Busting-the-Filibuster Friday

Posted: April 5, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: , , , , , , | 20 Comments

It’s been 2 Fridays since our Last Mueller Friday (March 22nd).

Where’s the damned report?

Every day we don’t see the report represents an obstruction of justice.  But then, that’s what Bill Barr was hired to do, right?   From The Guardian: “Barr invited to meet DoJ officials on day he submitted memo critical of Mueller. Revealed: The attorney general, then a private lawyer, called the special counsel’s obstruction of justice inquiry into Trump ‘fatally misconceived’”

William Barr was invited to meet justice department officials last summer, on the same day he submitted an “unsolicited” memo that heavily criticized special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into obstruction of justice by Donald Trump.

Barr, who was a private attorney at the time, met the officials for lunch three weeks later and was then nominated to serve as Trump’s attorney general about six months later.

The revelation about the meeting, which was arranged by Steve Engel, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, and which has not previously been publicly disclosed, raises new questions about whether the White House’s decision to hire Barr was influenced by private discussions he had about his legal views on Mueller’s investigation.

None of this surprises me. I’m sure the right. chair of the right committee–most likely oversight and Rep. Elijah Cummings–will get to the bottom of this.  Every appointment Trump makes to anything just drips of cronyism.

Today, a Federal Court of Appeals court shortened the time that a decision will be made by the judiciary.  This is via Politico and Josh Gerstein:  “Appeals court narrows path for disclosure of grand jury info in Mueller report. Court splits, 2-1, in a closely watched case that could affect the release of the special counsel’s review.”

A Federal appeals court on Friday tossed an obstacle in the way of grand jury information in special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report being released directly to the public, but the decision may not slow disclosure of that material to Congress.

The decision from a divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals did not directly address Mueller’s report, but involved a grand jury investigation more than six decades ago into the disappearance of a Columbia University professor and political activist, Jesús Galíndez.

In the new ruling, the panel majority concluded that federal district court judges lack the authority to order the release of typically secret grand jury material except in situations specially authorized in a federal court rule.

While there is no exception that covers cases of intense political or historical interest, courts have repeatedly held that they have “inherent authority” to make such disclosures in unusual cases.

However, the D.C. Circuit decision Friday sided with a long-standing Justice Department position that those rulings were mistaken and a formal change to the grand jury secrecy rule would be needed to give judges that power.

“We agree with the Government’s understanding of the Rule,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote, joined by Judge Greg Katsas. “The contrary reading … which would allow the district court to create such new exceptions as it thinks make good public policy — would render the detailed list of exceptions merely precatory and impermissibly enable the court to ‘circumvent’ or ‘disregard’ a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure.”

The impact of the new decision in the current battle over disclosure of the Mueller report could be limited, however, because the Democrat-controlled House is already demanding the special counsel’s full submission including grand jury information.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee passed a resolution authorizing Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) to subpoena the full report and all supporting materials. Such a subpoena may be sufficient to give the House access to grand jury information under an existing exception covering material sought in connection with “judicial proceedings.”

I wanted to make sure we had a good look and discussion about the various ways that Mitch McConnell is changing the SOP of the Senate. To no one’s real surprise, the Senate did go Nuclear somewhat quietly on Wednesday on a 51-48 vote.  ABC and other media outlets covered it but not to the extent that it deserved.

The Senate has gone “nuclear,” voting 51-48 Wednesday afternoon to change its own rules and slash debate time for some nominees from 30 hours to two hours, paving the way to fast-track certain Trump picks. Republicans — led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — have long lamented what they have termed Democratic obstruction of the president’s nominations, particularly judicial nominations.

All Republicans vote for the rule change except Sen. Mike Lee and Sen. Susan Collins, who voted with Democrats, and no Democrats voted with Republicans.

This is what Senator Elizabeth Warren has to say about that even though she her last vote did not reflect this discussion.  It’s something to thing on.  I really appreciate Warren’s bringing the beef to the hamburger.  It’s the women that are discussing actual policy and it’s time they all get some air time and ink.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is expected to issue the strongest indictment of the Senate filibuster of her campaign for president thus far during a speech at the National Action Network convention on Friday morning.

