated Trump on all Russian crimes past, present and future — except not actually NOPE — and also on obstruction of justice, because Bill Barr says so.

    Ryan Goodman reported an interesting history story about Bill Barr […] To make a very long story short (read it all yourself, please), Barr had written a memo that concluded it was super OK for the FBI to kidnap people in other countries. This was handy, because as Rachel Maddow explained last night, Poppy Bush had been just suggesting for a while that maybe there should be a coup in Panama and Manuel Noriega should be removed. And now it was OK to kidnap him, in violation of international law! News of the existence of the memo trickled out on Black Friday in 1989, and when Congress asked to see it — it wasn’t classified or anything — Barr said NUH UH! But he said he could to this other thing:

    Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? […]

    We don’t want to bury the surprise, so we’ll tell you right now that when Barr “summarized the principal conclusions,” he actually misrepresented and mischaracterized a lot of the conclusions. And he left out A LOT. […] Simpering neophytes who haven’t been covering politics for a very long time like Glenn Greenwald might think there’s no reason to doubt Bill Barr’s goodness or purity of intention, […] people who know better are ready for tomorrow to be a heaping pile of horseshit, based on Barr’s past behavior and also the things he’s been doing with the Mueller report right in front of our faces.

    […] he appears to have near zero respect for the equal branch of government known as Congress, especially when he is on the payroll of a Republican president […]

    […] recent American history filed under “Would you look at this fucking guy? Unfuckingbelievable!” […]

    Video available at the link.

  130. says

    John Dowd has not read the Mueller report: “John Dowd, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, is calling the Mueller report ‘pure mischief’ and ‘not fair,’ believing that it will cause undue problems for the president.”

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dowd-mueller-report-pure-mischief-not-fair

    […] “I haven’t read it, but it’s just wholly unnecessary,” he told the Daily Beast. “You just don’t need it. It’s pure mischief.”

    “The trouble is, these special counsels inflate themselves, think they’re more important—and they’re not, in the scheme of things, and it ruptures the system of justice and it’s not fair,” he added. “To me, it’s a probe that’s tainted by politics and by hate, and I don’t like it.” […]

  131. blf says

    Turkish opposition candidate declared winner of disputed Istanbul vote:

    Turkey’s main opposition candidate was declared Istanbul’s mayor Wednesday after election recounts were completed, despite an appeal still pending by President Tayyip Erdogan’s party to re-run the vote.

    Initial results from the March 31 local elections gave a narrow victory to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) […]

    New CHP mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was handed a paper, mounted in a gold frame, which formally granted his mandate as city mayor in a ceremony at an Istanbul court which was surrounded by a throng of supporters.

    […]

    On Tuesday, after 16 days of appeals and recounts, the AKP asked the High Election Board (YSK) to annul and re-run the election in Istanbul over what it said were irregularities. Its nationalist MHP allies made a similar request on Wednesday.

    […]

    CHP Deputy Chairman Muharrem Erkek responded that there were “no concrete documents, information or evidence in the AKP appeal for an annulment.”

    […]

    Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of Teneo political risk advisers, said it was puzzling to call only for a re-run of the mayoral elections, and added that some of the areas where the AKP claimed fraud took place were under its responsibility.

    […]

  132. blf says

    Follow-up to @165, EU, Canada reject Trump’s Cuba sanctions policy:

    The EU and Canada issued a joint warning against the United States on Wednesday after Washington said it would allow US lawsuits against foreign investments in Cuba.

    “The EU and Canada consider the extraterritorial application of unilateral Cuba-related measures contrary to international law,” the EU’s foreign affairs supremo Federica Mogherini and Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a statement that was also signed by Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.

    […]

    Under the provision of the Helms-Burton Act, any companies that operate in property seized by Cuba during Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution could face lawsuits in US courts from the vast and politically powerful Cuban American diaspora.

    Pompeo called on all businesses that own buildings in Cuba to fully investigate whether they are stolen in service of a failed communist experiment.

    […]

    But the European Union and Canada, which have long warned against the Helms-Burton Act, swiftly condemned the move.

    In a letter ahead of the announcement, Mogherini and Malmstrom warned Pompeo that enforcement of the law would lead to reprisals in Europe.

    The European Union “will be obliged to use all means at its disposal, including in cooperation with other international partners, to protect its interests,” said the official letter seen by AFP by EU foreign policy chief Mogherini and trade commissioner Malmstrom.

    […]

    Countries with large investments in Cuba have ferociously protested the law and threatened to sue in the WTO if Washington tries to interfere with the business ties between Cuba and another sovereign nation.

    “The extraterritorial application of the US embargo is illegal and violates international law,” said Alberto Navarro, EU ambassador to Cuba. “I personally consider it immoral. For 60 years the only thing that’s resulted from the embargo is the suffering of the Cuban people.”

    […]

    […] Phil Peters, director of the Arlington, Virginia-based Cuba Research Center, […] said he also believed the new measure could hurt the Trump administration’s effort to force Maduro from power with help from allies like Spain.

    “There are plenty of countries that are interested in helping Venezuela find a soft landing after Maduro, but they are not interested in waging an economic war on Cuba,” Peters said.

  133. says

    From Rachel Maddow:

    Per @RepJerryNadler , Barr tomorrow is planning to:

    — hold his own press conference about Mueller,

    — without Mueller there,

    — well before anyone will be allowed access to even Barr’s redacted version of Mueller’s findings.

    Why?

    Where’s Mueller?

  134. says

    From Representative Nadler:

    I’m deeply troubled by reports that the WH is being briefed on the Mueller report AHEAD of its release. Now, DOJ is informing us we will not receive the report until around 11/12 tomorrow afternoon — AFTER Barr’s press conference. This is wrong. #ReleaseTheReport

    From Peter Carr, the Special Counsel spokesman:

    Neither Mueller nor anyone else from the special counsel’s prosecution team will be in attendance at the Barr press conference.

  135. says

    From The New York Times:

    […]
    Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about the conclusions made by Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, in recent days, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have aided the president’s legal team as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings. […]

    The discussions between Justice Department officials and White House lawyers have also added to questions about the propriety of the decisions by Attorney General William P. Barr since he received Mr. Mueller’s findings late last month. […]

    Does any of this make Barr look better? No. Everything we are seeing reveals that Barr is Trump’s man.

  136. says

    From Trish Turner:

    Senate Dem aide tells ABC that Intel Cmte was just informed that DOJ is delivering hard copies of the Mueller report at *11AM* “a full hour and a half post presser, and they have informed us they won’t even begin to have a discussion about redacted material until Friday.”

    The White House is coordinating with the Justice Department, (or at least with William Barr), to further obstruct justice, and to obscure the truth.

    From Sam Stein:

    So, if Nadler’s tweet is true, Bill Barr will have summarized the Mueller report, redacted it, briefed the White House on it, and then given a press conference on it all before allowing Congress to see it.

  137. says

    From Hakeem Jeffries, Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. Member of the Judiciary and Budget Committees:

    So-called Attorney General is presiding over a dog and pony show.

    Here is a thought.

    Release the Mueller report tomorrow morning and keep your mouth shut.

    You have ZERO credibility.

  138. says

    From Glenn Kessler:

    Barr news conference at 9:30 am, Mueller report released at 11 am: In the annals of pathetic efforts to spin apparently bad news in Washington, this ranks near the top.

  139. says

    From Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff:

    Bill Barr sent a letter purporting to summarize Mueller’s conclusions.

    He took it upon himself to reach a conclusion on obstruction.

    He adopted the President’s “spying” smears.

    Now, he will spin a report no one has read.

    My advice: Wait to read Mueller’s words for yourself.

    From Representative Val Demings:

    Pretty convenient of the Attorney General to take questions on the report before anyone has a chance to read the report.

  140. Hj Hornbeck says

    Oh right, Trump’s polling data! It came up a while ago, and I swatted down that down as being premature. Now that we’re several weeks from Barr’s original announcement, we can assess how much impact it’s had.

    NATIONAL POLL: @realDonaldTrump rating 40% approve (44% in March) 54% disapprove (51% in March)
    Approve/Disapprove by party REP 83% / 13% IND 40% / 49% DEM 7% / 92%

    That’s just from one pollster, though. On one of FiveThirtyEight’s podcasts, Nate Silver said the report had given Trump a 0.2% bump. I don’t have a link to that, alas, but their live aggregator shows a minor blip about a month ago that’s barely perceptible.

    Tomorrow may bring a bigger change, but we won’t know for at least a week after.

  141. Hj Hornbeck says

    If any readers were thinking Barr’s deliberately drew out the reveal of the report to coincide with a holiday, give yourself a cookie.

    Trump’s allies are also betting on the timing of the report’s release — just before two major religious holidays leading into the weekend — will help dampen any potential media storm.

    “The reality is this is a 24-hour to 72-hour news cycle and nothing more,” the source said, after noting the report’s Thursday release would be coming just ahead of the Easter and Passover holidays.

    “If there’s no collusion or obstruction charge, there’s probably nothing in there that people will be talking about past the weekend,” said the source.

    Also, everybody’s overreacting!

    The source further said the “administration scuttlebutt” was that some officials had seen the report and concluded that “it’s going to be less bad than even what people today have expected” in the wake of Barr’s summary.

    See? Trump and his advisors have all seen the report on whether or not Trump and his advisors obstructed justice, and concluded there’s no major wrongdoing on display. Congress has nothing to worry about!

  142. Hj Hornbeck says

    Just spotted this press release from key Democratic Party members in the House:

    Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff, Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Committee on Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters, and Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot L. Engel issued the following joint statement calling for Attorney General William Barr to cancel a press conference on Special Counsel Mueller’s report scheduled to take place before Congress is set to the receive the report

    There’s more behind the link, but you get the gist.

  143. says

    “Australia Says It’s ‘Ready To Confirm’ A Key Meeting That Led To The Investigation Into Trump’s Russia Links”:

    A senior Australian diplomat has said the government is “now ready to confirm” a series of events in 2016 between the country’s high commissioner to the UK and a Trump campaign adviser, which led to US authorities investigating Donald Trump’s links with Russia.

    The release of the Australian diplomatic documents comes as a redacted copy of the final Mueller report is expected to be released on Thursday.

    The London meeting between former high commissioner Alexander Downer and Trump adviser George Papadopoulos was first reported by the New York Times in December 2017, reportedly revealing how Downer had been told by Papadopoulos that Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

    Until now, the Australian government and Downer have refused to confirm or give any details about the meeting central to the beginning of the Trump-Russia investigation, repeatedly citing the need to preserve national security.

    But in a letter sent to Australia’s Information Commissioner after a 15 month-long FOI battle with BuzzFeed News, a senior foreign official said his department was ready to confirm the meeting and release redacted documents, because Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was now finished.

    Included in the documents released to BuzzFeed News is a calendar invite, and a diplomatic cable Downer wrote about the meeting. The senior foreign official said Downer’s cable had been heavily-redacted because the full contents could “reasonably be expected” to damage Australia’s relationship with the United States….

    I wonder if there’s anything in the report about Papadopoulos telling Russia-friendly high officials in the Greek government as well.

  144. says

    Natasha Bertrand – “Post-Mueller report likely to target Russia dossier author Steele”:

    The frenzied anticipation around special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report has overshadowed another Justice Department report on the Russia probe that could land as soon as next month, and which will likely take direct aim at the former British spy behind an infamous “dossier” on President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

    For the past year, the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, has been examining the FBI’s efforts to surveil a one-time Trump campaign adviser based in part on information from Christopher Steele, a former British MI6 agent who had worked with the bureau as a confidential source since 2010.

    Several people interviewed by the Inspector General’s office over the past year tell POLITICO that Horowitz’s team has been intensely focused on gauging Steele’s credibility as a source for the bureau. One former U.S. official left the interview with the impression that the Inspector General’s final report “is going to try and deeply undermine” Steele, who spent over two decades working Russia for MI6 before leaving to launch his own corporate intelligence firm.

    With his reputation on the line, Steele—who has not commented publicly on the Trump-Russia investigation—intends to rebut the Inspector General’s characterizations, if necessary, in the form of a rare public statement, according to people familiar with his plans….

    Former U.S. officials interviewed by the inspector general were skeptical about the quality of his probe. They emphasized to Horowitz that information in a warrant application need not be wholly verified, as long as the reliability of the source of the information is disclosed to the court, which the FBI did in the Page FISA case with regard to Steele. But the inspector general seemed neither well-versed in the FISA process nor receptive to the explanations, the officials said….

    Great.

  145. says

    Ted Boutrous: “This absence tomorrow by Mueller and his team is emblematic of a—maybe the—major failing of the Mueller investigation. Silence, a blind refusal to explain to the public what has been happening and why.”

  146. says

    Maggie Haberman: “Sorry but this is not a press conference – it’s an opportunity for Barr to put a spin on the ball or defend himself. No one can ask real questions here.”

    Barr all along has been claiming he’s settled issues and informed congress/the public about them (executive privilege claims, the timing and process of the release of the redacted report, the nature of the redactions, whether or not he’ll speak about the redacted report before it’s released) and then just completely ignoring his earlier dishonest statements.

  147. says

    Alternate Barr: Trump & campaign encouraged and embraced Russian interference in election without rising to level of criminal conspiracy and then covered it up and obstructed justice but without sufficient provable criminal intent to make it a crime in eyes of pro-Trump lawyer.”

  148. says

    NEW: Nadler has formally invited Mueller to testify before the House Judiciary Committee — ‘no later than May 23’.”

    Barr said in response to a question that he wouldn’t object to Mueller testifying.

    He had no answer to the question about why Mueller wasn’t there.

  149. says

    Chris Wallace on Fox: ‘The Attorney General seemed almost to be acting as the counselor for the defense, the counselor for the president, rather than the Attorney General, talking about his motives, his emotions… Really, as I say, making a case for the president’.”

    On Fox.

  150. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Well, as defense opening statements go, that was pretty tepid–hardly a full-throated defense of an “honest man” wronged by “the system”. The Rethugs have signaled very clearly that the game being played here is politics. It will be interesting to see whether the Dems are sufficiently adroit to get the message. This should make for an interesting if unproductive afternoon.

  151. says

    “Beginning in June 2016, [redacted – Harm to Ongoing Matter] forecast to senior Campaign officials that WikiLeaks would release information damaging to candidate Clinton.”

  152. lotharloo says

    I fucking hope at least one of those 14 investigations is about the financial ties. They really need to find something incriminating on Trump, the obstruction itself is not going to do it.

  153. says

    SC @221, Barr substantially mischaracterized the Muller report. He did that in public. He did that in an official press conference. He has done that five times so far … and all before he released the report to Congress and to the public.

    The Mueller report also provides the details of when Trump asked McGahn to see that Mueller was fired.

  154. says

    From Steve Benen, “In bizarre press conference, Barr said what Trump wanted to hear”:

    All Attorney General Bill Barr had to do was release Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. That’s it. Donald […]

    But that apparently wasn’t good enough for Barr. Instead, the attorney general scheduled a press conference to discuss the report, hours before the release of a redacted version of the document, to effectively pre-spin what the Republican lawyer wants the public to believe about Mueller’s findings.

    The result was a bizarre spectacle in which the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, whose credibility and political independence have already been called into question, positioned himself as a defense attorney for the president who appointed him.

    […] “In assessing the president’s actions discussed in the report, it is important to bear in mind the context. President Trump faced an unprecedented situation. As he entered into office, and sought to perform his responsibilities as president, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office, and the conduct of some of his associates. At the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the president’s personal culpability. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion.

    “And as the special counsel’s report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks.

    “Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims. And at the same time, the president took no act that in fact deprived the special counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.”

    As SC noted up-thread, the White House did not fully cooperate!

    I’m at a loss as to how anyone could take this seriously. Trump may have obstructed justice, but it’s all right because he felt “frustrated and angered”?

    [snipped details showing that the White House did not fully cooperate]

    Stepping back, when the attorney general issued his original, four-page memo last month, he seemed to be going out of his way to frame the Mueller report in a way that was favorable to the White House, before anyone had an opportunity to evaluate the document for themselves. Today, he did the exact same thing, positioning himself as an extension of Trump’s political messaging operation. […].

  155. says

    From Josh Marshall:

    So one big finding so fa […]. It’s in the “Introduction to Volume II”, the obstruction part. It’s very specific and detailed. But it’s only two pages. You can read it yourself. It’s pages 213-14 in the PDF, pages 1 and 2 of that volume of the report.

    The gist though is that the Special Counsel decided not only that they couldn’t indict a sitting President but that it would not be fair even to accuse him of a crime without indicting him. They also say that if they decided he shouldn’t face prosecution (under the normal standards that would apply to a non-President) that they would say so. They did not.

    The gist is that the whole non-finding of obstruction seems to rest on the DOJ/OLC belief that a sitting President cannot be indicted – quite contrary to Barr’s claim.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/key-part-of-the-report-on-obstruction

  156. says

    Here’s what Watergate experts thought of Barr’s ‘political defense’ of Trump

    “He was a shill for the president,” one Watergate expert said.

    […] It was a political defense,” David Dorsen, former assistant chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, said of Barr’s comments Thursday. “What Barr did was, he was a shill for the president. He reminded me of Sean Spicer, who would say anything Trump told him to say,” he said, referring to Trump’s former press secretary.

    Ken Hughes, an expert on Watergate at the University of Virginia, said Barr’s comments on Trump line up with defenses offered by the Nixon White House.

    “Richard Nixon also sincerely believed that the Watergate investigation ‘was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,’” Hughes said, quoting Barr’s morning press conference. “None of that justified obstruction of justice then, and none of it justifies obstruction now.”

  157. says

    Mainstream news outlets fall for the White House’s spin of the Mueller report. Again.

    Attorney General William Barr sought to spin the Mueller report before its release. Several news outlets were happy to oblige.

    […] So what was the immediate reaction by CNN as Barr strode away from the podium?

    “Alright, so there you have almost a complete vindication of the president of the United States by the attorney general of the United States,” declared CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. […]

    [Jake Tapper was more circumspect] “He made the point [“no collusion”] several times which will no doubt please President Trump,” said Tapper. “I guess the question is now, what does the report say? And how well does that line up with what the attorney general just said?”

    CNN was hardly the only news outlet to parrot the White House’s talking points to their audience. Shortly after Barr concluded his political address, the New York Times trumpeted Barr’s “no collusion” comments atop its homepage, without so much as a mention of the bright line that Barr had drawn around the report’s conclusion about potential obstruction of justice violations. […]

    Naturally, Fox News and other publications aligned with the White House were happy to emphasize Barr’s supposed exoneration of the Trump campaign. For the discerning public wondering what to make of the Mueller report, the advice is simple: Wait until the report itself is actually made public and thoroughly reviewed before drawing any conclusions.

  158. says

    Matt Miller was just reading from a section that makes clear that Senate Intel Committee Chair Richard Burr fed Trump (via McGahn, I believe) the names of the investigation’s targets. I wonder if Mark Warner is just learning this.

  159. says

    From David Corn:

    At his spin-before-release press conference on Thursday morning, Attorney General Bill Barr repeatedly bolstered Donald Trump’s mantra. “No collusion,” he said multiple times. And he gave the president a big pass on obstruction of justice, noting that Trump had been sincerely “frustrated” by the Russia investigation—as if that is a legitimate excuse. It was a great big PR wet-kiss for Barr’s boss. […]

    Moreover, Barr’s spin hid the basic foundation of the Trump-Russia scandal. Barr pointed out that the Russian government “sought to interfere in our election process.” That is, Putin’s attack was no hoax. Yet Trump and his crew, during the campaign and afterward, repeatedly denied that any such attack was underway or had occurred. Famously—or infamously—Trump at a press conference with Vladimir Putin in July 2018 said he saw no reason not to believe Putin’s denials.

    During the election, when it mattered the most, Trump and his folks kept saying there was no Russian assault. They echoed Putin’s disinformation: Moscow is doing nothing. That provided cover for the Kremlin and helped it get away with this operation.

    And at the same time, they were enthusiastically interacting secretly with Russians. [snipped details of enthusiastic interactions] They raise the question: If Trump and his aides did not commit crimes, did they still engage in treachery and betrayal?

    Barr, of course, did not address this. He stuck to the limited issue of whether there was any direct Trump involvement in the Russian attack. He pointed out that Mueller did investigate links and contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russians but did not uncover any “conspiracy to violate US law.” Yet not all misconduct is criminal conspiracy. […]

    Barr decided to contextualize the report before releasing it—an unorthodox decision—and now the contents of the report will have to catch up to the spin.

    Link

  160. says

    From Representative Eric Swalwell:

    […] Barr never should have been confirmed, but once confirmed, he should have recused himself from all oversight of the Mueller investigation. […]

    Today, he made a show of allegiance to the President over the American people by declaring “no collusion” and excusing the President on the basis of his emotional state. He has proved that he’s an embedded Trump ally who puts this President’s political future above of the rule of law. That makes him unfit to serve. He must resign.

    And there’s this, as Zack Budryk wrote, which sounds like more witness tampering by Trump:

    Former White House Counsel Don McGahn refused repeated requests from the White House to deny that President Trump asked him to fire Robert Mueller, according to Mueller’s investigation.

    […] Trump’s personal counsel and two aides told McGahn to deny the accounts, according to Mueller.

    “Each time he was approached, McGahn responded that he would not refute the press accounts because they were accurate in reporting on the president’s efforts to have the Special Counsel removed,” Mueller’s report states.

    Trump later personally met with McGahn in the Oval Office with only then-Chief of Staff John Kelly present to try to get him to deny the accounts, according to Mueller.

    “McGahn refused and insisted his memory of the President’s direction to remove the Special Counsel was accurate,” according to Mueller’s report.

    In the meeting, Trump denied to McGahn that he had used the word “fire” in reference to Mueller, the report says.

    Trump in the same meeting reportedly asked McGahn why he had told Mueller’s office that he had been asked to have Mueller removed, according to the report.

    McGahn said that he had no choice and that their conversations were not protected by attorney-client privilege. Trump went on to confront McGahn on his practice of taking notes during their discussions, saying “What about these notes? Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes,” according to Mueller’s office.

    “I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes,” Trump reportedly added, in reference to his mentor and onetime personal lawyer, who also served as chief counsel during Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) hearings in the 1950s, according to the report.

    “The President’s statements reflect his understanding-and his displeasure-that those events would be part of an obstruction-of-justice inquiry,” Mueller noted.

    Link

  161. Hj Hornbeck says

    lotharloo @222:

    I fucking hope at least one of those 14 investigations is about the financial ties. They really need to find something incriminating on Trump, the obstruction itself is not going to do it.

    In the past, obstruction alone was enough.

    ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN THE NAME OF ITSELF AND OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AGAINST RICHARD M. NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT OF ITS IMPEACHMENT AGAINST HIM FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS.

    ARTICLE 1

    In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his consitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice…

    What’s changed is twofold. The Republican Party has become more authoritarian, in that it follows the whim of the President far more than it did decades ago, and that it is far more concerned with retaining power than being ethical. Also, the media landscape has become far more deferential to the President and the Republican Party; historian Michael Beschloss has argued that Nixon would have fared a lot better if Fox News existed back then.

  162. lotharloo says

    From CNN: “Minimal reference to Trump’s finances in Mueller report.

    There are no references in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to President Trump’s taxes or loans to his business beyond the discussions around Trump Tower projects in Moscow that was evaluated under the “collusion” umbrella.”

    I would say that’s great news. I find it unlikely he did not investigate them so hopefully one of those 14 investigations …

  163. lotharloo says

    And I have to add that Russian skeptics were generally right. As it turns out, the “Trump a Russian asset/puppet, or Trump doing Putin’s bidding” conspiracy theories have been bullshit, at least as far as I can see.

    It’s time to go beyond this “Russian derangement syndrome” and focus on things that can actually hurt or bring down Trump: his finances.

  164. lotharloo says

    @Hj Hornbeck:
    I’m sure you know but Democrats don’t have the votes to do shit.

  165. says

    New: @PressSec Sarah Sanders admitted to Mueller her public comments about FBI weren’t based in fact. Specifically, Sanders said her assertion in response to question about FBI agents supporting Comey wasn’t ‘founded on anything’, according to Mueller.”

    Lying asshole.

  166. says

    SC @239, I could tell Sarah Huckabee Sanders was lying when she said that, not just because it was unlikely that she had spoken to a bunch of FBI agents who purportedly hated Comey (or thought he was a terrible boss), but because she looked like she was desperate and making shit up.

    So glad to see her caught for blatantly lying.

  167. says

    Kellyanne Conway’s alternative facts for today:

    White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Thursday compared special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to a “political proctology exam” on President Trump who emerged from the metaphorical procedure unscathed.

    Where asked about the “unflattering” aspects of the report that show the President in his most untethered form, Conway was dismissive.

    “So? Intent matters and that’s the whole point here. What all these people have had to say over millions of words, thousands of hours on TV, in print, on Twitter, has zero legal significance. What matters is what the Department of Justice of the special counsel concluded here, which is no collusion, no obstruction, and complete exoneration, as the President says. This has been a political proctology exam and he’s merging with a clean bill of health. There’s no other way to look at it.”

  168. says

    “We concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice,” Mueller wrote.

    Mueller also explained why this is constitutionally proper. “Congress can permissibly criminalize certain obstructive conduct by the President, such as suborning perjury, intimidating witnesses, or fabricating evidence, because those prohibitions raise no separation-of-powers questions.”

    Exactly.

  169. says

    Followup to comment 244.

    More text, more context:

    “With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice,” the redacted report, released Thursday, states.

    The report continues: “The separation-of-powers doctrine authorizes Congress to protect official proceedings, including those of courts and grand juries, from corrupt, obstructive acts regardless of their source… The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”

  170. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Lotharloo,
    I think that you may have some confusion as to what constitutes an “asset”. To be an asset, all one has to do is perform some desirable service that furthers your goals. It can be willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly. One does not even have to meet or know the asset.

    DJT has demonstrated a willingness to curry favor with Putin since well before he decided to run for office. He’s shown he can be manipulated easily and predictably through flattery, cajolery or disinformation. Moreover, it is clear that the man has a lot that he wants to keep hidden. Keeping secrets is a great way to advertise your services as an asset. It is inconceivable to me that someone like Putin, coming from an intelligence background, would look at DJT and not think “Asset”.

    Agent is another story.

  171. says

    From the Mueller report:

    The investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters. Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.

    “The Office charged some of those lies as violations of the federal false statements statute.

  172. says

    From the Mueller report, text from a footnote:

    Comey’s briefing included the Steele reporting’s unverified allegation that the Russians had compromising tapes of the President involving conduct when he was a private citizen during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant.

    During the 2016 presidential campaign, a similar claim may have reached candidate Trump. On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze that said, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know… .” … Rtskhiladze said “tapes” referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia. …

    Cohen said he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving the texts from Rtskhiladze. … Rtskhiladze said he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen.

    A Russian businessman involved in the Trump Tower Moscow project seems to have said that the “pee tapes” were fake. How do you stop the flow of fake tapes? Other than that, we don’t have any news here. There’s no confirmation that the tapes were fake, no confirmation that the tapes were/are real, and no confirmation if the tapes exist, ever existed, etc.

  173. Hj Hornbeck says

    lotharloo @237:

    And I have to add that Russian skeptics were generally right. As it turns out, the “Trump a Russian asset/puppet, or Trump doing Putin’s bidding” conspiracy theories have been bullshit, at least as far as I can see.

    So wait, I show that Trump had several secret meetings with Putin and that he was repeating Kremlin talking points, and your response is that anyone thinking there was collusion/coordination between Trump and Putin is engaging in “bullshit” “conspiracy theories”?

    Riiiiight. I see where your head is at.

  174. Hj Hornbeck says

    Mike Levine:

    From the Mueller report: Michael “Cohen also discussed pardons with the president’s personal counsel and believed that if he stayed on message he would be taken care of.”

    Or, in other words, Trump dangled pardons to encourage a witness to lie and thus obstruct an ongoing investigation.

  175. Hj Hornbeck says

    nycsouthpaw:

    Manafort had Gates regularly send campaign data to Kilimnik (who the FBI says has links to Russian intelligence); he also met with Kilimnik twice in the US in 2016 and gave him campaign info. Mueller’s office never figured out why the info was sent or what Kilimnik did with it.

    That’s effectively coordination of messaging between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, during the election, in order to benefit Trump. The only thing missing is the smoking gun.

  176. Hj Hornbeck says

    Steve Reilly:

    The Special Counsel’s Office made 14 referrals of evidence of potential criminal activity to outside offices. Only two are publicly known at this point.

    That’s a LOT of shoes that have yet to drop.

  177. lotharloo says

    @a_ray_in_dilbert_space:
    He does the same thing with Netanyahu, yet nobody accuses him of being Netanyahu’s puppet. He also sucks up to Kim Jong Um, any no conspiracy theories there.

  178. Hj Hornbeck says

    This strikes me as interesting. From the report, emphasis mine:

    “Recognizing that the President would not be interviewed voluntarily, we considered whether to issue a subpoena for his testimony. We viewed the written answers to be inadequate. But at that point, our investigation had made significant progress and had produced substantial evidence for our report. We thus weighed the costs of potentially lengthy constitutional litigation, with resulting delay in finishing our investigation against the anticipated benefits for our investigation and report”

    “We determined that the substantial quantity of information we had obtained from other sources allowed us to draw relevant factual conclusions on intent and credibility, we are often inferred from circumstantial evidence and assessed without direct testimony from the subject of the investigation.”

    Combine that to Lynna’s quote from Josh Marshall @226, emphasis by me:

    The gist though is that the Special Counsel decided not only that they couldn’t indict a sitting President but that it would not be fair even to accuse him of a crime without indicting him. They also say that if they decided he shouldn’t face prosecution (under the normal standards that would apply to a non-President) that they would say so. They did not.

    The gist is that the whole non-finding of obstruction seems to rest on the DOJ/OLC belief that a sitting President cannot be indicted – quite contrary to Barr’s claim.

    In essence, the SCO is saying they had enough information to determine intent, but due to existing policy they couldn’t even accuse him of a crime. It sounds like Mueller and team were trying to say “Trump obstructed justice” in the report, but without explicitly saying those words.

  179. says

    Adam Schiff: “The House Intelligence Committee has formally invited Special Counsel Mueller to testify on the counterintelligence investigation.

    After a two year investigation, the public deserves the facts, not Attorney General Barr’s political spin.”

    They’re asking to arrange a date in May.

  180. Hj Hornbeck says

    lotharloo @253:

    He does the same thing with Netanyahu, yet nobody accuses him of being Netanyahu’s puppet. He also sucks up to Kim Jong Um, any no conspiracy theories there.

    Israeli agents weren’t contacting his election team offering dirt on his opponent. His campaign manager wasn’t giving internal polling data to someone connected to the Mossad. He hasn’t tried to hold secret meetings with Netanyahu, or tried to destroy any paper trail of what was said during said meetings. He hasn’t repeatedly denied he was building something in Israel, in the middle of his election campaign.

    I mean, I know by now that you’ve got a loose grip on reality, but c’mon. You should have been able to answer this one yourself.

  181. lotharloo says

    @Hj Hornbeck:
    So what? The important point is whether or not there was coordination, or else as I have noted above, Trump also parrots right-wing Israeli propaganda and takes direct measures to empower them, he even tried to help Netanyahu win with his latest stupid policy.

  182. lotharloo says

    @Hj Hornbeck:
    Again, my understanding of the Mueller’s report is that there was no coordination. Without coordination, it’s Russia trying to pursue Russian interests. And since we are on the topic of Israel, I’m pretty sure Netanyahu’s government will try to get Trump re-elected. But so what? That’s the game that’s been played.

  183. says

    Jim Sciutto:

    The number of “fake news” claims by President Trump and the WH now thoroughly debunked by the Mueller report is mesmerizing.

    To name a few:

    1-Trump claimed he never asked for loyalty from Comey – Mueller found he did.
    2-Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let Flynn matter go – Mueller found he did.
    3-Trump claimed he never pushed McGahn to fire Mueller – Mueller found he did.

  184. F.O. says

    It seems like the report, even redacted, is painting a horrible picture of Trump.
    I’m surprised Barr didn’t redact more tho.
    What game are they playing?

  185. unit000 says

    HJHornbeck@#254
    That was certainly my interpretation of the Introduction to Volume II (@#225)
    Reading further, it’s clear Mueller considered there was sufficient evidence o indict on more than one count of obstruction

  186. Oggie: Mathom says

    F.O.:

    <

    blockquote>What game are they playing?<?blockquote>

    They are playing the game of “Let’s muddy the water enough so that the GOP voters can still vote for us, the rich asswipes will still donate to us, and Fox News will still be able to present it as a political attack”. Remember, many of the things that I, and others, think are horrible about Trump are exactly the things that his followers like. And his followers will be voting in the primaries.

  187. says

    SC @264, So good. That one had me laughing out loud. Same for 265.

    F.O. @267, they are counting on the fact that most people will not read the report. They are counting on the fact that many people will accept, and form their opinions based on, what William Barr said on TV today. They are, unfortunately, probably right.

  188. says

    From Garrett M. Graff, writing for WIRED:

    […] as Mueller lays out in sometimes lurid detail, in at least 10 episodes over the ensuing months Trump sought to block or stop that very investigation. He did so even as Mueller doggedly made public the “sweeping and systematic fashion” in which the Russian government attacked the 2016 presidential election, and brought serious criminal charges—and won guilty pleas—from a half-dozen of the president’s top campaign aides. […]

    Barr appears to have misled the public about the severity of the evidence on obstruction of justice. He also misrepresented Mueller’s reasoning for not making a “traditional prosecutorial decision” on the obstruction half of his investigation.

    The attorney general has implied that Mueller left that choice to Barr. In truth, the report makes clear that Mueller felt constrained by the Justice Department policy that a sitting president could not be indicted. Don’t mistake lack of prosecution, in other words, for absence of wrongdoing. “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president did not obstruct justice, we would so state,” Mueller’s report says. “Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

    Mueller then points to Congress, not the attorney general, as the body appropriate to answer the question of obstruction. As Mueller wrote in what seems to be all but a referral for impeachment proceedings, “The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balanced and the principle that no person is above the law.” […]

    There was, Mueller also concludes, good reason for the president to attempt to obstruct the ongoing FBI probe. “The evidence does suggest indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal or political concerns,” Mueller wrote.

    After reading through the numerous episodes, it seems almost nothing short of a miracle that Mueller’s probe appears to have wrapped up on his own terms, though not for lack of effort on Trump’s part to derail it. Instead, Mueller paints a picture of a commander-in-chief who fought back in private and public against the probe, but was ultimately saved from his worst instincts by aides like McGahn, who cooperated extensively with Mueller’s probe and testified for some 30 hours before his team. “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful,” the report reads, “but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” […]

    Much more at the link.

