US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 5

On September 15 2018 08:21 xDaunt wrote:

Wait, wait, wait. How do you get to "he's probably a creep?" All we have is a letter by some anonymous woman who has been quiet for the past 40 years or whatever. Even presuming that that everything that she says in the letter is true, it still isn't a big deal given how long ago it happened and the total absence of any evidence of similar instances of conduct (quite the contrary, actually). What's far more likely is that this woman's account is flawed like the accounts of so many other #metoo accusers, which is why she never reported this nothing burger when it happened.

Now, you raise an interesting point about appropriate levels of resistance. What exactly do you think that the democrats should be doing when it comes Kavanaugh given that they don't have the votes to stop his appointment? For that matter, what do you think democrats should have done when Trump won the election?

I mean shit, it's not like democrats (and many republicans for that matter) haven't gone to unprecedented lengths to sabotage Trump's presidency. Just look at what they have done with that horseshit Steele dossier and the ensuing Mueller investigation. Even when the Mueller investigation winds down and closes without finding any wrongdoing by Trump (which seems inevitable at this point), there won't be any doubt that the whole process will have inflicted a tremendous amount of damage upon Trump's presidency (and the country as a whole).

When they got to the Yale Women's Center, the brothers instructed the chants to begin. "No means yes, yes means anal," the pledges repeated over and over. "Fucking sluts!" they yelled, and "My name is Jack; I'm a necrophiliac. I fuck dead women and fill them with my semen."

On September 15 2018 09:03 xDaunt wrote:
Good lord. Does innocent until proven guilty mean anything to you?

As for that cop, it definitely doesn’t look good for her. My next guess is that it is going to come out that she had an affair/relationship with him.

Meet the Creationist Helping to Change Arizona School Standards on Evolution

Arizona Superintendent Diane Douglas tapped a young-earth creationist to serve last month on a committee tasked with revising the state's science curriculum standards on evolution.

Joseph Kezele, the president of the Arizona Origin Science Association, is a staunch believer in the idea that enough scientific evidence exists to back up the biblical story of creation. Douglas appointed him to an eight-member special working group at the Arizona Department of Education that completed a final review of the draft evolution teaching standards on August 30.

Kezele teaches biology at Arizona Christian University in Phoenix. He advocates teaching his version of "established, real science" in classrooms.

Evolution, he said, is a false explanation for life and should be taught so that students "can defend against it, if they want to."

"I'm not saying to put the Bible into the classroom, although the real science will confirm the Bible,"

He argued that scientific evidence supports his creationist ideas, including the claims that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs were on board Noah's Ark.

ADE spokesperson Stefan Swiat said that Kezele was selected because of his position at Arizona Christian University. Swiat was unaware if Douglas knew that Kezele was a creationist when she selected him.

"One of the aims of the working group is to include a broad collection of contributors from the scientific community," Swiat wrote in an email. "Both the working group, as well as the head of ADE’s science standards, were completely unaware that Dr. Kezele was a creationist."

Kezele did not discuss his "personal creationist beliefs" with the working group, Swiat added.

As examples of the science that should be taught in classrooms to disprove evolution, Kezele offered unintelligible explanations about the human appendix and the strength of Earth's magnetic field.

Students should be able to judge for themselves whether the creation model or the evolutionary model "actually is consistent with the real scientific evidence that we have," Kezele said. "And then the students can do some thinking and see which one holds up. In general, that's what education should be, not just indoctrination."

To date, Lisa Page’s infamy has been driven mostly by the anti-Donald Trump text messages she exchanged with fellow FBI agent Peter Strzok as the two engaged in an affair while investigating the president for alleged election collusion with Russia.

Yet, when history judges the former FBI lawyer years from now, her most consequential pronouncement may not have been typed on her bureau-issued Samsung smartphone to her colleague and lover.

Rather, it might be eight simple words she uttered behind closed doors during a congressional interview a few weeks ago.

“It’s a reflection of us still not knowing,” Page told Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) when questioned about texts she and Strzok exchanged in May 2017 as Robert Mueller was being named a special prosecutor to take over the Russia investigation.

With that statement, Page acknowledged a momentous fact: After nine months of using some of the most awesome surveillance powers afforded to U.S. intelligence, the FBI still had not made a case connecting Trump or his campaign to Russia’s election meddling.

Page opined further, acknowledging “it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing” to connect Trump and Russia, no matter what Mueller or the FBI did.

“As far as May of 2017, we still couldn’t answer the question,” she said at another point.

I reached out to Page's lawyer, Amy Jeffress, on Friday. She declined to answer questions about her client’s cooperation with Congress.