“Last year the Senate passed a bill that would make lynching a federal crime,” Warren will say, according to prepared remarks viewed by The Daily Beast. “Last year. In 2018. Do you know when the first bill to make lynching a federal crime was introduced? 1918. One hundred years ago. And it nearly became the law back then. It passed the House in 1922. But it got killed in the Senate—by a filibuster. And then it got killed again. And again. And again. More than 200 times. An entire century of obstruction because a small group of racists stopped the entire nation from doing what was right.”
Warren goes on to say that the filibuster has been used in recent years “by the far right as a tool to block progress on everything.”

“I’ve only served one term in the Senate—but I’ve seen what’s happening,” she says, according to the remarks. “We all saw what they did to President Obama. I’ve watched Republicans abuse the rules when they’re out of power, then turn around and blow off the rules when they’re in power.”

Democrats running for president in 2020 have been debating Senate rules for months, as activists push for a change that would not necessitate a 60-vote supermajority to pass sought-after legislation like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal, both of which have been endorsed by a large share of the Democratic candidates currently running. But many of the same candidates, including the senators in the race, have been resistant to institutional changes. The one candidate who has affirmatively campaigned on its elimination in order to address climate change is Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. Many others, like Warren before Friday, had said they’d consider it, and she previously said “all the options are on the table.”

Schumer believes other wise. This is from CSPAN. “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell debate the GOP’s decision to make a change to rules reducing the length of post-Cloture debate time of federal district court judges and sub-Cabinet nominations from 30 hours to two hours. ” It happened on April 3rd, the day of the vote.

From Vox and Li Zhou: “Senate Republicans have officially gone “nuclear” in order to confirm more Trump judges.
It’s a win for Republicans in the short term, but Democrats could also capitalize on the change in the future.”

Senate Republicans have officially gone nuclear again this week.

Once more, they’ve changed Senate rules so they can confirm President Donald Trump’s nominees more expeditiously — a string of actions first kicked off by Democratic leader Harry Reid in 2013. It marks the third time in less than a decade that the Senate majority has used the so-called “nuclear option” — a term used for parliamentary procedure that sets a new precedent with only a simple majority of lawmaker votes.

This time, Republicans have amended Senate rules in order to further limit the amount of time lower-level nominees could be debated on the floor. Previously, if lawmakers voted to limit debate on a nominee, that back-and-forth would still be able to continue for 30 hours. Practically speaking, because there is only so much time the Senate is in session, this meant that there were a finite number of nominees that Republicans could get through — and that’s something they wanted to change.

Republicans argued that this rules change is necessary because Democrats have gone out of their way to slow-walk consideration of Trump’s nominees. Democrats, meanwhile, say that Republicans have gutted other processes, like “blue slips,” that would enable them to otherwise vocalize their concern with different nominees.

“Senate Democrats spent the first two years of the Trump administration dragging out the confirmation process to not only deny the president his team, but also to waste hours of floor time that should have been spent focusing on the American people’s priorities,” Republican Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said in a statement. “This has been nothing more than obstruction for the sake of obstruction and it is outrageous.”

That assertion, however, is laughable to many Democrats, who have noted that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s supposed outrage over the way Democrats have blocked Republican nominees is hypocritical, given the lengths he went to in order to prevent President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland from even getting considered for a Supreme Court seat.

Nancy Pelosi threw some serious shade at a reporter who evidently wasn’t aware that there is a law that says the IRS will hand over tax returns of whoever certain chairs of congress request.

Donald Trump is doing his usual hold it up routine. “All the way to the Supreme Court, Alice!!!”

And, I’m giving the last word today to my “I’m just a country lawyer” Senator who just can’t seem to keep the folksy routine sounding sane.

With that, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?

April Fool’s Day Reads with the Fool in Charge

Posted: April 1, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: | 22 Comments

Morning Sky Dancers!!