  189. Hj Hornbeck says

    I was wondering whatever happened to this. Emphasis mine.

    On September 8, 2016, Sessions met with Kislyak in his Senate office. Sessions said that he believed he was doing the Campaign a service by meeting with foreign ambassadors, including Kislyak. He was accompanied in the meeting by at least two of his Senate staff: Sandra Luff, his legislative director; and Pete Landrum, who handled military affairs. The meeting lasted less than 30 minutes. [A number of topics were discussed, mostly benign.] Landrum recalled that Kislyak referred to the presidential campaign as “an interesting campaign,” and Sessions also recalled Kislyak saying that the Russian government was receptive to the overtures Trump had laid out during his campaign. (830) None of the attendees, though, remembered any discussion of Russian election interference or any request that Sessions convey information from the Russian government to the Trump Campaign.

    The Kremlin thought that Trump was asking for their help with the election, according to Sessions himself.

  190. says

    From the Mueller report:

    Although the series of events we investigated involved discrete acts, the overall pattern of the President’s conduct towards the investigations can shed light on the nature of the President’s acts and the inferences that can be drawn about his intent. In particular, the actions we investigated can be divided into two phases, reflecting a possible shift in the President’s motives

    The first phase covered the period from the President’s first interactions with Comey through the President’s firing of Comey. During that time, the President had been repeatedly told he was not personally under investigation. Soon after the firing of Comey and the appointment of the Special Counsel, however, the President became aware that his own conduct was being investigated in an obstruction-of-justice inquiry.

    At that point, the President engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.

    Also, we should note that after he knew that he was indeed under investigation, Trump continued to tell the public that he was not under investigation.

    From Steve Benen:

    […] there’s a degree of irony to the circumstances. Earlier in the Mueller report, the document concluded that “substantial evidence indicates” that the catalyst of the president firing then-FBI Director James Comey was “Comey’s unwillingness to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation, despite the president’s repeated requests that Comey make such an announcement.”

    In other words, Trump told the FBI director to tell the public he wasn’t under investigation. Comey balked, which led the president to fire him, and soon after, Trump found himself under investigation – a point he repeatedly lied about. […]

    It’s entirely possible the president will soon tell supporters that he was never under investigation […]

  191. Hj Hornbeck says

    I want what Glenn Greenwald is smoking.

    The two-pronged conspiracy theory that has dominated U.S. political discourse for almost three years – that (1) Trump, his family and his campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election, and (2) Trump is beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin — was not merely rejected today by the final report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. It was obliterated: in an undeniable and definitive manner.

  192. lotharloo says

    @HJ Hornbeck:

    Okay, I looked into and I found this on the 10t page:

    the investigation did not
    establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian
    government in its election interference activities.

  193. says

    Text describing how Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied repeatedly:

    When a reporter indicated that the “vast majority” of FBI agents supported Comey, Sanders said, “Look, we’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things.” Following the press conference, Sanders spoke to the President, who told her she did a good job and did not point out any inaccuracies in her comments. Sanders told this Office that her reference to hearing from “countless members of the FBI” was a “slip of the tongue.” She also recalled that her statement in a separate press interview that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in Comey was a comment she made “in the heat of the moment” that was not founded on anything.

    Other statements Sarah Sanders made while she lied in the same vein:

    “Most importantly, the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.”

    “Most of America had decided on their own that Director Comey was not the person that should be leading the FBI, as evidenced by the numerous comments that we’ve seen from Democrat members in the House and Senate, Republican members, members of the FBI, and people across the board.”

    She also claimed that Trump himself “had countless conversations with members from within the FBI.”

    That’s a lot slips of the tongue.

  194. says

    Oh, FFS. Trump used the Game of Thrones font and style to depict himself with a “Game Over” graphic that also proclaimed “No Collusion. No Obstruction. For the Haters and the Radical Left Democrats—Game over.” Trump posted this using all caps for the text. (I’m not going to link to this garbage.)

    From HBO:

    Though we can understand the enthusiasm for Game of Thrones now that the final season has arrived, we still prefer our intellectual property not be used for political purposes.

  195. says

    “If this is what a complete and total exoneration looks like, I’d hate to see a damning report.”

    […] I asked 12 legal experts to examine what the report had to say about collusion and obstruction of justice. Specifically, I wanted to know if Barr’s decision not to pursue obstruction charges was justified, and if the evidence of coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign amounted to criminal conspiracy.

    There was a near-consensus on both questions. While Mueller may not have had sufficient evidence to charge anyone with conspiracy, the experts agree that plenty of evidence exists. The same is true of the obstruction question. As one expert put it, “the Mueller report provides a road map for prosecuting Trump for obstruction of justice, but stops short of this finding because of legal doubts about indicting a sitting president.” […]

    Jessica Levinson, law professor, Loyola Law School
    If we were talking about Mr. Trump, not President Trump, we’d be talking about an indictment for obstruction of justice. […] Mueller found substantial wrongdoing that would plague, and perhaps end, any other presidency in American history. […]

    Miriam Baer, law professor, Brooklyn Law School
    […] Even if each of the events described and analyzed by the special counsel independently falls short of establishing obstruction as a legal matter (and that’s a debatable proposition), viewed in the aggregate, they indicate a stunning willingness to ignore and subvert the rule of law. […] Trump’s supporters can call it an exoneration, but his opponents may well view it as a road map for impeachment.

    Stephen Legomsky, law professor, Washington University
    Ever since Attorney General William Barr released his purported “summary” of the Mueller report’s conclusions, most media accounts have assumed that Mr. Mueller ultimately decided there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians. […]

    Those accounts gave the president an undeserved free pass, for even Mr. Barr’s cherry-picked quotes had made no such claims. We can now see that all Mr. Mueller decided on that issue was that “the investigation did not establish” such a conspiracy. To non-lawyers this might seem like splitting hairs, but lawyers understand how important that difference is. “Establish” is prosecutor talk that simply means “I won’t bring an indictment because I don’t think a jury would find the proof of conspiracy to be ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’” — an extremely high standard of proof. As the Mueller report emphasizes in the introduction, “A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.”

    To the contrary, we now know that Mr. Mueller found abundant evidence of precisely such a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The section titled “Trump Campaign and the Dissemination of Hacked Materials” was very heavily redacted, but even the non-redacted evidence of conspiracy was substantial […]

    Peter Margulies, law professor, Roger Williams University School of Law
    […] The Mueller report provides a road map for prosecuting Trump for obstruction of justice but stops short of this finding because of legal doubts about indicting a sitting president. Trump could be charged after he has left the White House […] Congress could start impeachment based on Mueller’s road map, although political factors might weigh against that move. […]

    Keith Whittington, politics professor, Princeton University
    If this is what a complete and total exoneration looks like, I’d hate to see a damning report. We have often been cautioned not to rush to judgment because we did not know what the Mueller team knows. […] the report collects all that information in a single place and provides new details that do not put the president in a favorable light. […]

    Moreover, the president has behaved remarkably badly in regard to the investigation into the 2016 campaign. […]

    Link

    More at the link.

    A mention of Putin:

    Victoria Nourse, law professor, Georgetown University
    “Putin has won.” Election Day 2016, an intercepted message to Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian national “closely connected to Putin.” (On page 149 of the Mueller report.) This line says everything that the American public should remember about the Mueller investigation. […] It is not a crime for any citizen to associate with criminals and spies, nor to enjoy their favors, but that is surely too low a standard for a president of the United States. […]

  196. Hj Hornbeck says

    lotharloo, you cut out the surrounding context. Bolding is my emphasis, italics is what you quoted.

    As set forth in detail in this report, the Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfere~ in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents. The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign. Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

    Below we describe the evidentiary considerations underpinning statements about the results of our investigation and the Special Counsel’s charging decisions, and we then provide an overview of the two volumes of our report.

    The report describes actions and events that the Special Counsel’s Office found to be supported by the evidence collected in our investigation. In some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event. In other instances, when substantial, credible evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence, the report states that the investigation established that certain actions or events occurred. A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

    “Establish” is a term of art with a very narrow meaning, don’t project your lay understanding onto it. In this case, it means something more like “justified beyond a reasonable doubt,” a pretty high standard to hit.

  197. says

    AOC:

    Mueller’s report is clear in pointing to Congress’ responsibility in investigating obstruction of justice by the President.

    It is our job as outlined in Article 1, Sec 2, Clause 5 of the US Constitution.

    As such, I’ll be signing onto @RashidaTlaib’s impeachment resolution.

  198. lotharloo says

    @HJ Hornbeck:

    “Establish” is a term of art with a very narrow meaning, don’t project your lay understanding onto it. In this case, it means something more like “justified beyond a reasonable doubt,” a pretty high standard to hit.

    Okay, I get your point. So it’s not an exoneration. It does not even say that Trump did not collude with Russia on other issues. But nonetheless, it’s a much worse outcome than what I was hoping to get let’s say a year ago.

  199. Hj Hornbeck says

    lotharloo @285:

    But nonetheless, it’s a much worse outcome than what I was hoping to get let’s say a year ago.

    Can’t help you there. Still, if one way you judge this report’s effectiveness is by how Trump reacts, he refused to take questions this afternoon after previously promising to take questions. It sounds like the White House didn’t expect this level of blow-back.

  200. consciousness razor says

    I’m still trying to figure out how much of the conspiracy findings amount to “we know they tried on multiple occasions, but they (1) may have been too stupid to understand that’s illegal, or (2) were too incompetent to succeed, or (3) were prevented from doing so by third parties.” It seems to be “(4) all of the above,” but then there’s also “(5) redacted.” It’s totally unacceptable no matter what, of course.
    Another option is that this was also meant to be passed off to Congress to start impeachment proceedings, along with the obstruction stuff. If the reasoning is that they could only investigate the latter (not make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” ) — hence the way that’s somewhat obscured in the language, and was mangled into a contradicting interpretation by Barr, Trump, etc. — then that would apply just as well to any conspiracy findings. That isn’t specific to something like obstruction; it’s a completely general issue related to presidential powers. So of course they’re going to avoid a clear, explicit “determination,” in so many words, because that’s not what they set out to do in their report.
    Anyway, I’m sure the sophistry from Trump supporters (and other ignorant/confused people) will continue, and only become more ridiculous if that’s possible. They should just be ignored/mocked/etc., so the grown-ups can take care of things. But I’m really not sure that establishment Democrats will do their jobs, as opposed to obsessing over their polling numbers….

  201. Hj Hornbeck says

    consciousness razor @288:

    But I’m really not sure that establishment Democrats will do their jobs, as opposed to obsessing over their polling numbers….

    I was feeling that way, until I listened to the second segment of the latest Pod Save America. Long story short: impeachment may be the right thing to do, but with Republicans and the right-wing noise machine pushing back it could easily backfire. Rather than begin all-or-nothing impeachment hearings that would climax just before the elections, start up a lot of smaller investigations and begin a steady trickle of damning judicial and legislative findings. Weather away at Trump’s diehard base, and let the voters do the impeachment for you. That is both safer and more likely to succeed.

  202. Hj Hornbeck says

    Having said that, Maxine Waters offers up a strong counter-point. I’ll just quote the conclusion:

    At this point, Congress’ failure to impeach is complacency in the face of the erosion of our democracy and constitutional norms. Congress’ failure to impeach would set a dangerous precedent and imperil the nation as it would vest too much power in the Executive Branch and embolden future officeholders to further debase the U.S. presidency, if that’s even possible.

  203. consciousness razor says

    Long story short: impeachment may be the right thing to do,

    No, it is part of their job, according to our Constitution. This isn’t a game of chess, and it isn’t about political strategizing. Article I does not tell the House to “ask yourself whether or not you think this will be politically advantageous right now.” You do what the Constitution requires, as an elected official, or you may resign. Both Democrats and Republicans need to accept that responsibility, or they should have never run for office in the first place. They can go work in an International House of Pancakes instead, where they will do less damage.
    But let’s think about this. Suppose the Republicans do want to play games. They should be happy to see Democrats harm their chances politically, if that’s what they genuinely believe will come of this. I’m not going to be scared off by that, however. If they know what they’re doing with their games, they should jump at the chance to allow it, because they believe it will be good for them — do you see them acting that way? I don’t. Let them figure that out among themselves, if they think they understand the minds of millions of people so well. They don’t seem to understand much of anything very well, and I don’t buy it.
    But I just don’t care about that anyway. I didn’t vote for Democrats so they can do what is most convenient for them (or me) at any particular moment. They have to follow the Constitution, uphold the rule of law, and have a meaningful separation of powers, or else we are all fucked, not just Trump. And …. when Dems don’t do that, what exactly is my vote supposed to reflect in next election? Definitely not that I approve of them being afraid of responsibility, not that I like when they once again fail to use their control of the House, and definitely not that they are more interested in manipulating voters like me than simply doing their fucking jobs. My vote will reflect desperation, at best. As a strategy, if that’s how you insist on thinking about it, that leaves something to be desired.

  204. KG says

    The gist is that the whole non-finding of obstruction seems to rest on the DOJ/OLC belief that a sitting President cannot be indicted – quite contrary to Barr’s claim. – Lynna, OM quoting Josh Marchall@226, emphasis added

    Well that shouldn’t have stopped Mueller – after all, what he was dealing with is a lying President ;-)

  205. Akira MacKenzie says

    consciousness razor @ 291

    I didn’t vote for Democrats so they can do what is most convenient for them (or me) at any particular moment.

    But… that’s been the Democrat’s strategy since 1992.

  206. Akira MacKenzie says

    Hj Hornbeck @ 289

    Weather away at Trump’s diehard base, and let the voters do the impeachment for you.

    Ummm… Trump’s diehard base are fascist, racist, inbred, Bible-humping, gun-fondling garbage people. They have no problem with anything Trump does, legal or illegal, as long as it “triggers the lib-tards.”

    You can’t expect help from that redneck trash.

  207. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    FWIW, the Constitution does not specify any circumstances under which the House MUST impeach the President. All it says is that only the House can impeach, only the Senate can convict, and upon impeachment AND conviction, the President SHALL BE removed from office.

    What is more, impeachment is quite rare. Only 2 Presidents have been impeached–both subsequently acquitted. (Nixon wasn’t one of them, and while it is likely he would have been impeached, it is possible the Senate might not have convicted him.) Fewer than 10 Federal officials (mostly judges) have been removed from office by impeachment–although several others have resigned, some to actually be acquitted afterwards!
    To my mind, impeachment is probably a bridge too far. I think it could be more valuable to investigate the hell out of DJT and friends, forcing the Rethugs to defend the indefensible. What really matters is 2020. Whoever controls state houses after 2020 will control redistricting and so control the House for the next decade, as well as determining whether the electorate is broadened or narrowed.

    If you support a liberal agenda, this should be the prize you keep in mind. Legislators are a lot more likely to cater to the left if the only challenges they face come from that direction.
    The game being played here is politics–and I guarantee that the sausage being made by either party isn’t vegan.

  208. Chris J says

    The problem is, if impeachment doesn’t happen now when it has happened to Clinton for lying under oath, the message this sends is, at best, that we no longer care how illegally, immorally, or terribly a president acts; they can use the government as their tool however they like and still be considered a useful leader of the country.

    At worst, it sends the message that it doesn’t matter how illegally, immorally, or terribly a president of one party acts, as long as the rest of the party puts power over everything else and breaks governmental systems to achieve their goals.

    Yes, it helps if the president can be charged with and prosecuted for crimes they commit once they leave office, in that something is better than nothing, but there’s all sorts of nonsense around what you can and can’t do to a sitting president and who a president can and can’t pardon. Plus, the president (according to sections of the Mueller report) has a lot of power to bury or destroy evidence that could be used for prosecution because they are the highest singular leader in this country. Without impeachment, we could have a system where a president can rule absolutely and blatantly criminally, then just destroy evidence and interfere with investigation so they are safe once they leave office.

    It’s a terrible mess to be in, all because you think that impeachment might not be the politically best move to make.

  209. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Chris J.,
    What it says if the current occupant of 1600 Penn Ave. is not impeached is:
    1) Democrats are better at doing math than Republicans–the math says this isn’t an action that wins them votes.
    2) The American people realize that impeachment is political, not legal.
    3) It expresses confidence in American institutions that they can survive 4 years under an utter imbecile.
    4) It says that Democrats are willing to play the long game and set up the shot before they take it.

    Above all, it shows there’s an appreciation that if DJT were impeached in the House and acquitted in the Senate, that he could ride a wave of sympathy back into office for another 4 years.

  210. Chris J says

    I just can’t agree with your points. It definitely is a gamble about whether the presence of impeachment would affect the election one way or another, but let’s add to that gamble by pointing out that if the current occupant of 1600 Penn Ave. is not impeached, then he has free reign to paint the whole investigation as partisan (as he’s been doing) that found no collusion (as he’s been doing) and that boost in political morale could fuel his re-election.

    Making impeachment political is one thing, but making it partisan is another, and the lack of any consequences as a result of everything that has been found cements the investigation as partisan, not merely political or not-legal.

    Meanwhile, checks and balances become meaningless.

  211. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Chris J.,
    I share your frustration–the man is utterly vile. However, what would be the point of impeaching DJT if you can’t even muster 50 votes in the Senate to bring the issue to the floor, let alone 67 votes needed to convict? And even if you did convict, the replacement would be Mike Pence!
    The risk-reward calculus just isn’t there. Meanwhile, if they take a page a day from the Meuller report for hearings, they can keep a steady drip of corruption, incompetence and downright fuckery until after election day. The goal is not just to defeat DJT, but to defeat the Republicans. Defeating Trump but still having to deal with McConnell is not a win.

    The electoral map is tight. The former blue-wall states are now swing states, and DJT has a formidable war chest of campaign funds he can use to drip poison into the ears of the citizens there. DJT is starting with a solid base of 40% who will vote for him no matter what. We cannot afford to alienate that many voters before the DJT’s re-election comes within stealing distance.

  212. Chris J says

    a_ray_in_dilbert_space:

    I can also share a need for practicality. I’m usually an extremely practical person. But in this case, I think we need to take a more righteous stance to preserve the few bits of institution we have left.

    Mike Pence as president faces re-election in 2020 if Trump is impeached, with the usual problems of ramping up and new leadership. Trump has already hobbled the government, so I don’t see Pence as being able to cause much more trouble than Trump already is. Additionally, a successful impeachment would mean that even Republicans have judged Trump and the whole debacle of an administration he set up as too far. I see that as a plus for the 2020 elections, and one that would allow Democrats to campaign on something other than Anti-Trump more successfully.

    So what happens if impeachment passes the house and not the senate? Given all the information in the Mueller report, I see this still as positive for Democrats in 2020. It means that Democrats are willing to act on the report’s findings and grant it legitimacy, and they can hammer Republicans for not doing the same. Meanwhile, Republicans put themselves even more at Trump’s disposal, who may be popular with a rabid fan base but still only has a 40-ish% approval rating.

    The problem I see with avoiding impeachment is that voters will see that the people who are in charge of impeachment don’t see the Mueller findings as a big deal. No matter what they personally think, they’ll wonder why the investigation happened at all if the findings weren’t going to matter, and the more center-ish voters will start to see the investigation and the Democrats who pushed it so hard as a big flop. Disillusionment is strong in this age, and it works in service of Trump and the Republicans.

    In other words, I see it more likely that doing nothing will alienate voters on the fence, because the investigation will look exactly like Benghazi; a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing in the end, with Democrats who can’t follow through. Impeachment would involve laying out exactly what grounds the impeachment is based on, and there are enough facts in the Mueller report, I believe, to convince a normal voter that there is grounds for doing so.

  213. Saad says

    It’s pretty cool that we’ve come to the point where a serious case is being made that there shouldn’t be any consequences for the president this president for attempting to obstruct justice.

  214. consciousness razor says

    A nice long article from The Atlantic: Impeach Donald Trump
    a_ray, you said you want a bunch of hearings that show “a steady drip of corruption, incompetence and downright fuckery.” What’s supposed to be the fucking difference? It’ll show all of that … but somehow, they’re also not supposed to charge Trump (or his cronies) with anything. Presumably, that’s the difference, even though makes no sense. It would be an extended whining session, about things you consider unimportant (since you may call them corruption, incompetence and downright fucking, but you don’t really mean it). It would just be a bit of political theater and nothing more. Pretending as if you’re running the government and making a case, but only ever pretending.
    Isn’t that what you’re asking for? If so, what would be the point of that?

  215. consciousness razor says

    correction: “fuckery” not “fucking”
    It sounds like what you want the House to do, by the way. Just fuckery, not governing.

  216. says

    a_ray @302:

    The electoral map is tight. The former blue-wall states are now swing states, and DJT has a formidable war chest of campaign funds he can use to drip poison into the ears of the citizens there. DJT is starting with a solid base of 40% who will vote for him no matter what.

    You’re right. And Donald J Trump is not the only one wielding a formidable war chest in his re-election campaign. He also still has the backing of Russia. As I write this, Russian trolls and bots are flooding the internet to push Trump’s view of the Mueller report, and to weaken the impact of any bad news about Trump. They are also obviously pushing previously-debunked conspiracy theories about the FBI “spying” on Trump … and on and on.

    It’s a formidable re-election machine and it will continue to bury the facts and to nurture Trump’s lies right through 2020.

    What went on in the past, and a harbinger of what is to come:

    […] The troll group, known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), also successfully used fake accounts on Twitter to provoke reactions from high profile American users from across the political spectrum.

    The report makes clear that Mueller’s team found no evidence that Americans who had interacted with the accounts knew they were tied to Russia or any other foreign country.

    But whether those Americans knew — and even whether they were retweeting the fake accounts to support what they had said or publicly disagreeing with them — may not have mattered to the trolls. Any interaction between one of the accounts and someone with a significant number of Twitter followers would have gotten the account in front of more people, and likely led to new followers. The more followers the accounts got, the more legitimate they would have looked to both regular users and high-profile ones alike.

    The report names former Ambassador Michael McFaul, political operative Roger Stone, Fox News host Sean Hannity, and Michael Flynn Jr., the son of Trump’s former national security adviser, as either responding to or retweeting tweets sent by the Russian group.

    Responding to the report on Thursday, McFaul, who served as US ambassador to Russia under President Obama, tweeted, “for heaven’s sake. I was not ‘influenced’ by these Russian bots (and I engaged with hundreds more , bots and real people). I was trying to refute them.”

    Tweets from one troll account, @TEN_GOP, which was designed to look like it was associated with the Republican party of Tennessee, were cited or retweeted by multiple Trump campaign officials or surrogates. Among those who interacted with the account were Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, along with Kellyanne Conway, who is now counselor to the president, and Brad Parscale, who is now the campaign manager for Trump’s reelection campaign.

    “The investigation identified no similar connections between the IRA and the Clinton Campaign,” the report noted. […]

    CNN link

    Here’s Trump’s nonsense from today, (this is basically what Russia is repeating in various ways):

    Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue. Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed.

    Note that Trump is scapegoating the note-taker, Don McGahn, the lawyer who gave the Mueller team some of the most damaging information on Trump when it came to obstruction of justice, or attempts to obstruct justice. McGahn is credible. Trump is not.

  217. Akira MacKenzie says

    Most Americans (yes, even Republicans) know Trump and Co. are corrupt shits, it’s just that they don’t care. Until his policies hurt them personally (especially in the pocket books) they won’t care.

  218. says

    Akira @294:

    Ummm… Trump’s diehard base are fascist, racist, inbred, Bible-humping, gun-fondling garbage people. They have no problem with anything Trump does, legal or illegal, as long as it “triggers the lib-tards.”
    You can’t expect help from that redneck trash.

    Akira! Wake up. Please read comment 35 (from blf), and especially comment 70 (from me). Read those two comments several times. Make sure you understand.

  219. says

    From Susan B. Glasser, writing for The New Yorker:

    […] The appointment of Mueller did not lead to the end of Trump’s Presidency. Not yet, and probably not ever. […] But the report’s belated publication, almost four weeks to the day after Mueller submitted it to Attorney General William Barr, is hardly the “complete and total exoneration” that Trump initially claimed it was and that Barr misleadingly and incompletely portrayed to the country. We knew that wasn’t the case the minute Trump said it.

    What we didn’t know until Thursday, when we finally saw the four-hundred-and-forty-eight-page document, is how much evidence Mueller had amassed about the President, panicked and in crisis mode, trying to shut down and block the investigation. The report documents ten different incidents that raise questions about the President’s behavior. Was it obstruction of justice? […] that that is a matter for Congress to decide. And Congress, as a matter of political calculation and senatorial math, remains unlikely to pursue the question to its bitter end.

    […] Trump is one of only a few Presidents in American history to win the Presidency via the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. The Mueller report appears to have arrived at a similar outcome. […]

    […] the portrait of the White House that Mueller and his team have produced, which is surely one of the most damning insider accounts ever written about a Presidency in modern times. What the report portrays, in numbing legalese and revealing footnotes, is a breathtaking culture of lying and impunity, distrust and double-dealing. […] it is based on sworn testimony and on contemporaneous notes, e-mails, and phone records that only a prosecutor could have had access to. […]

    We pretty much knew this was coming. On Wednesday evening, President Trump himself announced that Barr would give a press conference the next morning. Then came news from the Justice Department that Congress and the public would get the report only after the press conference. Then came a Times report that the Justice Department had, in fact, briefed White House lawyers about the Mueller findings before the release, aiding their preparations to rebut it.

    To say that Washington heads were exploding would be an understatement. Imagine Richard Nixon announcing that Leon Jaworski would be giving a press conference the next day to exonerate him, and you get some sense of how this late-breaking information was received.

    By 8 p.m., Representative Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Democratic-controlled House, was telling reporters that the “Attorney General appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump, the very subject of the investigation at the heart of the Mueller report.”

    The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, tweeted, “AG Barr has thrown out his credibility and the DOJ’s independence with his single-minded effort to protect @realdonaldtrump above all else.” […]

  220. says

    Trump is joking about staying in office as president for more than two terms. This “joke” makes my stomach turn:

    […] At an event for the Wounded Warrior Project, Lt. Gen. Michael S. Linnington, chief executive of the veterans charity, gave Trump a trophy to thank him for his support.

    “Well, this is really beautiful,” Trump told the crowd in the East Room of the White House. “This will find a permanent place, at least for six years, in the Oval Office. Is that okay?”

    After some laughter from the crowd, Trump continued: “I was going to joke, General, and say at least for 10 or 14 years, but we would cause bedlam if I said that, so we’ll say six.”

    Trump also made a joke on the same topic last year. In a speech to Republican donors at his Mar-a-Lago estate, he praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for doing away with term limits.

    “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said, according to CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”

    Washington Post link

    We’d better keep an eye on this.

  221. says

    The Mueller report debunks Barr’s ‘No Collusion=No Obstruction’ lie:

    […] Mueller found evidence of a corrupt intent in at least some of the episodes he investigated as part of his obstruction inquiry. Intent is a key question in determining whether certain conduct fits into the legal framework of an obstruction offense.

    “Obstruction of justice can be motivated by a desire to protect noncriminal personal interests, to protect against investigations where underlying criminal liability falls into a gray area, or to avoid personal embarrassment,” Mueller said. “The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.”

    […] In assessing the motive for the Comey firing, Mueller said that a “thorough FBI investigation” would expose the work Michael Cohen had done on the Trump Tower project in Moscow throughout 2016, even as Trump repeatedly denied he had any connection to Russia. In a semi-redacted sentence, Mueller also seemed to point to an additional motive for firing Comey: Trump’s awareness that he had privately sought information about the Wikileaks’ email dumps during the campaign even after it was publicly reported that Russia was behind the hacks. […]

    According to Mueller’s report, the perceived criminal liabilities of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting — where his inner circle met with Kremlin-tied individuals — also may have motivated some of Trump’s allegedly obstructive conduct. […]

    TPM link

    Much more at the link.

  222. says

    Armed white nationalist militias are now coordinating with U.S. Border Patrol to “detain” migrants.

    Text excerpts below are from the New York Times and the Guardian.

    Armed rightwing militia members detained a large group of migrants at the US-Mexico border and coordinated with US border patrol agents to have them arrested, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, in a series of actions the civil liberties organization called a “kidnapping” and a flagrant violation of the law.
    ——————
    The group of white, rightwing vigilantes—dubbing itself the United Constitutional Patriots, and operating in southern New Mexico—has been given tacit permission by U.S. Border Patrol agents to terrorize migrant families and hold them at gunpoint until agents arrive to “process” them.
    ———————
    A video posted Monday night by Jim Benvie, a member of the armed group, appeared to show the militia ordering around a large group of migrants, including many children, and telling them to sit on the ground. As he filmed the migrants kneeling in the dirt, Benvie narrated on his video: “There’s no border patrol here. This is us.”

    […]

    Benvie mirrored Trump’s anti-immigrant language in his videos, saying, “This is an invasion. Gotta build the wall.”

    In another video posted Wednesday, Benvie filmed himself stopping a group of four adults and three children and said “border patrol” to them as he approached, before calling for another member of his group to join.
    ——————–
    “The Trump administration’s vile racism has emboldened white nationalists and fascists to flagrantly violate the law,” the ACLU of New Mexico said in a letter to the state’s governor and attorney general, urging them to “immediately investigate this atrocious and unlawful conduct”.

    The ACLU described the group as “an armed fascist militia organization” made up of “vigilantes” working to “kidnap and detain people seeking asylum” and accused the group of directly making illegal arrests.

    Link

  223. says

    A Florida man was arrested over violent threats against Democratic members of Congress.

    […] A trio of Democrats — Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Reps. Eric Swalwell of California and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — were on the receiving end of belligerent messages from 49-year-old John Kless, according to a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. […]

    The complaint quotes a profanity-laced message allegedly targeting Swalwell, who has made gun control a centerpiece of his platform and clashed with critics on Twitter, warning that “the day you come after our guns” is “the day you’ll be dead.”

    Swalwell has previously highlighted similar threats, posting to Twitter a voicemail in which a caller can be heard mimicking the sound of gunfire and saying the California congressman would be a “casualty.” Swalwell responded to Kless’ arrest on Friday by praising law enforcement for “for protecting my staff and constituents.” […]

    “Tell your Taliban friend to” stop talking about 9/11, he is quoted telling Tlaib, adding that “this ain’t Trump’s fault” and “you definitely don’t tell our president, Donald Trump, what to say.”

    According to the complaint, Kless had earlier made “profane/harassing calls” to the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in which he spoke of “Congress taking away his guns, abortion, illegal immigration and Muslims in Congress.”

    Link

  224. says

    Republican Representative Matt Gaetz just hired a white nationalist.

    […] former Trump administration aide, Darren Beattie, will join his Capitol Hill office.

    “Very proud to have the talented Dr. Darren Beattie helping our team as a Special Advisor for Speechwriting. Welcome on board!” Gaetz tweeted Friday.

    Beattie was fired from the White House in August 2018 after reports that he had delivered remarks at a 2016 conference, dubbed an “active hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, alongside a well-known white nationalist, Richard Spencer.

    Organizers of the event, the H.L. Mencken Club, described it as a gathering for the “independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right.” But the SPLC has described its attendees as “a band of white nationalists, pseudoacademic and academic racists.”

    Link

  225. says

    Followup to comment 279.

    From Wonkette’s coverage of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ lies that were discussed in the Mueller report:

    […] The actual video of the post-Comey press conference […] shows that Sanders first slips her tongue in response to a reporter’s direct question about the White House’s bullshit story, which contradicted the acting FBI director Andrew McCabe. When asked by yet another reporter to confirm that she’d “personally” heard from “countless” FBI agents, her tongue keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. It’s a pretty funny exchange.

    REPORTER: You personally have talked to countless FBI officials, employees, since this happened?
    See, it’s barely been a day. What she’s saying strains credulity […]. He’s giving her an off-ramp but she won’t take it.

    SANDERS: Correct.

    REPORTER: I mean … really?

    SANDERS: Between like e-mail, text messages, absolutely.

    REPORTER: 50, 60, 70?

    SANDERS: Look, we’re not gonna get into a numbers game. I mean, I have heard from a large number of individuals that work at the FBI that said that they’re very happy with the president’s decision.

    […] Now, Sanders is on damage control. She tried to reassure the public of her honesty on Hannity last night […] She showed up today on “CBS This Morning” and further slimed Comey, insisting that Trump firing him was “one of the best decisions” the president ever made. Considering that’s what led to Mueller’s appointment as special counsel, Sanders doesn’t really understand how decisions work.

    Sanders repeated her absurd argument that her lies were just statements made “in the heat of the moment.” […] This was a press conference and later multiple appearances on TV where she justified the sudden termination of the FBI director. But Sanders wants us to believe the lies weren’t a “scripted thing.” Why? Because she’s still covering up for her boss

    Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti observed back in February that if Trump directed Sanders to lie it would show consciousness of guilt. Why else was it so important to promote a narrative that Comey was a bumbling incompetent, a common Inspector Clouseau? Trump could’ve fired him for any reason. […]

    Trump knew and was advised that canning Comey was legally perilous. He made every effort to distance himself from his own decision. He repeatedly tried to justify the termination as fully warranted and even something the FBI rank-and-file not-so secretly desired. This is why Sanders insists that Trump never directly told her to lie. […] The hosts of “CBS This Morning” pressed her on this point.

    JOHN DICKERSON: In the course of your time at the White House, has the president ever asked you to say something that you knew not to be true?

    SANDERS: The president isn’t asking people to break the law, isn’t asking them to do anything that is dishonest.

    [That is both untrue and avoids the question.]

    ANTHONY MASON: That’s not the question, Sarah.

    DICKERSON: So you’re saying the president has never asked you to say anything you knew not to be true.

    SANDERS: Correct.

    Why would anyone believe Sanders at this point? Everything she says is a lie wrapped in an insult. Longtime foe April Ryan struck down Sanders yesterday with great vengeance and furious anger. […]

    Link

    Several video snippets are available at the link, including a video of April Ryan responding.

  226. says

    Yes, one guy on Fox News still tells the truth:

    Before 30 seconds had passed during Thursday’s episode of Shepard Smith Reporting, the host had said what most of his Fox News colleagues had been trying very hard not to say all afternoon. “The bottom line on today’s document—according to the document, not the attorney general—is this: Robert Mueller reports he could not exonerate President Trump,” Smith declared.

    After noting that the special counsel had found that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election “was no hoax” and that “the [Trump] campaign expected to benefit from the stolen information that the Russians released,” Smith reiterated his initial point. “Robert Mueller’s report does not clear President Trump of obstruction of justice,” he said. “In fact, the special counsel wrote that if he could clear the president of obstruction of justice, he would, but that he could not.”