It might take a few seconds for the enormity of Page’s statements to sink in. After all, she isn’t just any FBI lawyer. She was a lead on the Russia case when it started in summer 2016, and she helped it transition to Mueller through summer 2017.

For those who might cast doubt on the word of a single FBI lawyer, there’s more.

Shortly after he was fired, ex-FBI Director James Comey told the Senate there was not yet evidence to justify investigating Trump for colluding with Russia. “When I left, we did not have an investigation focused on President Trump,” Comey testified.

And Strzok, the counterintelligence boss and leader of the Russia probe, texted Page in May 2017 that he was reluctant to join Mueller’s probe and leave his senior FBI post because he feared “there’s no big there, there.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general asked Strzok shortly before he was fired from the FBI what he meant by that text, and he offered a most insightful answer.

Strzok said he wasn’t certain there was a “broad, coordinated effort” to hijack the election and that the evidence of Trump campaign aides talking about getting Hillary Clinton dirt from Russians might have been just a “bunch of opportunists” talking to heighten their importance.

Strzok added that, while he raised the idea of impeachment in some of his texts to Page, “I am, again, was not, am not convinced or certain that it will,” he told the IG.

So, by the words of Comey, Strzok and Page, we now know that the Trump Justice Department — through Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — unleashed the Mueller special prosecutor probe before the FBI could validate a connection between Trump and Russia.

Which raises the question: If there was no concrete evidence of collusion, why did we need a special prosecutor?

Page’s comments also mean FBI and Justice officials likely leaked a barrage of media stories just before and after Mueller’s appointment that made the evidence of collusion look far stronger than the frontline investigators knew it to be. Text messages show contacts between key FBI and DOJ players and the Washington Post, the Associated Press and the New York Times during the ramp-up to Mueller’s probe.

And that means the news media — perhaps longing to find a new Watergate, to revive sagging fortunes — were far too willing to be manipulated by players in a case that began as a political opposition research project funded by Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and led by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, who despised Trump.

Finally, Page’s statement signals that the nation’s premier intelligence court may not have been given a complete picture of the evidence — or lack thereof — as it approved an extraordinary surveillance intrusion into an American presidential nominee’s campaign just weeks before Election Day.

There was no fault to the FBI checking whether Trump was compromised by Russia; that is a classic counterintelligence responsibility.

The real fault lies in those leaders who allowed a secret investigation to mushroom into a media maelstrom driven by official leaks that created a story that far exceeded the evidence, and then used that false narrative to set a special prosecutor flying downhill ahead of his skis.

No matter where Mueller ends his probe, it is now clear the actions that preceded his appointment turned justice on its head, imposing the presumption of guilt upon a probe whose own originators had reason to doubt the strength of their evidence.

On September 17 2018 00:17 LegalLord wrote:

I suppose in the narrowing definition of "liberal" this is still true, but overall he isn't remembered as fondly as he once was. This definitely all started well ahead of Trump taking office though. At the very least he was one hell of a lame duck in the last months.

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said Sunday that he plans to release transcripts of interviews with around 70 witnesses in the Trump-Russia probe within the next few weeks.

“We believe that the depositions that we took, I think for nearly about 70 people those need to be published, and they need to be published I think before the election,” Nunes said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” (RELATED: House Intel Committee Releases Long-Awaited Report On Trump-Russia Collusion)

“By published I mean put out for the American people to review, so that they can see the work that we did and they can see all of the people that were interviewed by us, and there are answers to those questions. I think full transparency is in order here so I expect to make those available from our committee to the American public here in the next few weeks,” continued Nunes.

On September 17 2018 02:48 xDaunt wrote:
Here it comes.....



Source.

Looks like Trump is about to have the last laugh on the Russia collusion stuff. There’s going to be a daily release of stuff leading all the way up to the election. A lot of people are going to have egg on their faces.

On September 17 2018 06:52 GreenHorizons wrote:


I honestly don't know how they kept up their belief they were going to nail him after the first couple months.

Just remember, law enforcement agencies in this country have been shit since inception, the FBI being one of the most well documented examples. When what they're doing is more politically favorable to you don't act like Democrats did and pretend that they aren't shit filled liars.

Based on this fear that FISA could be used pretextually to conduct criminal investigations, the Clinton Justice Department imposed “The Wall.” To prevent investigators from exploiting FISA to steer criminal investigations, a barrier was imposed between the FBI’s counterintelligence agents, on one side, and criminal investigators and prosecutors, on the other. It became practically impossible for the two sides to cooperate and share information.