There’s nothing like a good congressional hearing on White House malfeasance to cheer an old crone up.  Why, I may even take up knitting names into something. What creepy crawly blatantly unconstitutional and illegal things has the Trump Family Crime Syndicate committed that we find out about today?  Well, in the Trump White House … you get a security clearance, he get’s a security clearance!  Everybody gets a Security Clearance even though the chances that they are doing nefarious things in their own interests and against that of our country has led the nation’s security apparatus to just say no.  A Trump never lets anything like the national interest get in the way of a shiny penny or two.

We knew the evil princeling  Kushner and his wife the vain sorceress I’vain’ka have been cooking up some money making schemes all over the world which has worried just about everyone in the NSA, FBI, and CIA.  Never Fear though!  King Fool will let them have it any way. Grift away! Grift away! Grift away all!!

From the New York TImes and the usual suspects comes this lede: “Whistle-Blower Tells Congress of Irregularities in White House Security Clearances”.  Ah, ‘irregularities!’  Such a slight word for such a situtation where the  concerns are of kompromat and scheming to make money off US power and purse!

A whistle-blower working inside the White House has told a House committee that senior Trump administration officials granted security clearances to at least 25 individuals whose applications had been denied by career employees, the committee’s Democratic staff said Monday.

The whistle-blower, Tricia Newbold, a manager in the White House’s Personnel Security Office, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a private interview last month that the 25 individuals included two current senior White House officials, in addition to contractors and other employees working for the office of the president, the staff said in a memo it released publicly.

The memo does not identify any of 25 individuals referenced by Ms. Newbold. The New York Times reported in February that President Trump had personally ordered his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to grant a clearance last year to Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser. Mr. Kelly had recorded Mr. Trump’s direction to him in a memo, according to several people familiar with its contents. Mr. Trump had denied playing a role in an interview with The Times in the Oval Office a month earlier. Mr. Kelly left the White House at the end of last year.

Ms. Newbold told the committee’s staff members that the clearance applications had been denied for a variety of reasons, including “foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct,” the memo said. The denials by the career employees were overturned, she said, by more-senior officials who did not follow the procedures designed to mitigate security risks.

Ms. Newbold, who has worked in the White House for 18 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, said she chose to speak to the Oversight Committee after attempts to raise concerns with her superiors and the White House counsel went nowhere, according to the committee staff’s account.

“I feel that right now this is my last hope to really bring the integrity back into our office,” she said, according to a summary of her March 23 interview with the committee’s staff distributed on Monday.

Good luck with that as long as King Fool is in charge.

And whoa!  Look over there!  Better stock up on avocados!!!

But back again to my state of panic and a Reuters’ headline: “America would run out of avocados in three weeks if Trump shuts down the U.S.-Mexico border. Nearly half of all imported U.S. vegetables and 40 percent of imported fruit are grown in Mexico.”  I’m going to have to get Temple to stand guarding over all these darling little baby avocados budding on the tree outside my window.  Whatever will we do!  Cinco de Mayo cannot be without a lot of guacamole!  But, King Fool doesn’t care as long as he can get that stale McDonald’s take out and a side of NAZIs at his rallies.

Are we winnng yet?

President Donald Trump’s threat to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border would hit American consumers — in the gut.

From avocado toast to margaritas, the United States is heavily reliant on Mexican imports of fruit, vegetables and alcohol to meet consumer demand. Nearly half of all imported U.S. vegetables and 40 percent of imported fruit are grown in Mexico, according to the latest data from the United States Department of Agriculture.

Americans would run out of avocados in three weeks if imports from Mexico were stopped, said Steve Barnard, president and chief executive of Mission Produce, the largest distributor and grower of avocados in the world.

“You couldn’t pick a worse time of year because Mexico supplies virtually 100 percent of the avocados in the U.S. right now. California is just starting and they have a very small crop, but they’re not relevant right now and won’t be for another month or so,” said Barnard.

Trump said on Friday that there was a “very good likelihood” he would close the border this week if Mexico did not stop immigrants from reaching the United States. A complete shutdown would disrupt millions of legal border crossings in addition to asylum seekers, as well as billions of dollars in trade, about $137 billion of which is in food imports.

“When a border is closed or barriers to trade are put in place, I absolutely expect there would be an impact on consumers,” said Monica Ganley, principal at Quarterra, a consultancy specializing in Latin American agricultural issues and trade.