    […] In recent years, Smith has spent much of his airtime speaking slowly and directly into the camera, in the soothing tones used by crisis negotiators. During these monologues, he rebuts the dumb things said by his colleagues on the network’s opinion side. His program is a beacon of candor in a sea of partisan bullshit. […]

    Link

  227. says

    Oh, FFS. Trump has reverted to blaming President Obama for allowing Russian interference in U.S. elections:

    [Trump tweeted] “Anything the Russians did concerning the 2016 Election was done while Obama was President. He was told about it and did nothing! Most importantly, the vote was not affected.”

    Nearly everything in Trump’s tweet was wrong. The vote was affected. Barack Obama did a lot more than “nothing,” and he would’ve done more were it not for Mitch McConnell’s opposition. The “anything the Russians did…” suggests Trump may still have some doubts as to the nature of the Russians’ attack, which is an issue that does not lend itself to skepticism.

    […] Yesterday, for example, Trump blamed Obama for the Russia attack. Earlier this week, Trump made up a story about hearing from a “big tough guy” who was “crying” because Obama ruined his life. Last week, Trump focused his attention on his approval rating — as compared to Obama’s.

    Earlier that day, Trump tried to defend his family-separation policy by falsely claiming it was actually Obama’s policy. Four days earlier, Trump went after Joe Biden by condemning Obama.

    Three days earlier, Trump told the National Republican Congressional Committee, “By the way, the carbon and all of the things flying up in the air, you know, the carbon footprint? President Obama used to talk about the carbon footprint and he’d hop on Air Force One, a big 747 with very old engines, and he’d fly to Hawaii to play a round of golf. Now, you tell me, the carbon footprint. But that’s the way it is.”

    Obama, incidentally, never flew to Hawaii solely to play a round of golf.

    The week before that, Trump suggested Obama was responsible for orchestrating a conspiratorial scheme against the Republican campaign in 2016. […]

    Link

    Trump does not look good when compared to Obama. Trump does not look good when he reveals his ongoing obsession with President Obama.

  228. says

    From Elizabeth Warren:

    The Mueller report lays out facts showing that a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump and Donald Trump welcomed that help. Once elected, Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into that attack.

    Mueller put the next step in the hands of Congress: “Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.” The correct process for exercising that authority is impeachment.

  229. says

    From Mitt Romney:

    I am sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the President. I am also appalled that, among other things fellow citizens working in a campaign for president welcomed help from Russia.

    Reading the report is a sobering revelation of how far we have strayed from the aspirations and principles of the founders.

  230. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    CR and CJ, Actually, impeachment would be more political theater than would hearings, since the Senate would fail to convict and might not even bring it to the floor. Once the House pulls that trigger, they have shot their bolt. They relinquish control and attention. The ball is squarely in McConnell’s court.
    Hearings can be timed to make lives miserable not just for DJT, but also for his enablers well into the election year.

    And what is more, the public support for impeachment is not there. I am old enough to remember the Clinton impeachment. All it accomplished was neuter Newt and give Clinton a boost in popularity that he did not deserve. Politics is the art of the possible. I say we should focus on the ones we can actually win.

  231. lotharloo says

    @a_ray_in_dilbert_space:

    Initially, I thought impeachment was pointless but after thinking about it for a while, I think it’s the right thing to do.

    Cons:
    1) Impeachment will result in a political theater, with little actual gain.
    2) It will hurt Democrats in the short term. Fox news will play the “impeach the motherfucker” clip over and over and over again, and tell its ignorant viewers that the Dems wanted to do the impeachment regardless of the outcome of the Mueller report, which by the way is great and totally and completely exonerates Trump and says that it was all Obama’s fault!
    3) It will distract from other issues, e.g., Trump taxes, actual policy positions, etc.

    Pros:
    1) It’s the right thing to do. It’s very clear Trump tried to obstruct justice, multiple times and through multiple ways.
    2) In a few years, after the Foxnews propaganda is forgotten, impeachment will still stay as the right decision that Democrats made. For a moment, think about the legacy of the Clinton impeachment for the Republicans. It’s that “Republicans tried to impeach Bill Clinton because of a blowjob”. That’s what the public remembers, even though at the time Republicans used a lot of fake holy rage about the office of the president, testimony under oath and many other talking points that are completely forgotten. What would be the legacy of the Democrats if they don’t impeach? It would be that Donald J. Trump tried everything he could to obstruct justice and Democrats were fine with it.
    3) It will help fire up the Democratic base. It will show the base that their representatives are willing to fight instead of doing political calculations.

    I don’t think it’s an easy decision but I think there are stronger arguments for the impeachment position.

  232. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Lotharloo,
    OK, so let me get this straight. The right thing to do is for Democrats to fall on their sword, throw their legislative agenda into chaos, trash whatever good will they have built up in opposition to Darth Cheeto and all with zero probability of succeeding and the likelihood that their actions will deliver a second term to the imbecile?

    Yeah. OK. I don’t think that’s gonna happen. Impeachment died when Democrats didn’t take back the Senate–which means that it really died in 2012 (the math was always against winning the Senate), before Trump even declared.

    Has Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses. Without doubt. Is he a disaster as President? Again, no doubt. But since impeachment will never happen in the current incarnation of the Congress–hell, it’s not even clear it would make it through the House–what matters, all that matters is winning BIG in 2020. We cannot do that with the base only. We can’t do that when over 50% of the public opposes impeachment.

    Again, politics is the art of the possible–not the beau geste.

  233. Akira MacKenzie says

    a_ray_in_dilbert_space @325

    And what about the law? What other crimes should we ignore because it’s politically inconvenient to enforce. What else is the president above?

    Impeaching Trump is not about gestures, it’s about THE FUCKING LAW.

  234. lotharloo says

    @a_ray_in_dilbert_space:
    I’ll take your points in reverse order.

    We cannot do that with the base only.

    Yes, we can. You don’t need to convince the republican voters to vote for a Democrat. You don’t need to convince the right-leaning independents. If you can motivate your own base, you can win. Therefore, any political maneuver should be judged not only on its potential to pull in people who are not in your camp to vote for you, but also on its potential to bring more of your base to the voting booths.

    Has Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses. Without doubt.

    While it’s true that we all thought he had committed impeachable offenses, the difference now is that we had a special council investigation that concluded that. Not impeaching means that the special council investigation was in fact meaningless to a large degree, and that Democrats were planning to not do anything unless Mueller could catch Donald Trump swearing fealty to Putin.

    OK, so let me get this straight. The right thing to do is for Democrats to fall on their sword, throw their legislative agenda into chaos.

    I confess this is one of the two main reasons to not do impeachment, that it will prevent the Democrats from pursuing their agenda. But on the other hand, the Democratic agenda is fucked anyways. Republicans will never let Democrats implement anything meaningful anyways, however, shifting the focus to the impeachment rather than the issues and policies is going to hurt the Democrats.

    … the likelihood that their actions will deliver a second term to the imbecile?

    I would say this is the main reason not to do the impeachment. However, the blowback is only going to be short term.

    Let me bring up an example to see where you stand on these types of political strategies: When Dianne Feinstein received the allegations by Christine Blasey Ford, her ultimate choice was to bury the story because she thought that it would motivate the conservatives in the upcoming elections. The story was leaked eventually but it is likely that she was right. So just for the sake of the argument let’s assume that she was right. Do you think she made the right decision?

    I don’t think so. She did the short-sighted political calculation and went for a strategy to maximize short-term gains. However, the eventual hearings and Ford’s testimony was extremely credible and moving and it motivated a lot of people on the left to get involved with politics.

    I think it could be the same with the impeachment. The Republicans could become more energetic for a few months but it could help motivate the Democratic base in the long run.

  235. Akira MacKenzie says

    Lynna OM @ 309

    I’ve been trying to compose as polite a response to your request as humanly possible. The following is the best I can come up with:

    Oh… boo hoo. My heart bleeds for the hurt feeling of the inbred, Bible-beating, gun-fondling, uneducated, rural scum who are a millstone around this civilization’s neck. Cry me a fucking river.

    As fir BLF @ 35

    To see this, replace “garage people” with, e.g., “hijab wearers” or “people of colour” or “cis males” or “pharyngula’s horde”.

    We aren’t talking about some historically marginalized group or discriminated race or ethnicity. If that were the case, I’d agree We’re talking about a particular group of WHITE PEOPLE. You know, the morons who believe in JEEZ-us, creationism, and carry AR-15s into Walmart! The ones who voted for Trump The ones who stand in the way of everything you claim to value.

    Call them what you will, but according to my moral calculas, “Garbage People” is a appropriate epithet to hurl at these hicks.

  236. Akira MacKenzie says

    Forgive the lapses in punctuation in the last comment. My attention to detail tends to suffer when I’m furious.

  237. says

    Akira in comment 328, you began this discussion by talking about “the general level of stupidity and bigotry of the garbage people who live in the Redneck States.” That’s too general.

    See bf’s comment 35 … again: “Referring to a specific individual as, e.g., “hair furor”, or a well-defined group as, e.g., the “tory ultras” is one thing, but referring to an indeterminate, probably large, population is not that thing.”

    You are missing the point.

  238. Hj Hornbeck says

    Akira MacKenzie @328:

    My heart bleeds for the hurt feeling of the inbred, Bible-beating, gun-fondling, uneducated, rural scum who are a millstone around this civilization’s neck.

    Take it down a notch. A lot of their support comes from being fed a continual dose of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Take those away, and their support for Trump may soften enough that you think of them as human again.

    Anyway, I hope this angle gets more traction.

    It’s not simply that his staffers disregarded his orders. After all, Trump didn’t need Mueller to tell him that. Trump already knew these things didn’t happen. Sessions didn’t unrecuse. Corey Lewandowski never sent his backchannel messages to Sessions. And of course Robert Mueller was never fired. What I suspect is most angering to Trump, most humiliating is precisely that these narratives show he never did anything about it. […]

    The image is one of weakness, someone who blusters but is actually surprisingly, paradoxically conflict averse.

    The SCO report makes it crystal clear that Trump is a spinless coward. Much of the White House chaos can be attributed to that weakness: Trump doesn’t lead, so much as let others do whatever they want so long as they keep him rich and happy. And even when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain, it takes him a long time to do anything about it.

  239. says

    https://twitter.com/maddow/status/1119452258591215616

    Tweet from Rachel Maddow regarding the Maria Butina sentencing filing, which includes this:

    […] the defendant provided the Russian Official with the name of an individual she claimed was being considered for Secretary of State. She asked the Russian Official to seek the input of the Russian government on the name she provided and told him, “our opinion will be taken into consideration” in the United States.

    From Rachel:

    The opinion of the Russian government “will be taken into account” on … what’s that you say?

  240. says

    Hj @331, regarding your comments about the Mueller report: one man is still hopping mad about the Mueller report. Trump. This gives me hope in one way. It indicates that Trump knows how damaging the information in the Mueller report actually is.

    These tweets are all from Trump, and all from today:

    Despite the fact that the Mueller Report should not have been authorized in the first place & was written as nastily as possible by 13 (18) Angry Democrats who were true Trump Haters, including highly conflicted Bob Mueller himself, the end result is No Collusion, No Obstruction!

    The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to stir up and anger the pols and as many people as possible seldom mentioning the fact that the Mueller Report had as its principle conclusion the fact that there was NO COLLUSION WITH RUSSIA. The Russia Hoax is dead!

    United States weekly jobless claims just hit a 50 year low. The economy is doing GREAT!

    The end result of the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history is No Collusion with Russia (and No Obstruction). Pretty Amazing!

  241. says

    Followup to comment 333.

    From the readers comments:

    I hope this motivates people to read the report.
    ——————
    Can’t wait to read his Easter/Passover tweet. I’m sure it will focus on his crucifixion.
    —————–
    Why are they freaking out? As
    @TheRickWilson
    said: “The most striking part of the last two days is how Donald Trump and his allies are acting like losers, more aggrieved, bitchy, and petulant than ever.”
    It’s because they know. They always knew. And now it’s in the open.

    From Tom Nichols:

    One interesting aspect of the Mueller Report is not what’s in it, but how Trump’s shills have reacted to it. They have taken two positions.
    1. The report says exactly the opposite of what it says
    2. The media totally screwed up this story.

    The first strategy is pure gaslighting, like Kellyanne demanding apologies. She’s like the person who backs into you in the parking lot, gets out, and and demands your insurance info and says you’ll be hearing from her lawyers while her BMW is lodged in the side of your Camry.

    This is the strategy taken by people who know only the strategy of doubling down, of reacting with aggression, and who understand just how bad the news really is. They go on offense because…well, why the hell not? Bang the table. Might work.[…]

    The other is a spate of tweets and articles about what “the media” got wrong, mostly focused on talking heads who (admittedly) went too far in believing the myth that Trump would be led across the South Lawn in handcuffs. But these stories, too, are a panic reaction.

    They’re from conservatives who really, really wanted to invalidate the entire MSM [mainstream media] and they thought the Report was their silver bullet. It wasn’t In fact, it validated almost all of the MSM reporting.

    Sure, there were clinkers, like McClatchy’s “trip to Prague.” But when your case against “the media” is something you pulled off a panel from CNN or MSNBC (and notice “the media” is never “Fox”), then you’re admitting that you’d rather talk about anything but what happened.

    The Russians attacked the election. The Trump campaign, right up to the top, thought that was awesome. They greeted it with “how can we work this” instead of “call the FBI.” They lied, and lied, and lied some more. Amazing that the media got *any* of it right faced with that.

    Why are they freaking out? As @TheRickWilson said: “The most striking part of the last two days is how Donald Trump and his allies are acting like losers, more aggrieved, bitchy, and petulant than ever.”
    It’s because they know. They always knew. And now it’s in the open.

  242. says

    From CNN:

    […] Now, those close to him say Trump is newly furious at the people — most of whom no longer work for him — whose extensive interviews with the special counsel’s office created the epic depiction of an unscrupulous and chaotic White House. And he’s seeking assurances from those who remain that his orders are being treated like those of a president, and not like suggestions from an intemperate but misguided supervisor. […]

  243. says

    As someone who lives in a conservative, rural area, I’m not too happy at being categorized as a “garbage person” on the basis of geography.

  244. blf says

    Ah, but poopyhead@335, since you are someone who can also be reasonably called one of the WHITE PEOPLE, you clearly are one of the morons who believe in JEEZ-us, creationism, and carry AR-15s into Walmart!

    Anyone else notice the rather extreme racism is the apparent-troll’s reply, or (somewhat disguised) in their comment about the Notre Dame fire?

  245. says

    From Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer:

    Special Counsel Mueller’s report paints a disturbing picture of a president who has been weaving a web of deceit, lies and improper behavior and acting as if the law doesn’t apply to him.

    But if you hadn’t read the report and listened only to Mr. Barr, you wouldn’t have known any of that because Mr. Barr has been so misleading.

  246. says

    William Barr has offered to let just a few lawmakers see a less redacted version of the Mueller report, but Barr also placed severe restrictions on that viewing.

    […] Barr’s offer, which would allow just 12 senior lawmakers and certain staffers to see the fuller version of the report, also fails to guarantee lawmakers access to grand jury material. They say they’re open to “discussing a reasonable accommodation” but that members of investigative committees — such as the Judiciary Committee and Intelligence Committee in each chamber — require access as well.

    “While the current proposal is not workable, we are open to discussing a reasonable accommodation with the Department that would protect law enforcement sensitive information while allowing Congress to fulfill its constitutional duties,” they write. […]

    Link

    I think Barr is just playing a game of stall-them-until-they-give-up. He is buying time for Trump and his lackeys to cement the “no collusion, no obstruction” false narrative in the minds of the public.

    Barr won’t let lawmakers take copies of the report to their offices. He doesn’t want the few lawmakers that he does allow to see a less redacted report to discuss that report with their colleagues. Lawmakers, even the special few, will still be blocked from seeing grand jury testimony. Barr is preventing Congress from performing its oversight functions.

    Barr is also acting like an all-powerful autocrat.

  247. says

    blf @336:

    Anyone else notice the rather extreme racism is the apparent-troll’s reply, or (somewhat disguised) in their comment about the Notre Dame fire?

    Yes, I noticed that. It sounds like hate speech to me.

    Akira is also coming close to fostering divisiveness, just like a Russian troll. It’s weird. I can’t quite figure it out.

    I live in a rural area with “rural scum” (as Akira calls them) that I do not find to be a “millstone” around my neck, nor do I find them to be “garbage people.” Yes, there are many flaws in this population, but I would not indulge in wholesale condemnation of them.

  248. says

    From Josh Marshall:

    The simple takeaway from the Mueller Report is the President betrayed his country and spent two years lying and breaking the law to try to hide that fact. He should resign and be tried for his crimes.

  249. says

    About Erik Prince’s appearance in the Mueller Report:

    Erik Prince really was up to no good in that Seychelles meeting.

    Mueller revealed that Erik Prince, Blackwater founder and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, did in fact wildly mislead Congress about the purpose of his January 2017 Seychelles trip.

    The report revealed that Prince flew to the island nation specifically to meet with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. On two occasions during that trip, they sat down to talk U.S.-Russia relations, and Prince described the conversations to Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

    That’s a far cry from what Prince said in a tense interview with the House Intelligence Committee: “I didn’t fly there to meet any Russian guy.”

    In his testimony, Prince bristled at suggestions there was anything untoward about his trip, saying he just shared a beer with Dmitriev during a chance encounter.

    The report doesn’t explicitly say that Prince perjured himself during his congressional testimony, as those interviewed in the investigation were offered so-called “queen for a day” immunity. Mueller also declined to indict Prince for lying to Congress.

  250. says

    Rudi Giuliani is now calling don McGahn a liar. That’s rich.

    Some background information:

    […] So far as Trump is concerned, McGahn made a basic error—he was truthful and cooperated with a criminal investigation. In the process McGahn made it clear just how much Trump tried to hamstring, harm, and end the investigation into Russia’s interference in a the 2016 election. As the New York Times reports, McGahn became one of witnesses most cited in the report produced by special counsel Robert Mueller. References to the White House counsel’s testimony came up 157 times.

    And there was a good reason. Trump twice called on McGahn to remove Mueller and end the investigation. […] Instead, McGahn threatened to resign, saying that Trump was ordering him to do “crazy shit.”

    Clearly, speaking the truth is the one sin that cannot be tolerated by Trump or anyone around him, so current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has issued an attack on McGahn. According to Giuliani, McGahn’s statements “can’t be taken at face value.” He followed up by speculating that McGahn was lying, or McGahn wasn’t remembering correctly, or Trump was only making a joke by “venting his frustrations” with Mueller.

    Trump had previously posted a twisted attack on McGahn’s credibility for a reason that for anyone else, would seem incredibly strange. McGahn took notes during meetings. According to the former counsel, Trump asked about the notes at the time, and McGahn had to explain that it was what “real lawyers” did. But Trump later tweeted “Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed.”

    […] The concept that other people want an accurate record of events isn’t just odd to Trump, it’s threatening. […]

    Link

    From the Washington Post:

    “The narrative is written as if it’s all true and somebody proved it. Nobody proved it,” Giuliani said in an interview Friday. “I’m frustrated by the report because in some ways I’d love to have a trial and prove that it’s not true.”

  251. says

    The courts dealt two major blows to Trump’s environmental agenda during the past week:

    […] Judge Brian Morris of the U.S. District Court in Montana ruled late Friday that the Interior Department under former Secretary Ryan Zinke acted illegally when it sought to overturn a 2016 ban on coal mining on public lands. More than 40% of U.S. coal is currently mined from federal lands and the Obama administration imposed the ban on most federal coal sales three years ago.

    The Trump administration sought to lift that moratorium as part of a larger effort to revive the coal industry, but Morris said that in doing so government officials ignored the environmental implications associated with selling large amounts of coal obtained from U.S. lands. The judge slammed Interior officials for describing the move “as a mere policy shift” […]

    While Morris’ ruling does not go so far as to reinstate the Obama-era ban, legal experts said it would likely force officials to revise their justification for the decision. The judge has moreover said he will issue a second legal decision this year on whether the mining ban should be reinstated.

    Also on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ordered the EPA to finally take action on widespread demands from environmental groups to ban chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide. […]

    The court ruled Friday that the EPA has 90 days to make a decision on banning chlorpyrifos across the country, giving the agency until mid-July to act.

    Environmental groups have expressed concern that the Trump administration may continue to drag out the case, but also sounded a note of optimism following the court’s ruling.

    “We’ll find out in three months if the Trump EPA remains under the tight control of the chemical agriculture industry, or if Administrator [Andrew] Wheeler will finally take his job seriously and ban this brain-damaging pesticide,” said Environmental Working Group (EWG) President Ken Cook in a statement to ThinkProgress and other publications. […]

    Link

  252. tomh says

    Interesting opinion in the Washington Post.

    Trump tried to obstruct justice. But he was too inept to do it.

    The Mueller report shows that ineffectiveness kept the president from more legal jeopardy.

    By Jennifer Daskal
    Jennifer Daskal is an associate professor of law at American University Washington College of Law and a former counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice.
    April 19

    Reading the redacted report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Thursday felt like reading the story of a particularly clumsy mob boss. President Trump’s longtime former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is told: “The boss loves you.” “Everyone knows the boss has your back.” Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, gets the message: “Sit tight.” You will be “taken care of” as a result. Trump himself says of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort: Thank you for not flipping. You are so “very brave.”

    Except that Trump doesn’t appear to have been anywhere near as effective as the fictional gangsters he resembles in Mueller’s work.

    Perhaps one of the most striking takeaways from the report is the degree to which the president and those close to him tried their very best to coerce, coordinate and conspire — and ultimately break the law — but couldn’t quite succeed in doing so. Failure may be the key thing that has, at least for now, saved Trump and his immediate family members from indictment.

    Much more at the link.

  253. Kreator says

    @blf #336, Lynna #339:

    Once, Akira also referred to Middle Eastern people* as “goat-fuckers,” so I think he’s definitely a racist. To be honest I was surprised when he wasn’t banned then and there, or at least given a warning by PZ.

    (*) being generous you could say that he meant just terrorists, but that’s not much better. Isn’t being a terrorist bad enough?

  254. blf says

    Kreator@346, They then apologised (see later in that thread). However, judging by both the recently-cited comments, and also the multiple cases of majorly missing the points flying very low and loudly over their head, they don’t seem to have taken on aboard what the problems are… nor how to present an opinion without resorting to crude bigotry or inaccurate overgeneralism. Plus (perhaps understandably on the subject of hair furor supporters?), what seems to be a whiff of USAian exceptionalism.

  255. blf says

    Follow-up to @313, FBI arrests member of rightwing militia accused of detaining migrants:

    Larry Mitchell Hopkins accused of illegal weapons possession after videos apparently showed men stopping migrants in New Mexico

    A member of an armed rightwing militia group accused of illegally detaining migrants at the US-Mexico border has been arrested, officials said on Saturday.

    The FBI arrested Larry Mitchell Hopkins […] for alleged unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition , days after his group posted videos that appeared to show armed men stopping migrants at the border in New Mexico, ordering them to sit on the ground and coordinating with US border patrol agents to have them taken into custody.

    […]

    On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called for an investigation into the pro-Trump, anti-immigrant men who have been patrolling the border and calling themselves the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP).

    The ACLU in New Mexico described the group as “an armed fascist militia organization” made up of “vigilantes”, saying they were working to “kidnap and detain people seeking asylum” and had directly made illegal arrests and held migrants at gunpoint.

    Hopkins’ role in the group was unclear, and it was also not clear if he was facing any charges directly related to the videos of the men stopping migrants. The New Mexico attorney general’s office described Hopkins as a “dangerous felon who should not have weapons around children and families” and labeled him an “armed individual detaining migrants at the border”.

    […]

    The Daily Beast reported that Hopkins has a history of pushing far-right conspiracies and has a conviction for impersonating an officer and felony firearm possession. He could not be reached on Saturday and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.

    Stephanie Corte, an immigrant rights campaign strategist with the ACLU in New Mexico, said her group was still trying to make contact with the detained migrants and was uncertain if any had been released.

    “Our next focus is to try to get their story and making sure they feel safe to tell their story of being held at gunpoint,” she told the Guardian, adding that the ACLU would explore legal options.

    […]

  256. Akira MacKenzie says

    Oh, irony-of-ironies, I’m being called out by supposedly LEFT-WING ATHEISTS for denigrating the Bible-fucking, NRA-life-member, redneck who threaten our very existence.

    Are you people aware that you defense of sibling-fucking, Southern-fried, shitkickers is EXACTLY the same rhetoric the Right Wing uses to defend the poor, besieged, white, heterosexual, Christian, conservative?

    What fucking side are you people on!?

    At this point your ability to criticize the Right, Trump, Creationists, Capitalists, et al, is severely hobbled.

  257. blf says

    ‘Whimsical, uninformed’: French ambassador’s parting verdict on Trump (the Grauiad’s edits in {curly braces}):

    […]
    [Gérard Araud, t]he outgoing French ambassador to the US has compared the Trump administration to the court of King Louis XIV, filled with courtiers trying to interpret the caprices of a “whimsical, unpredictable, uninformed” leader.

    […]

    “When they say America first, it’s America alone,” Araud said in an interview with the Guardian. “Basically, this president and this administration don’t have allies, don’t have friends. It’s really {about} bilateral relationships on the basis of the balance of power and the defence of narrow American interest.”

    […]

    “They {the Trump administration} are not thinking in terms of multilateral cooperation first. And secondly, they don’t have any affection towards the Europeans. They treat Europeans the way they treat the Chinese,” Araud said. “And when the British come for a free-trade agreement, there will be blood on the walls and it will be British blood. […]”

    […]

    In Washington he stood out among the diplomatic corps in part because he lived with his partner, the photographer Pascal Blondeau, at a time when the administration is increasingly inhabited by conservative evangelical Christians hostile to gay marriage.

    […]

    Araud was also unusual on the diplomatic circuit for his blunt and acerbic language — in person and on Twitter — in defence of multilateral diplomacy, liberalism and international law at a time when they have been under siege.

    At 2am on the night Trump was elected, the ambassador tweeted: “It is the end of an era, the era of neoliberalism. We don’t yet know what will succeed it … After Brexit and this election, anything is possible. A world is collapsing before our eyes. Vertigo.”

    […]

    On the issue of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, for example, Trump has gone from threatening fire and fury against the Pyongyang regime, to meeting Kim Jong-un in Singapore and declaring himself to be in love with the dictator. He said then he was in no hurry for disarmament, but at a second summit in Hanoi in February he demanded full denuclearisation in advance of any sanctions relief, before cancelling sanctions imposed by his own administration in March because President Trump likes Chairman Kim and declaring himself once more open to a step-by-step approach.

    “It’s like {trying} to analyse the court of Louis XIV,” Araud said. “You have an old king, a bit whimsical, unpredictable, uninformed, but he wants to be the one deciding.”

    Like the Sun King who dominated France in the 17th and 18th centuries, Trump “doesn’t want to appear under any influence and he wants to show it”, Araud said.

    He portrayed the current situation as the opposite extreme of the meticulous though sometimes ponderous decision-making process pursued by the previous administration.

    […]

    Now that inter-agency process is largely dead, killed off and replaced by John Bolton, the ultra-hawkish national security adviser, while other centres of power in the state department and Pentagon are withering, weakened by multiple unfilled senior positions, and top officials serving in acting capacity only, without Senate confirmation.

    “Actually, we don’t have interlocutors,” Araud said. “{When} we have people to talk to, they are acting, so they don’t have real authority or access. Basically, the consequence is that there is only one centre of power: the White House.

    […]

    Araud said the tweeted cancellation of North Korean sanctions, and the exclusion of Bolton from key meetings and meals at the Hanoi summit, were designed to “humiliate” Bolton and demonstrate that the president “is the master and the bureaucrats are nothing”.

    […]

    He said Bolton’s view was that international law was mere convention, with “no gendarme and no judge” to enforce it. “But it’s a sort of a fragile wall or dam against barbarians,” he said.

    […]

  258. blf says

    I see teh troll is back (@350)…

    ● Goalpost shifting: No-ones defended hair furor or his dalekocrazy. Disingenuous to asset so, especially without any citations.

    ● Invention out of whole cloth: A long stream of abuse, to-date said only by teh obvious troll and by few, if any, of the people they are addressing — and again, note the lack of citations — is extremely reminiscent of hair furor’s insults. Who is not blamed; instead, it’s people who have been noting / documenting what he and his daleks have been doing, saying, lying…

    ● Lack of logic: Somehow — notably not explained — the troll’s racism, goalpost shifting, point-missing, and lying means the people the troll is addressing ability to criticize the Right, Trump, Creationists, Capitalists, et al, is severely hobbled.

    Based on past recent performance, the above points will also zoom over teh troll’s head, who, if they respond, will engage in more insults, no citations, and an apparent complete lack of self-awareness. Probably with added overgeneralisation; season with incoherence and please dispose of safely.

  259. Akira MacKenzie says

    Furthermore, let me point out that I was on the Right-Wing side of politics and economics for a large portion of my life. I know what they think and what they want, and it isn’t pretty. I live in the sticks, so I get to see land hear Right-Wing, capitalist,and Christian bullshit day-in day out! My right-Wing, Republican, Catholic father spews the bullshit he gathers daily from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Breitbart as hype wishes. Meanwhile, I, who lives paycheck to paycheck and has to sit and put up with my father’s right-wing-Catholic rants without the ability to contradict them lest I end up on the street , has to keep my mouth shut.

    Also, DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE ACCUSE ME OF BEING GODDAMN RUSSIAN TROLL!!! i voted for that hypocrite HRC, even though she was a capitalist, Christian, shit, if only to keep that fascist, CHRISTIAN, scum Trump out of the Olive Office.

    But hey, PZ, if my hatred of theists, capitalists, and Stone-to Iron-Age cultures and their latter-day adherents who still control the body politic isn’t enough to for you to listen to, then ban-hammer me. It’s your blog, it’s your decision. I won’t hold it against you,

  260. says

    Hmm. Akira’s ability to form grammatically correct sentences in English has diminished markedly. See comments 350 and 353.

  261. says

    Followup to comment 342.

    From former White House Counsel Don McGahn:

    It’s a mystery why Rudy Giuliani feels the need to re-litigate incidents the attorney general and deputy attorney general have concluded were not obstruction. But they are accurately described in the report.

    Link

    I conclude those incidents were obstruction, and that attorney general (Barr) and deputy A.G.(Rosenstein) are wrong, (and they are in disagreement with Mueller).

    But I agree with McGahn that Giuliani’s many comments are strange. Giuliani said, in part: “It could be the product of an inaccurate recollection or could be the product of something else.”

    It also seems that McGahn’s description of the incidents were accurate, as reported by Mueller.

    From the readers comments:

    This is the difference between a real lawyer and a TV lawyer. Trump’s people need change the conversation and not discuss the report at all. Trump promised total exoneration. Now all his supporters want to talk about is how Crooked Hillary and Obummer were worse so it doesn’t matter what’s in the report.

  262. blf says

    Akira MacKenzie@353, An unfortunate set of circumstances does not make insulting an entire population with a superficial resemblance to one’s perceived oppressors valid. Or even helpful to whatever the point one’s trying to make is.

    Both Lynna and poopyhead have self-identified as rural, but there’s no reason to suspect either are garbage people or morons who believe in JEEZ-us, creationism, and carry AR-15s into Walmart!; nor is there any reason to suspect their ability to criticize the Right, Trump, Creationists, Capitalists, et al, is severely hobbled. Indeed, they’ve both objected to those characterisations.

    Yet all of those things have been said (the first repeatedly), and said without qualification (or any citations or other evidence). Insults, insinuations, lack of citations, divisiveness, and lack of evidence, are characteristic of disinformation — trolling — which is why that word as been used. A (presumably paid) “Russian” troll? Doubtful, the known ones seem a bit more competent in spreading divisiveness, and / or less hysterical.

    As others have said, dial it down. Please!

  263. blf says

    Lynna@355, Thanks for the rapid apology — I, or maybe the mildly deranged penguin, was going to “take you to task” (or at least withhold some cheese) over the self-acknowledged petty comment. (I obviously cannot, and do not claim to, speak for the individual concerned.)

  264. says

    blf @358, yep. I made a mistake. I’ll withhold cheese from myself for one day.

    Regarding other matters, I was sorry to hear about Akira MacKenzie’s oppressors and/or unfortunate circumstances.

    I did not call Akira a Russian troll. I made the point that posting many deliberately divisive comments on social media is what Russian trolls do. Something to be avoided. Some of Akira’s comments seemed more divisive than informative. That does not make Akira a Russian troll, it makes the divisive posts look similar to those of Russian trolls.

  265. Akira MacKenzie says

    Lynna @ 354-355

    Yeah, admittedly I was under the influence of cheap whiskey when I wrote that last one.

    Since I don’t seem to be doing anything but making a colossal ass of myself I’ll hoist the white flag. You guys win. I’ll tone it down.

  266. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Akira, I sympathize with your disillusionment with the Trumpetariat. It has been very difficult for me not to write off anyone who was sufficiently stupid or greedy or vile to vote for that imbecile. It is difficult for me to envision how I could trust such a person ever again–whether they be a relative a co-worker or a friend.

    However, it is important to understand how we got to the point where rural America was desperate enough to embrace a “burn it all down” strategy. There was a time when Democrats could be relied upon to support initiatives that improved rural areas–rural electrification, aid to small farmers, subsidies to rural school districts… That went by the wayside during the false austerity of the 80s and 90s, when Democrats became mostly indistinguishable from Republicans in their embracing of “magic of the market place, rising tide lifts all boats” capitalism. Since then, rural areas in America have become dismal places, perhaps as dismal as the unreclaimed and ungentrified urban areas, and it is no wonder that voters there are angry. This does not justify their having embraced a grifter like Darth Cheeto. However, anger has never been a basis for good decisions.
    The thing we have to keep sight of is that these people are first and foremost people and second are just as much victims of DJT as the rest of us. Divisions and acrimony only help the patriarchy. True subversion consists in making common cause with all of the oppressed, not in favoring one group and rejecting another. That is why ideas like the Green New Deal have power. They empower the oppressed, wherever they live, whatever they believe, and in so doing, they weaken the patriarchy. I have to keep reminding myself of this.

  267. says

    Oh, FFS. Really?

    Giuliani’s spin, performed in his role at Trump’s TV lawyer, is really off in LaLa Land today.

    […] Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Sunday defended the Trump campaign’s attempts to accept foreign help during the 2016 election.

    “Any candidate in the whole world in America would take information,” Giuliani told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview.

    “Who says it’s even illegal?” he asked, adding later: “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.”

    While accepting foreign campaign help is illegal, Mueller said in his redacted final report released Thursday that he did not charge Donald Trump Jr. or others on the Trump campaign for seeking Russian help — in the form of a meeting they took during the campaign at Trump Tower with several Russians they believed had dirt on Hillary Clinton — because there wasn’t sufficient evidence to establish the Trump officials knew they were breaking the law.