One result was the desired clamping down on potential FISA abuse. But the cure proved worse than the disease. With counterintelligence and criminal investigators unable to build a mosaic of intelligence, the left hand no longer knew what the right hand was doing. This enabled terrorists to escape detection. Inevitably, catastrophes would occur, such as 9/11.

After 9/11, The Wall came down. Its razing was endorsed by such experienced hands as your humble correspondent. We argued that it was ridiculous to believe the FBI would pretextually use FISA to conduct a criminal investigation. Many times I posited that, even if we assume a rogue agent, it would be far easier for the rogue to fabricate the evidence needed to get a criminal wiretap than to fabricate a national-security angle so he could use FISA. I insisted that if the rogue tried to go the FISA route, he’d never get away with it. FISA requires too many levels of scrutiny in the upper ranks of the FBI and the Justice Department — responsible superiors who would stop the rogue in his tracks.

I was wrong.

What I didn’t factor in was the possibility that, for political reasons, the upper ranks of the FBI and Justice Department would do an investigation by themselves. That should never happen. The bosses are supposed to be the cooler heads, with detachment from on-the-ground investigation. They are there to enforce guidelines and prevent abuse, to police investigations, not conduct them.

On September 17 2018 09:12 xDaunt wrote:


You know changes are coming when guys like Andrew McCarthy start writing stuff like this:



Source.

I think that the main problem with law enforcement is cultural. Law enforcement officials no longer care about justice as much as they care about winning — getting notches in their belts. I first noticed this while working at the criminal defense clinic in law school. I saw some assistant DAs who were over the top in their prosecutorial zeal, looking for fairly outrageous sentences for minor offenses. The upper ranks of law enforcement agencies are stacked with these kinds of people. Just look at Mueller’s team as one of the worst such examples.

It would be easy to think that the police officer is a figure who has existed since the beginning of civilization.

In fact, the U.S. police force is a relatively modern invention, sparked by changing notions of public order, driven in turn by economics and politics, according to Gary Potter, a crime historian at Eastern Kentucky University.

Policing in Colonial America had been very informal, based on a for-profit, privately funded system that employed people part-time. Towns also commonly relied on a “night watch” in which volunteers signed up for a certain day and time, mostly to look out for fellow colonists engaging in prostitution or gambling. (Boston started one in 1636, New York followed in 1658 and Philadelphia created one in 1700.) But that system wasn’t very efficient because the watchmen often slept and drank while on duty, and there were people who were put on watch duty as a form of punishment.

Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.”

In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves.

In general, throughout the 19th century and beyond, the definition of public order — that which the police officer was charged with maintaining — depended whom was asked.

On September 17 2018 12:34 xDaunt wrote:
Well, that Time article discusses different problems (particularly the political problems) than what I was describing. But no, I don't really disagree with anything in there.

We argued that it was ridiculous to believe the FBI would pretextually use FISA to conduct a criminal investigation. Many times I posited that, even if we assume a rogue agent, it would be far easier for the rogue to fabricate the evidence needed to get a criminal wiretap than to fabricate a national-security angle so he could use FISA. I insisted that if the rogue tried to go the FISA route, he’d never get away with it. FISA requires too many levels of scrutiny in the upper ranks of the FBI and the Justice Department — responsible superiors who would stop the rogue in his tracks.

So perhaps it is a culture issue, but it's a culture as American as the system itself.

On September 17 2018 13:07 xDaunt wrote:
Yes, your argument for "abolishing the police" definitely looks less crazy now than it did at first blush. I can certainly see how an institution could become so irredeemably corrupt and rotten that abolition followed by replacement is the only option. The point remains, however, that some form of civil police force will continue to be necessary.



I'd have to think about this, but I'm inclined to say that the worst problems with our law enforcement agencies aren't distinctly American. If anything, political corruption of law enforcement is far, far worse outside of the US.

On September 18 2018 01:04 xDaunt wrote:
Maybe I'm a little jaded, but I find it quite incredible that Kavanaugh's accuser went from "I want to remain anonymous" to "It's time to do a press tour in support of Capitol Hill testimony" in a period of about 48 hours or so. And that's even before factoring in that Feinstein has been sitting on this letter for 2 months or so. Shit like this is why I have zero desire to go into politics. People are dirtbags.

On September 18 2018 01:04 xDaunt wrote:
Maybe I'm a little jaded, but I find it quite incredible that Kavanaugh's accuser went from "I want to remain anonymous" to "It's time to do a press tour in support of Capitol Hill testimony" in a period of about 48 hours or so. And that's even before factoring in that Feinstein has been sitting on this letter for 2 months or so. Shit like this is why I have zero desire to go into politics. People are dirtbags.