“We’re absolutely going to see higher prices. This is a very real and very relevant concern for American consumers.”

Jonathan Chait characterizes King Fool today as: an  “Adolescent Bully”.  I always wonder if he even got to that level of maturity. I’ve seen preschoolers with more self awareness and control.

Trump’s use of bullying tactics against his rivals for the Republican nomination in 2015–2016 played a critical role in endearing him to the Republican base. Trump’s rollouts of new terms of abuse for his rivals have become mini-events celebrated by his fans. The Trump campaign capitalized on the new insult by hawking celebratory T-shirts. His continued use of these methods, and the delight it gives his supporters reveals something important about what binds them together.

Bullying is most closely associated with adolescence, because teenagers are most naturally prone to it. Children that age tend to lack empathy or well-developed moral worldviews, and they often gravitate toward peers who engage in displays of dominance and cruelty. It is also the age when people are most prone to judge themselves and others by their appearance, and when social relations tend to be the most hierarchical.

Like a teenage bully, Trump fixates on a superficial characteristic in his target. He mocks male targets (Marco Rubio, Schiff, Bob Corker) as short, and a variety of women as fat or ugly. When reporter Serge Kovaleski challenged one of his lies, Trump mimicked his disability. He mocked Senator Charles Schumer for tearing up over Trump’s Muslim ban, either disgusted or unable to comprehend that somebody would empathize with the plight of immigrants.

Trump’s innovation of winning the election through adolescent-style bullying has carried over to his presidency. Presidents traditionally inculcate the virtues of decency, gentleness, and generosity as part of their role as ceremonial head of state. One little-noticed feature of Trump’s presidency is how little time and attention he devotes to what used to be the banal presidential work of celebrating charitable good works and public service. Speeches and photo ops with volunteers, do-gooder business leaders, hospital visits and the like, once the barely noticed daily bread of presidential messaging, has all but disappeared.

While Trump waits in prey for his next mean stunt (Via Axios) “Scoop: Trump “saving” Judge Amy Barrett for Ruth Bader Ginsburg seat”., Mitch Mconnell  works on making it so like some evil sorcerer in the dark tower. What better way of kicking women in the teeth than to remove them of another American Heroine?  But again, wtf is McConnell up to and who pulls its strings while it puts the Constitution in its basket?  This is from HuffPo: “Mitch McConnell Plans To Change The Rules Again To Confirm Trump Judges The GOP leader, who blocked lots of Obama’s court picks, is ready to make it easier to confirm district judges now.”  We’re fucked if this happens.

He changed the rules to make it easier to confirm President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court picks. He tossed out Senate traditions to make it easier to confirm Trump’s circuit judges. So, naturally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants to adjust the rules again to make it easier to confirm the rest of Trump’s nominees to lifetime seats on federal courts.

The Senate will vote this week to reduce its debate time for most nominees ― district court judges and lower-level executive nominees ― from 30 hours to two hours. This will not apply to Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court nominees or circuit court nominees.

Without a whiff of irony, McConnell, whose greatest legacy is denying a Supreme Court seat and dozens of other federal court seats to President Barack Obama, said Thursday that the rule change is necessary because of Democrats’ “unprecedented obstruction” of Trump’s nominees.

“Obstruction for obstruction’s sake,” bemoaned McConnell, who was so Machiavellian about denying Obama the ability to confirm judges that he drove Republicans to block their own nominees and fueled a vacancy crisis on federal courts.

It would take 67 votes to make the rules change. All 45 Democrats, along with the two independent senators who caucus with them, are expected to vote against it. But the 53 Republicans could still get it done if they invoke the so-called “nuclear option,” a more confrontational approach that would allow them to change the rules with a simple majority, or 51 votes. It’s not clear if McConnell is prepared to go nuclear to make the change, but he’s previously suggested that he is.

Since Trump became president, McConnell has used the nuclear option to lower the vote threshold for confirming Supreme Court nominees from 60 to a simple majority. He’s also endorsed repeated violations of the “blue slip” rule, a Senate tradition of only moving forward with a judicial nominee when both of his or her home-state senators sign off on it.