    Link

    Okay, stop right there for a moment. First, who is that stupid? Second, tell that to the woman who had the temerity to vote while she was out on probation. She didn’t know it was illegal. She was sentenced to five years in jail. Washington Post link to “Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation.” Yes, she is a black woman.

    More from the Talking Points Memo article:

    Mueller said of meeting organizer Don Jr., for example, that he “could mount a factual defense that he did not believe his response to the offer and the June 9 meeting itself violated the law.” […]

    Link

    So now we’re going to have more presidential and congressional candidates taking help from adversarial countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia? Giuliani is bonkers.

    From the readers comments:

    Of course it is illegal to accept campaign assistance from a foreign ENEMY. Spinning this shit does even more harm because it pretends it’s not illegal.
    ——————–
    I rise to point out that beyond the legal fine points, it’s obvious to any election professional that when a hostile foreign government steals confidential information and weaponizes it to meddle in a national election, you don’t say “Oh goodie!” and repeatedly encourage them to do it more and praise the effort as it happens, and you then don’t deny that it happened at all, and commit multiple instances of obstruction to prevent the facts coming to light and protect the criminals. You CALL THE FBI the moment you hear such a thing is going on. You announce a bipartisan effort to stop it and future meddling. And you don’t pooh-pooh it as normal, Guiliani, you has-been clown.
    ———————-
    Rudy already takes foreign money from several bad actors. Everyone in his circle does too. If we allow “who says it’s illegal?” to become our mantra, this country is gone.
    ———————
    As Muller points out, it’s a violation of the law for a political campaign to take anything of value from a non citizen of the United States. In this specific instance, Muller says it was unclear if the information offered was of sufficient value to trigger the laws, but Rudy presumably is talking about information with specific value. Ethics aside, it’s clearly illegal to accept anything, including information, of value from non citizens for a political campaign.

  268. says

    From House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff:

    […] the obstruction of justice in particular in this case is far worse than anything that Richard Nixon did.

    In a normal circumstance, the level of evidence in the Mueller report would be without question within the realm of impeachable offenses.

    We are, unfortunately, in an environment today where the GOP leadership, people like Kevin McCarthy, are willing to carry the President’s water no matter how corrupt or unethical or dishonest the President’s conduct may be.

    It means that an impeachment is likely to be unsuccessful.

    [He said that Democrats could still opt to pursue impeachment, and that Democrats should ask themselves, “what is the best thing for the country?”]

    Whether or not to impeach ia a very tough question, and I think it’s one we ought not to make overnight.

    My prediction is that Schiff will be ready to move on impeachment proceedings after Mueller testifies before Congress. (Sometime in May.)

    I’m not sure that Schiff will ever get the completely unredacted Mueller Report that he wants so that he will have all of that particular set of facts. William Barr is good at stalling and at playing political games to keep that report out of the hands of Democrats. Schiff may have to act based on testimony from Mueller and others; and on what he has been allowed to see, so far, of the Mueller Report.

  269. says

    Akira @360, thank you.

    In other news, a city in Michigan plans to make it a a criminal misdemeanor to racially profile people of color for “participating in their lives.” This is a reaction to people calling 911 to report that, for instance, black people are having a picnic in the park: barbecuing while black, or #LivingWhileBlack, etc.

    Diversity and Inclusion Manager Patti Caudill said the ordinance is a new concept in Michigan. It isn’t meant to discourage 911 calls, she said. Rather, it’s meant to make people “check their biases” before calling the police.

    “Call the police, but if you’re calling because your neighbors are having a barbecue and you’re calling because of some implicit bias because they’re people of color, we don’t want to see that,” she said. […]

    Adding a “bias crime reporting prohibition” and making it a criminal misdemeanor to racially profile people of color for participating in their lives. That is, no person shall make a police report that is based in whole or in part on an individual’s membership in a protected class and not on a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity in consideration of all available facts and the totality of the circumstances. […]

    Link to “Grand Rapids could make it illegal to call police on people of color for ‘participating in their lives”

    An incomplete list of other instances of the police being called to investigate black people living their lives:

    Operating a lemonade stand

    Golfing too slowly

    Waiting for a friend at Starbucks

    Campaigning door to door

    Moving into an apartment

    Napping in a university common room

    Eating lunch on a college campus

    Riding in a car with a white grandmother

    Babysitting two white children

    Wearing a backpack that brushed against a woman

    Delivering newspapers

    Swimming in a pool

    The list is summarized from a CNN report.

  270. says

    From the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler:

    If proven, some of this would be impeachable. Obstruction of justice would be impeachable.

    We’re going to see where the facts take us.

  271. says

    Another freshman Congressperson to watch: Tom Malinowski.

    […] Malinowski, 53, is just one of nearly 100 members of the freshman class in the House — but he’s quickly becoming one of the Democrats’ most influential voices on foreign policy, educating his fellow members about key issues and aggressively pushing the Trump administration to prioritize global human rights issues and re-orient its often chaotic foreign policy.

    […] Born in Poland and having emigrated to the U.S. at age 6, he spent 12 years as a top official at Human Rights Watch before joining Barack Obama’s State Department as head of the bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor — hardly the usual launching pads for a congressional career. In the 2018 midterms, he narrowly defeated a GOP incumbent in a Republican-leaning central-north New Jersey district […]

    Building a public profile around foreign policy and national security issues is a daunting task in any era. And in a freshman class that includes firebrands like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, it often seems impossible to jerk the media spotlight over to sobering topics like the incipient famine in Yemen. Yet that’s exactly what Malinowski is aiming to do — while assiduously tending to the needs of his constituents: Officially, his top issue is pushing for the construction of the proposed Gateway Tunnel linking New Jersey with Manhattan.

    “You know my job in Congress: Dig a tunnel and save the world — in that order,” he often says, ranking his spot on the Transportation Committee above membership on the Foreign Affairs panel. But it’s clear that human rights — not bridges and tunnels — remains his true passion.

    Calling out and punishing human-rights abusers is one of the few actions that routinely brings Republicans and Democrats together on Capitol Hill […].

    Trump’s stunning reversal of North Korea sanctions would soon be forgotten, a fact that clearly irked Malinowski, who was enraged by the president’s decision.

    “We’re inured to this. The president ‘likes’ the leader of an adversary state and therefore will not take action against him?” Malinowski said soberly in his characteristic deep, monotone voice that he almost never raises. “You don’t wait for your Treasury Department to sanction people and then the next day theatrically overturn them. You don’t do that.” […]

    “Every institution cares apart from the White House,” Malinowski added. “And unfortunately, the president speaks for the United States, so the world gets a warped impression of what the United States is all about right now because of one man. And that is consequential. But it can be reversed.” […]

    He recently introduced a resolution condemning white-supremacist rhetoric and those who amplify or repeat it. The legislation doesn’t mention Trump specifically, but it’s an implicit dig at the president with a twist: The resolution almost entirely quotes conservative darling Ronald Reagan from his final speech as president. It was an address Malinowski described as a “love letter” to immigration. It’s something close to his heart as an immigrant himself. […]

    Link

    Much more at the link.

  272. says

    Followup to comment 362.

    More eyebrow-raising comments from Rudy Giuliani:

    […] On CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper asked Giuliani to expand on why he believed the report was not credible.

    “How about looking at it this way,” Giuliani responded. “People [Mueller’s team] who were unfair to him [Trump], people who wrote an unfair report, people who came close to torturing people to get information and break them.” […]

    “Came close to torturing people?” Tapper asked.

    “Yes, how about having Manafort in solitary confinement and questioning him 13 times?” Giuliani responded, before walking back the statement. “Maybe torture is too much.” […]

    Yeah, Rudy, way too much.

    From Mueller’s team:

    “Among the unique privileges Manafort enjoys at the jail are a private, self-contained living unit, which is larger than other inmates’ units, his own bathroom and shower facility, his own personal telephone, and his own workspace to prepare for trial,” Mueller’s team said.

    In more than one phone call, “Manafort has mentioned he is being treated like a ‘VIP,’” the filing says. […]

    Link

  273. says

    More than 200 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. Several churches and hotels were attacked.

    Explosions at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka killed more than 200 people and injured 450 Sunday. This is what we know so far:

    ● Police say coordinated attack by suicide bombers

    ● At least 207 deaths, 450 injured

    ● Churches attacked as worshipers gathered for Easter services

    ● Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says “several” Americans killed

    ● No claim of responsibility; 13 arrested

    ● Prime minister says elements of government had prior intelligence of attacks

    […] No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, the worst violence in Sri Lanka since the end of the civil war a decade ago. Thirteen people have been arrested, police said, and three police officers were killed in a raid on a house as they attempted to interrogate an individual.

    The dead included “several” Americans, Secertary of State Mike Pompeo said; he blamed “radical terrorists.”

    Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe told reporters that elements of the government had prior intelligence about the attacks. He did not elaborate. […]

    Washington Post link

  274. says

    Isaac Chotiner interviewed Neal Katyal. Neal Katyal, is a lawyer and a professor at Georgetown Law. In 1999, in the wake of the Starr report, Katyal was enlisted to help draft the special-counsel regulations. Under President Barack Obama, Katyal served as the acting Solicitor General.

    What is your sense of why, exactly, Mueller and his team declined to come to a definitive conclusion about whether Trump obstructed justice?

    I think the most important thing to understand about the Mueller report that was obscured by Barr’s letter and his press conference was that Mueller was guided by two things, and Barr’s press conference mentioned neither of them. One is that, if I have all the evidence that shows you, Trump, to be guilty as sin, I am still not going to say so, because I can’t indict a sitting President, and fairness concerns counsel against calling you criminal if you have no way of clearing your name, because there is no criminal process. And the second is that, if I have no evidence you have committed a crime, I will say so in the report and exonerate. Everything about the obstruction of justice needs to be read in light of those two things.

    So what Mueller is doing in this report is laying out the instances of obstruction of justice and not drawing a conclusion, because, he says, There is enough there that I can’t exonerate you, but I can’t go further and call you guilty because you have no way to defend yourself. And, in this respect, the pattern of this report looks very much like what Leon Jaworski did in Watergate, and what Ken Starr did in the Lewinsky and Whitewater referrals. Jaworski just laid out the evidence and ultimately just left it to Congress and the American people to decide. When we were writing the special-counsel regulations, back in 1999, the template was Jaworski. Absolutely. And I am sure Mueller knows that, and so it is not surprising to me that Mueller followed that same path. […]

    New Yorker link

    Much, much more at the link.

  275. says

    Followup to comment 369.

    More from the Chotiner-Katyal discussion:

    […] Would it have been helpful for Mueller to say more explicitly that he would have charged the President, if not for the Office of Legal Counsel opinion that a sitting President cannot be indicted? Or, as you are saying, would that have been unfair because Trump can’t defend himself in court?

    Exactly. I think Mueller answers that right away, in page 2 of his report. He says Trump would have no opportunity to clear his name, because there would be no criminal process for him to go through and ultimately be potentially vindicated. So, ultimately, Mueller says, that is exactly what I am not going to do. And I feel like it is the Barr four-page letter and the press conference which obscured that, and we are here, twenty-four hours after the report, and you are asking that question. […] Had we just gotten the document, we would have done what normal people do and just read the introduction, which has a summary of the conclusions. But because of the Barr spin, it took a while for those two key things to really get picked up.

    And I would say there is even a third one, near the end of the report, that is more subtle. Maybe Mueller can be faulted for being subtle. It is footnote 1091. It says impeachment isn’t the only remedy here and, just because there is an impeachment possibility, it doesn’t take criminal actions off the table, and, in particular, even though a sitting President can’t be indicted, once a President leaves office, he can be. That footnote did not need to be in the report, and it is in there, in my judgment, as a very pointed footnote.

    Do you understand why Mueller didn’t push harder for an interview with Trump?

    […] Mueller had uncovered significant evidence of the President’s corrupt intent. So you don’t need the interview in order to absolutely make that case. […] When Mueller first began investigating, for the first seventeen months or so, he was the only game in town. He was the only one who could investigate, in terms of getting to the details of these episodes. And there it made sense to leave no stone unturned. But after November, once the Democrats take control of the House, there is a new investigator in town, and Mueller doesn’t have to do everything. And it is not surprising to me that, shortly after the November election, we started to hear the first signs that Mueller might wind things down, because he could pass the football to somebody else.

    Is that a political decision rather than a decision about best legal practices?

    Well, I don’t think it is political. I think any investigator is always thinking about who else are the investigators. I would think about that with regards to U.S. Attorneys’ offices. But I would also think about it with respect to state investigations, and what is the best strategic allocation of resources when you have multiple investigators. So I think it is absolutely something that would be considered, and it is absolutely reasonable that an investigator would consider something like that.

    And then you have the third, most important fact, which is Mueller had to know that, if he tried to subpoena the President, given what the President had been saying, there would have been a fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. I think Mueller would have won that fight, but it would have been years down the road, and, if your goal is to try and get the information to the American people and to Congress as quickly as you can, a lengthy court fight is going to put things back. I think it is a reasonable decision to make here, to forgo that extra source of information because it is so long before that source can yield results. […]

  276. says

    Another salient quote from Neal Katyal:

    What kind of witch hunt is it when Mueller says, Look, even if you are guilty as sin, I am not going to tell the American people that? I would say three people’s colors have been revealed by this report. We have learned Mueller’s reputation is real. We have learned Trump’s disregard for the truth and the rule of law is real. And we have learned Barr has become a total Trumpian Attorney General.

  277. says

    Update on the elections in Ukraine:

    Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a Jewish comedian who plays the President of Ukraine on TV, has been elected President of Ukraine by a landslide margin of 73% of the vote, according to a just released exit poll.

  278. blf says

    Akira MacKenzie@360, Thank you.
    Not unrelared to your, and mine, and presumably most readers here, concerns about the people who voted for, and those who support, hair furor, is Trump’s moral squalor, not impeachment, will remove him from power:

    Congress cannot rid us of this appalling man. Democrats must focus on voters who hold the keys to the White House

    [… T]he question of “wink-wink” cooperation with Russia still looms. Mueller’s quote of Trump, when first learning a special counsel had been appointed — “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked” — has already become a national tagline. Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?

    Added to this will be Mueller’s own testimony before Congress, and Congress’s own investigations of Trump.

    But let’s be real. Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader, the chances are nil.

    Which means Trump will have to be removed the old-fashioned way — by voters in an election 19 months away.

    The practical question is whether the Mueller report and all that surrounds it will affect that election.

    Most Americans hold a low opinion of Trump. He’s the only president in Gallup polling history never to have earned the support of majority for single day of his term.

    Yet Mueller’s report probably won’t move any of the 40% who have held tight to Trump regardless.

    So how to reach the 11% or 12% who may decide the outcome?

    Reveal his moral loathsomeness.

    […]

    Even though Mueller apparently doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump’s character.

    Trump is revealed as a chronic liar. He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the Michael Flynn matter go. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it. Trump enlists others to lie. He lies to his staff.

    Trump treats his subordinates horribly. He hides things from them. He yells at them. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.

    He acts like a thug. He regrets his lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn — a mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.

    Trump is unprincipled. The few people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to Mueller — threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders — are now gone. They resigned or were fired.

    This is a portrait of a morally bankrupt man.

    We still don’t have the full story of Trump’s tax evasion and his business dealings with Russian financiers. But we know he has lied to business associates, stiffed contractors, cheated on his wife by having sex with a porn star, paid the porn star hush money, and boosted his wealth while in office with foreign cash.

    It continues. In recent weeks he wilfully endangered the life of a member of Congress by disseminating a propaganda video, similar to those historically used by extremist political groups, tying her to the 9/11 tragedy because she is a Muslim American speaking up for Muslim Americans. […]

    […]

    How many of Trump’s followers or those who might otherwise be tempted to vote for him in 2020 will recoil from this moral squalor?

    Donald Trump is the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins &mdash pride, greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, envy and sloth […]

    [… N]o voter in 2020 should be allowed to overlook this basic reality: Donald Trump is a morally despicable human being.

  279. blf says

    Follow-up to @313 and @348, Member of armed militia who detained migrants faced similar charges in 2006:

    Larry Mitchell Hopkins, arrested on Saturday, was also arrested in Oregon in 2006 for impersonating a police officer while unlawfully carrying a firearm as a convicted felon

    […]

    In Klamath county, Oregon in 2006, Hopkins was accused of impersonating a police officer and claimed to be a fugitive bounty hunter, the Santa Few New Mexican reported. In his guilty plea, Hopkins acknowledged he had given “the impression to others that I was a peace officer” while unlawfully carrying a firearm as a convicted felon.

    […]

    In the 2006 incident in Oregon, a sheriff’s office report said Hopkins was found at a gas station in Keno showing firearms to youth and telling them he was a police officer. Hopkins displayed a badge that said “special agent” and had numerous medals pinned to his shirt, according to the report obtained by the Santa Fe New Mexican.

    The newspaper said the court records were uncovered by the Southern Poverty Law Center […]

  280. Akira MacKenzie says

    a_ray_in_dilbert_space @ 361

    That is why ideas like the Green New Deal have power.

    I assure you, where I live, the GND has absolutely no power, AOC is another name of Satan, and it will be ill advised to go around singing the praises of social democracy. Your argument about government depriving rural America resources would sound more convincing if they were demanding MORE government programs and assistance rather than screaming to gut what’s left of the welfare state.

  281. says

    So now Trump is suing the Democrats in the House of Congress. I doubt that this lawsuit will work, (I think the courts will rule against Trump), but it will succeed in one way: it will slow down this investigation.

    Lawyers for President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization are suing House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings to block a subpoena for years of financial records from accounting firm Mazars USA.

    The lawyers filed the lawsuit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, saying the subpoena “lacks any legitimate legislative purpose, is an abuse of power, and is just another example of overreach by the president’s political opponents.” […]

    “We will not allow congressional presidential harassment to go unanswered,” Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, said in a statement — a phrase Trump often uses to attack his critics in Congress.

    The lawsuit argues that House Democrats have “declared an all-out political war against President Donald J. Trump” and that “subpoenas are the weapon of their choice.” It goes on to say that Democrats are “obsessed” with finding something that could “damage the president politically.” […]

    NBC News link

    There is, in my opinion, a solid basis for the subpoena since the House Oversight Committee heard testimony from Michael Cohen about a series of financial shenanigans committed by Trump, including deflating and inflating his assets depending on the circumstances. In other words, Trump had his accountants submit a pack of lies to banks, insurance companies, etc. (allegedly).

    The committee that Elijah Cummings heads has evidence of possible wrongdoing. Cohen submitted documents to back up his testimony.

  282. says

    From the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson:

    Already, Republicans are urging the country to move on [from the Mueller Report]. In this case, moving on would ignore and reward corruption on a grand scale.

    And a followup to comment 320, in which Mitt Romney bemoaned “the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the President.” Now Mitt Romney says, “The business of government can move on.”

  283. says

    Oh, dear. Sean Hannity is upset.

    Fox News host Sean Hannity was displeased Easter Sunday that reporters pointed out that Russian television has been using clips of his monologues insisting on Trump’s innocence in light of the redacted Mueller report.

    “Maybe the Daily Beast should look at itself and the rest of the Fake News industrial complex in America, as they are no better than Russian propaganda outlets—perhaps even worse,” Hannity raged in a 13-part Twitter thread.

    The Daily Beast reported that Russian TV has been splicing in clips from Hannity’s show to further Trump’s “no collusion” narrative.

    Link

    From the readers comments:

    I note in passing that it’s not the Daily Beast that Russian TV has been using in its stories.
    —————-
    Rage tweeting at actual factual truth. Ho hum and it’s another Monday in the Confederate Nazi America.
    —————–
    Is the Murdoch family proud of the fact that they have such a high profile in Russia?
    Good work Sean, keep up the good work, maybe there is a nice Dacha there for you.
    ——————
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA…they have been screaming about TRUMP’S INNOCENCE forgetting the investigation was about Russian interference and NOW they are screaming because the Russians are regurgitating their original whines. Gotta love it.
    ———————-
    Follow Julia Davis on Twitter, and you’ll see her regularly post clips from Russian television in which they openly joke about having swayed the election in Trump’s favor . . . and, not quite as regularly, harshly critique Trump’s weakness as a president.

    It’s a lot like watching FOX, come to think of it

  284. says

    Elizabeth Warren has the biggest free college plan yet

    Warren doesn’t just want tuition-free college. She also wants to cancel millions of Americans’ student debt.

    In a new plan detailed on Monday, Warren became the first Democrat running for president in 2020 to detail a sweeping higher education plan with the goal of alleviating America’s $1.5 trillion student debt crisis.

    Warren’s plan is unique in that is would assist former and future college students alike. The plan would cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt for an estimated 42 million Americans, and invest in debt-free college for students attending two- or four-year public institutions. It also comes with a hefty price tag of $1.25 trillion over 10 years. Warren plans to pay for it with the ultra-millionaire tax she introduced in January, which would tax the 75,000 wealthiest families in America. […]

    Here’s what the sweeping plan would do:

    Cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with household income under $100,000, and give “substantial debt cancellation” to every person with household income between $100,000 and $250,000. (Those making above $250,000 wouldn’t qualify.)

    […] Out of the almost 45 million Americans with student debt, Warren’s policy team estimates this plan would give debt relief to over 95 percent, and entirely forgive student loan debt for over 75 percent.

    Make public two- and four-year institutions tuition-free and expand Pell Grant funding to go toward additional college costs like housing, transportation, food, and books.

    Cut off for-profit colleges from receiving any federal funds (including federal student loans or military benefits). These schools tend to account for a huge number of defaults on their loan payments. A majority of students who attend for-profit colleges default within three to five years after they begin repaying what they owe.

    Create a $50 billion fund for historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions, and add more money to it over time.

    Warren intends to pay for this plan, which her team estimates would cost $1.25 trillion over 10 years, this way:
    Take money from Warren’s proposed tax on America’s ultra-millionaires and billionaires, which includes the 75,000 wealthiest families in the country (those making over $50 million).

    Warren’s tax plan would put an annual 2 percent tax on wealth above $50 million and an additional 1 percent tax on wealth above $1 billion.

    Warren estimates this tax would raise $2.75 trillion in revenue over 10 years, meaning her debt-forgiveness and universal education plan would cost less than half of the total revenue raised. […]

    Link

    More at the link, including a comparison to Bernie Sanders’ “College for All Act.”

  285. says

    From Wonkette’s coverage of the Mueller Report:

    […] the tick-tock that starts on page 90 is HOLYSHITDUMB. Trump calls Corey Lewandoski into the Oval Office on June 19, 2017, says “Corey will you please call the Justice Department and tell Jeff Sessions they’re only allowed to investigate Russian election interference OF THE FUTURE?” […] why would Mueller want to investigate what happened in 2016?

    So Corey silently told Trump to fuck off and didn’t do it. (To be clear, though, he tried. He even set up a meeting with Sessions, and when that didn’t work out, he tried to farm the job out to Rick Dearborn. He just didn’t try very hard. Still, Corey Lewandowski is a fucking idiot, and also an accessory.)

    ONE MONTH LATER, Trump is like “hey Corey, did you relay my very important and normal and smart request to Jeff Sessions?” He had not, but said he would. (He was not going to.) […]

    From the statement Trump dictated to Corey Lewandowski:

    <

    blockquote>The President directed that Sessions would give a speech publicly announcing:

    I know that I recused myself from certain things having to do with specific areas. But our POTUS … is being treated very unfairly. He shouldn’t have a Special Prosecutor/counsel b/c he hasn’t done anything wrong. I was on the campaign w/ him for nine months, there were no Russians involved with him. I know it for a fact b/c I was there.H e didn’t do anything wrong except he ran the greatest campaign in American history.

    Now a group of people want to subvert the Constitution of the United states. I am going to meet with the Special Prosecutor to explain this is very unfair and let the Special Prosecutor move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections so that nothing can happen in future elections.

    More from Wonkette’s commentary:

    […] LOL, so after the meeting a month later was when Corey finally gave the notes to Rick, and it was Rick who really was like UM YEAH NO. So he told Corey the situation had been dealt with, when the truth was fuck you.

    To be clear, part of this request to Corey and to Rick involved how Jeff Sessions should resign if he’s not willing to give the very important and normal speech pasted above, about how Trump is a genius and Robert Mueller should not check the trunk for bodies, we mean investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

    So basically Trump was trying to get Corey Lewandowski — who didn’t even work for the White House — to fire Jeff Sessions for him. Did you know that private citizens are allowed to fire the attorney general? We didn’t!

    On that note, Bill Barr, Wonkette on line one. We need to fire you. […]

    Link

    More at the link.

  286. says

    Oh, FFS.

    From Jennifer Hassan:

    President Trump tweets (then deletes) claim that 138 million people were killed in today’s Sri Lanka explosions. Our latest reporting states that the blasts killed more than 150 people, with hundreds injured.

    Yes, Trump really did that. There are screen grabs of Hair Furor’s crazy tweet:

    Heartfelt condolences from the people of the United States to the people of Sri Lanka on the horrible terorist attacks on churches and hotels that have killed at least 138 million people and badly injured 600 more. We stand ready to help!

    https://twitter.com/GuinnessKebab/status/1119922410944389120

  287. says

    Well, at last, some sort of good news: Herman Cain has withdrawn from consideration as Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve. This will be good news until Trump nominates someone even more unqualified for the job.

    Even Republicans did not support Cain’s nomination:

    […] Trump’s planned nominee for the Federal Reserve, withdrew from consideration on Monday, after a lack of Republican support in the Senate doomed his prospects for confirmation.

    President Trump made the announcement on Twitter, writing, “My friend Herman Cain, a truly wonderful man, has asked me not to nominate him for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board. I will respect his wishes. Herman is a great American who truly loves our Country!” […]

    Some lawmakers, economists and Wall Street investors questioned his qualifications for the central bank and noted the multiple allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct that derailed his campaign. […] one of the accusers said she would testify at his confirmation hearing if given the chance.

    Many also had concerns that the nomination of a close political ally of the president who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Trump and lashed out a Trump’s critics would threaten the bank’s independence. […]

    Washington Post link

  288. says

    Trump wants to be seen as a strong man, a man whom everyone obeys. Okay, that’s not factual. Read the Mueller report.

    Despite the facts, Trump is insisting that “Nobody disobeys my orders.” [laughter]

    […] Trump says that “nobody” disobeys his orders, a reference to the Mueller report, which paints a deeply unflattering picture of his presidency.

    Trump made the comments Monday during the annual Easter Egg roll when asked by reporters about special counsel Robert Mueller’s portrayal of a White House in which staffers often ignore the president’s orders.

    The report suggested that some of those refusals helped protect the president from himself.

    But Trump insisted Monday that: “Nobody disobeys my orders.”

    Boston.com link

  289. says

    Followup to comment 385.

    From Steve Benen:

    […] we already knew that Trump’s team routinely ignored the president’s instructions. Bob Woodward’s latest book, for example, highlighted an incident in which Trump directed then-Defense Secretary James Mattis to prepare a plan to kill Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Mattis listened, told Trump he’d get right on that, hung up the phone, and told a senior aide, “We’re not going to do any of that.”

    There was also a separate incident in which Trump asked Mattis to provide him with military options for Iran. The Pentagon chief reportedly “refused.”

    […] this comes up with alarming regularity. For example, Trump announced in June 2018 that he had “instructed” U.S. officials “not to endorse” an official G-7 communique negotiated by diplomats from member nations. Officials didn’t much care about the tweet and they proceeded to ignore Trump’s online instructions.

    A few months earlier, the president announced via Twitter that Russia should “get ready” because he was poised to launch a military offensive in Syria. White House officials found Trump’s declaration “distracting,” and proceeded “as if nothing had happened.”

    “What is most remarkable is the extent to which his senior officials act as if Trump were not the chief executive,” Jack Goldsmith, a top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, wrote a while back. “Never has a president been so regularly ignored or contradicted by his own officials…. The president is a figurehead who barks out positions and desires, but his senior subordinates carry on with different commitments.”

    But the Mueller report took this dynamic to an even more embarrassing level.

    As the Washington Post explained last week:

    Trump often asks aides to falsely deny things or do things that make them uncomfortable. […].

    In one section, then-White House counsel Donald McGahn got a message from Trump’s personal lawyer saying Trump wanted McGahn to put out a statement denying a New York Times report that said Trump had tried to fire Mueller. McGahn declined, because Trump had in fact tried to fire Mueller.

    In another instance, Trump asked outgoing deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland to draft an internal email stating Trump hadn’t instructed national security adviser Michael Flynn to speak with the Russian ambassador about sanctions during the transition period. (This is the episode that Flynn pleaded guilty to lying about.) But McFarland didn’t know that to be true, so she didn’t do it.

    [snipped the Lewandoski incident, which is detailed in comment 381]

    […] The special counsel’s report listed a series of others in Trump’s orbit who also blew off his instructions.

    […] “Nobody disobeys my orders”? If Trump actually believes that, I have some bad news for him.

    Link

  290. says

    Oh, man. Another Democratic presidential candidate? I have completely lost track of some of them.

    Representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, announced his candidacy today. I think this makes 17 Democrats who are now running, (if you count Bernie Sanders as a Democrat and not as an independent). Moulton is also a military veteran.

  291. says

    What other stupid and counterproductive thing could Trump do to screw up legal immigration to the U.S.? This:

    The Trump administration may begin closing some international U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices as soon as the end of June, BuzzFeed reports. The office in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, would be first, on June 30, followed by Manila, Philippines. “All offices, including the main district offices for the separate regions, are scheduled to close by March 10, 2020.”

    Officials reportedly claim that the closings will save “millions of dollars every year,” with the agency’s spokesperson adding that “the agency is working with the State and Homeland Security departments to coordinate and avoid interruptions in services.” The administration could also save millions of dollars by cutting down a certain someone’s golfing outings, but it’s never really been about saving money for these guys.

    BuzzFeed reports that “The offices primarily deal with international adoptions, family visa applications, petitions for citizenship for military members stationed in foreign countries, and citizenship applications, along with help on refugee processing and investigations of fraud.” Despite claims otherwise, targeting legal immigration, especially by non-whites, has long been a goal of the Trump administration, particularly of White House aide and white supremacist Stephen Miller.

    Asylum is also legal immigration, but the administration, from the very start, has taken and supported illegal actions stomping on the right of vulnerable people to ask for protection. Closing USCIS offices continues this trend of systematically walling us off from the world. Former officials have been condemning the closures, including former Refugee Affairs Division official Barbara Strack, who warned, “It will be a great blow to the quality and integrity of the legal immigration system.”

    Link

  292. says

    Big donors, the Trump campaign, and corruption … how does it work, or more accurately, how will work for the 2020 Trump reelection campaign?

    […] On May 7, elite big-moneyed Republicans will formally unveil their Trump project at “a closed-door event with Trump 2020 aides,” which will undoubtedly be at the Trump D.C. hotel so he can make even more money off of it. Party officials explained to Politico that the plan will be that “high-performing bundlers who collect at least $25,000 for Trump Victory, a joint Trump 2020-Republican National Committee fundraising vehicle, will earn rewards like invitations to campaign-sponsored retreats, briefings and dinners.” Probably at Trump properties, where he can make an additional buck off of them. Because Republicans love them some grift.

    It gets grosser. “Party officials have been reaching out to top fundraisers in recent weeks and wooing them with the prospect of joining ‘raiser clubs,’ with names like 45 Club, Trump Train and Builders Club.” Like this is all completely normal and Trump isn’t burning the whole country down around our ears. Of course, they’re still reaping the benefits of his big tax scam, […]

    The Republican Party should just plaster a big gold TRUMP on party headquarters and call it good.

    Link</a<

  293. blf says

    Follow-up to @313, @348, and @374, Leader of militia at US border boasted of training to kill Obama — FBI:

    Larry Hopkins, arrested Friday on weapons charges, allegedly said his group also trained to assassinate Hillary Clinton and George Soros

    […] Hopkins appeared in court in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to face charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The FBI said it found guns during a 2017 visit to his home. Defense attorney Kelly O’Connell said Hopkins planned to plead not guilty and noted that the charges were unrelated to UCP’s actions at the border.

    […]

    UCP spokesman Jim Benvie previously said the group was helping the border patrol and publicizing the border crisis. […]

    Crowdfunding sites PayPal and GoFundMe last week barred the group, citing policies not to promote hate or violence, after the ACLU called the UCP a “fascist militia”.

    […]

    “Hopkins also allegedly made the statement that the United Constitutional Patriots were training to assassinate George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama” because it believed that they supported leftwing, anti-fascist protesters, the complaint said.

    Former state and federal prosecutor David S Weinstein said border patrol’s tacit allowance of the UCP may have let it to go beyond what citizens are legally allowed to do.

    “To the extent where the FBI has got involved, I think it’s escalated to a point where they need to send a stronger message out to them that, ‘No, we told you not to do this,’” said Weinstein, a partner at the law firm of Hinshaw and Culbertson.

  294. blf says

    America’s new voting machines bring new fears of election tampering:

    […]
    By design, tens of millions of votes are cast across America on machines that cannot be audited, where the votes cannot be verified, and there is no meaningful paper trail to catch problems — such as a major error or a hack.

    For almost 17 years, states and counties around the country have conducted elections on machines that have been repeatedly shown to be vulnerable to hacking, errors, breakdowns, and that leave behind no proof that the votes counted actually match the votes that were cast.

    Now, in a climate of fear and suspicion over attacks to America’s voting system sparked by Russia’s attacks on the 2016 elections, states and counties across the country are working to replace these outdated machines with new ones. The goal is to make the 2020 elections secure.

    […]

    The draw of the new machines, called ballot-marking devices (BMD), is the promise of a paper ballot. The voter will use a touchscreen to vote, then the BMD will print out the votes. Theoretically, the voter will look over that ballot, make sure it is correct, and insert it into an optical scanner that will quickly count it and save the paper in a secure lockbox. This paper trail solves [sic] the problem of the previous system by allowing election officials to audit the election.

    […]

    At least two companies that sell the machines, Dominion and Election Systems & Software, combined a BMD, which prints a filled-out ballot, with a scanner, which counts the votes. Large election jurisdictions such as Delaware, Georgia, New York and Philadelphia are purchasing these “hybrid” systems, which some observers say creates two problems.

    First, the printer and the scanner share the same paper path. If a voter leaves any races blank — a common practice called undervoting — the machine could in theory autofill those races. Neither the voter or election administrators would be able to detect the change. Second, the hybrid machines have a feature critics are calling “permission to cheat”. Voters can opt to not to review their ballots, meaning that the BMD prints the ballot straight to the scanner and into the lockbox. In such cases, there would be no way to confirm that what the voter intended to vote was actually what was printed and counted.

