US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6959

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House chief of staff Reince Priebus asked a top FBI official to dispute media reports that President Donald Trump's campaign advisers were frequently in touch with Russian intelligence agents during the election, a White House official said late Thursday.

The official said Priebus' request came after the FBI told the White House it believed a New York Times report last week describing those contacts was not accurate. As of Thursday, the FBI had not stated that position publicly and there was no indication it planned to.

The New York Times reported that U.S. agencies had intercepted phone calls last year between Russian intelligence officials and members of Trump's 2016 campaign team.

Priebus' discussion with FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe sparked outrage among some Democrats, who said he was violating policies intended to limit communications between the law enforcement agency and the White House on pending investigations.

"The White House is simply not permitted to pressure the FBI to make public statements about a pending investigation of the president and his advisers," said Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

A 2009 memo from then-Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department is to advise the White House on pending criminal or civil investigations "only when it is important for the performance of the president's duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective." When communication has to occur, the memo said, it should involve only the highest-level officials from the White House and the Justice Department.

The White House official would not comment when asked if the administration was concerned about the appropriateness of Priebus' communications with McCabe. The official was not authorized to disclose the matter publicly and insisted on anonymity.

The FBI would not say whether it had contacted the White House about the veracity of the Times report.

CNN first reported that Priebus had asked the FBI to weigh in on the matter.

Trump has been shadowed by questions about potential ties to Russia since winning the election. U.S. intelligence agencies have also concluded that Russia meddled in the campaign to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Last week, Trump fired national security adviser Michael Flynn because he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Flynn, who was interviewed by the FBI about his contacts, is said to have talked with the ambassador multiple times during the transition, including about U.S. sanctions policy.

Still, Trump and his advisers have denied contacts with Russian officials during the election. Last week, Trump said "nobody that I know of" spoke with Russian intelligence agents during the campaign.

Priebus alluded to his contacts with the FBI over the weekend, telling Fox News that "the top levels of the intelligence community" have assured him that the allegations of campaign contacts with Russia were "not only grossly overstated, but also wrong."

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Priebus' comments opened the door for FBI Director James Comey to discuss the bureau's investigation publicly.

"If the White House chief of staff can make public claims about the supposed conclusions of an FBI investigation, then Director Comey can come clean with the American people," Wyden said.

Justin Shur, a former Justice Department public corruption prosecutor, said it was imperative that Justice Department investigations not be swayed by political considerations.

"As a general matter, investigations and prosecutions should be about gathering the facts and the evidence and applying the law," Shur said.

During the campaign, Trump and other Republicans vigorously criticized a meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton, husband of Trump's general election opponent. The meeting came as the FBI — which is overseen by the Justice Department — was investigating Hillary Clinton's use of a private email address and personal internet server.

There's something about a warm February day that reminds you that something just isn't right. It gives you that nagging feeling that maybe global warming is real after all.

February 2016 has featured prolonged warm weather the likes of which many areas have not seen before, or have only experienced on rare occasions.

Taken as a whole, the month-to-date in the U.S. has seen a ridiculously lopsided ratio of daily record highs to daily record lows, which is a key indicator of short-term weather variability and, over the longer term, human-caused climate change.

For individual days' worth of warm weather, you mainly have the jet stream to thank. This current of fast-moving air at about 35,000 feet above the ground has been steering a never-ending series storms into the West Coast, where California's mountains have picked up a crazy 500 inches of snow so far, and then moved across the U.S. in a way that has cut off flow of frigid air from the Arctic.

While transient weather variability is playing a key role here, the widespread record warmth across the U.S. so far this year is part of a long-term trend toward more warm temperature records versus cold ones.

This February offers a vivid illustration of this trend.

Through Feb. 22, daily record highs have been blowing away daily record lows by a greater than 100-to-1 ratio, which, if it holds for a few more days, would itself set a record. (Although it might need an asterisk, considering the short calendar month.)

And it's not the daily records that are most impressive, but rather the number of monthly records that are being tied or broken from the Gulf Coast all the way to the Midwest and northeastward into Canada. During the past week alone (not including Feb. 23), there were 736 daily record highs set or tied in the U.S., compared to zero daily record lows for the same period.

Even more startling is the number of record warm overnight temperatures set or tied in the past seven days, which total a whopping 940. There were no record cold overnight low temperatures set or tied during the same period.

And the monthly records, which are far harder to break than daily milestones, are astounding.

According to the National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI) in Asheville, North Carolina, February has seen 248 monthly record highs set or tied, along with 203 records set or tied for the warmest overnight minimum temperature. In comparison, there were no monthly cold temperature records set or tied through Feb. 22.

These figures do not include records that have been broken on Thursday, which so far include 69 degrees Fahrenheit in Albany, 63 in Toronto, Canada, and 62 in Burlington, Vermont, both of which were monthly records.

On Wednesday, the record warmth was centered across the Midwest, where the three major cities in Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay), all saw temperatures hit record highs for not just February, but for any month during meteorological winter, which encompasses the months of December, January and February.

Milwaukee, for example, broke its monthly all-time record high for February when the temperature reached 71 degrees Fahrenheit, and Madison set a monthly record with a high of 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

On February 24 2017 23:35 LegalLord wrote:
It's interesting to see the parallels between the DNC leaks and the current government leaks. The first almost certainly spawned the second, and the two sides are reversed in the "contents of the leak vs. leaking is bad" game. It should perhaps be a warning as to what relying on leaks will lead to.

On February 25 2017 00:21 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Trump starting his speech at CPAC.

EDIT #1:

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/835149237058859008

EDIT #2:

Okay...

https://twitter.com/TimAlberta/status/835149059610591232

On February 24 2017 15:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +


Democrats need to take a page from Republicans and worry about the how later, win the house, senate, and presidency running on bringing medicare for all period. Of course they should actually have a plan (basically boils down to removing the age cap on medicare and deciding how to pay for it, probably trade premiums for taxes) when they actually win. The private market wouldn't disappear overnight, it would just be focused on people who pay the tax and still have money left over to pay a premium for premium health service (nicer buildings and furnishings, prestigious doctors, etc...)

Democrats are repeating old mistakes if they try to hash out the details of medicare for all (negotiating with themselves) before they even have a path to being able to make it happen.

You want them to lose, have a discussion about the best way to bring about medicare-for-all, you want to win and actually get it, hammer into people's head that the reason they put off going to the doctor, the reason their uncle/father/mother/aunt/etc... died from that totally treatable condition is because they couldn't afford insurance and couldn't afford to wait in the ER for hours only to not receive any helpful treatment. And the only reason we haven't joined the rest of the "first world" in guaranteeing healthcare as a right is the damn Republicans.

What's sad is that I don't actually support doing that, but that's the only way Democrats are going to win, and here I am having to make the case to them about how it's unfortunate that they don't like it (like Hillary's campaign finance was for me and others) but it's something you're going to have to accept if you want to win.

In the most reductive terms I can think of, Democrats are playing chicken with Millennials who are at the "Give me a Democratic party worth a damn or give me death" stage. Without getting into the merit of their position, the reality is that they don't know how bad "bad" can be and they are still in the invincible stage, Democrats will lose this game. It's time for them to be the bigger person and accept the superficial defeat.

Or just act like the off duty cop that tried to murder a kid and tell everyone that he feared for his life because you didn't want to look like you lost the confrontation.

On February 25 2017 00:12 RealityIsKing wrote:


Never bought the whole Russian leaked the Hillary Email thing to undermine America thing.

If Russian are able to get into DNC server, they can release GOP stuff too.

If anything, it would have been more damaging. That would create way more chaos within the American society, would render Americans even more divided.