Those changes, along with his latest push to make another rule change, are all part of McConnell’s grand plan: to use Trump’s presidency to put piles of young, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, anti-voting rights ideologues into lifetime federal court seats before Trump is up for reelection in 2020.

1x93myWell, let’s hope this year, the joke’s not on us but on King Fool.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?  And excuse my fracturing some fairy tales and mixing many metaphors today!  Oh, and I took liberty with literature too.  Well, it is April’s Fools day.

 

And just in case you’re curious:  Where did April’s Fools Day come from?

Although April Fools’ Day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery.

Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563.

People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes.

These pranks included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.

Historians have also linked April Fools’ Day to festivals such as Hilaria, which was celebrated in ancient Rome at the end of March and involved people dressing up in disguises.

There’s also speculation that April Fools’ Day was tied to the vernal equinox, or first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, when Mother Nature fooled people with changing, unpredictable weather.

April Fools’ Day spread throughout Britain during the 18th century. In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event, starting with “hunting the gowk,” in which people were sent on phony errands (gowk is a word for cuckoo bird, a symbol for fool) and followed by Tailie Day, which involved pranks played on people’s derrieres, such as pinning fake tails or “kick me” signs on them.

Read more at the link about to the History Channel.

Friday Reads: Toddler Talk Time with Little Trumpy Dumpkins

Posted: March 29, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: | 11 Comments

It’s Friday!

Can we just find a good way to tell all those Republican Cavemen to stop their crusade against the rest of us?  And then, can we ask them to send their Child of Perpetual Grievance, Greed and Ignorance back to the nursery for a forever nap?  I’m down with giving a Mouse a cookie, but what happens when you give a toddler a microphone?  From The Hill:  “Trump says Great Lakes have ‘record deepness’

President Trump said the Great Lakes have “record deepness” during an unusual moment in his boisterous rally Thursday night in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Trump often likes to use hyperbole to describe the places he visits, and in this case it led him to make a statement in the Great Lakes State that left some people scratching their heads.

“I support the Great Lakes. Always have,” Trump said during his speech. “They’re beautiful. They’re big. Very deep. Record deepness.”

While the Great Lakes are big and many would describe them as beautiful, they are not among the deepest lakes in the United States, let alone the world.

The deepest lake in the country is Crater Lake, a volcanic crater in southern Oregon with the deepest measured depth of 1,949 feet, according to Geology.com.

Lake Superior is the Great Lake with the largest surface area in the U.S. at 31,700 miles. Its maximum depth is 1,332 feet, but it doesn’t make the record books.

Trump’s comments were getting some chuckles on Twitter the morning after.

A parody Twitter account with the name “Lake Superior” tweeted: “I hate to admit this, but … no, not record deepness. Not in the world or in the United States.”

 

This week has pulled out all the stops to demonstrate just how miserable the next two years of relentless campaigning and rallying will be for us all.  I am going to need elephant tranquilizers just to sleep at night at this rate.  Susan Glasser–writing for The New Yorker–characterizes him thusly “Our President of the Perpetual Grievance”.  That’s pretty much what his cult is like too. They’re a bunch of whiny ass white titty babies who want it all and want it now.

What’s been remarkable, this week, is how much Trump triumphant has sounded like Trump at every other point in his Presidency: angry and victimized; undisciplined and often incoherent; predictable in his unpredictability; vain and insecure; prone to lies, exaggeration, and to undercutting even those who seek to serve him. Sure, he appears relieved, but the Barr letter, with its welcome news for Trump, did not come with magic fairy dust that could suddenly transform the seventy-two-year-old President into someone else entirely. The new Time cover shows Trump under an umbrella, smiling in the rain, with the headline “The Trump Reboot,” but that misses the point. There is no reboot, no Trump 2.0—nor will there be. Even without the existential peril to his Presidency that Mueller posed, Trump is still Trump, the same as he ever was.