    Due to these problems, the New York state board of elections is reviewing the state certification of the voting equipment. But other jurisdictions are not.

    […]

    But there is another potential weakness, too. Many BMD models on the market print a sort of two-in-one ballot with one section to be read by machines and another to be read by humans.

    Barcodes — or QR codes — that represent a voter’s choices are printed on the ballot along with plain text showing, presumably, the same information in a way people can understand. When the ballot is scanned, it is the barcode that is scanned and counted, not the text that voters can read. If a barcode is printed that represents a different choice, or the scanners were hacked, voters would not know the difference.

    Hanging over all of this is a question that scares many: what if voters did find problems with their ballots? And what would election officials do if it was found that ballots were cast on hacked machines? There may not be a better way to sow chaos in American democracy than to force dozens of jurisdictions across the country to redo elections.

    More likely, complaints about the machines would be written off as user error and manipulation would go undetected. After all, thousands of complaints were made about the old machines in Texas and Georgia in the 2018 midterms. Neither the results nor the machines in either election have been investigated.

    […]

    Redacted from the above except are several other problems. One of them, apparently, is security researchers / experts are not trusted by most(?) companies making the equipment. Hence the expert’s expertise, suggestions, vulnerability testing, et al is downplayed if not simply ignored.

  295. blf says

    Representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, announced his candidacy today. I think this makes 17 Democrats who are now running

    Nineteen, apparently, Seth Moulton: meet the 19th Democratic contender for US 2020 race (video).

    Here’s a useful guide, Who is running for president? The full list of 2020 Democratic candidates: “Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have confirmed, and Joe Biden look likely — but they’ll have to see off a historically large field of candidates first”.

    Vice President Biden is apparently thought to be announcing this week (Seth Moulton: Democratic congressman enters crowded 2020 presidential race), so this circular beanball contest may grow some more.

  296. says

    blf @390, OMG, all the best people for sure.

    Very glad to see that PayPal and GoFundMe barred those fascist groups.

    “Training to assassinate George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama” … WTF!? Scary. And of course they use the word “patriot” in their group’s name.

  297. says

    blf @392, “Nineteen, apparently.” Ah, thanks. I knew I had lost track of the number of Democratic presidential candidates.

    In other news, the Trump administration has taken another step in sanctions against Iran … and I don’t think this is going to go well. Trump is also threatening friends and allies at the same time.

    […] it will scrap all waivers that allowed eight governments to buy Iranian oil without facing U.S. sanctions — a move designed to choke off Tehran’s oil revenue.

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned foreign countries and companies that Washington would enforce U.S. sanctions banning the purchase of Iranian oil without exception, […]

    “Any nation or entity interacting with Iran should do its diligence and err on the side of caution. The risks are simply not going to be worth the benefits,” Pompeo told a news conference.

    The news prompted a surge in oil prices. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, rose $2.26, or 3.1%, to $74.23 per barrel on Monday.

    The policy shift affects Japan, South Korea, Turkey, China and India. The three other countries that had been granted oil sanctions waivers — Taiwan, Italy and Greece — have already stopped purchasing Iranian oil.

    […] The move raised the risk of aggravating relations with allies such as India, which has been one of Iran’s biggest oil customers, and raising tensions with China at a moment when Washington is trying to negotiate a major trade deal. The Trump administration is also looking to Beijing to help push North Korea to agree to abandon its nuclear and missile arsenal in return for a relaxation of economic sanctions. […]

    […] the foreign ministry said Iran was carrying out consultations with European and other international partners” on the sanctions and that it would make an unspecified announcement later on the issue. […]

    “The #US decision to end sanctions waivers on #Iran oil imports will not serve regional peace and stability, yet will harm Iranian people. #Turkey rejects unilateral sanctions and impositions on how to conduct relations with neighbors,”Cavusoglu [Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu] posted on Twitter.

    Ibrahim Kalin, a senior adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters last week that Turkey “expected” another extension from the U.S. but said his government had been offered no assurances. […]

    NBC News link

  298. says

    In a move to hobble any Democrats who win a position as governor in their red state, Republican legislators in Kansas have proposed legislation that would curtail Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s power to fill vacancies in some top state posts.

    Instead, that power would be given to Republican party leadership.

    Republicans were sneaky about introducing the legislation:

    […] The measure was introduced on Friday, April 5, the last day of the session, according to legislative records. It was not introduced in a meeting, and lists no individual sponsors, just the House Federal and State Affairs Committee. Several members of the committee said they were not aware of the proposal. […]

    A second bill, HB 2410, would remove the governor’s power to fill vacancies in the offices of the state treasurer and insurance commissioner. The bill was requested for introduction on March 25, also by Carpenter.

    The legislation may be a sign that Republicans are expecting top leaders to depart before their terms end in 2022. […]

    Rep. Stephanie Clayton, D-Overland Park, sits on the Federal and State Affairs committee, and upon reading the legislation, called it “morally wrong.”

    “How can the people trust us when we are making laws based on political gain as opposed to how to best structure and run our democratic system that we have here in the state of Kansas?” Clayton said. […]

    Kansas City Star link
    `
    Republicans say that Democrats can do the same thing to a Republican governor in the future, but that’s a situation that is unlikely to come about. What is more likely is that, if a Republican is elected as governor in the future, the dominant party in the legislature (still the GOP in red-state Kansas) would just change the law again to allow the Republican governor to appoint conservatives to fill state-level vacancies.

  299. says

    From Josh Marshall:

    […] If you’re going on what we knew before the [Mueller] report was released – the Trump Tower meeting, the narrow version of the Papadopoulos story, Michael Cohen continuing to work on the Trump Moscow deal through the summer of 2016 – there’s quite a lot more. More importantly, when you read the report, it clear that a substantial number of threads of the investigation simply ran into roadblocks of joint operating agreement amnesia, refusal to cooperate and stonewalling. X was happening over here but somehow the person involved never told anyone in the campaign, despite talking to them regularly.

    One TPM Reader, who is a former prosecutor, had thoughts similar to mine.

    Volume I would look very different if Manafort had come clean and fully cooperated. That’s why the section in Volume II on Trump’s efforts to keep Manafort in line are so disturbing and important. To me, that was the whole ballgame. Successful cover up. Pardon coming after the election.

    Whether this has any practical import I’m not sure. Investigations often end inconclusively. That’s life. My biggest takeaway is that there was an enough communication, enough messages back and forth that everyone was on the same page, that explicit agreements may simply not have been necessary. […] repeated instances where President Trump tried to keep confederates quiet by offering the hope of pardons. This happened again and again according to the report and the evidence strongly suggests it worked with Paul Manafort. […]

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime-beta/theres-a-lot-in-there

  300. says

    From Representative Jerry Nadler:

    Today, I issued a subpoena to former White House Counsel Don McGahn for documents and public testimony following revelations uncovered during the course of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into obstruction of justice by President Trump.

    Documents are supposed to be submitted to the House Judiciary Committee by May 7, according to the subpoena, and McGahn is scheduled to testify in a public hearing on May 21.

    Trump and Rudy Giuliani are going to love that.

  301. says

    A high school student took on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

    If you’ve ever worried about the youth of this country not being engaged in politics enough, this story will offer some relief. High school students from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Lexington, Kentucky, tried to attend a discussion between Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Republican governor Matt Bevin, with the goal of covering it for their school paper. This should be a wonderful opportunity for the students, right?

    Wrong. The students weren’t allowed in. As they report in their editorial, a man told them they weren’t allowed inside because they didn’t RSVP. Not to be deterred, they wrote an editorial called “No Seat at the Roundtable” instead. […]

    Notably, the event was a roundtable discussion held at a local community college. It was described as an open press event, but as reported by the Washington Post, the students were turned away because they hadn’t received an invitation, and hadn’t RSVPed. […]

    In their editorial, the students don’t shy away from calling out how ridiculous the situation was. “We expected the event to be intense,” they wrote.”We expected there to be a lot of information to cover. […] How odd is it that even though future generations of students’ experiences could be based on what was discussed, that we, actual students, were turned away?”

    They also called out the eye-rolling-inducing rules about the RSVP. “Not that we’re happy about it,” they wrote, “but we understand why a student news organization wouldn’t have been considered important enough to receive a copy of the media press release. Why, after our explanation that we were not given the press release asking for an RSVP, weren’t we allowed to enter as students and stakeholders?” […]

    As the students point out in their editorial, it’s highly possible that the content of the discussion is something DeVos wanted to keep people away from. As reported by the Post, the roundtable was largely to discuss something called school “freedom” scholarships. What does this mean? In essence, the scholarships would permit public funds to go to sending kids to private and religious schools … including those that discriminate against LGBTQ students.

    “We wonder if the topic of school choice at the roundtable in Lexington is what kept public school students from being able to attend,” they wrote. “Don’t they want student input?”

    It’s safe to say that DeVos—and most anyone in Trump’s administration—doesn’t want a certain kind of input.

    Link

  302. says

    Humor … from the CIA:
    https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1120123885771476992

    A perk of working for CIA is world travel. Apparently that sometimes extends to other realms…

    “Little birds,” be on the lookout for a former deputy director of ours wandering through #Westeros in tonight’s episode of #GameOfThrones.

    Image available at the link.

    From Vikram J. Singh:

    Holy cow @cohendavid that is quite the new assignment.

    “Way to blow my cover,” he later quipped.

  303. blf says

    Japanese city gets its first ever female politician:

    Misuzu Ikeda becomes first assemblywoman in Tarumizu city as record numbers of women elected nationwide

    Misuzu Ikeda has struck a rare blow for Japanese women in politics by becoming the first female candidate to be elected to the local assembly in the southern city of Tarumizu.

    Ikeda hugged supporters on Sunday night when she finished third out of 17 candidates for the 14-seat assembly in Tarumizu, which is officially recognised as a city despite its relatively small population of 15,000.

    Noting that she was the first assemblywoman in the city’s 61-year history, the former tax office employee promised to work towards a society “where residents feel cared about”, according to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

    […]

    Japan […] performs poorly in international comparisons of female representation in politics.

    Before Sunday’s elections, four out of every five local assembly members nationwide were men, with almost 20% of assemblies having no female councillors at all. That prompted parliament to pass non-binding legislation last year calling on parties to field equal numbers of male and female candidates.

    […]

    From memory, the post-WW ][ Japanese constitution explicitly calls for equal rights for women and men (somewhat remarkable given when it was written). I don’t (now) recall if it was the first such constitution to do so, but it was among the earliest.

  304. blf says

    This could be interesting, How the Green New Deal was hatched in a London bar (podcast)†:

    In 2007, Larry Elliott [the Grauniad’s economics editor –blf] met a friend to discuss the financial crisis. Over the course of the evening, and several drinks, they cooked up the Green New Deal – a plan to deal with the effects of the economic crisis and the threat of climate change. They formed the Green New Deal Group and, though Gordon Brown and Barack Obama briefly flirted with the idea, it did not progress much further.

    But in 2018, the youngest US congresswoman in history, the Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, picked it up and the idea has been gaining traction ever since. Ocasio-Cortez’s plan mixes old and new. She wants a living-wage job for anyone who wants one; universal healthcare; and basic income programmes as part of a “detailed national, industrial, economic mobilisation plan” that would ensure the US is powered by 100% renewable electricity, and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing, agriculture and other industries.

    Elliott talks to India Rakusen about how the deal first came to fruition and why it is essential if we are to tackle climate change.

    […]

      † I don’t like podcasts too much and haven’t yet actually listened to it.

  305. says

    Thoughtful commentary from Steve Benen:

    […] This is not a disagreement over whether to investigate the president and his alleged misdeeds, but rather, how. Either way, as Roll Call noted, there’s no denying the fact that the process is moving forward.

    House Democrats are starting to follow leads laid out in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report as their own investigations into President Donald Trump continue.

    The caucus held a conference call Monday evening in which the six committee chairs who are investigating various matters involving Trump updated members on their next steps now that Mueller has concluded his investigation.

    According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close White House ally, House Dems will move forward with a “stampede” to impeach the president. If that’s true, it’s the slowest moving stampede anyone’s ever seen.

    Yes, a “stampede” that is careful and lawful.

    More from Steve Benen:

    […] whatever happened to those threats Trump made in the hopes of scaring Democrats away from conducting oversight?

    […] the intimidation campaign began the day after the 2018 midterm elections. As results were still being tallied in parts of the country, Trump, acknowledging the incoming House Democratic majority, published a tweet warning Dems not to investigate his many scandals.

    Hours later, at a White House press conference, the president suggested he wouldn’t even try to work with Congress on substantive issues if Democratic lawmakers scrutinized the controversies surrounding him. In his State of the Union address, Trump was even more explicit, insisting he would only work constructively with Congress if Dems agreed to look the other way on his many scandals.

    The Republican added a couple of days later that he doesn’t believe such scrutiny should be “allowed.”

    At one point, the president threatened to expose “very questionable things” unnamed Dems have done if he and his team faced investigations. He later raised the prospect of declassifying materials related to Robert Mueller’s investigation, which he predicted would expose some kind of conspiracy linking the FBI, the Justice Department, and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

    Democrats, Trump warned, “will see how devastating those pages are.”

    Well, where are the pages? Where’s the evidence that exposes the “very questionable things” Democrats did?

    Do you suppose it’s possible that the president was simply bluffing and the “devastating” information exists only in his imagination?

    Link

    Even though Steve Benen provided some of the details of Trump’s threats against Democrats, if you look at the actual repetition of those threats, you will see a lot more. Those threats did not work.

  306. says

    Another “oh, FFS” moment courtesy of Trump. He thinks he should be immune from criticism:

    In the ‘old days’ if you were President and you had a good economy, you were basically immune from criticism. Remember, ‘It’s the economy stupid.’

    Today I have, as President, perhaps the greatest economy in history…and to the Mainstream Media, it means NOTHING. But it will!

    Dear history-challenged Hair Furor, the economy of the USA was stronger in 2015. Yes, you can brag about the good economy, but it is not “the greatest economy in history.”

    No past presidents have been immune from criticism, no matter their success (or lack thereof) in sustaining a good economy. The “old days,” as festering in Trump’s mind, never existed.

    As you will have no doubt noticed, Trump does not usually address or rebut the criticisms against him. He does claim that no one should be allowed to criticize him.

    Yesterday, he told reporters: “No one disobeys my orders.” His tone was one of disdain for the reporter asking the question, dismissal of the question as petty, and anger. That’s his rebuttal to all the facts in the Mueller Report.

  307. says

    From the Washington Post, some details concerning how the Trump administration actually works when it comes to “transparency”:

    A former White House personnel security director has been instructed by the White House not to show up Tuesday for questioning by the House Oversight Committee.

    The move appears to be the latest effort by the Trump administration to push back against congressional inquiries targeting the White House, which have proliferated since Democrats took control of the House in January.

    White House deputy counsel Michael M. Purpura wrote a letter Monday asking the former security director, Carl Kline, not to show up as the committee had requested.

    What Trump said in May 2018:

    What I want is I want total transparency…. You have to have transparency.

    What Trump said in September 2018:

    All I want to do is be transparent.

    And now, Carl Kline has been told not to comply with a subpoena.

  308. says

    Followup to comment 384.

    So Herman Cain withdrew as a nominee for the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. Cain was too poor a candidate even for Republicans.

    We still have an “all the best people” candidate, Stephen Moore, coming up for a confirmation vote. Trump’s choice of Moore, like most of Trump’s choices, is really bad.

    From CNN:

    One of President Donald Trump’s picks to serve on the Federal Reserve Board has written that women should be banned from refereeing, announcing or beer vending at men’s college basketball games, asking if there was any area in life “where men can take vacation from women.”

    Stephen Moore, an economic commentator and former Trump campaign adviser, made those and similar comments in several columns reviewed by CNN’s KFile that were published on the website of the conservative National Review magazine in 2001, twice in 2002 and 2003. […]

    “Here’s the rule change I propose: No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer venders, no women anything,” he wrote at the time. “There is, of course, an exception to this rule. Women are permitted to participate, if and only if, they look like Bonnie Bernstein. The fact that Bonnie knows nothing about basketball is entirely irrelevant.” […]

    Moore was an advocate for adopting the gold standard. Then he lied and said he never did that. Moore actually admitted that, if confirmed, he would be on a steep learning curve because he doesn’t know how the Fed works, nor does he know anything about monetary policy.

    Republicans may still confirm Moore.

  309. says

    Followup to tomh @402.

    With so much at stake — the apportionment of political power nationwide, the adequate representation of immigrant communities, the scope of executive power —the Supreme Court arguments Tuesday over whether the Trump administration could add a citizenship question to the 2020 census wound up being highly technical. The much-anticipated hearing included ample discussion of phrases like “comparative errors,” “maximal need,” and “credible quantitative evidence.”

    What was not evident was any uncertainty or movement among the conservative justices towards ruling against the administration […]

    The liberal justices — perhaps aware they faced an uphill battle to convince their conservative counterparts to strike down the question — displayed a deep understanding of the empirical issues at play in the case. They were able to bat around Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who received few life rafts from the conservative justices during his initial defense of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ decision to add the question.

    There was no clear sign during Tuesday arguments, however, that the liberals would succeed in finding a fifth vote to rule against the citizenship question, which has been blocked by three lower courts. […]

    The Trump administration has not challenged the Census Bureau’s conclusion that the question would result in a nearly 6 percent decline in self-response among noncitizen households.

    […] conservative justices stuck to more superficial lines of inquiry that hewed to the administration’s top-line defenses of the question. They seemed less interested in engaging in the more complicated arguments against adding the question. At earlier steps in the proceedings, the three most conservative justices already signaled they were inclined to rule in favor of the government.

    The case, Commerce Department v. New York, has monumental implications for voting rights and how political power is doled out in the country. […]

    For all of the case’s broad implications, much of Tuesday’s arguments focused on a highly technical point in the case: that the Census Bureau had repeatedly advised Ross that there were better ways to provide the citizenship data he was seeking than asking it directly on the country-wide census. Lower court judges have ruled that Ross violated the Administrative Procedures Act because his decision to add the citizenship question despite the Census Bureau’s advice was arbitrary and capricious.

    When Francisco tried to defend Ross’s decision by pointing to standalone lines in the Census Bureau’s recommendations, the liberal justices pushed back with a deep understanding of the bureau’s bottom line conclusions and the larger context of its analysis. […]

    The confusion and deception surrounding the lead-up to Ross announcement that he was adding the question was of little concern to the conservative justices Tuesday.

    Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked first about the Justice Department’s stated rationale that the data would enhance voting right enforcement and later about the United Nations’ guidance that countries survey citizenship. Kavanaugh also parroted the administration’s talking point about the citizenship question having always been asked “in one form or another” — a talking point the liberal justices at this point had already demolished.

    […] “Justice Alito, respectfully, I think the Census Bureau said a little bit more than ‘trust us.’” Ho [ACLU attorney Dale Ho] said. “What the Census Bureau said was we can develop a highly accurate model for this that’s going to be better” than asking the question on the survey.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/supreme-court-oral-arguments-census-citizenship

  310. says

    Followup to comment 405.

    From House Oversight Committee chair Elijah Cummings:

    The White House and Mr. Kline now stand in open defiance of a duly authorized congressional subpoena with no assertion of any privilege of any kind by President Trump. Based on these actions, it appears that the President believes that the Constitution does not apply to his White House, that he may order officials at will to violate their legal obligations, and that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight.

    I intend to consult with House Counsel and Committee Members about scheduling a vote on contempt. I hope that Mr. Kline, in close consultation with his personal attorney, will carefully review his legal obligations, reconsider his refusal to appear, and begin cooperating with the Committee’s investigation.

    The Committee has repeatedly deposed officials across the government — including from the White House — represented by their own counsel […] The White House now seeks to stonewall this otherwise routine congressional process. There are obvious reasons we need to conduct our investigations of agency malfeasance without representatives of the office under investigation.

    Kline’s attorney told the committee that Kline would follow the White House’s order to ignore the subpoena.

    More details:

    […] The White House demanded that Kline only be deposed by the committee if accompanied by a representative from the Office of Counsel to the President. After the committee rejected that demand, the White House told Kline to ignore the subpoena. […]

    Kline is accused of retaliating against a whistleblower who raised concerns that 25 people who were denied security clearances by career officials were then granted the clearances by political appointees. Kline allegedly placed files out of the reach of whistleblower Tricia Newbold, who has dwarfism, after she voiced her concerns.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/cummings-contempt-carl-kline

  311. says

    Another Republican has left the party. Some Republicans, when they leave the party, announce that they are now independents, but Iowa state Representative Andy McKean is joining the Democratic party.

    McKean’s name has already been removed from the House Republican caucus’ website.

    From the Iowa state Democratic party:

    We gladly welcome Andy McKean to the Democratic Party. His decision to put people over politics shows his commitment to our state. Rep. McKean has already joined Democrats in standing up for a host of issues important to Iowa’s working families and his announcement brings us one vote closer to truly representing Iowa values in the House.

    Link

    Earlier, three female Republicans in Kansas joined the Democratic party after the midterm elections.

    A group of judges in Texas switched parties after the midterm elections.

  312. says

    Mueller report exposes ‘Miners for Trump’ as a Russian troll effort

    Photo of a coal miner on one poster was actually a lifelong Democrat who died of black lung disease.

    In October 2016, Pennsylvania social media accounts promoted “Miners for Trump” rallies around the state with a picture of a gritty coal miner. The rallies coincided with a series of presidential campaign rallies by then-candidate Donald Trump.

    It turns out the social media promotions were not created by U.S. coal miners, however. Instead, they were the work of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll farm, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s recently released report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. […]

    As the Mueller report explains, the IRA organized U.S.-based rallies “from June 2016 until the end of the presidential campaign… often promoting the Trump campaign and opposing the Clinton campaign.” […]

  313. says

    Senate GOP campaign committee smears Democratic 2020 candidates with false billboards

    The National Republican Senatorial Committee is accusing Medicare for All opponents of wanting Medicare for all.

    […] Not all of the Democrats who are being targeted actually support Medicare for All, and some have explicitly opposed the idea.

    One such billboard, appearing alongside Interstate 10 in Tolleson, Arizona, suggests that Democratic candidate Mark Kelly — a retired astronaut who holds no elected office — is to blame for millions of people in the state possibly losing insurance coverage, if such a proposal were ever enacted.

    Beside a black-and-white photo of Kelly, the NRSC claims, “Mark Kelly silent as 3,471,500 Arizonans would lose their private health insurance.” The sign suggests that, by replacing the current system of private insurance with a single-payer proposal, those currently covered would be worse off under a public insurance plan. […]

    Kelly has in fact opposed Medicare for All publicly. “We should be able to provide access to affordable health care for everybody, but I am not in favor for the 156 million of us that get our health care through our employer to make that go away,” Kelly told 12 News in Phoenix in his first interview since launching his campaign. “I mean, we’re not going to be able to promise these folks something better.”

    That quote was included in an Arizona Republic story about the billboard, which the NRSC tweeted out on Monday. Neither the NRSC nor the billboard company immediately responded to questions about whether the false ad would be removed. […]

    Think Progress link

  314. says

    Trump’s demands for apologies from the media go unanswered:

    […] Trump wants New York Times journalists to beg for forgiveness on their knees, and White House aides say they’re ready to accept apologies from the press corps at large.

    They’re in for a long wait.

    Special counsel Robert Mueller’s bombshell 448-page report has unleashed a very different kind of reckoning among Washington reporters and media watchdogs.

    The report detailed multiple efforts by Trump and his senior aides to mislead journalists and the public […]

    The repeated public rejections of key aspects of the report in the face of sworn, on-the-record statements from his own advisers have diminished the power of a denial from the president of the United States — something that once carried weight.

    “Reporters have to start assuming that this White House is going to continue to lie and manipulate the media,” Columbia Journalism Review editor-in-chief Kyle Pope said in an interview. Pope, who said some news organizations were too slow to challenge official White House statements, added: “The dealings with the White House have to be reframed given what we now know about them.”

    Pope even questioned the value of quoting or interviewing Trump’s principal spokesperson, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who admitted to Mueller’s investigators that she made unfounded claims that the ousted FBI director James Comey had lost support among rank-and-file agents. Sanders later tried to defend her statement, saying the “sentiment” was accurate without offering any proof to support her claim.

    “I don’t think Sanders has any credibility whatsoever,” he said.

    Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But she and other White House officials have denounced the media for focusing so much of their attention on the Russia investigation, with some calling on them to apologize. Trump bashed The New York Times on Twitter today, calling on them to “get down on their knees & beg for forgiveness.” […]

    “Journalists shouldn’t take anything said by any president at face value, but the Mueller report reminds us that this president in particular says so many things that are flatly untrue that we shouldn’t trust anything without checking it,” said veteran New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker. […]

    Link

  315. blf says

    There’s a new immigration scandal brewing in the UK. Last year was the Windrush scandal where people legally resident in the UK for decades were being deported because of missing bits of paperwork or other trivialities. Now it’s something called the “English test results scandal”. Unlike the Windrush scandal, this one has been known about, albeit not much reported on. The story started back in 2014 when indisputable evidence emerged about quite blatant cheating in two centres where English-language testing was being done (as a condition for student visas).

    Teh dear lino, laughably called the PM, Theresa May, was, as with the start of the Windrush scandal, the Home Office minister at the time. In the case of the test cheating, her “hostile environment” Home Office basically decided c.90% of all people who took the test — nationwide — were cheats and denied their visas.

    The evidence on which they made this decision is unclear, and the 90% figure implausible. According to Sajid Javid urged to act in immigration scandal ‘bigger than Windrush’, its based on a private company’s “voice analysis of recordings of all 58,458 tests taken in 96 test centres in the UK between 2011 and 2014 and concluded that 33,725 people cheated, and a further 22,694 people had ‘questionable results’. Only about 2,000 were found not to have cheated.”

    There are at least two problems with that evidence. First, it sounds suspiciously similar to so-called lie detectors, which aren’t and don’t. They are pseudoscience, a total nonsense. Courts generally don’t allow lie detector evidence, with Good Reason.

    The second problem is the private company is “Educational Testing Service (ETS)” from the States, which has a rather notorious reputation; for example (also in the UK):

    Problems administering England’s national tests in 2008 by ETS Europe were the subject of thousands of complaints recorded by the Times Educational Supplement. Their operations were also described as a “shambles” in the UK Parliament, where a financial penalty was called for. Complaints included papers not being marked properly, or not being marked at all and papers being sent to the wrong schools or lost completely. […]

    From the Grauniad’s article, by Amelia Gentleman (who reported on the Windrush scandal):

    More than 1,000 students forcibly removed over English language test cheating claims

    […]

    About 34,000 foreign students have had their visas cancelled or curtailed and more than 1,000 people were forcibly removed from the UK as a result of the English language testing scandal, which involved the government accusing tens of thousands of students who sat a Home Office-approved test of cheating.

    The Guardian understands that students who took the test of English for international communication (Toeic) five or more years ago are still being targeted by immigration enforcement officers and being taken to immigration detention centres ahead of enforced removal from the UK.

    […]

    Thousands of students who have remained in the UK to fight to clear their reputations have spent the past five years attempting to prove that they are not guilty of cheating, but most have struggled because the Home Office has told them they have no right of appeal in the UK and must leave the country.

    […]

    There is no doubt that there was a well-organised cheating system operating in those [two] centres when [undercover] filming took place; what is less clear is how many people were involved in the fraud.

    […]

    The Home Office cancelled the visas of tens of thousands of students who had taken the Toeic test, large numbers of whom protest that they did not cheat. More than 4,000 have left the country without an opportunity to prove their innocence, having been told that they could be arrested if they did not leave. Immigration enforcement officers visited the homes of more than 3,600 students, as the Home Office attempted to round up all those accused of cheating.

    Many of those who believe they have been wrongly targeted have asked for an opportunity to sit a new English test, pointing out that they had no need to cheat as they speak fluent English. Some were studying for degrees in English literature, others were PhD students, and some were nearing the end of accountancy and law degrees.

    […]

    Those who remained in the UK have been prevented from continuing to study and are unable to work while they attempt to prove their innocence. They are also unable to open bank accounts or rent properties. Many have had to rely on their families, who helped pay fees for their unfinished courses in the UK and are now funding their attempts to have their visas reinstated so that they can continue with their studies.

    The allegation of cheating in the UK makes applying to study elsewhere extremely difficult. Most chose to study in the UK because of Britain’s international reputation as a country with good universities and a reliable justice system. Because the Toeic issue has never become headline news, many say their families at home have begun to believe they must have cheated, convinced the UK government could not make such an error.

    Campaigners representing students contesting the Home Office’s allegation of cheating say most of those affected have been made unwell by the prolonged strain of attempting to prove their innocence. Many have been pushed into destitution. […]

    […]

    Hundreds of court hearings have subsequently questioned the reliability of the evidence provided by ETS and the Home Office. Some students have been accused of sitting a test in one centre but have clear proof that they sat it in another. At least one of those accused never sat the Toeic test but has nevertheless had his visa cancelled with no opportunity to appeal.

    […]

    Nazek Ramadan, the director of Migrant Voice, said: “It’s an outrage that thousands of students are still suffering, five years after the first wrongful allegations. In this country, you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty — but for these students, that principle was thrown out of the window.

    “We’ve heard from students, lawyers and judges that the Home Office has failed to present any evidence at all in most cases. In other cases, the evidence they’ve presented has been totally flawed. The only solution now is a political one. This was a Windrush-style textbook example of bad decision-making, but the home secretary [Sajid Javid] has the power to put some of it right and give these students their futures back.”

    […]

    (The Windrush scandal is not over yet, with the government being extremely slow to act, proposing derisory compensation, and still actually doing highly suspect deportations.)

  316. blf says

    Not exactly political, “It’s very concerning”: Americans sitting more than ever, study finds:

    • Adolescents sat for eight hours a day in decade to 2016
    • Americans spend three hours a day sitting watching TV

    The amount of time Americans spend sitting down has increased by an hour a day in recent years, a new study has found.

    Americans of all ages increasingly take life sitting down, researchers found, but adolescents sit more than other groups. The study found adolescent Americans typically increased their total sitting time from seven hours to just over eight hours a day in the decade to 2016, the largest amount of time spent sedentary and the biggest jump of all the groups studied, experts said.

    Adults also sat for about an hour a day more over that decade, but sat less overall, increasing sitting time from an average of just over five hours a day to just over six hours .

    Dr Yin Cao of Washington University in St Louis, the author of the study, said: “It’s very concerning when there’s such an increase in sitting time on a national level across all age groups, especially taking into consideration the health risks that come with this.”

    […]

    Such sedentary behavior is not only associated with obesity, but also related to increased risks of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and overall mortality, the authors warned.

    Although physical activity could potentially eliminate these risks, research suggests this tends to work only for highly-active individuals. According to the study, that counts as individuals who walk briskly for at least 10 hours per week or equivalent. This leaves the majority of the US population at a higher risk of mortality associated with sitting.

    […]

    The mildly deranged penguin is quite puzzled by this. Catching, subduing, and eventually eating cheese is hard work — difficult to do sitting down — requiring lots of vin (and moar cheese!) to recuperate and recover. I then point out USAlienstan has aerosol cans of cheese… She shrieks in horror, and after running around the room (in all three spacial and at least two other dimensions) wailing, sits — ahem! — down and agrees perhaps the best way to recover from spray-on cheese is to sit very very quietly until whatever is left of ones brain stops melting-down.

  317. blf says

    ‘Skirting ethical rules’: Trump’s key staff under investigation at interior agency (the Grauniad’s edits in {curly braces})::

    […]
    Following allegations of a “disturbing pattern of misconduct” at Donald Trump’s interior department, based in part on Guardian reporting, the agency’s watchdog has opened a probe into six top officials there.

    It comes in response to a 20 February ethics complaint filed by the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan watchdog group, that alleged a culture of “skirting ethical rules” among key staff appointed in the wake of Trump’s November 2016 election victory.

    “An agency’s ethical culture depends on ethical leadership,” said Delaney Marsco, the Campaign Legal Center’s ethics counsel. “Former {interior} secretary Ryan Zinke and {current interior} secretary David Bernhardt, now under investigation himself for ethics violations, have failed to demonstrate adequate ethical behavior at the top of Interior.”

    “Their cavalier approach to ethics appears to have spread throughout the agency, with a pattern emerging where officials have routinely disregarded obligations to remove themselves from official meetings with former employers or lobbying clients.”

    Last week, the inspector general opened a wide-ranging investigation into allegations that Bernhardt has violated federal ethics rules by involving himself in a series of official decisions that potentially benefited his former lobbying clients, such as a powerful agricutural [sic] group in California. That investigation is ongoing.

    The new inquiry is scrutinizing the activities of a handful of high-ranking officials at the department, including assistant secretary Douglas Domenech, a close personal confidant of Bernhardt.

    […]

    Details — some of which I vaguely recall being noted in previous iterations of this thread — are at the link. All teh bestingerest peoples!

  318. blf says

    France to invest €6 million in free breakfasts at public schools:

    […]
    French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and Junior Health and Solidarity Minister Christelle Dubos on Tuesday announced €6 million in initial funding for the free breakfast programme, which will be put in place at public schools that have been identified as “priority education network” (réseau d’éducation prioritaire or REP) establishments as well as in some poor urban neighbourhoods and rural areas.

    “The goal is to allow children to begin the day without an empty stomach, so they stay focused throughout the morning and therefore learn in the best of conditions,” Blanquer and Dubos said in a joint statement ahead of a scheduled breakfast with students in the northern town of Pont-Sainte-Maxence. “The measure will contribute to reducing inequality starting at the earliest age.”

    A pilot programme was launched earlier this month in eight areas where schools are already working to serve students a healthy, free meal in the morning: Amiens, the overseas territory of La Réunion, Lille, Montpellier, Nantes, Reims, Toulouse and Versailles.

    The programme will be expanded nationwide in the fall, and is expected to provide breakfast to as many as 100,000 schoolchildren once fully operational.

    […]

    France is not the only country to experiment with offering free breakfast in schools. The United Kingdom found that students’ performance generally improved after rolling out a similar programme in 2014.

    “As well as reducing hunger, breakfast clubs were perceived to improve concentration and behaviour in class and to improve punctuality for some pupils,” the UK Department for Education found in a 2017 report. “Additional positive impacts on pupils’ social development and the way in which they helped some pupils make wider friendship groups and become more confident were also highlighted by schools.”

    Following the breakfast clubs’ success, the British government announced last year that it was expanding them from 184 to 1,770 schools nationwide.

    […]

    Memo to Betsy DeVos: This is one example of how you do it.
    (I’m a bit surprised France apparently hasn’t had such a program.)

