US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 95

On December 05 2018 10:45 GreenHorizons wrote:
Looks like Flynn's off the hook. 0 jail time recommended by Mueller.

What's the grand total of years in prison everyone involved has actually been sentenced to so far?

On December 05 2018 11:31 xDaunt wrote:

It was destined to happen as soon as Trump won the election. The inevitable wipeout of the Never Trumpers in the 2018 midterms merely made it official.

On December 05 2018 12:00 xDaunt wrote:
Okay, so this is interesting. Reading Mueller’s addendum to his memo recommending no jail time for Flynn, he names three investigations that Flynn has assisted with. Only one is left unredacted: the investigation into Trump campaign/Russia collusion. What the hell else is Mueller looking at?

On December 05 2018 14:39 Doodsmack wrote:


One of them is almost certainly obstruction/tampering on the part of Trump.

NYPD to deploy drone fleet, stoking fears of Big Brother

"The NYPD's drone policy places no meaningful restrictions on police deployment of drones in New York City," the New York Civil Liberties Union said.

The nation's largest police department on Tuesday announced that it will soon deploy a newly acquired fleet of 14 drones to assist with emergencies.

And New York police officials went out of their way to assure civil libertarians that the unmanned aerial vehicles would not be used to peer into the lives of everyday New Yorkers.

"Let me be clear," Chief of Department Terence Monahan told reporters, "NYPD drones will not be used for warrantless surveillances."

The department said in a statement the devices would be used for searches and rescues, car crash investigations, crime scene documentation, evidence searches at hard-to-access locales, hazardous materials calls, monitoring crowds at large events, hostage and barricaded-suspect incidents, and "other emergency situations" so long as the chief of department approves.

Police officials Tuesday demonstrated how drones would be used to fly over three situations: a hazardous materials spill, a vehicle collision and a missing person's case.

But civil libertarians and other department critics weren't impressed.

They've long argued that drones in the hands of law enforcement can easily be used to track innocents, especially those who speak out against City Hall and police.

On December 05 2018 12:00 xDaunt wrote:
Okay, so this is interesting. Reading Mueller’s addendum to his memo recommending no jail time for Flynn, he names three investigations that Flynn has assisted with. Only one is left unredacted: the investigation into Trump campaign/Russia collusion. What the hell else is Mueller looking at?

The parent company of the Washington Examiner is relaunching the conservative weekly magazine with a broader national distribution.

"Currently available only to lawmakers, decision-makers, and others involved in D.C.’s political process, the expanded publication will launch on Jan. 1 with new life and culture content and a nationwide subscriber footprint," Clarity Media Group, which owns the Examiner and The Weekly Standard, said in public release on Monday.

The expanded magazine will publish 44 issues per year.

“Over the years, we’ve frequently been asked if individuals outside of the Beltway could subscribe to the publication,” Ryan McKibben, president and CEO of Clarity Media, said in the release. “With this expansion and relaunch, our aim is for the new, national Washington Examiner to build on its position as a leader in providing a conservative perspective on the events of the day.”

The new sections will include "Your Land," with stories "about the evolving social culture and mores of America." It will also include "Life & Arts," which will feature columns "by people in varied walks of life" about "outdoor life, life in uniform" and traveling life. The relaunched publication will also offer a personal finance column in its business section, a crossword and a regular obituary column.

“Our readers have always turned to us for the best in breaking news and in-depth analysis on policy and politics,” said editorial director Hugo Gurdon. “The new Washington Examiner will include all of the news, analysis, and commentary that readers have come to expect for nearly 13 years, but now it will also include a great many regular new features that appeal to a more diverse array of readers across the U.S.”

The Examiner has undergone changes before, most notably in June 2013 when it ended publication as a daily print paper, dropping its coverage of local Washington news and relaunching as a weekly magazine focused on national politics. The shakeup resulted in the layoffs of nearly 90 employees.

On December 06 2018 01:44 Danglars wrote:
Somewhat related to the Weekly Standard troubles, the same parent company has decided to launch the Washington Examiner nationally as an actual print magazine instead of webzine. They've hired Seth Mandel (NY Post) and Jay Caruso (Dallas News) as executive editor and deputy editor. The web journal has historically portrayed both the center-right and right-wing elements of the conservative movement (with various articles extremely critical of Trump and extremely supportive of Trump). The previous focus was simply an inside look at Washington politics, and now they're trying to diversify into art, culture, and sports. I hope they do well.


The Hill

On December 05 2018 15:00 xDaunt wrote:

I doubt it. Flynn was already out before any of that happened. He wouldn't know anything, and whatever he might know wouldn't be usable first-hand knowledge.

On December 06 2018 01:55 Doodsmack wrote:


In theory Trump could have spoken with Flynn before he left about the investigation. The obstruction/tampering could have started before Flynn left.

On December 06 2018 02:07 xDaunt wrote:

Maybe. If obstruction of justice was one of the investigations that Flynn helped with, it would be Investigation #3 given that it falls under Mueller's purview.

On December 06 2018 02:17 Doodsmack wrote:


As far as the first investigation, I think it says [Redacted] Criminal Investigation. Funnily enough, people have noticed that the redaction fits exactly "Donald J. Trump" in that font. It's also the exact same size as a redaction that follows "presidential campaign of." But there are probably a lot of things that would match.

On December 06 2018 01:03 xDaunt wrote:
Just to provide a little detail to what I'm talking about, let's take a look at the addendum. Here are the three listed investigations:

1) "A criminal investigation [redacted]"
2) "The Special Counsel's Office's ("SCO") investigation concerning any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald J. Trump"
3) [Redacted]

There are a few conclusions that can be drawn from how this is worded.