Before his rally on Thursday, Trump had made eight public appearances after Barr released his summary of Mueller’s findings, most of them short responses to shouted questions from reporters and one long interview with his favorite Fox News host, Sean Hannity. I went back and listened to all of them. There was no new Trump, no moving on. What was striking was how little celebration there was from the President, although he did talk a few times about the “beautiful” outcome. The same was true for Trump’s always-active Twitter feed, which combined the usual fevered mix of insta-punditry, peremptory demands(The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries must “increase the flow of Oil… Thank you!”), and score-settling (“the Fake News Media is going Crazy!”) that has become familiar, if no more Presidential, by now. The main news of Trump’s post-Mueller week, in fact, was the undercutting of his own party, another Trump trademark, as his Administration decided to support a court ruling that would eliminate the Affordable Care Act. Trump declared a new slogan for Republicans as “the Party of great health care,” although G.O.P. leaders on Capitol Hill view the issue as a political loser that cost the Party control of the House last fall.

Trump appears to have been freed from the fear of impeachment and removal from office, but he remains the public figure he has always been: a weird combination of perpetual victim and perpetual bully, whose one constant is to remain on the attack. In case the President’s plan wasn’t already abundantly clear, on Thursday morning he tweeted out a Fox commentary segment: “Now is the time for President Trump to Counter Punch.” And counterpunch he did. The closest thing to an overture to Democrats in his rally on Thursday night was when he called on the Party “to decide whether they will continue defrauding the public with this ridiculous bullshit . . . or whether they will apologize to the American people” and work with Trump on priorities like fixing “broken trade deals” and building a wall on the southern border. As political overtures go, it wasn’t much of one.

More Toddler Talk with Trump and his nutty Fox Pal Sean Ham-it-up   (From Mary Papenfuss at HuffPo.)  “Trump To Sean Hannity: Wind Energy Won’t Work Because Wind ‘Only Blows Sometimes’.  Hey, he’s a very stable genius, you know.

Wind power won’t work because wind “only blows sometimes,” he explained to Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Trump also insisted Thursday evening at a rally in Michigan that he “knows a lot about wind. If it doesn’t blow, you can forget about television for that night,” he said.

Wind energy can be stored in a variety of ways, including in something called batteries. Most power grids combine energy provided by different sources — as the Trump administration’s own Energy Department explains on its website for anyone who cares to look. “The wind does not always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine,” the site helpfully notes. Yet the power grid “can accommodate large penetrations of variable renewable power without sacrificing reliability.”

Trump shared his energy insights during a rambling, often repeated point that he is the toughest president ever on Russia. That apparently has resulted in a boost in U.S. fossil fuel use and sales, he said in the Wednesday phone interview with Hannity.

Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch

I Like to sing a little song when he does shit like this … it goes like this.

Little Trumpy Dumpkins

Head just like a Pumpkin

and his little wiener

neener neener neener

Because, damn the man brings out the pre-schooler in me some times.  It’s got more verses but I’ll spare you.

As for that doing well with women thing ….  Not gonna happen… wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture.  Not gonna happen with GLBT community and certainly not the POC.  Not now. Not two years from now. Not EVER.

From NPR: “Nominee For No. 3 At Justice Department Withdraws After Backlash From GOP Senators.”

 

Two sources told NPR that the attorney general got into a “shouting match” with Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, a key figure in opposing Liu’s bid. A spokeswoman for Barr declined comment on the heated conversation with a lawmaker from his own political party. For his part, Barr issued a statement filled with praise for Liu and insisting, “We will all benefit from her universally-regarded expertise and dedication to public service” in her role as an adviser to him.

Four lawyers familiar with the matter said the stumbling block for Liu was a broader concern about her conservatism — specifically, her stance on women’s reproductive rights. Interest groups had begun drafting letters to senators about their fears that Liu would not support restrictions on abortion. Another key factor: Earlier in her career, Liu had an affiliation with the National Association of Women Lawyers, which sent a letter opposing the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

Philip Alito, a son of the justice, works for the antitrust subcommittee in the Senate, a subcommittee that is chaired by Lee.

And of course, Trumpy Dumpkins and his little playmates were all for equal wage for equal work for women right? From ABC News “House Democrats pass equal pay for equal work act. Women earn just 80 cents to the dollar a man makes for the same work.”