  319. blf says

    Teh le penazis latest wheeze, Le Pen’s National Rally goes green [sic] in bid for European election votes (France24 edits in {curly braces}):

    In its European election manifesto unveiled on Monday, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) adopted an environmentalist approach in an attempt to woo French voters beyond its base.

    The far-right National Rally (RN) launched its policy platform for May’s European elections on Monday. It was met with broad indifference, until the fire at Notre-Dame swept it out of the news cycle completely. Yet Le Pen’s party set out a surprising new approach: environmentalism tied to localism.

    With this manifesto — branded as not just a programme but a vision of humanity — Le Pen said she is putting everything back on the table to make a “Europe of nations” the world’s first ecological civilisation.

    Indeed, it seems that ecology is no longer the preserve of “bobos” (a popular French term for bourgeois bohemians) — as Marine’s father and National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen once dismissively said. The party’s new paradigm owes much of its intellectual basis to the essayist Hervé Juvin — an apostle of a localism that combines environmentalism with identitarianism who helped write the manifesto.

    My emboldening: There’s the fault & fraud in this latest wheeze. This so-called green le penazism is the same old, same usual, bigotry and hate:

    The RN’s ecological vision bears little relation to that of France’s left-wing parties, such as the Socialists and the Greens. Borders are the environment’s greatest ally; it is through them that we will save the planet, Jordan Bardella, head of the RN’s European election candidates list, told right-wing French daily Le Figaro on Monday. He proposes to reduce emissions by ending imports all over the place.

    For her part, Le Pen has sought to anchor her new vision in the idea that the individual is not simply a consumer or producer but someone rooted, someone who wants to live on their land and to pass it on to their children. Extrapolating from this axiom [sic], she argued that someone who is rooted in their home is an ecologist, whereas those who are nomadic {…} do not care about the environment; they have no homeland.

    “Environmentalism and localism have become part of the RN’s political agenda, but it’s a specifically far-right form of environmentalism — very identitarian,” said Jean-Yves Camus, a specialist on the extreme right at the Fondation Jean-Jaurès think-tank in Paris.

    “Many right-wing voters see society as like a biological organism that should be kept in its original state,” Camus continued. “According to this line of thinking, when a foreign body is introduced, it causes disorder — hence the anti-immigration stance. Logically the same goes for nature: We must respect the natural order established by the seasons of the year etc.”

    As well as pivoting in an ecological [sic] direction, Le Pen’s party has watered down its Europhobic stance. Although they were key planks of her platform in the 2017 presidential elections, a French withdrawal from the EU and the euro (with a consequent return to the franc) are no longer on the cards. “After that election, Le&bsp;Pen swept the idea of Frexit off the carpet because she realised that it provokes anxiety,” Camus pointed out. “Brexit is another factor: Its advocates promised so much, but it is very difficult to put into practice. Meanwhile, the notion of leaving the euro isn’t exactly reassuring for young people who never knew the franc.”

    […]

    […] Le Pen’s agenda risks collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. It is hard to envisage how one could defend national sovereignty in the European Parliament at the same time as submitting to the decisions of European institutions, approved by majorities of the EU’s nation-states. At the same time, Le Pen’s newfound acceptance of the euro sits uncomfortably with her railing against its guarantor, the European Central Bank.

    But, no stranger to ideological cross-dressing, the far-right party has a rich history of embracing paradoxical positions.

    Sustainable localised production is sensible — indeed, I make an effort to source locally-produced products (especially foodstuffs) — but that’s got precisely nothing to do with borders, people crossing borders, or indeed most of the gibberish, lies, and hate the le penazis continue to yell. (As I mentioned a few weeks ago, a local le penazi managed to push one of their leaflets into my hands; it was the usual immigrants = pure evil who take all “our” jobs & money &tc &tc spittle-flecked dribble.)

  320. blf says

    Advocates decry proposed change to Canada’s asylum system:

    Refugee and legal experts say amendment to asylum law is ‘shocking’ attack on refugee rights.

    Refugee advocates and legal experts have raised the alarm at a proposed change to Canada’s asylum system, saying the government’s plan would curb refugee rights and have a “chilling effect”.

    […]

    The change would prevent people who previously made an asylum claim in other specific countries — the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand — from having a full refugee status determination hearing in Canada.

    Ottawa says the measure is part of its broader effort “to better manage, discourage and prevent irregular migration”, as thousands of asylum seekers have crossed the border into Canada from the US without visas over the last few years.

    The goal also is to make the Canadian refugee system more efficient and reduce delays in processing times, a senior government official told Al Jazeera.

    That official is either an escaped dalek from, or applying for a position in, hair furor’s dalekocrazy. E.g., it appears to presume there was a fair process and valid determination in the other Five Eyes countries. Perhaps possible in New Zealand (I don’t know), but not so much in the other three. Not to mention Ozland’s concentration camps (conventionally located in other countries), the UK’s efforts to deport legal residents (Windrush &tc scandals), or hair furor’s Muslim ban.

    But Sharry Aiken, a law professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, said the change may end up “precluding people who are genuine refugees from having a hearing on the merits of their case”.

    “It’s just a bedrock principle of Canadian refugee law that claimants are entitled to an oral hearing on the merits of their claim,” she told Al Jazeera.

    […]

    Currently [… r]efugee-protection claimants get an oral hearing before an official at the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), an independent tribunal that adjudicates on refugee cases.

    Under the government’s proposed change, people will no longer have access to that hearing if they applied for refugee protection in one of the countries that Canada says has a refugee system similar to its own.

    Instead, they will have what’s called a pre-removal risk assessment.

    That assessment comes with its own set of rules and regulations and has been described by refugee law experts as being “less efficient” than the refugee hearings at the IRB.

    […]

    […] Maureen Silcoff of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers said filing a refugee claim in another country did not mean that person had a fair shot at getting protection.

    It also didn’t mean that people should automatically be shut out of the refugee system in Canada, she told Al Jazeera.

    “It’s actually quite shocking that this is what Canada wants to do,” she said.

    Silcoff said the change would largely affect people who previously made claims for refugee protection in the US, where the situation for refugees has become increasingly dire under US President [sic] Donald Trump.

    “We know what’s going on in the United States,” she said.

    “We know that children are ripped from their parent’s arms and put in cages. We know that people have to make asylum claims from behind bars in prison. We know that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions greatly restricted the refugee definition,” Silcoff added. “Our response to refugees seeking protection here should not be to make Canada more like Trump’s America by adopting those types of laws.”

    […]

    Many more details of this shocking proposal — which is buried in an unrelated budget bill — at the link.

  321. blf says

    Aim carelessly, pound keys enthusiastically, and make an total arse of oneself (from the Grauniad’s live blog):

    Comedian Patton Oswalt appeared in a video announcing MJ Hegar’s run for US Senate in Texas. That would usually be where the story ends, but this is 2019 in the age of Twitter, and incumbent Senator John Cornyn’s team is having none of it.

    Team Cornyn has decided to comb through Oswalt’s Twitter feed going back to 2013 to pick out “some offensive comments” to show his supporters exactly what “Hollywood Hegar” embraces. The problem, however, is not so much what Hollywood Hegar embraces, but what Team Cornyn rejects. For some reason, Team Cornyn has found the words “vagina”, “penis”, “scrotum” and “dildo” so offensive that they bleeped them out.

    As expected, Team Cornyn’s efforts have been met with more amusement than support, particularly from Oswalt himself:

    Vagina. Scrotum.
    Do you also bleep out “appendix” and “kidney”?

    “Dildo” isn’t a word that needs asterisks, Incel Ira. For example, “The dil** that runs @TeamCornyn must hate his life” can be written “The dildo that runs @TeamCornyn must hate his life.”

    […]

  322. blf says

    All teh besteringest daleks, No women anything: Trump Fed pick Stephen Moore’s list of misogynistic remarks:

    […] CNN dug up some of Moore’s old columns and, in news that will surprise nobody, it turns out the economic commentator and former Trump campaign adviser, has a long history of making misogynistic statements.

    A 2002 column of his for the National Review, for example, sets out his views on the role women should play in men’s college basketball. Here’s the rule change I propose: No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer venders, no women anything. Like all rules, this one has an exception: Women are permitted to participate, if and only if, they look like Bonnie Bernstein, Moore wrote. He also suggested the sports journalist should do her job while wearing a halter top.

    It’s not just basketball that Moore has strong views on. In a 2000 column, Moore complained: The women tennis pros don’t really want equal pay for equal work. They want equal pay for inferior work … If there is an injustice in tennis, it’s that women like Martina Hingis and Monica Seles make millions of dollars a year, even though there are hundreds of men at the collegiate level … who could beat them handily.

    There are many more offensive quotes but, according to Moore, you shouldn’t worry about them too much because he was just joking. This was a spoof, Moore said in a statement to CNN. I have a sense of humor. Moore also complained that the media is trying to sabotage his nomination. They can’t defeat me based on my qualifications or my economic ideas so they resort to character assassination, Moore told rightwing website the Daily Caller.

    Perhaps he has a point. To be fair and balanced, one ought to ensure his misogynistic views are presented alongside his economic ideas. So here’s a quick rundown of these ideas:

    ● He shouldn’t have to pay child support […]
    ● Women earning more than men would disrupt family stability […]
    ● The pay gap isn’t real[ …]
    ● Social security has gone too far […]
    ● Most importantly, he shouldn’t have to pay tax […]

      † Coincidentally, Why gender pay-gap truthers are on the rise:

    The evidence that men earn more than women is clear — yet the alt-right insists this is a myth. Why has this argument become so pervasive?

    […]

    At the kernel of the truther movement there are no statistics, only a single idea: women are simply different — softer, more caring, less intellectual, easily distracted by kids and whatnot, biologically programmed, moreover, to tend rather than earn, and society needs us all, but the market doesn’t.

    Ultimately, any free-market, fundamentalist view of the world must alight at this very gendered 1950s position, because the alternative is to regulate the market so that it can accommodate the different economic productiveness of different phases of a person’s life. And once you start to regulate markets, you’re not a fundamentalist; you’re a Fabian.

    So the genius of the pay-gap myth[] is that it takes some ancient prejudices about women and their place in the world, which are so hackneyed, familiar, dated and boring that they are now unsayable and recasts them as a modern “controversy”, which the mainstream right then dutifully takes up.

    […]

      ‡ The terminology here is perhaps confusing: The “pay-gap myth” is referring to the preposterous idea there isn’t a gender pay gap. Not, as one might read it, that the gender pay-gap doesn’t exist (is a myth).

  323. blf says

    ‘It’s not a little child’: gynecologists join the fight against six-week abortion bans (the Grauniad’s edits in {curly braces}):

    […]
    High-profile gynecologists are criticizing the framing of six-week abortion bans, known as “fetal heartbeat” bills, as medically inaccurate.

    […]

    “These bills present the idea that there’s something that looks like what you or a person on the street would call a baby — a thing that’s almost ready to go for a walk,” said Dr Jen Gunter, a gynecologist in Canada and the US who runs an influential blog. “In reality, you’re talking about something that’s millimeters in size and doesn’t look anything like that.”

    Go Dr Gunter! She’s also the doctor who took on goop’s goofy vaginal eggs & other scams, and other nonsenses.

    That early in a pregnancy, Gunter said, an embryo does not have a heart — at least, not what we understand a human heart to be, with pumping tubes and ventricles. At six weeks, a human embryo throbs, but those tissues have not yet formed an organ, so the pulsing should not be confused with a heartbeat.

    “When throbbing of some tissue begins, it’s not a heart,” said Dr Sara Imershein, a gynecologist and obstetrician in Falls Church, Virginia. “Really, we call it an embryo until about nine weeks from last menstrual period,” or roughly three weeks after the new laws prohibit termination of pregnancy.

    It would be more accurate to call these bills “fetal pole cardiac activity” measures, said Gunter. Though it doesn’t roll off the tongue, the term would capture the state of an embryo at six weeks, which appears more fish-like than human baby.

    “It’s a process — the heart doesn’t just pop up one day,” said Imershein. “It’s not a little child that just appears and just grows larger”, in contrast to imagery often invoked by anti-abortion campaigns of embryos as tiny, miniaturized infants.

    Misleading names like “heartbeat” move the debate away from medical considerations for a woman’s decision to get an abortion, said Gunter.

    Similarly, the phrase “late-term” is misleading. A normal human gestation is 40 weeks. Medically speaking, “late-term” means 41–42 weeks.

    But anti-abortion activists twisted the phrase into a political construct understood to be any abortion after the 21st week, late in the second trimester. “Nobody is doing late-term abortions — it doesn’t happen,” said Gunter of the medical definition.

    […]

    Gunter said six weeks is not enough time to make informed medical choices. It’s before most women know they’re pregnant, and before fetal malformations can be diagnosed. The risks of medical conditions, such as lupus, won’t be apparent that early. There are some heart conditions “where we say, you should not be pregnant”, said Gunter. “The risk of death is 50%. We know that the second the pregnancy test is positive. But what if that person doesn’t seek medical care until they’re eight weeks?”

    “The whole point {of these bills} is to introduce terminology that makes people think differently about pregnancy,” said Gunter.

    In practice, she said, six-week measures are effectively abortion bans — a fact that misleading names such as “heartbeat bill” could obscure. “We can’t use the incorrect language in the bills,” said Gunter. “Because once you start using incorrect language, you’ve basically conceded.”

  324. blf says

    The kings of capitalism are finally worried about the growing gap between rich and poor:

    Now that the political debate has shifted, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio is the latest in a bank of billionaires to talk about the gap between rich and poor

    […]

    This month Dalio, founder of Bridgewater, the world’s biggest hedge fund, an investor in low-wage employers including Walmart and KFC, and a man worth about $18bn according to Forbes, became the latest in a bank of billionaires to go public about his fears of widening income inequality.

    The yawning gap between rich and poor is a “national emergency”, Dalio wrote in an 8,000-plus-word blogpost on LinkedIn (where else?) that poses an “existential risk for the US”.

    “I believe that all good things taken to an extreme can be self-destructive and that everything must evolve or die. This is now true for capitalism,” he wrote.

    Dalio joins the JP Morgan boss, Jamie Dimon, investment guru Warren Buffett and even the Blackstone chairman, Stephen Schwarzman, “private equity’s designated villain” (copyright the New Yorker) and usually an unapologetic 0.01%er, in publicly worrying that income inequality has stretched the US body politic to breaking point.

    […]

    Now the political debate has shifted, said [author of Wall Street: A History and professor of economics and finance at Manhattan College, Charles] Geisst. “I think they realize that Bernie Sanders has a lot more support than a lot of people think,” he said. Sanders and fellow Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren “could give them a really bad time” with their plans for higher taxes and greater regulation, he said. “These people are famous for hedging their bets, and this is another way of doing it.”

    Steve Glickman, a senior economic adviser in the Obama administration and now founder of Develop, a company seeking to attract investment to low-income areas called “opportunity zones”, said the very wealthy understand there has been a societal change that challenges the way they have done business.

    “An increasing chunk of the country has been left behind and that can’t be ignored any more,” he said. “The rise of populism, not just in the US but also in many other markets like Europe, is dramatically affecting the business model they have taken for granted. We are turning the table on what was close to 90 years of agreed upon bipartisan policy goals around trade and immigration.”

    How sincere the 1% are about helping the 99% rather than themselves may be up for debate but it is pretty clear that the billionaires do believe there is a crisis.

    […]

    As Dalio points out:

    ● Forty per cent of all Americans would struggle to raise $400 in the event of an emergency.

    ● The childhood poverty rate in the US is now 17.5% and has not meaningfully improved for decades.

    ● The US scores lower than virtually all developed countries other than Italy and Greece on educational attainment.

    ● The US incarceration rate is nearly five times the average of other developed countries and three times that of emerging countries.

    ● For those in the bottom 60%, premature deaths are up by about 20% since 2000.

    […]

    For all their apparent concern, Geisst is unconvinced. “I don’t think they are worried about it at all,” he said. Their ultimate message is “yes the system is crooked, but please don’t take my money away”, he said.

  325. blf says

    And in reference to @423, not everyone gets it, Phones4u founder vows to leave UK if Corbyn brings in higher taxes:

    […]
    John Caudwell, the billionaire founder of Phones4u, has vowed to leave the UK for tax-free Monaco if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister to avoid higher taxes.

    With an £1.6bn fortune, Caudwell […] is the UK’s 87th richest person, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. He said he and other wealthy Britons would emigrate to escape Corbyn’s proposed wealth tax.

    Caudwell, who built his fortune importing and selling mobile phones in the late 80s and early 90s, said a Corbyn-led government would be a complete fiasco.

    If Corbyn wanted to start taxing more extensively than already, my appetite or tolerance to pay much more than I’m already paying is not very big, Caudwell said.

    We’d just go and live in the south of France or Monaco, Caudwell said in an interview with Spear’s, a magazine aimed at the super-rich. Why stay here and be raped?

    Paying taxes is nothing like being raped.

    And as someone who does live in the south of France, I wonder if this eejit has any idea what French ta rates are (among the highest in the OECD), or is aware France may reintroduce its “wealth” tax (Impôt de solidarité sur la fortune): French government opens door to wealth tax concession. There is quite a long list of so-called French tax exiles.

    […]
    If he leaves for Monaco, Caudwell, who supports a no-deal Brexit [why am I not surprised? –blf], would follow Britain’s richest man […] Jim Ratcliffe, the founder of petrochemicals company Ineos, who is expected to save up to £4bn in tax by moving to the principality.

  326. Onamission5 says

    @404:
    Ah, yes, “the economy, stupid,” also known as one of the three main campaign focuses of Bill Clinton, who was surely one of the least criticized presidents ever.

  327. blf says

    Trump orders staff and administration to boycott correspondents’ dinner:

    […]
    Donald Trump has ordered members of his staff and administration to boycott the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner on Saturday.

    […]

    Trump had already announced that he would skip the televised event in Washington for the third consecutive year, branding it boring and negative, and would instead to stage a Make America great again rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

    […]

    The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner has been attended by presidents most years since the organisation was founded in 1914. The group raises money for scholarship, gives out reporting awards and honours the first amendment, which protects the freedom of the press.

    […]

    In a statement responding to the boycott decision, Olivier Knox, the association’s president, said: “We’re looking forward to an enjoyable evening of celebrating the First Amendment and great journalists past, present and future.”

    […]

    The president [sic] has also stopped [Wacko House press secretary Sarah] Sanders conducting daily press briefings. On Tuesday, the White House set a record of 43 days for the longest stretch without a briefing. There have been just two so far in 2019.

    I rather doubt hair furor has any legal basis / authority to enforce the so-called “order” (much less to bellow it in the first place). For one thing — I’m guessing here — the staff & daleks attending would be doing so on their own time. And it is, broadly speaking, a public event.

  328. blf says

    More on @423 and @424, Ballooning executive pay is at last coming under scrutiny:

    […]
    Over the weekend, an heir to the Walt Disney fortune entered the debate over high levels of corporate pay and increasing inequality.

    [… G]randdaughter Abigail Disney’s comments about company chief executive Bob Iger’s remuneration come as the latest signal that the gap in pay that has opened up between company boardrooms and ordinary workers is reaching unsustainable levels.

    Since the 1980s, the gap between the wages for an average worker and the boss of their company has ballooned, as executive pay has boomed and average salaries grown by far less. The average pay ratio between FTSE 100 chief executives and their staff has gone from 20:1 in the 1980s to 129:1 in 2016.

    In the US, the situation is far more extreme. The bosses of the top 350 firms in the US earned 312 times more than their workers on average in 2017, up from around 50 to 1 in the 1980s.

    […]

    […] Stephen Schwarzman, a billionaire private equity tycoon and backer of president [sic] Donald Trump, who has called for higher minimum wages in the US, and Jamie Dimon, the boss of the US bank JP Morgan Chase, who has said he has no problem in paying higher taxes to tackle inequality.

    Although shareholders still typically support healthy pay increases for company bosses, the number of investor revolts over pay has risen over recent years.

    Public outrage has also risen. Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre, said some polls show around 80% of people in Britain want the government to reduce the gap between rich and poor, and that 57% support caps on pay and higher taxes for the rich.

    […]

    Politicians are beginning to act to increase transparency on company pay decisions, in a development observers say could have prompted business to be more proactive about curbing high pay levels.

    US laws require the disclosure of pay ratios, while MPs approved new rules requiring UK-listed companies to do the same from 2020. In the UK the law is for domestic staff only, while in the US the ratio takes into account the global workforce, which is among the reasons for higher ratios.

    The ratios of company chiefs can also be distorted by share awards. Unlike regular employees, their incentives can be several times greater than their salaries. Iger’s ratio at Disney would have been 852 times that of a theme park employee, not 1,424, without a $26m (£20m) grant of shares for his company’s takeover of rival media company Fox.

    However, business leaders may be gradually losing the right to determine their own future. The Commons business select committee called last month for companies to do more to link top bosses’ pay to that of the rest of their workforce, after finding that pay deals were too often waved through by weak company boards in the habit of designing ever more complicated pay packages. […]

  329. tomh says

    Trump continues to believe that appointing Supreme Court justices is the same as appointing company executives that are bound to do his bidding.

    WaPo: Trump says he would ask Supreme Court to intervene if Democrats move to impeach him

    President Trump suggested Wednesday that he would ask the Supreme Court to intervene if Democrats move to impeach him — a notion that legal experts said showed a misunderstanding of the Constitution.

    It was unclear how Trump would legally justify such a move, since the Constitution delegates impeachment proceedings to Congress, not the courts. Trump mentioned the idea briefly in morning tweets in which he lashed out at Democrats who are continuing to investigate him after the release of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report.

    “I DID NOTHING WRONG,” Trump wrote. “If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only are there no ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ there are no Crimes by me at all.” A White House spokesman did not respond to a request to elaborate on what the president would seek from the court.

    The notion was ridiculed by several legal experts, including Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, who accused Trump of “idiocy.”

    “Not even a SCOTUS filled with Trump appointees would get in the way of the House or Senate,” Tribe wrote on Twitter, adding that Trump apparently thinks his recent court appointments would give him a “ ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

  330. blf says

    They worked in torrid heat for Exxon, Shell and Walmart, for free (Al Jazeera edits in {curly braces}):

    ‘I can’t fathom this being legitimate,’ a former US Labor Department investigator says of a drug rehab’s work programme.

    A nationally renowned drug rehab programme in Texas and Louisiana has sent patients struggling with addiction to work for free for some of the biggest companies in the United States, likely in violation of federal labour law.

    The Cenikor Foundation has dispatched tens of thousands of patients to work without pay at more than 300 for-profit companies over the years. In the name of rehabilitation, patients have moved boxes in a sweltering warehouse for Walmart, built an oil platform for Shell and worked at an Exxon refinery along the Mississippi River.

    “It’s like the closest thing to slavery,” said Logan Tullier, a former Cenikor participant who worked 10 hours a day at oil refineries, laying steel rebar in 46 degrees Celsius heat. “We were making them all the money.”

    Cenikor’s success is built on a simple idea: that work helps people recover from addiction. All participants have to do is surrender their pay to cover the costs of the two-year programme.

    But the constant work leaves little time for counselling or treatment, transforming the rehab into little more than a cheap and expendable labour pool for private companies, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

    At some job sites, participants lacked proper supervision, safety equipment and training, leading to routine injuries. Over the last decade, nearly two dozen Cenikor workers have been seriously injured or maimed on the job, according to hundreds of pages of lawsuits, workers’ compensation records and interviews with former staff. One worker died from his on-the-job injuries in 1995.

    Labour experts say Cenikor’s entire business model might be illegal under federal labour law. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires all employees to be paid minimum wage and overtime.

    […]

    An ongoing Reveal investigation has exposed how many drug rehabs across the US have become little more than lucrative work camps for the private industry. Patients have slaughtered chickens on speeding assembly lines in Oklahoma and cared for residents at assisted living facilities in North Carolina.

    Among these programmes, Cenikor stands out. It has a long history of accolades from sitting lawmakers and judges […]. Last year, the Texas-based nonprofit [sic] earned more than $7m from work contracts alone, making it one of the largest and most lucrative work-based rehabs in the country.

    […]

    [… F]ewer than eight percent of people who enter Cenikor make it to graduation, according to the programme’s own numbers, and therefore never receive a paying job.

    “It was just a money racket,” said former Cenikor patient Alester Williams, who checked himself into Cenikor for help quitting alcohol and cocaine. “That place was all about manipulation and greed.”

    […]

    Multiple former staff members told Reveal that counsellors routinely falsified counselling records to make it appear as though patients received more counselling than they did. During busy work seasons, some received no counselling at all.

    […]

    Cenikor managers had a compelling sales pitch. They promised companies cheap workers who were drug tested and always on time. Cenikor would pay for transportation and cover the costs of insurance.

    […]

    Patients, meanwhile, make nothing. They are told that their paychecks will be used to offset the cost of the programme. Federal labour law allows Cenikor to deduct the costs of food, lodging and certain other expenses. But according to interviews and records obtained by Reveal, Cenikor typically brings in far more money from work contracts than it spends on patients.

    […]

    Despite its reliance on work, Cenikor frequently has skimped on providing safety training or giving participants basic protective gear, such as steel-toed boots and harnesses.

    […]

    Cenikor has been warned repeatedly to make sure participants are safe on the job. After a Cenikor worker plummeted from an unstable platform and died in an office supply warehouse in 1995, federal labour officials told Cenikor that ensuring patient safety was paramount.

    “Cenikor officials should take more of {an} active role in providing quality training” and “recognize hazards associated with the job,” officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration wrote.

    But injuries have continued to rack up.

    In recent years, a Cenikor worker crushed his hands in an industrial press, another worker fell off scaffolding and shattered his knee at a chemical plant, and at least two workers broke their backs.

    In Texas, Cenikor is not required to report on-the-job injuries to rehab regulators. But when officials with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission learned about the injuries from Reveal, a spokeswoman said the agency was “concerned about any injuries sustained to clients” and planned to investigate further.

    In Louisiana, state law requires Cenikor to report injuries, but Cenikor has not submitted a single injury report to the Louisiana Department of Health in the last three years, even though Reveal uncovered numerous injuries during that time. Licensing officials said they would investigate the injuries if a patient complained about them.

    […]

  331. says

    tomh @428, Trump seems to think that he not only has a get-out-of-jail-free card since he installed Kavanaugh and Gorscuch on the Supreme Court, he also thinks that he has a free hand to do whatever else he wants to do:

    […] The White House agenda on DACA? The president expects the Supreme Court to rule his way. Birthright citizenship? The president expects the Supreme Court to rule his way. Redirecting funds through an emergency declaration? The president expects the Supreme Court to rule his way. Tearing down his own country’s health care system? The president expects the Supreme Court to rule his way.

    Two senior administration officials told NBC News in November that “with Justice Brett Kavanaugh now on the Supreme Court,” the White House “expects to win.”

    […] what may matter most is Trump’s intention to “head to the U.S. Supreme Court” if congressional Dems launch an impeachment effort. […]

    Trump could “head to the U.S. Supreme Court,” but there’s literally nothing justices could do for him, even if they wanted to. The judiciary has no authority to help or hinder the impeachment proceedings.

    The president doesn’t know that, and while that’s embarrassing, he nevertheless seems eager to let everyone know just how confused he is.

    In the process, Trump is also offering a peek into his perspective on problem-solving. When he finds himself in a jam, the president seems to instinctively look for a fixer: Trump has spent his tenure assuming that everyone from his attorney general to his congressional allies to his White House counsel can simply make his problems go away for him.

    As of this morning, the president seems to think the Supreme Court can even rescue him from the threat of impeachment. […]

    Link

  332. says

    One of many reasons why the U.S. does not have a sustained and effective focus on preventing future election interference: Trump doesn’t want to hear about it.

    […] Kirstjen Nielsen, before ending her tenure as Homeland Security secretary, reportedly tried to organize a meeting of relevant cabinet secretaries to prepare a coordinated strategy for the next election cycle.

    Her efforts would’ve benefited from some presidential leadership, which she never received. In fact, according to a New York Times report, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told Nielsen not to even broach the subject of foreign interference in our elections around Donald Trump, apparently because it makes the president feel bad.

    […] Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

    But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

    […] U.S. intelligence officials believe a foreign adversary may target our elections next year, but no one should bring this up in the president’s presence, because he prefers not to be reminded of the dubious legitimacy of his own election.

    The principal goal, in other words, isn’t to protect the American system of elections from a foreign attack, but rather, it’s to protect the American president’s feelings.

    Making matters worse, this is not just a story about White House passivity and negligence in the face of a looming threat. […] Trump has taken some steps that might even make the problem worse.

    […] the White House eliminated the job of the nation’s cyber-security czar, as part of John Bolton’s reorganization of the National Security Council.

    […] “Cyber-security experts and members of Congress said they were mystified by the move…. It was the latest in a series of steps that appeared to run counter to the prevailing view in Washington of cybersecurity’s importance.” […]

    Link

  333. blf says

    Good grief, hair furor is even more deranged than usual (from the Grauniad’s live blog):

    [… O]n Twitter this morning, Trump threatened military conflict with Mexico.

    He said the military would be called up and the border would be closed, if Mexico does not stop everyone on the latest migrant caravan from approaching the border. He pegged that caravan at 20,000 people, but reporters traveling with it said it is about 3,000 people.

    Though Trump first said he would call the military to the border, he then said ARMED SOLDIERS were already being sent to the border. […]

  334. blf says

    Spotted on the Grauniad’s live blog, Aaron Rupar:

    Trump flagrantly lies to reporters while explaining why he doesn’t plan to comply with subpoenas from Congress: I have been the most transparent president and administration in the history of our country by far.

    His tax returns couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

  335. says

    This is a conspiracy theory that Trump and Sean Spicer touted in March 2017, but it now has new life since Trump tweeted about it this morning:

    ‘Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson accuses United Kingdom Intelligence of helping Obama Administration Spy on the 2016 Trump Presidential Campaign.’ @OANN WOW! It is now just a question of time before the truth comes out, and when it does, it will be a beauty!

    Trump was watching One America News Network (OANN), which is just Fox News on steroids. OANN is extremism made manifest. They traffic in debunked conspiracy theories all the time, 24/7.

    From Steve Benen:

    […] The president of the United States, having forgotten what happened the last time his administration peddled this foolish idea, [British officials were not pleased, insisting that the report was ridiculously untrue] apparently saw the interview and reflexively presented the conspiracy theory to the public as if it were true. […]

    But what makes this truly extraordinary is the timing of [Trump’s] misplaced missive.

    It was literally just yesterday when Buckingham Palace announced that the UK would welcome Trump in June with the formality of a state visit.

    One day later, the American president had no qualms about accusing British officials of participating in a spying scheme against him, based on absurd claims he saw some random conspiracy theorist make on an obscure far-right outlet.

    The mind reels.

    Link

  336. says

    About Trump’s meeting with Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO:

    […] The Washington Post reported, “A significant portion of the meeting focused on Trump’s concerns that Twitter quietly, and deliberately, has limited or removed some of his followers, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity because it was private. Trump said he had heard from fellow conservatives who had lost followers for unclear reasons as well.”

    It’s amazing just how stubborn Trump can be, resisting reality even when it’s slowly explained to him.

    As Twitter has made clear, over and over again, the social-media platform routinely removes bots, spammers, and other fraudulent profiles, which in turns leads to fluctuations in follower counts, especially among high-profile users.

    I have a fairly modest footprint on Twitter, but even I have seen my follower count drop sharply following a purge of fake accounts. When that happens, it can be a little jarring, but it never occurred to me that Twitter was acting in a “very discriminatory” way against producers for The Rachel Maddow Show.

    Trump, on the other hand, who has a massive Twitter footprint, instinctively embraces a conspiracy theory, even after learning the truth.

    And so, instead of having a constructive conversation about the importance of social media, the American president spent “a significant portion” of his meeting with Twitter executives whining about something he ought to know but struggles to understand. […]

    Link

  337. says

    Oh, FFS.

    On April 22, self-proclaimed Christian activist Dave Daubenmire drove eight hours from his home in Ohio to Hillary and Bill Clinton’s Chappaqua, New York, home to demand Hillary Clinton’s arrest. In a live video, “Coach Dave” called on militia groups such as the Oathkeepers to turn up and join him to demand Clinton’s arrest … for something. The crime of being a successful woman, maybe? He called the Clintons’ home “the greatest crime scene in American history.”

    Daubenmire must’ve been so overcome with the spirit of the Easter message that he had to put on his Christian ball cap and drive all day to another state in order to deliver a live message to armed militia groups in front of Clinton’s home. As Jesus would have done, no doubt.

    And if you wonder why he’s still going on about Hillary Clinton and demanding her arrest, Sean Hannity and Donald Trump have been focusing on her this week. […] They won’t let it go. They need her as a boogeyman for their audience and they continue harassing her, which, based on unstable “Coach Dave” showing up at her house and broadcasting her address, is obviously putting Clinton in danger. […]

    Link

  338. Hj Hornbeck says

    Hilary Clinton has weighed in after the SCO’s report, and I think it’s an excellent take. Some key bits:

    Congress should hold substantive hearings that build on the Mueller report and fill in its gaps, not jump straight to an up-or-down vote on impeachment. In 1998, the Republican-led House rushed to judgment. That was a mistake then and would be a mistake now.

    Watergate offers a better precedent. Then, as now, there was an investigation that found evidence of corruption and a coverup. It was complemented by public hearings conducted by a Senate select committee, which insisted that executive privilege could not be used to shield criminal conduct and compelled White House aides to testify. The televised hearings added to the factual record and, crucially, helped the public understand the facts in a way that no dense legal report could. Similar hearings with Mueller, former White House counsel Donald McGahn and other key witnesses could do the same today. […]

    Congress can’t forget that the issue today is not just the president’s possible obstruction of justice — it’s our national security. After 9/11, Congress established an independent, bipartisan commission to recommend steps that would help guard against future attacks. We need a similar commission today to help protect our elections. This is necessary because the president of the United States has proved himself unwilling to defend our nation from a clear and present danger.

  339. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Joy Reid is subbing on All In, and they have coverage of She the People, where 8 of dems prez contenders appeared. I’ll post videos in the morning if they appear.

  340. says

    Hj @438, that entire oped by Hillary Clinton is great. Everyone should read it.

    Hillary Clinton reminds us that that is how a president should write, and that is how a president should think.

    “Mueller documented a serious crime against all Americans. Here’s how to respond.”

    Another excerpt:

    Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated. This is the definitive conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. It documents a serious crime against the American people.

    The debate about how to respond to Russia’s “sweeping and systemic” attack — and how to hold President Trump accountable for obstructing the investigation and possibly breaking the law — has been reduced to a false choice: immediate impeachment or nothing. History suggests there’s a better way to think about the choices ahead. […]

    I am also someone who, by a strange twist of fate, was a young staff attorney on the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate impeachment inquiry in 1974, as well as first lady during the impeachment process that began in 1998. And I was a senator for New York after 9/11, when Congress had to respond to an attack on our country. Each of these experiences offers important lessons for how we should proceed today.