First and foremost, Investigation #1 is not Mueller's investigation. It's someone else's. We know this because Mueller defines "SCO" for the first time when listing the second investigation. He would have had to define it for Investigation #1 if that was his investigation, and no attorney is going to define a term twice in a document to be reviewed by a federal judge. Given that Mueller knew how this document was going to be redacted, I wonder if he intentionally structured the document this way to communicate something to the public.

The fact that Investigation #1 is listed first suggests that it is a doozy and more important than the SCO's investigation.

The third investigation could be Mueller's, but not necessarily so.

The first and third investigations very likely have nothing to do with any Trump people. Any investigation regarding Trump Jr, Pence, etc would fall under Investigation #2. We can also conclusively rule out that they fall under Investigation #1 given that someone other than Mueller is running that show.

Whatever the first and third investigations are about, they concern matters currently outside of the public domain because they are redacted. This means that the public does not know about them. This could mean sealed indictments.

On December 06 2018 03:14 Plansix wrote:
Kushner exists and could very likely be 3. His family is massively in debt and he has been trying to get loans from folks in the Middle East for years. My bet is Flynn knows about something about all the talks Kushner has with folks in Saudi Arabia. That would be well outside Mueller purview.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s proposed regulations overhauling how colleges handle sexual assault, which may become law in January, are far from perfect. But there is a big reason to support them: I’m a feminist and a Democrat, and as a lawyer I have seen the troubling racial dynamics at play under the current Title IX system and the lack of due process for the accused. Ms. DeVos’s proposals take important steps to fix these problems.

Consider this scenario: A young black man enrolls at a state university in California on an athletic scholarship. He’s the first person in his family to go to college. His teammate’s white ex-girlfriend matches with him on Tinder, comes to his apartment, has sex with him and, they both agree, returns three days later to have consensual sex.

Weeks later, the young woman, who has reconciled with her boyfriend, claims the Tinder match raped her during the first sexual encounter. The Tinder Match adamantly denies this. Her boyfriend, who is also black, says she is lying. There is no hearing, no chance for the accused to ask her questions.

But the Title IX investigator concludes that he committed sexual assault by finding her more credible than him under the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, under which the accuser must prove there is a greater than 50 percent chance her claim is true. He’s one of a few black students on campus and worries he may get killed after word spreads.

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This happened in early 2018 to a client in the pro bono clinic I direct with my law students. We represent low-income students of color in California who face expulsion based on allegations of sexual assault.

We see what the Harvard Law School professor Janet Halley described in a 2015 law review article: “The general social disadvantage that black men continue to carry in our culture can make it easier for everyone in the adjudicative process to put the blame on them.” That’s why the DeVos regulations are a step forward.

Here is how they would work. Cross-examination would be conducted by an adviser for the accused (not, as some coverage has erroneously said, by the accused.) The accuser may sit in a separate room or participate via videoconference. The right to cross-examine goes both ways: The accused must also answer questions posed by the accuser’s adviser.

The changes would also do away with the problematic “single investigator system” where the person who interviews the witnesses and gathers the facts also serves as the judge and jury — a method the California State University System uses for its 485,000 students across 23 campuses.

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The revisions are in line with court decisions that have characterized the current system as unfair. In August, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, ruling in a case from Michigan, declared that if a public university adjudicates what is essentially a “he said, she said” case, “the university must give the accused student or his agent an opportunity to cross-examine the accuser and adverse witnesses in the presence of a neutral fact-finder.” This year, two California appellate courts have overturned university decisions to suspend students for committing sexual assault because their procedures were so lacking in basic due process.

Meanwhile, my client has been barred from campus for more than nine months. (His suspension was based on this allegation and a second allegation by another accuser, which was found to be unsubstantiated by the evidence; that accuser is appealing.) The DeVos regulations and the two California appellate rulings are most likely his only hope of avoiding an expulsion that would tar him as a campus sex offender and most likely prevent him from getting into another school.

The current system of adjudicating sexual assault complaints is broken. Under the rules set up by the Obama administration, hundreds of colleges, including many in California, were placed under federal investigation and threatened with the loss of funding for failing to adequately investigate sexual assault complaints. The definition of what constituted an assault was vastly expanded. Nonpunitive resolutions such as mediation were forbidden, even if that is what both sides wanted.

The Obama rules were written to address a real problem: a tendency by colleges to sweep sexual assault allegations under the rug. But it also gave risk-averse schools incentives to expel the accused without any reliable fact-finding process.

The Office of Civil Rights does not collect data on race in Title IX cases, but the little we know is disturbing: An analysis of assault accusations at Colgate, for example, found that while only 4.2 percent of the college’s students were black in the 2012-13 school year, 50 percent of the sexual-violation accusations reported to the school were against black students, and blacks made up 40 percent of the students who went through the formal disciplinary process.

We have long over-sexualized, over-criminalized and disproportionately punished black men. It should come as no surprise that, in a setting in which protections for the accused are greatly diminished, this shameful legacy persists.

“I’ve assisted multiple men of color, a Dreamer, a homeless man and two trans students,” Professor Halley told me. “How can the left care about these people when the frame is mass incarceration, immigration or trans-positivity and actively reject fairness protections for them under Title IX?”

We can fix this. The DeVos reforms are in their public comment period, which gives people on all sides of this debate a chance to weigh in. That is a good thing. I know my allies on the left will criticize my position, but we cannot allow our political divisions to blind us to the fact that we are taking away students’ ability to get an education without a semblance of due process. What kind of lesson is that?