Ten years after President Barack Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, House Democrats voted Wednesday to approve the Paycheck Fairness Act, delivering one of the cornerstone pieces of their “For the People” agenda to the Republican-led Senate.

The vote passed 242-187, primarily down partisan lines, as the full Democratic caucus voted in favor of the bill and seven Republicans crossed the aisle to support it.

Can’t wait until the Senate passes it and the stable genius-who thinks he’s got the women’s votes–signs it!  Lies Lies and more lies!  Every Trump rally and interview is Lyingpalooza.

 

Anyway, you can read and listen to more at the links. Frankly, my old heart and brain can’t take any more..  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

Monday Reads: Has Trump finally found his Roy Cohn?

Posted: March 25, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , | 28 Comments

Our next attorney general: February 9, 2019

It’s Monday and we’re headed towards April Fool’s Day.

Or did that happen yesterday afternoon when it became pretty obvious that a Quid Pro Quo was delivered to Congress by an Attorney General who did pretty much what he was hired to do.  Congress–Our Congress–and we the people have to see the full report of the Mueller investigation. We must determine exactly what is meant by the President wasn’t exonerated and hey, I’ve decided noot no to prosecute but just make it all go away as much as possible because I believe in an imperial presidency and I did this before and got away with it.  So come get it if you can.

I wasn’t exactly expecting a smoking gun from Mueller.  I was, however, expecting a guy that wrote a diatribe on how the entire exercise was a witch hunt and then submitted it to the President for a spot back on the A team was  going to do exactly what he was hired to do. He’s providing cover at whatever the cost for a law ignoring  monster of a man.

Now, we wait for Congress and the Courts to shake it all out of Barr.

https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/1109204745531473920

Here’s how Neil Katayal sees. it.   You may recall that Katayal drafted the special counsel regulations under which Robert Mueller was appointed.

But the critical part of the letter is that it now creates a whole new mess. After laying out the scope of the investigation and noting that Mr. Mueller’s report does not offer any legal recommendations, Mr. Barr declares that it therefore “leaves it to the attorney general to decide whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime.” He then concludes the president did not obstruct justice when he fired the F.B.I. director, James Comey.

Such a conclusion would be momentous in any event. But to do so within 48 hours of receiving the report (which pointedly did not reach that conclusion) should be deeply concerning to every American.

The special counsel regulations were written to provide the public with confidence that justice was done. It is impossible for the public to reach that determination without knowing two things. First, what did the Mueller report conclude, and what was the evidence on obstruction of justice? And second, how could Mr. Barr have reached his conclusion so quickly?

Mr. Barr’s letter raises far more questions than it answers, both on the facts and the law.

His letter says Mr. Mueller set “out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the special counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of law and fact concerning whether the president’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction.” Yet we don’t know what those “difficult issues” were, because Mr. Barr doesn’t say, or why Mr. Mueller, after deciding not to charge on conspiracy, let Mr. Barr make the decision on obstruction.

On the facts, Mr. Barr says that the government would need to prove that Mr. Trump acted with “corrupt intent” and there were no such actions. But how would Mr. Barr know? Did he even attempt to interview Mr. Trump about his intentions?

What kind of prosecutor would make a decision about someone’s intent without even trying to talk to him? Particularly in light of Mr. Mueller’s pointed statement that his report does not “exonerate” Mr. Trump. Mr. Mueller didn’t have to say anything like that. He did so for a reason. And that reason may well be that there is troubling evidence in the substantial record that he compiled.

William Saletan–at Salon–has a take that’s worth considering. “Bill Barr’s Weasel Words. All the ways the attorney general is spinning the Mueller report to protect Trump.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller has submitted his report on the Russia investigation, and Republicans are gloating. They claim a four-page letterfrom Attorney General William Barr, purporting to summarize the report, exonerates President Donald Trump. They’re wrong. The letter says the Justice Department won’t prosecute Trump, but it reaches that conclusion by tailoring legal standards to protect the president. Here’s a list of Barr’s weasel words and what they’re hiding.