    First, like any time our nation is threatened, we have to remember that this is bigger than politics. What our country needs now is clear-eyed patriotism, not reflexive partisanship. Whether they like it or not, Republicans in Congress share the constitutional responsibility to protect the country.

    Mueller’s report leaves many unanswered questions — in part because of Attorney General William P. Barr’s redactions and obfuscations. But it is a road map. It’s up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads — to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not. Either way, the nation’s interests will be best served by putting party and political considerations aside and being deliberate, fair and fearless. […]

  341. consciousness razor says

    You’ve got to be kidding. All Clinton’s doing is stalling, like Pelosi, Hoyer, et al. There is already more than enough in the redacted report to start the impeachment process.
    The House definitely should get Mueller and others to testify, and they definitely should get the full report and accompanying documentation (even if that can’t be made public yet). This is all entirely normal, when you are charging a person with criminal behavior, which is exactly what needs to happen.
    None of that is a reason to say we’re not sure yet whether it should happen, that maybe instead we should just hem and haw about it endlessly. There is not a single fucking thing about this whole investigation which resembles a “rush to judgment.” That is such bullshit. Maybe it’s presidential bullshit, but that doesn’t change much for me.
    What would actually be unfair to Trump, what can become a rush to judgement, comes from the media, when he is never given a chance to formally defend himself, like anyone else when they have to go to court. It’s like the House expects the press to somehow do their jobs for them. That’s not how it works, and if they’re not going to play a role in turning the whole fucking system into even more of a joke, they do not have another option.

  342. blf says

    A follow-up to @351, excerpted from (unrelated) Trump repeats unproven claims of GCHQ spying:

    [… UK foreign secretary Jeremy] Hunt tweeted a picture of the bust of Winston Churchill in the US president’s Oval Office […] after Gérard Araud, the outgoing French ambassador in Washington, said British influence in the US capital was now negligible, partly due to the UK’s preoccupation with Brexit.

    Araud told the Financial Times: “The UK has vanished. The British ambassador told me — and I loved it — that every time the British military is meeting the American military, the Americans are talking about the French.”

    Hunt tweeted back to Araud: I am sure you enjoyed making hay with the UK’s temporary Brexit travails but until there is a French president’s bust in the Oval Office we will not take any lessons in having good relations with Washington.

    Absolutely typical. Instead of engaging with the Ambassador’s claim (about military-level discussions), teh eejits use an old predominately displayed gift to assert everything is fine and you can’t claim the same (I wonder if he forgot about the Statue of Liberty?), so there! Ni!!

  343. blf says

    Nearly 170m under-10s unvaccinated against measles worldwide:

    […]
    Nearly 170 million children in the world under the age of 10, including half a million in the UK and 2.5 million in the US, are unprotected from measles in the face of growing outbreaks of the disease, Unicef is warning.

    More than 21 million children a year are not vaccinated against one of the most infectious organisms in existence, says the UN body. […]

    […]

    Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, warned the situation was serious. […] He called for Facebook and Twitter to take action against the posting of anti-vaccine propaganda and conspiracy theories. “With measles cases almost quadrupling in England in just one year, it is grossly irresponsible for anybody to spread scare stories about vaccines, and social media firms should have a zero-tolerance approach towards this dangerous content,” he said.

    Measles cases are up 300% in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year, says Unicef, with 110,000 confirmed reports. The same number died of the disease in 2017. Measles cases have reached their highest level in Europe for 20 years and caused an emergency to be declared in New York City.

    Between one and three people in every 1,000 who catch measles will die, it is estimated, and there are serious complications in some who survive such as blindness, encephalitis (an infection that causes brain swelling) and pneumonia.

    The US tops the list of high-income countries with the most children not receiving the first dose of the vaccine […] followed by France and the UK […]

    In low- and middle-income countries, the situation is critical, says Unicef. In 2017, for example, Nigeria had the highest number of children under the age of one who missed out on the first dose, at nearly 4 million. It was followed by India (2.9 million), Pakistan and Indonesia (1.2 million each), and Ethiopia (1.1 million).

    Many countries have not introduced the second dose, which is given after the age of four. Twenty countries in sub-Saharan Africa do not have it in their immunisation schedule, which means that 17 million infants are at higher risk.

    Dr Robin Nandy, Unicef’s chief of immunisation, said: “[…] We know in many conflict-affected areas and remote rural areas and some urban slums there are kids being left out for whatever reason, but we are also seeing measles outbreaks in Europe, Japan and the United States and it is extremely disappointing. Measles vaccine is a silver bullet as far as public health is concerned.”

    […]

  344. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Snippets of the She The People Forum from All In. My MSNBC foo isn’t strong enough to get separate links. The link below for for Elizabeth Warren, and Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Julian Castro, and Kamala Harris are available from the sidebar.
    Elizabeth Warren

  345. blf says

    In the UK, Tories resisting efforts to allow scrutiny of secretive trusts, says Labour:

    High fees and need to provide evidence ‘will stop journalists accessing information to uncover corruption’

    The UK government has been accused of thwarting Europe-wide efforts to combat money laundering and terrorism by resisting measures to open secretive trusts to public scrutiny.

    Under Europe’s fifth anti-money laundering directive, which comes into force next year, member states are supposed to give those with a “legitimate interest” a right to know what assets are owned by trusts and who the beneficiaries are. […]

    Labour says the government’s proposals, published this month, are “extremely restrictive” and will block enquiries by those who should have access to the data, such as journalists, campaigners and the victims of fraud.

    Shadow Treasury minister Anneliese Dodds wrote to Philip Hammond on Thursday to urge a rethink. “Investigative journalists have done great work uncovering corruption,” she told the chancellor. “The UK government should not be blocking them from accessing important information.”

    […]

    Trusts are a favoured money-laundering tool because of the secrecy that surrounds them. There is currently no public register listing the names, beneficiaries or holdings of any UK trusts, but the new EU directive is designed to change this.

    The tax office currently keeps a register of all trusts that pay UK tax. The new directive means that register will be expanded to cover all trusts, whether they pay tax or not. […]

    The information will be accessible to law enforcement, to professionals with a duty to make money-laundering checks, such as lawyers, accountants and estate agents, but also, for the first time, to members of the public with a good reason for accessing the information.

    However, the government’s consultation paper makes it clear that the Treasury is minded to take a cautious approach to information sharing. Those wanting access will need to already have evidence from another source linking the trust or its beneficiary to money-laundering or terrorism, and that evidence will have to be shared with the government.

    Even then, the government reserves the right to refuse to share data if it impedes ongoing law enforcement investigations. Unlike freedom of information requests, the government intends to charge for access to the data. Its consultation paper suggests the charges could be significant, stating: “The government expects to apply fees proportionate to the costs involved in checking and compiling the information.”

    In her letter, Dodds said: “This sets the bar far too high and will prevent legitimate investigation into trust structures suspected of use for fraudulent purposes.” The government had adopted “an extremely restricted view” of how such legitimate interest would be interpreted, she wrote. Journalists relying on tip-offs from insiders to identify corrupt individuals would not be able to provide such evidence to government.

    […]

    The Conservatives have been resistant to more transparency around trusts. It was revealed that the former prime minister David Cameron had personally intervened in 2013 to weaken an earlier EU drive to reveal the beneficiaries of trusts, saying they were mostly used for inheritance tax planning and should be exempt from anti-money-laundering measures.

    […]

    Not unrelated, “The Tory party’s 2017 accounts showed it received twice as much in donations from the dead, in the form of legacy payments, as from the living” (from Memo to Tory MPs: denigrating the membership is a really bad idea by Gary Younge).

  346. says

    British officials called Trump’s conspiracy theory “utterly ridiculous” … again.

    Britain’s main eavesdropping agency on Wednesday said allegations that it had been asked by the Obama administration to spy on Donald Trump after the 2016 presidential election were utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.

    Trump on Wednesday tweeted that a former CIA analyst, Larry Johnson, had accused Britain of spying on the Trump campaign. Trump said: “It is now just a question of time before the truth comes out, and when it does, it will be a beauty!”

    When asked about the tweet, a GCHQ spokesman said: “The allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct ‘wire tapping’ against the then President Elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”

    Reuters link

    From Jon Chait:,

    It is humiliating for the world’s greatest superpower to disregard its president as a weird old man who wanders in front of microphones spouting off unpredictably and without consequence.

  347. says

    From George Conway, regarding Hillary Clinton’s op-ed:

    “Obviously, this is personal for me, and some may say that I’m not the right messenger.”

    Perhaps so. Probably so. But if she’s with the Constitution, I’m with her.

    https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1121158375654535178

    Excerpt from the op-ed:

    The Mueller report isn’t just a reckoning about our recent history; it’s also a warning about the future. Unless checked, the Russians will interfere again in 2020, and possibly other adversaries, such as China or North Korea, will as well. This is an urgent threat. Nobody but Americans should be able to decide America’s future. And, unless he’s held accountable, the president may show even more disregard for the laws of the land and the obligations of his office. He will likely redouble his efforts to advance Putin’s agenda, including rolling back sanctions, weakening NATO and undermining the European Union.

    That part bears repeating.

    From the readers comments:

    The response to this direct and on target article by Hillary Clinton is simply yes on point 1, yes on point 2, yes on point 3, and yes on point 4. Trolls will be trolls, as they have no other choice based on their vested interests, but they will ultimately have no say. Stay the course and publicly investigate and educate the population. The right simply wants to wear down everyone with a prolonged confusing “conversation” so popular attention turns to other things and they can get their way.

    This is a marathon, not a sprint. Stay the course and expose potential violations of the law by this administration on a day by day, week by week, and if necessary month by month basis until the legal, constitutional mode of redress can be initiated if supported by facts, not shill screams to the contrary.
    ————————–
    None of this – none of the white nationalism, none of the interference, none of the total disregard for the rule of law – goes away with the end of Trump. The GOP has found their way, their path to continued and unbridled access to the highest office in the land. They’re not going to relinquish that access easily.

    This is why I believe thorough and complete investigation of everything related to Trump must go forward and be prosecuted.

    Don’t be misled that this will end with Trump – it didn’t start there. He was just a useful idiot. A thug, but a useful idiot.

  348. says

    Bad news for transgender people:

    […] Trump’s administration is preparing to roll back protections for transgender patients while allowing health care providers to opt out of various treatments based on religious objections, […]

    The Obama administration tried to extend protections to transgender patients as a provision of the Affordable Care Act, but a federal judge in Texas blocked the move. Trump is intending to issue a replacement rule rolling back those safeguards.

    Advocates worry that the new provisions will also endanger women who are seeking an abortion or who have already had one.

    The administration claims that the new moves will help guard against religious discrimination in the health care field.

    Link

    From the readers comments:

    “Religions must be free to hate others.”

    Jesus Trump
    ——————-
    This is ass backwards. What it does is enshrine Discrimination based on Religion.

  349. says

    From Jeff Sessions, concerning the Mueller report:

    It was complete and thorough, some may have said it was extensive.

    I have the greatest confidence in the integrity of the system. The process that was initiated was carried forth vigorously and with integrity. I think it deserves respect and I think it is about time to accept the results and let’s get on with the business of America.

    Sessions refused to be specific. While he praised the Mueller report in general terms, he did not say what he thought “the results” are. We can’t tell if Sessions agrees with William Barr’s misleading summary/non-summary, or if Sessions has actually read the Mueller report and agrees with the findings, particularly on obstruction of justice.

  350. says

    From Mark Sumner:

    […] The report also shows that when word that Trump had ordered McGahn to end the investigation reached the press, Trump called McGahn back to his office and ordered him to deny the first order. In fact Trump “made repeated attempts to get McGahn to change his story.” Now that the White House counsel’s testimony is out there in the public, Trump has settled on a strategy that seems like a perfect encapsulation of who Trump is, and how he believes things should work.

    Trump is using both press appearances and his Twitter account to claim that the Mueller report is wrong and that “I never told then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller, even though I had the legal right to do so.” At the same time, the Trump White House has announced it will fight a subpoena from Congress over calling McGahn to testify and to produce related documents. Trump wants to be able to state his version of “reality,” and make sure that no one else can speak or show evidence that might contradict his statement.

    Trump expanded on his claim that either McGahn or the special counsel was lying by saying that “Mueller was not fired and was respectfully allowed to finish his work.” Which might sound almost reasonable, had Trump not called Mueller a “Trump hater who was highly conflicted” and called the investigation “illegal” in that very same sentence where he said it was “respectfully allowed to finish its work.”

    What the report actually says that Trump stonewalled investigators, withheld critical information, tampered with witnesses, suborned perjury, provided inadequate answers, and simply lied. It also states that Trump’s obstruction makes it impossible to say for sure whether or not there was a criminal conspiracy with Russia. […]

    Link

  351. says

    More refusals from team Trump:

    White House senior aide Stephen Miller, a powerful immigration policy adviser, will not testify before the House Oversight Committee, the Trump administration said in a letter Tuesday.

    The letter, signed by White House counsel Pat Cipollone, said the refusal to appear before the Democratic-led committee follows “long-standing precedent” for White House staffers of both parties and adheres to constitutional law.

    The decision to pass on the hearing could keep Miller — largely regarded as the architect of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda — out of the spotlight. The senior aide reportedly pushed for the removal of several Homeland Security Department officials during a staff shakeup earlier this month.

    House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) sent a letter to Miller last week that invited him to appear voluntarily at a May 1 hearing that will focus on the administration’s immigration policies. Cummings said he requested Miller’s presence because of his apparent role in Trump’s “troubling” immigration policy agenda.

    In its response, the White House argued that Cabinet members and agency leaders have testified regularly before Congress and would continue to do so, but that Miller’s testimony was not warranted. […]

    Link

    That’s not going to fly.

    I really think Miller should be questioned by members of the House Oversight Committee.

  352. blf says

    Here in France, Macron is currently giving his (delayed by the Notre Dame fire) address in response to the gilets jaunes semi-fraudulent movement: France24 link (simultaneous English translation).

  353. says

    Some shenanigans in which the billionaire former candidate for governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, and his wife M.K. Pritzker, evaded taxes, etc. They are now under investigation for “perjury, mail fraud, and tax fraud. They are Democrats.

    […] “She is going to have the house re-assessed as an uninhabitable structure,” the email says. “To do this, she would like to have us pull all toilets and cap all toilet lines in the house. Then after the assessment, she would like us to put the 1st Floor toilet back in and have this as the one functioning bathroom in the place (she will then be finishing out the front room for JB’s [Jay Robert ‘J.B.’ Pritzker’s] hangout/meeting area].”

    The project manager that the Pritzkers hired told inspectors that M.K. Pritzker did specifically mention “reassessed” during a meeting, according to the report.

    “When asked if it was clear that M.K. wanted to have all the toilets removed because it was related somehow to the home being ‘reassessed,’ the B&A; Project Manager replied. ‘She did note those two areas together,'” the report says.

    The toilets were removed on Oct 6, 2015, with no directive to reinstall them. A ticket from the plumbing company notes five toilets were pulled, with the five toilet supply lines also capped, along with additional gas lines disconnected and additional work.

    The appraisal firm’s president said “he was unaware the toilets were removed about 10 days prior to their inspection of the property on October 15, 2015.” He also told inspectors he had been informed the toilets were in place on Jan. 1, 2015. He said the home was “unoccupied but functional and it could be habitable.”

    There were two affidavits signed that said “the property has been vacant and uninhabitable from January 1, 2012 to present. There are no functioning bathrooms or kitchen.” That was signed on Oct. 15, 2015. […]

    Chicago Tribune link

    The Pritzker scheme resulted in non-payment of about $330,000 in property taxes.

    From Wonkette:

    […]Why is the wife of a billionaire spending her days looking over her assistant’s shoulder and micromanaging LYING ABOUT TOILETS AND BASEMENT STAIRS to skip out on property taxes that are — I just did the math — nine THOUSANDTHS of a percent of their $3.5 billion net worth? […]

    How fucking dare you take the five toilets out of your mansion-next-to-your-other-mansion so you can cheat your own city’s homeless of a library, a shelter, a toilet. Or five.

    How very very very fucking dare you.

  354. says

    From Rudy Giuliani, pontificating on Fox News:

    How this [the Mueller investigation] ever got started in the first place is the next investigation. And Ms. Clinton better get a lawyer.

    There used to be a DOJ standing policy you cannot indict a Clinton no matter how much they obstruct justice, no matter how much evidence they destroy and how often they lie and no matter that they committed perjury.

  355. blf says

    The anti-gay extremist behind America’s fiercely strict abortion bans:

    Janet Porter won a major victory when the strictest law in the US passed in Ohio — the latest step in a fight she is taking global

    Janet Porter is a woman who believes life begins at conception and homosexuality is a choice. She has said gay marriage caused Noah’s floods, and was the architect of a 1990s gay conversion campaign. She implied US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a Jewish woman, is a racist. Like Donald Trump, she was a proponent of the Barack Obama “birther” conspiracy theory.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center […] designates her non-profit Faith 2 Action, as a hate group for its work against LGBT rights. She lost a slot on a Christian radio network when, the station said, an event she held veered into a form of Christian supremacy.

    Many on the left despise her. But she has enemies on the right too.

    And yet, in Trump’s America, she has just had one of the biggest victories of her career.

    Porter successfully lobbied Ohio’s legislature to pass one of the strictest abortion bans in the world this month, a heartbeat bill [see @422 –blf], which would make the procedure illegal at about six weeks into gestation. And for Porter, Ohio is the latest step in a fight she is taking global.

    […]

    [… F]or Porter, this new law is still not tough enough.

    The bottom line with this bill, is it doesn’t go all the way to when our lives begin at conception, but it is a scientific step toward that goal, said Porter. […]

    It’s a way to stop the discrimination. We’ve been discriminating against the very young. If you have a fellow human being, and we know that human being is alive, then to ignore that indicator, that heartbeat, is heartless, she said.

    Of course, a heartbeat is not the only indicator of “life” physicians consider. Victims of brain death often have a heartbeat, for example.

    Ohio’s law is considered the strictest anti-abortion bill in the US, not only because it ends abortion before most women know they are pregnant, but it also makes no exemptions for rape or incest. It would also allow prosecutors to charge doctors who defy it with a felony, which carries a sentence of up to a year in jail, $20,000 in fines and can threaten a physician’s license to practice medicine.

    […]

    […] When the Guardian interviewed her, she insisted the location of the interview not be disclosed. She said she has remained cautious about personal safety since, as a young lobbyist, her Porsche was set on fire.

    She videotaped the interview, insisting this reporter was in the shot. At least three more people were present at the location of the interview, but declined to disclose their names. They described themselves as “friends”, despite disclosing they had traveled with Porter for work […].

    […]

    […] Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, and Iowa congressman Steven King have all aided Porter.

    King has echoed Porter’s criticism of mainstream anti-abortion groups, and even her tagline: If a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected. King was recently stripped of his committee assignments in Congress for his white supremacist views.

    Porter was also close to Republicans such as former US Senate candidate Roy Moore. She became his spokesperson after he was accused of sexual assault and pursuing teenage girls in his 30s […]

    All the bestestering peoples!

    [On Moore:] “I have known him for 20 years because of his stand for the Ten Commandments. So, if there was ever a man who was innocent — he’s like the least likely man in America to do the things they accused him of,” Porter said.

    […] Porter compares the six-week ban to the infamous Dred Scott case, in which the supreme court once upheld slavery. She hopes this law will provide the US supreme court an opportunity to reconsider the landmark ruling which legalized abortion across the US in 1973, Roe v Wade.

    Thank God people were willing to challenge supreme court rulings, like slavery, like abortion, said Porter.

    She also said she continues to oppose gay rights, hinting that her ambitions for the US still have scope far beyond the abortion debate.

    In her opinion, Obergefell v Hodges — the supreme court case which legalized gay marriage across the US — had not settled the issue any more than Roe v Wade settled the issue of abortion.

  356. says

    Oh, FFS. Lara Trump said a bunch of stuff:

    In the midst of railing against a migrant caravan headed to the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump threw in her two cents on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to admit refugees into the country during a Thursday interview with Fox Business host Stuart Varney.

    Trump said that Merkel’s decision “was the downfall of Germany,” in response to Varney saying that the migrant caravan clip reminded him of “a march across Europe by a million people who wanted to get into Western Europe” and how Merkel “let them in.”

    ‘It was one of the worst things that ever happened to Germany,” Trump said. “This President knows that, he’s trying to prevent that from happening here, but Congress has got to get their act together and do the right thing for the American people.” […]

    Link

  357. says

    Is Trump too far out on a limb? Even some Fox News talking heads think so:

    Fox News analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano […] said that Attorney General Bill Barr was “wrong” to determine Trump didn’t obstruct justice.

    In a written column and video posted online, Napolitano outlined special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings on the numerous attempts Trump made to impede the investigation into Russian interference, which Napolitano called a “serious allegation of criminal activity.”

    “If [Trump] had ordered his aides to violate federal law to save a human life or to preserve human freedom, he would at least have a moral defense to his behavior,” the judge said in the video. “But ordering them to break federal law to save him from the consequences of his own behavior? That is immoral, that is criminal, that is defenseless, and that is condemnable.”

    In his column, Napolitano also criticized Barr’s “narrow” view of obstruction as being “at odds with the statute itself.”

    “On obstruction, Barr is wrong,” he wrote, refuting the attorney general’s assertion that the President didn’t obstruct justice because Mueller didn’t find evidence that he colluded with the Russia government.

    “The essence of obstruction is deception or diversion — to prevent the government from finding the truth,” Napolitano argued. […]

    Link

  358. says

    Summarized from a Talking Points Memo article, here is a list of all the people and entities that Trump and his administration have told to resist Congress:

    DOJ official John Gore, who was involved in the decision-making process to add a citizenship question to the census, was ordered by the Trump administration not to comply with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena […]

    Former White House official Carl Kline, who ran the office that issued security clearances and who allegedly retaliated against a whistleblower, was ordered by the Trump administration not to comply with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena […]

    The Trump administration plans to fight the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena of former White House counsel Don McGahn, as well as any other oversight requests related to the issues covered in the Mueller report.

    Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has stalled on the House Ways and Means Committee’s request for Trump’s tax returns and hinted that the administration is not inclined to turn them over […]

    Trump’s personal attorneys have also urged Mazars USA, Trump’s accounting firm, not to comply with a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee and filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking the subpoena.

    The White House rejected the House Oversight Committee’s request that White House adviser Stephen Miller come before the committee to testify about immigration policy.

  359. blf says

    Macron’s has just finished his speech. He covered quite a lot of territory, which I will leave to the professionals to summarise. Three things stood out for me (in the order in which he presented them): No mandatory / compulsory voting; Referendums / petitions at both the local & national levels; and The most important thing is dealing with Climate Change. That last point is indisputable, but it also what started the protests: There was a fuel tax increase to combat Climate Change (in various ways), the truckers (probably egged on vested interests) complained and started the gilets jaunes protests, which attracted other protestors (on a wide variety of points), and then was hijacked by extremists from both the loony left and nazi right.

    Another point, which is (currently) being focused in the press confidence, is decentralising the government. (I must admit I missed / blanked-out that part of the speech, so am uncertain what he is proposing.) Broadly, from what I recall, moving more powers and responsibility to local structures, without review / approval back in Paris. Sorry, I wasn’t paying too much attention… cheese interrupted… and MUSHROOMS!

  360. blf says

    A recent question in the on-going Macron press confidence suggests part of my summary @459 is wrong — perhaps completely backwards — on “Referendums / petitions at both the local & national levels”. The questions and answers suggests that should be “No referendums / petitions…”, albeit it is possible the Q&A is talking about some specific subject rather than in general. (Currently, as I understand it, only national referendums are possible, and only if the President’s office approves.)

  361. blf says

    Marcon is concluding now. (So am I, I’m off to the pub…) I presume there will be a lot of analysis, criticism, and so on, in both reliable and unreliable sources.

    Near the end he echoed my criticism — albeit more nuanced and diplomatic — of the gilets jaunes fraudulent nature. France24 is now analysing live (in English)…

    (Apparently, this was the first open Macron press confidence since being elected; previous ones have been closed / restricted, and generally restricted to visits from International diplomats…)

  362. blf says

    Re @460: My initial @459 was correct (so I have no idea just what the @460 Q&A was about); that is, according to the discussion now on France24, albeit there is some disagreement on both its significant and its actual details / implementation.

  363. lotharloo says

    If anyone is curious, this is Napolitano video that says Trump obstructed justice. Youtu.be/KrFaSrkJrZU

  364. KG says

    blf@442,

    I have it on good authority (that of my imagination) that that report is most unfair to our esteemed foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, because it omits the fact that Araud also taunted Hunt, saying his mother was a hamster and his father smelled of elderberries!

  365. tomh says

    From WaPo:
    Federal judges rule Michigan gerrymandering unconstitutional, order maps redrawn by 2020

    Federal judges ordered the state of Michigan to draw new legislative districts on Thursday, after finding that a gerrymandered plan enacted by the state’s Republican-dominated legislature in 2011 constituted an “extremely grave” constitutional violation.

    The three-judge panel said it found that the redistricting plan in 34 congressional and state legislative districts was designed to thwart Democratic voters by dispersing their votes into districts where Republicans dominated, in violation of the First and 14th amendments.

    “Evidence from numerous sources demonstrates that the map-drawers and legislators designed the Enacted Plan with the specific intent to discriminate against Democratic voters,” the panel, two judges appointed by President Bill Clinton and one by President George H.W. Bush, wrote in its decision.

    The panel ordered the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to come to an agreement with its newly sworn-in Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, to redraw the districts from the plan before the 2020 elections. If the state officials are unable to come up with new maps by Aug. 1, the court will redraw them itself.

    The violations were so pronounced, the panel said, that all of the state Senate districts in the plan would need to have special elections, meaning that some lawmakers’ four-year terms would be cut short.

    “The constitutional violations in this case are particularly severe,” the panel wrote, saying that the redistricting plan “taints thirty-four total legislative districts across the state, including ten Senate districts.”

    The panel noted that the redistricting plan had advantaged Republicans over the course of several election cycles. In three elections in those districts between 2012 and 2016, Republicans won 64 percent of the state’s congressional seats — nine out of 14 — while never earning more than 50.5 percent of the statewide vote, they wrote.

  366. says

    Weirder and weirder. Ever further down the rabbit hole. Trump is using his Obama conspiracy theories and obsessions to raise funds for his reelection campaign, and to increase his email list of potential donors.

    How much can President Trump get away with blaming his predecessor for Russia’s targeted interference in the 2016 election?

    That seems to be what the Trump campaign is trying to find out with the “Official Obama-Russia Accountability” survey it blasted out on Thursday.

    The “survey” – really just a mechanism for gathering voters’ contact information – promises that the President will “personally review” the responses of those who provide their answers (plus their names, emails and cell numbers).

    Ah, a “survey” that also contains bullshit and lies.

    But the framing is pretty rich.

    “Obama worked with Russia?” the email subject line reads.

    In the Trump campaign’s telling, the “Waste of Money Mueller Report” proved that “Cheatin’ Obama” intentionally declined to prevent Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential contest.

    Survey questions include: “Do you believe Obama doing nothing gave Russians the green light to interfere in the 2016 Election?” and “Do you believe Obama did nothing so that Russians would help him with his Disastrous Iranian Nuclear Deal?” […]

    Link

    The “survey” is ugly, and I mean physically ugly, not just ideologically bonkers. You can see it in all of its offensive, hurt-your-eyes, insult-to-good-design horror at the link.

  367. says

    Maria Butina was sentence tod 18 months in prison for conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. She has already served 9 months.

    […] “This case is not simply about failing to notify the attorney general,” U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said at the sentencing hearing. It is because Butina did not register as a foreign agent, Chuktan said, that made her conduct so “dangerous” and a threat to “our democratic institutions.”

    Butina was arrested in July 2018 and charged with failure to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy. The government alleged that she used gun rights activism to infiltrate conservative political circles. She pleaded guilty to the conspiracy count in December and has been cooperating with the government ever since. […]

    Prosecutors have called her assistance “substantial” but nonetheless sought the 18 month sentence. Her lawyers argued that she be released immediately, having been in jail since her arrest. Both parties agreed to a swift deportation once she completed her sentence — an order that judge approved.

    In its sentencing memo, prosecutors claimed Butina’s actions were part of a so-called “spot and assess” operation, where in Butina was providing the Russian government with information it could later use to recruit susceptible targets. […]

    The case revealed that Butina had plotted her efforts with Alexander Torshin, a Russian who has served in the Russian government and helped Butina organize an NRA trip to Moscow. She had also started dating GOP operative Paul Erickson, who has since been indicted for fraud.

    Link

  368. says

    Trump obstructed justice according to comments made privately by two prosecutors on Mueller’s team:

    Two prosecutors from the special counsel’s office said privately there was enough evidence to file federal criminal charges of obstruction of justice against President Trump over his efforts to halt an FBI probe into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, the New York Review of Books reports. But Trump’s status as president precluded them from advocating for criminal charges.

    The report’s sourcing comes two steps removed from the special counsel himself. Two prosecutors reportedly told other top law enforcement officials, two of whom then told the story’s author, journalist Murray Waas.

    “Privately, the two prosecutors, who were then employed in the special counsel’s office, told other Justice Department officials that had it not been for the unique nature of the case—the investigation of a sitting president of the United States, and one who tried to use the powers of his office to thwart and even close down the special counsel’s investigation—they would have advocated that he face federal criminal charges,” the story reads.

    Talking Points Memo link

    New York Review of Books link

    […] On March 24, without consulting with Mueller, Attorney General William Barr declared that in the absence of a final judgment by Mueller as to whether or not the president broke the law, he, the attorney general, had taken it upon himself to make that determination in a summary he sent to Congress. Barr decided that Trump wouldn’t be charged with a crime. But many career Justice Department employees, former prosecutors for the special counsel, and legal scholars have questioned the propriety and legitimacy of Barr’s making such a decision. […]

    In the course of such cases, prosecutors and FBI agents working for Mueller often interacted with their peers in US attorneys’ offices around the country and in the DOJ’s Criminal Division and Public Integrity Section. Some of Mueller’s prosecutors, who had been detailed from other Justice Department offices, have since returned to their previous jobs or taken new positions in the department. The special counsel’s office was thus less sequestered than is generally believed.

    It was against this backdrop that prosecutors working for the special counsel spoke to their peers in the Justice Department. That is how I learned what, in particular, the two Mueller prosecutors had to say about the Flynn investigation. Two people present during one such conversation provided me with detailed and consistent accounts of what the special counsel’s two prosecutors had said to them. A third person present corroborated that the conversation took place but declined to provide details of what was said.

    One person who spoke to me reported grappling with the issue of what could be considered a breach of their colleagues’ confidence. But in part because of what they regarded as Attorney General Barr’s misrepresentations of the Mueller report, they believed it was important for the public and Congress to know what Mueller’s prosecutors had themselves privately concluded: that a charge of obstruction of justice was indeed merited by Trump’s actions in the Flynn matter. […]

    Much more at The New York Review of Books link.

  369. says

    A group of Republican judges is making a concerted effort to restrict the rights of protestors.

    An opinion handed down Wednesday by three Republican judges could chill the First Amendment rights of protesters — and potentially allow police to shut down political movements by filing lawsuits harassing movement leaders.

    The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Doe v. McKesson effectively strips First Amendment protections from protest leaders who commit minor offenses, ignoring longstanding Supreme Court precedents in the process.

    The “Doe” in Doe v. McKesson is an anonymous police officer who was allegedly injured by an unknown protester who is not DeRay McKesson. McKesson is a prominent racial justice advocate closely associated with the Black Lives Matter movement who, according to Doe’s complaint, helped organize a protest near the Baton Rouge Police Department building.

    Doe alleges that the unknown person — who, again, is not DeRay McKesson — “picked up a piece of concrete or similar rock like substance and hurled [it] into the police” that were arresting protesters. […] If true, this rock-thrower’s actions are reprehensible, and whoever threw the rock belongs in prison.

    Yet, in a legal complaint that is riddled with typos, Doe’s lawyers claim that McKesson should be liable for “injuries and compensable damages . . . greater than $75,000.00” because of the alleged actions of an unknown person who, in case this fact is not yet clear, is not DeRay McKesson. […]

    As the Supreme Court explained in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware, “civil liability may not be imposed merely because an individual belonged to a group, some members of which committed acts of violence.” […]

    […] Doe does not allege that McKesson ordered anyone to throw a rock. […]

    The Fifth Circuit dodges Claiborne by suggesting that if McKesson endorsed any illegal activity, that justifies stripping him of his First Amendment rights.

    At one point, the protesters allegedly blocked a street, which violates Louisiana law. Thus, the panel of three Republican judges reason that “Officer Doe’s complaint does allege that McKesson directed the demonstrators to engage in the criminal act of occupying the public highway, which quite consequentially provoked a confrontation between the Baton Rouge police and the protesters, and that Officer Doe’s injuries were the foreseeable result of the tortious and illegal conduct of blocking a busy highway.”

    This minor criminal act, according to the Republican judges, is enough to establish that “the First Amendment is not a bar to Officer Doe’s negligence theory.” […]

    In fairness, the Fifth Circuit’s Doe opinion comes at an early stage in this litigation. As even that opinion acknowledges, “our ruling at this point is not to say that a finding of liability will ultimately be appropriate.” McKesson will still be allowed to attack the factual underpinnings of Officer Doe’s claims, among other things.

    But he will likely have to do so at considerable legal expense […]

    The threat of legal expenses alone could be seen to restrict the rights of leaders of protest movements. Frivolous lawsuits come with real financial burdens for the defendants.

    […] The implications of this legal theory are breathtaking. For one, there is a long history of civil rights protesters blocking streets over the objections of the police. Courts have not typically held that doing so strips these protesters of their constitutional rights. […]

    the Doe opinion offers a road map to police officers — or, really, to anyone injured by a single participant in a political movement they disagree with — to shut down those movements with litigation. […]

    Think Progress link

  370. says

    Oh, FFS.

    Trump said this today:

    I’m a student of history. I see what you get when you fire people and it is not good. But there would have been nothing wrong with firing him. Legally, I had absolute right to fire but I never told Don McGahn to fire Mueller.

    One of Trump’s first acts as president was to fire acting Attorney General Sally Yates. He also fired Jim Comey. He fired several Cabinet secretaries, sometimes via tweet. He fired Omarosa Manigault Newman. He fired Agent Strzok. He claimed that Steve Bannon cried when he was fired.

  371. says

    Trump loses in court … again.