“The Russian government.” The letter quotes a sentence from Mueller’s report. In that sentence, Mueller says his investigation didn’t prove that members of the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The sentence specifies Russia’s government. It says nothing about coordination with other Russians. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, gave campaign polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian associate who has been linked to Russian intelligence. Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner met secretly in Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-connected lawyer. But neither Kilimnik nor Veselnitskaya is part of the Russian government. They seem to be excluded from Barr’s analysis.

223138Read the entire list of Weasel Words.  Then, remember the last time Barr basically did the same kind of thing George HW Bush and Iran Contra.  Why wouldn’t he do it again especially since he was out writing about it for Trump and all to see over the past two years?  Remember all those pardons?

Back then, the all-consuming, years-long scandal was called Iran-Contra. On Dec. 24, 1992, it ended when Bush pardoned six peoplewho had been caught up in it.

“The Constitution is quite clear on the powers of the president and sometimes the president has to make a very difficult call,” Bush said then. “That’s what I’ve done.”

Then-Attorney General Barr supported the president’s decision in the Iran-Contra case, which gave clemency to people who had been officials in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. He had been set to go on trial to face charges about lying to Congress.

To the man who led the Iran-Contra investigation, however, the pardons represented a miscarriage of justice.

“It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences,” said Lawrence Walsh, the independent prosecutor in the case, at the time of the pardons.

Barr said later that he believed Bush had made the right decision and that he felt people in the case had been treated unfairly.

“The big ones — obviously, the Iran-Contra ones — I certainly did not oppose any of them,” Barr said as part of the Presidential Oral History Program of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

Well, he’s has certainly handed a reprieve-at the very least- to a very big one at the moment.

Marcy Wheelers’s conclusions at The New Republic are worth reading.  This headline even sums it up nicely.  “Yes, Trump Obstructed Justice. And William Barr Is Helping Him Cover It Up. The attorney general’s take on the Mueller report goes through contortions to avoid charging the president with a crime.”

It is widely believed that Barr had already categorically ruled out charging a president with obstruction. In a June 2018 memo, shared with Trump’s lawyer before his nomination, Barr argued that the theory of obstruction he believed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to be adopting would not be proper. But in that very same memo—on the very first page!—Barr conceded, “Obviously, the President … can commit obstruction in [a] classic sense of sabotaging a proceeding’s truth-finding function.” Barr envisioned that if a president “suborns perjury, or induces a witness to change testimony … then he, like anyone else, commits the crime of obstruction.”

That’s important, because we know that Trump has been involved in getting his aides to lie. His own lawyer, Jay Sekulow, reportedly edited the prepared statement Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen gave to Congress about an effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen goes to prison in May, in part, for telling lies that Sekulow reviewed.

And Trump has repeatedly dangled pardons to subordinates under investigation, reportedly including former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, former campaign chair Paul Manafort, and Cohen. Indeed, in a hearing in February, Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann argued that Manafort lied about the details of sharing Trump campaign polling data with the Russian political operative Konstantin Kilimnik on August 2, 2016—knowing that the data would be passed on to others including other Russians—specifically to “augment his chances for a pardon.”

Ah Manafort, does he get his pardon now that the President and his enablers are screaming it’s an exoneration even though it really wasnt?
Well, turn the TV news on if you dare.  I’m just going to grade for awhile and hope there’s a plan some where to end this nightmare.

Sunday Sum Up: Quo Vadis?

Posted: March 24, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: | 51 Comments

Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!

It’s Persian New Year!  Yesterday was National Puppy Day!  I’ve been looking at all kinds of things to find some distractions but I still fell empty and wanting from my nearly 2 year relationship with Robert Mueller.  I can’t help asking what does this break up mean?  Is it really over?  Where do we go from here?

I appear not to be alone in my search for clues and answers.  So, here it is … the morning list of reads of what’s next  or entering the next phase of throwing the entire Trump/Kushner family syndicate in jail and out of the White House.

 

!Oh, and this:

Plus, mmm this:

Continuing on ..

and, for your consideration …

https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/1109806088088625153

Well, go read and get back to me …

JJ should be back this week.   And, this is an open thread, no, really it is …

Meanwhile, here are some puppies to celebrate National Puppy Day a day late!!!

And read all about Nowruz (Persian New Year) here.

 

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