    A federal judge in Washington state temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s overhaul of the nation’s only federal family planning program. The Trump administration’s rule barred abortion providers from participating in the program […]

    U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Bastian, an Obama appointee, issued a nationwide injunction from the bench on Thursday, freezing any changes to the Title X program as a lawsuit brought by Washington state, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is further litigated in court. The injunction is effective immediately.

    The decision comes just two days after a federal judge in Oregon said he would block the domestic gag rule, siding with various Democratic attorneys general, American Medical Association, and Planned Parenthood. Other courts in California and Maine could possibly block the rule too.

    “Today’s decision is a victory for the 4 million patients nationwide who rely on trusted family planning providers for access to birth control and other essential health care,” Ruth E. Harlow, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement to ThinkProgress. […]

    Link

    The long legal road ahead:

    “But we know this is not the end of the road,” Harlow continued. “The Trump administration has made clear that they will stop at nothing to curtail access to contraception and other reproductive health services for low-income people. We will continue to fight for what is right every step of the way.” […]

    If the rule was fully implemented, federal officials would bar abortion providers like Planned Parenthood (which serves 40% of Title X patients) from receiving Title X funds. The rule also prevents any Title X provider from even mentioning abortion during pregnancy counseling, which is why critics liken it to a gag.

    Currently, no federal dollars pay for abortions; providers looking to participate in the grant program use Title X funds to subsidize services like breast cancer screenings for low-income patients. The rule would have likely diverted grant money to centers that have a history of misleading patients. […]

  372. Akira MacKenzie says

    I’m a student of history.

    PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

  373. says

    Inside the shrinking newsroom of the paper that shapes the primaries, the Des Moines Register:

    Tony Leys is a newspaperman. He has covered murders. He has worked the copy desk. […] After spending much of his career assigning stories—as city editor, state editor, politics editor—he returned to writing them. His beat became health care, and he owned it, reporting with soul-wringing realism on the flaws of the American medical apparatus. He has won numerous awards, including two years ago for reporting on the impact of Medicaid privatization, as told through the eyes of poor, suffering patients, and last year for authoring a stellar package of Sunday print edition stories about mental health.

    There will be no such series this year. Not because Leys has lost his job, but because he’s being reassigned—sort of. He’ll continue to cover health-related stories. But for the next 10 months, his priority will be covering presidential politics. Leys is used to this. It happens every four years. Because this is Iowa. Because this is the Des Moines Register.

    Since the dawn of the modern nominating process, no single event has done more to winnow the field of aspiring presidents than the Iowa caucuses—and no single publication has done more to capture its characters, narratives and rhythms than the Register.

    But the scythe of technological change and economic pressure that is killing the news industry, and especially local journalism, is coming for Iowa’s paper of record, too. […]

    It’s almost impossible to imagine the first-in-the-nation nominating contest without Iowa’s biggest newspaper. Its editorial endorsements are national news. Its front-page stories, on subjects ranging from politics to agriculture policy, demand attention from every campaign. […]

    Fourteen reporters at the Register are currently assigned to Democratic candidates, responsible for tracking their every move and covering their every stop in the state, but only three of them are practiced political journalists. The paper’s business reporter is covering Bernie Sanders […]

    The newspaper is but a shadow of the behemoth it once was. A decade’s worth of layoffs and buyouts have gutted the editorial operation and purged the administrative staff crucial to running a metro daily. The institutional knowledge critical to covering a state—and paramount to reporting on the Iowa caucuses—has been all but eradicated. And yet, the reality is that many comparable small-city newspapers have it much worse; if it weren’t for the global obsession with Iowa’s role in choosing leaders of the free world, the Register bullpen would be even emptier. […]

    The effort is noble, valiant, even inspiring: a shrinking team of Swiss-army-knife reporters […] clinging to the Register’s outsized role in narrating the path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, all while reporting other beats essential to preserving its identity and publishing a daily newspaper.

    But from the perspective of the public interest, it’s also deeply depressing. Local journalism is going extinct across America. According to Pew Research, the number of newsroom employees working for newspapers was cut nearly in half between 2008 and 2017, dropping from 71,000 to an estimated 39,000. In the past year alone, crippling layoffs have hit the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Dallas Morning News and many of the newspapers owned by Gannett. […]

    Link

    In my opinion, the decline of daily newspapers contributes to Trump’s ability to get away with lying to a significant portion of the American public. Ditto for other Republican candidates.

  374. says

    Trump spoke at the National Rifle Association convention in Indianapolis today. Here is an excerpt from the coverage:

    “We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedom. And that is why my administration will never ratify the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. I hope you are happy. … I am officially announcing today that the United States will be revoking the effect of America’s signature from this badly misguided treatment.” He then signed a letter on stage requesting the Senate “to discontinue the treaty ratification process and return the now rejected treaty right back to me in the Oval Office, where I will dispose of it,” before tossing the signing pen into the audience.

  375. says

    Followup to comment 475.

    Let’s look at Trump’s refusal of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty from a perspective that opposes Trump’s action:

    […] Backing out of the commitment harms international efforts to reduce war crimes, said Amnesty International USA’s Adotei Akwei.

    “As the biggest arms exporter, the U.S. signature to the ATT was an important step towards ensuring that dangerous weapons stay out of the wrong hands,” Akwei said. “With this announcement, the Trump administration will reopen the floodgates for arms sales with weakened human rights criteria, which could potentially fuel brutal conflicts, and make everyone less safe.”

    Kris Brown, president of the gun safety organization Brady, said Trump “chose to pander to the corporate gun lobby and shirk his responsibility to his country and the world.”

    “We should be doing everything in our power to stop gun violence, not export it,” Brown said. “By denouncing the treaty today, President Trump will only embolden terrorists and other dangerous actors around the world. This is a dangerous, reckless move that will endanger countless Americans and other innocent people worldwide.” […]

    Link

  376. says

    In the first 24 hours since he officially launched his campaign, Joe Biden raised $6.3 million. That pace and amount of donations beats both Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke, the candidates who previously held the record for raising campaign funds.

    In the first poll published since Biden announced, he leads Trump by six points.

    […] The April 25-26 Hill-HarrisX survey of 1,000 registered voters found that 43 percent said they would choose Biden while 37 percent said they would pick Trump. Fifteen percent of respondents said they were unsure and 5 percent said they would vote for another candidate.

    Biden’s 6-point lead was outside the poll’s 3.1 percent sampling margin of error. […]

    Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly insulted Biden by questioning his intelligence and by labeling him as “Sleepy Joe.” That, no doubt, raises Biden’s profile.

    In my opinion, it is too early to judge candidates by early poll results and/or early fundraising totals. We haven’t even seen the Democratic candidates on the debate stage yet. Still, it’s interesting that so many people are willing to send money to Joe Biden.

  377. says

    Trump escalates his authoritarian rhetoric:

    […] Trump, during a lengthy call-in interview with his favorite Fox News host on Thursday evening, repeatedly called special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election to a “coup” — echoing the sort of rhetoric people are accustomed to hearing in undemocratic countries.

    “This was a coup. This was an attempted overthrow of the United States government,” Trump told Sean Hannity, adding later that he thinks what happened to him is worse than Watergate. “This was a coup. This wasn’t stealing information from an office in the Watergate apartments. This was an attempted coup. Like a Third World country. Inconceivable.”

    Trump also made clear he has no plans to comply with Democrats’ efforts to exercise their lawful right to conduct oversight of his administration.

    “Enough is enough,” Trump said. “I could’ve fired everybody … we’ve had it. That’s enough.”

    Authoritarian leaders raising suspicions about coups taking place against them is a hallmark of countries like Turkey and the Philippines, but it is not the sort of thing we’re accustomed to hearing in the United States. […]

    Link

  378. says

    Followup to comment 467.

    Commentary from Steve Benen:

    […] a reporter asked [Trump] t this morning if he still believes there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. “Oh, I’ve answered that question,” the Republican responded.

    And if he’d stopped there, said nothing else, and fielded the next question, it would have demonstrated a degree of common sense and political agility. Trump did not, however, stop there.

    “[I]f you look at what I said, you will see that that question was answered perfectly.

    “And I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general. Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals.

    “I have spoken to many generals here, right at the White House, and many people thought – of the generals, they think that he was maybe their favorite general.

    “People were there protesting the taking down of the monument of Robert E. Lee. Everybody knows that.”

    I’m curious what part of Donald Trump’s brain told him, “Nearly two years later, after international condemnations and brutal political blowback, now seems like a good time to relitigate my scandalous response to Charlottesville.”

    In any case, let’s note right off the bat that [Trump’s] effusive praise for a Confederate general is both wrong and weird. The idea that U.S. military leaders have singled out Lee as “maybe their favorite general” is extremely hard to believe. (And given this president’s habit of describing conversations that happened only in his mind, I’d recommend some skepticism about his claim.)

    It’s also worth appreciating the fact that Trump’s reaction to the 2017 violence in Charlottesville was anything but “perfect.” He began by blaming “many sides” for what transpired, which led to bipartisan rebukes, and a clarification, which the president ended up stepping on soon after with even more incendiary remarks.

    But even putting these relevant details aside, Trump wasn’t simply defending fans of a Robert E. Lee statue. The “fine people” the president defended in 2017 were the same people chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.” […]

    Link

  379. says

    More infighting in the National Rifle Association:

    The NRA has suspended Steve Hart, its longtime top lawyer, in just the latest sign of the infighting that is splintering the group.

    […] Hart was suspended before Lt. Col. Oliver North announced Saturday that he would not serve a second term as NRA president.

    The gun rights group has been imploding all week, with CEO Wayne LaPierre claiming that North is extorting him, a legal skirmish breaking out between the NRA and its advertising vendor and North’s dire warnings about the organization’s financial leadership.

    Ah, good. This is our schadenfreude moment for today.

  380. says

    A succinct look at the renewed interest around Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and the sometimes questionable role he has played:

    After the New York Times reported back in September that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein floated wearing a wire to secretly record President Trump, it was a bit surprising that he remained in his role.

    But now, thanks to new reporting from the Washington Post, it’s been revealed that Rosenstein had to fight for his job in the wake of that report.

    After the report came out, Rosenstein offered to resign in a meeting with then-White House chief of staff John Kelly, but said he didn’t “want to go out with a tweet,” according to the Washington Post. Rosenstein then spoke with Trump over the phone.

    Rosenstein blamed the New York Times report on former deputy FBI Ddirector Andrew McCabe and told Trump that he would make sure the President was treated fairly by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to the Post.

    “I give the investigation credibility,” Rosenstein reportedly said. “I can land the plane.”

    That apparently helped convince Trump to keep Rosenstein on at the Justice Department

    Read the Washington Post’s full report here.

    Talking Points Memo link

    From the Washington Post:

    […] The episode illustrates the political tightrope Rosenstein has had to walk in his two years as the Justice Department’s second-in-command. To keep his job, the deputy attorney general has worked to mollify an often angry Trump, while at the same time protecting the special counsel’s investigation of the president and his campaign. Rosenstein’s actions have come under renewed scrutiny, as he has played a key role in releasing Mueller’s findings in a way even some of his supporters say has been overly favorable to Trump.

    In a statement for this article, Rosenstein said: “The only commitment I made to President Trump about the Russia investigation is the same commitment I made to the Congress: so long as I was in charge, it would be conducted appropriately and as expeditiously as possible. Everyone who actually participated in the investigation knows that.” […]

    Trump ended the call with Rosenstein thinking he was “on the team after all,” one senior administration official said, adding that the president has been further swayed by Rosenstein’s deference in meetings and other settings.

    On multiple occasions, according to people familiar with the matter, Rosenstein told Trump he was not a “target” of Mueller’s investigation — using law enforcement jargon that can refer to people about whom the Justice Department has gathered substantial evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Mueller’s report makes clear that investigators focused on Trump; his attorneys were informed he was a “subject,” a different bureaucratic term meaning his conduct was being investigated. And Mueller’s report details conduct that legal observers have said could constitute obstruction of justice. […]

    From Matthew Miller:

    He shouldn’t be talking to the president about an investigation into the president under any circumstances and he shouldn’t be giving him assurances about how that investigation will end and he especially shouldn’t be doing it at a time when he’s begging and pleading for his own job…

    The way to understand Rod is he’s weak, and he’s always been weak. He was weak at the beginning of this investigation when he signed off on the Comey firing and gave the president the excuse, despite––we now know, having read the Mueller report––that he knew why the president was firing Comey, that it was over the Russia investigation.

    https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fmr-doj-spox-goes-off-on-weak-rod-rosenstein-hes-always-been-weak/

    Video, and more comments from Miller, are available at the mediaite link.

  381. says

    Followup to comment 481.

    From the readers comments:

    Seems like Rod was keeping Trump in the loop every step of the way. This makes me wonder a lot about how much Rosenstein constrained Mueller and his team. Junior should’ve been indicted. The rationale given in the report does not fly particularly since ignorance of the law is no excuse.
    ——————-
    They sure do love talking in code, as to give plausible deniability.
    ——————
    At this point it may be more important to get Rosenstein to testify in public under oath than McGahn. He was more concerned about his job than the country. He like most others in this administration are without integrity.
    ——————–
    Rosenstein was obviously a Trump stooge from the moment he aided and abetted Trump’s obstructive firing of Comey by cooking up the pretextual letter of dismissal. I’ve never understood how Mueller felt able to conduct his investigation with an overseer who was subject to this blatant conflict of interest. Now it’s becoming clear that the fix was in from the beginning–‘fix’ being a relative term, in a case of such obvious criminality. Trump basically got the best outcome consistent with the facts of the case. I can’t help wondering if Rosenstein played a role in the miraculous new policy that Mueller came up with, i.e., that a traditional prosecutorial judgment can’t be made in relation to a president.

  382. says

    Hard-line views made Lou Dobbs a Fox powerhouse. Now he’s shaping Trump’s border policy.

    One day in mid-March, […] Trump gathered his top economic team at the White House to get its read on the state of the nation’s financial health.

    But before the Council of Economic Advisers finished its annual get-together with the nation’s chief executive, a basso profundo voice thundered into the room via speakerphone. With the council sitting by, Trump had placed a call to his unofficial policy whisperer — Lou Dobbs, the Fox Business Network host. The call ushered Dobbs into a traditionally private gathering […]

    Day by day, the relationship between the bombastic president and the cranky anchorman has become an object of curiosity and amusement. But it is also something much more profound.

    An echo chamber on ideology and policy has evolved; Trump often takes steps urged by Dobbs, such as declaring a national emergency to pay for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, pushing out Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and pulling back from a proposed cessation of the trade war with China. […]

    Close associates of both Trump and Dobbs say they speak off-air often — as frequently as every day some weeks. Just this week, Trump tweeted he’d spoken to Dobbs [and] urged his tens of millions of Twitter followers to watch the Fox Business stalwart’s show that night, which turned out to be the start of a new series with Dobbs alleging “radical Dems, the Deep State and the national left-wing media have tried to subvert and overthrow the president of the United States.”

    “While the president and Lou are friendly, it’s not like his relationship with a lot of other people in the media who like him,” said Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist. “This is about policy. They’re completely in sync on immigration and trade and what that all means for wages and how the Republican elite has failed.” […]

    Dobbs railed about an “invasion of illegal aliens” and broadcast pieces with shaky or misleading factual foundations. He said in 2003 that “illegal aliens” constituted one-third of the total prison population, a claim he later retracted. He promoted claims in 2005 that 7,000 people with leprosy had immigrated here in three years — when, in fact, that number covered 30 years. […]

    Link

    More at the link.

  383. says

    From former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates:

    I’ve been a prosecutor for nearly 30 years, and I can tell you I’ve personally prosecuted obstruction cases on far, far less evidence than this.

    And, yes, I believe if he were not the President of the United States, he would likely be indicted on obstruction.

  384. says

    So now William Barr is one of the many people refusing to testify before Congress. Barr is more stalling than refusing at this point. Still, we can see what is going on here. He is looking for any excuse he can find to refuse to testify.

    House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said Sunday that Attorney General Bill Barr is “not going to tell the committee how to conduct its hearing, period.”

    The blunt statement from Nadler comes as CNN reports that Barr objected to the conditions Nadler set for Barr’s upcoming appearance before the committee. […]

    If Barr doesn’t comply with the committee’s requests, Nadler said, “then we will have to subpoena him, and we will have to use whatever means we can to enforce the subpoena.”

    Per an unnamed committee source “with knowledge of the matter,” Barr may respond to Nadler’s hearing format by not showing up at all.

    Per the source, Nadler wants all committee members to have five minutes of questioning each, and also for each party’s counsels to be able to participate during an additional 30 minutes of questioning per side.

    But, per the source, Barr has objected to being questioned by committee lawyers. Another unnamed source confirmed that stance to CNN.

    Link

    From the readers comments:

    If he doesn’t show up, Trump henchman Barr needs to be held in contempt, arrested, imprisoned, impeached and disbarred.

    From southpaw:

    It’s hard to express how transgressive Barr/Rosenstein’s decision on obstruction was. So contrary to the weight of the evidence that I haven’t seen one former prosecutor defend its merits. So contrary to the purpose of the special counsel and so personally unethical.

    From Brian Fallon:

    Christine Blasey Ford bravely took questions from an outside lawyer because Republicans insisted on it. But now the Attorney General of the United States is afraid of being questioned by staff lawyers about the Mueller report?

  385. says

    Excerpt from Trump’s speech at a rally in Wisconsin last night:

    […] Trump on Saturday night repeated a stunning falsehood promoted by anti-abortion activists that doctors and mothers execute newborns.

    During a rally hosted by his 2020 re-election campaign in Wisconsin, Trump made the egregious claim after asserting that Democrats are “aggressively pushing extreme late-term abortion, allowing children to be ripped from their mothers’ womb right up until the moment of birth.”

    “The baby is born, the mother meets with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully, and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby,” he said. […]

    From commentary by Matt Shuham:

    […] There are no laws that allow doctors to perform executions. Rather, Republicans in North Carolina and Wisconsin have in recent months introduced legislation meant to highlight doctors’ conduct during and after late-term abortions, in the extremely rare cases that babies are born alive following an abortion attempt. Senate Democrats blocked a similar resolution from Republicans earlier this year.

    Critics of the resolutions say they’re meant to discourage abortion access and make doctors look like executioners when in fact babies born alive following abortions are already afforded the same legal protections as anyone else. […]

    Law and bioethics professor Alta Charo told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the proposal was “pure inflammatory rhetoric” meant to “create the false impression that abortion providers practice infanticide.” Babies born alive are already “granted equal protection of the law,” she said.

    Trump also referenced Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam: “Until this crazy man in Virginia said it, nobody even thought of that.”

    The President seemed to have been referencing one widely misinterpreted comment from Northam, one that he has spewed falsehoods about before, regarding third-trimester abortions.

    Referring to fetuses that have “severe deformities” and are “nonviable” outside of the womb, Northam said during a January interview: “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

    Anti-abortion activists took his comment out of context as a description of infanticide, in fact, as the governor and a spokesperson for him later reiterated, he was speaking about babies who would not survive outside of the womb.

    “No woman seeks a third-trimester abortion except in the case of tragic or difficult circumstances, such as a nonviable pregnancy or in the event of severe fetal abnormalities, and the governor’s comments were limited to the actions physicians would take in the event that a woman in those circumstances went into labor,” a spokesperson for Northam told Politifact of the comments. “Attempts to extrapolate these comments otherwise is in bad faith and underscores exactly why the governor believes physicians and women, not legislators, should make these difficult and deeply personal medical decisions.” […]

    Link

    From Julia Pulver, a registered newborn intensive care unit nurse:

    Thread: As a NICU nurse, I served on the “Bereavement Team.” We were a special team of Nurses tough enough to help new parents go through the worst day of their lives. Parents of babies who had fought so hard for their tiny little lives and weren’t going to make it.

    And parents of babies who, after they were born, and wouldn’t have their moms body keeping them alive, would die rather quickly. As these small bodies were failing, it was our job to be there with the parents at every step, give them support, and do our best to make some Memories of their precious babies that could help easy their impending and overwhelming grief. When heroic measures failed or a baby without a brain or working lungs or heart was born, we knew the end was near, and we encouraged the parents to be present in these finals moments.

    We placed the babies skin to skin with mom and placed a blanket over them both. We lowered the lights and quieted the room. We had as much or as little family and the parents wanted in the room. We sang songs, we prayed, we hugged, we swayed… and we all cried.

    I cried until my throat burned for this family who has just had to endure the unthinkable. We were in the moment with those families. We took pictures, even for the ones who were too traumatized to think they’d ever want to see them, just in case they did. We made footprints.

    We put a lock of hair into a ribbon. We measured the babies length and marked it on a tape measure. We made special tiny white gowns and hats for our angels. We created a memory box for these families who were losing their child that day.

    So yes, there are those in hospitals who are around infants who pass: they are the Bereavement Teams & they provide the equivalent of neonatal hospice to families who are living through absolute Hell. Babies and children die, it’s a sad part of life. But no one, absolutely NO ONE ever, in any hospital, nor any mother who has just given birth, is conspiring with a doctor on whether or not to commit infanticide. This is perhaps one of the sickest accusations levied by this deranged dictator yet. Don’t believe a word he says about anything important.

    https://twitter.com/VotePulver/status/1122325499051761669

  386. says

    Followup to comment 486.

    From the readers comments:

    Trump is not merely a liar; he is a highly proficient truth assassin.
    —————
    The weirdest thing at this point isn’t that the president speaks gibberish, but that he gets applause when nothing he says makes sense. 4https://t.co/r7vpPamlFA4 — Robert Maguire ( @RobertMaguire ) April 28, 2019
    —————-
    The Daily from the NYT did a two parter on abortion recently and they talked with a couple who are both obstetricians in Missouri. They described the type of threats they receive pretty regularly.

    Trump’s rhetoric in this case is not just absurd, it puts real lives at risk.

  387. says

    Rabble in Wisconsin cheered as Trump called Obama disloyal, called women murderers, and characterized the FBI as “scum.”

    Link

    A series of video snippets is available at the link. You can watch the highlights (abominable lowlights) of the speech without having to endure the whole thing.

  388. says

    Followup to comments 457 and 463.

    From Think Progress:

    […] Trump is very mad that a Fox News analyst called his attempts to obstruct special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation “immoral,” “criminal,” “defenseless,” and “condemnable.” So the president is using an approach straight out of his playbook: smearing the critic on Twitter and claiming that the person secretly begged him for stuff and is retaliating for not getting it.

    […] Judge Andrew Napolitano, the senior judicial analyst for Fox News, condemned the president’s behavior.

    “If [Trump] had ordered his aides to violate federal law to save a human life or to preserve human freedom, he would at least have a moral defense to his behavior,” Napolitano said this week. “But ordering them to break federal law to save him from the consequences of his own behavior that is immoral, that is criminal, that is defenseless, and that is condemnable.”

    Late Saturday night, Trump lashed out at his former ally, using his title “Judge” in scare quotes and suggesting — without evidence — that Napolitano was bitter about not getting a Supreme Court seat and a pardon for a friend. […]

    You will not be surprised to learn that, in the past, Trump heaped lavish praise on Napolitano. Now he is attacking Napolitano in the way he usually attacks perceived enemies:

    Thank you to brilliant and highly respected attorney Alan Dershowitz for destroying the very dumb legal argument of “Judge” Andrew Napolitano.

    Ever since Andrew came to my office to ask that I appoint him to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I said NO, he has been very hostile! Also asked for pardon for his friend. A good “pal” of low ratings Shepard Smith.

  389. says

    More nonsense and deplorable rhetoric from Hair Furor:

    The president had a few things to get off his chest Sunday morning, so naturally he called into Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show to complain about the state of America’s immigration system. His main gripe? That his administration can no longer separate children from their family.

    “We go out and we stop the separation,” Trump said. “The problem is you have 10 times more people coming up with their families. It’s like Disneyland now. You know, before you’d get separated so people would say, ‘Let’s not go up.’ Now you don’t get separated and, you know, while that sounds nice and all, what happens is you have—literally you have 10 times more families coming up because they’re not going to be separated from their children.” […]

    “The problem is we have to register them, we have to bring them to court,” he told Fox. “Another country just says, ‘Sorry, you can’t come into our country,’ and they walk them out. In our country you have to bring them to court, you have to have Perry Mason involved.” […]

    Link

  390. says

    From Steve Benen:

    […] the new Washington Post/ABC News poll, but here’s a topline result that stood out for me: 55% of American voters say they “definitely” will not vote for Donald Trump next year. That may seem encouraging to the president’s critics, though it’s worth noting for context that in 2016, 54% of Americans didn’t vote for Trump and he won anyway.

    In other campaign news, Beto O’Rourke released his plan to address the climate change crisis.

    […] O’Rourke’s four-pillar framework combines proposed executive action with legislation he pledges to introduce within his first 100 days in office and outlines further steps to take in response to climate-related disasters in the future. […]

    “The greatest threat we face — which will test our country, our democracy, every single one of us — is climate change,” the former Texas congressman said in a statement accompanying the release of the plan. “We have one last chance to unleash the ingenuity and political will of hundreds of millions of Americans to meet this moment before it’s too late.” ​

    On the campaign trail, O’Rourke regularly takes questions about climate change, including on Friday, when he told a questioner in Las Vegas that it was his “north star” issue — citing his children and the need to act to protect their generation.

    The plan begins with proposed executive actions, including rejoining the Paris climate agreement on day one of an O’Rourke administration and moving quickly to raise efficiency standards for buildings, cars and appliances. Longer term executive actions include setting a net-zero emissions carbon budget for federal lands by 2030 and adding more national parks and monuments to protect land and seascapes.

    The meat of the O’Rourke plan is a promise to send Congress, as his first piece of legislation, a bill that would mobilize $5 trillion over the next 10 years to upgrade infrastructure and spur innovation — including more than a trillion dollars in tax incentives to reduce emissions, and $250 billion dedicated directly to research and development.

    O’Rourke proposes to mobilize this capital with a $1.5 trillion investment from “revenues generated by structural changes to the tax code that ensure corporations and the wealthiest among us pay their fair share and that we finally end the tens of billions of dollars of tax breaks currently given to fossil fuel companies,” according to his campaign’s release.

    NBC News link

  391. says

    Republicans are not worried about the Russians:

    […] The Republican National Committee, for example, has not publicly committed to rejecting materials hacked by foreign operatives.

    Jared Kushner last week downplayed the Russian attack in 2016 as being little more than “a couple of Facebook ads.”

    Rudy Giuliani recently told a national television audiences there’s “nothing wrong” with an American campaign receiving aid from a foreign foe.

    Brad Parscale suggested last week Russian interference barely even happened.[…]

    Link

    From The New York Times:

    While American officials have promised to continue to try to counter, block and weaken the Russian intelligence operations, they have complained of a lack of high-level coordination. President Trump has little interest or patience for hearing about such warnings, officials have said.

    Mr. Trump views any discussion of future Russian interference as effectively questioning the legitimacy of his 2016 victory, prompting senior officials to head off discussions with him.

    From Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee:

    Let’s not blow this thing [Russian attacks on elections] out of proportion. Let’s be vigilant. Let’s be concerned about it. But let’s not blow it out of proportion, either.

  392. Saad says

    Lynna, OM, #493

    Republicans are not worried about the Russians

    It would be against their best interest to do so. At this point, they’re basically conspiring with them.

  393. says

    Trump told a lie. He pretended that some vindictive thing he wants to do is actually being done. Here’s what he said to his rally audience:

    Last month alone, 100,000 illegal immigrants arrived in our borders, placing a massive strain on communities and schools and hospitals and public resources, like nobody’s ever seen before. Now we’re sending many of them to sanctuary cities. Thank you very much…. I’m proud to tell you that was my sick idea.

    According to reporting from the Associated Press, Trump lied:

    There’s no evidence that the Trump administration has begun to send the migrants to sanctuary cities en masse . He proposed the idea in part to punish Democratic congressional foes for inaction on the border, but Homeland Security officials rejected the plan as unworkable. […]

    There were no indications federal officials were taking any steps to move forward with the idea or considered the president’s words anything more than bluster. His words to the Wisconsin crowd, suggesting his “sick idea” was in motion, appeared to be no more than that.

    Bluster. Lies.

    From Steve Benen:

    Trump publicly floats an idea.

    Then he endorses it.

    Then he says he might implement it.

    Than he says he’s already implemented it. […]

    Trump would like to repeal the estate tax, so he tells people the estate tax has already been repealed, even though it hasn’t. He’d like to scrap the Johnson Amendment prohibiting church politicking, so he boasts about its repeal, despite the fact that the law remains fully intact.

    For Trump, the line between coming up with an idea and actually implementing the idea is often quite blurry. For those concerned with his mental acuity, this isn’t reassuring.

  394. says

    At this point, Trump doesn’t need to remind us that he thinks the worst of migrants. Nevertheless, he usually provides a near-daily reminder.

    […] you have lawyers standing at the border, our people, lawyers, wise guys, standing at the border signing people up. Every time they [migrants] catch a cold they try to blame Border Patrol. It’s a disgrace what’s going on, and it could be solved in 15 minutes if the Democrats would give us the votes.

    Facts:

    During the month of December, two young migrant children died in Border Patrol custody. The first died of dehydration, which medical staff believe started as a cold. The second child was taken into custody and transported to a local hospital. Staff there believed the child initially had a cold and a fever and was given an antibiotic. Hours later he began vomiting and was taken back to the hospital where he later died.

    From the readers comments:

    Catching a cold has nothing to do with being kept in overcrowded and under-sanitzided conditions, with a tin foil blanket on top of you and a piece of rubber on an ice-cold concrete floor.
    ———————-
    “He called U.S. border custody ‘Disneyland’…”
    Complete with Mr. Toad’s Wild Death by Dehydration, It’s a Small Cage, and Jungle Deportation Cruise.
    ———————
    “Wise guys” at the border?
    Lawyers are now “wise guys”????

  395. says

    Tracking Trump’s lies, which are increasing in frequency and number:

    […] Trump has always lied a lot. It’s getting worse. Hugely worse. The Washington Post has the facts: Trump made 5,000 “false and misleading claims” in his first 601 days in office … and his next 5,000, bringing him to 10,000, in the next 226 days.

    That means Trump went from eight false or misleading claims a day to nearly 23—in public. If we knew what he was saying in private the number would doubtlessly be much, much higher. How does Trump rack up the lies so quickly? […]

    […] There was a 45-minute telephone interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News on April 25: 45 claims lies. There was an eight-minute gaggle with reporters the morning of April 26: eight claims lies. There was a speech to the National Rifle Association: 24 claims lies. There was 19-minute interview with radio host Mark Levin: 17 claims lies. And, finally, there was the campaign rally on April 27: 61 claims lies. […]

    While the traditional media likes to steer clear of the straightforward “lies” to describe what Trump’s doing, we know that Trump is lying not just because we know something about the quality of the man’s character but because when someone repeats a “false claim” literally dozens of times after it’s been called out as false, it’s a lie […]

    His followers eat it up and Republican politicians defend it, showing that this isn’t about Trump alone. His entire party is complicit in his lies.

    Link

    Strike-through corrections above are mine.

  396. says

    Fox News hosts do not understand how unions work. And Fox News hosts are hopping mad about unions endorsing Joe Biden.

    The International Association of Fire Fighters, a labor union representing more than 300,000 firefighters and emergency medical service providers, endorsed Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign on Monday. Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade apparently found this very concerning.

    In a Monday morning interview with the union’s general president, Harold Schaitberger, Kilmeade repeatedly demanded to know why the mandatory union dues for the “many of those firefighters” who actually support President Donald Trump would be used to elect a candidate they oppose.

    Schaitberger explained that the group’s voluntary political action committee donations, not its union dues, would be used for political spending — but Kilmeade would not relent.

    “Are you using their dues for Joe Biden?” Kilmeade asked of the union’s Trump supporters.

    “Our role is to represent all of them in their profession,” Schaitberger began to respond.

    “Right. Are you using their money to support Joe Biden?” Kilmeade pressed.

    “We are using the money that those that choose to contribute to our political PAC, we use on their behalf in the political arena. Those that choose to make those contributions,” he replied.

    Federal law prohibits unions from using union dues to make contributions to political campaigns. Instead, members who voluntarily opt to make additional donations to the union’s political action committees can help fund candidates endorsed by the union.

    Despite this explanation, Kilmeade continued to falsely suggest that pro-Trump firefighters were being forced to give their money to Biden.

    “If someone calls you, if one of your members calls you today and says, ‘Do not use my dues to support Joe Biden,’ what will you do?” he demanded.

    “I will say that our political resources are those that come from our members who voluntarily contribute to our political operations,” Schaitberger calmly replied. “Not your dues.”

    Link

  397. says

    Followup to comments 457, 463, and 490.

    Andrew “Judge” Napolitano responded to some of the insults trump hurled at him via Twitter:

    In terms of the “pardon” situation, Napolitano said Trump once asked for his opinion about the conviction of a “mutual friend” of theirs. Napolitano said he thought that the conviction was just, to which, Trump offered “a very strong term” to express his disagreement.

    “He said, ‘You know this person as well as I do. Call this person up and tell this person he’s going to be on the list of pardons that I will seriously consider.’ That was the extent of that conversation.”

    Trump dangled a pardon! Or at least he tried to dangle a pardon using Napolitano as the messenger.

    To refresh our memories, here’s what Trump tweeted:

    Ever since Andrew came to my office to ask that I appoint him to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I said NO, he has been very hostile! Also asked for pardon for his friend. A good ‘pal’ of low ratings Shepard Smith.

    This all began when Napolitano wrote an op-ed for the Fox News website, and when he repeated pretty much the same condemnation of Trump in a video that was widely disseminated:

    The president’s job is to enforce federal law. If he had ordered its violation to save innocent life or preserve human freedom, he would have a moral defense. But ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.

    From the op-ed:

    […] Trump initially claimed that he had been completely exonerated by Mueller — even though the word “exoneration” and the concept of DOJ exoneration are alien to our legal system. Then, after he learned of the dozen or so documented events of obstruction described in the report, Trump used a barnyard epithet to describe it. [“bullshit” was the epithet]

    […] We know that obstruction of justice constitutes an impeachable offense under the “high crimes and misdemeanors” rubric because both presidents in the modern era who were subject to impeachment proceedings — Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton — were charged with obstructing justice.

    […] the obstructer need not succeed in order to be charged with obstruction. That’s because the statute itself prohibits attempting to impede or interfere with any government proceeding for a corrupt or self-serving purpose. […]

    Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump — from asking former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter about the reason for Flynn’s chat with Kislyak, to asking Corey Lewandowski and then-former White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller and McGahn to lie about it, to firing Comey to impede the FBI’s investigations, to dangling a pardon in front of Michael Cohen to stay silent, to ordering his aides to hide and delete records. […]