US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1260

On March 29 2019 10:15 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:


That advantage is that they don't actually host any content, they just link you to other websites. They're like a tour guide of the internet. Do you think people would actually read quality journalism if google and facebook didn't exist? They'd just see the click bait titles somewhere else.




and how long does government regulation take and will that even be effective? You can look across the pond at article 11, which in theory would clamp down on link aggregators. We'll see if that actually pans out, but we have a pretty good indication already since a link tax already exists/existed in Germany and Spain. It provided google with a monopoly because you have to be on google and google can choose not to host your content. The little guy doesn't have the clout to charge for links.

Hurting the companies bottom line is the solution to capitalism, not waiting for the government to try to regulate something they don't even understand. Quite frankly I fear direct democracy more than what we have now, but you can't argue that the outrage machine is powerless. If we could direct that energy better it would be great.

On March 29 2019 04:43 Ben... wrote:

Yup. Adam Schiff went off on the Republicans over this today for almost 5 minutes after they put out a letter calling for his resignation because Barr's letter claims Trump is innocent. He literally spent 4+ minutes listing out various contacts the Trump Campaign had with Russia. It was great.

It's fun to watch Devin Nunes become increasingly uncomfortable as the whole thing goes on:

On March 29 2019 10:51 xDaunt wrote:

I wouldn’t get too comfortable with Adam Schiff if I were you. Trump and the House GOP seem to be targeting him for something bad, perhaps criminal prosecution, likely over leaks. The other person who is getting explicitly called out right now is Brennan.

On March 29 2019 10:51 xDaunt wrote:

I wouldn’t get too comfortable with Adam Schiff if I were you. Trump and the House GOP seem to be targeting him for something bad, perhaps criminal prosecution, likely over leaks. The other person who is getting explicitly called out right now is Brennan.

On March 29 2019 10:53 NewSunshine wrote:

I'm gonna just go ahead and wait until that happens, rather than taking your word for it.

On March 29 2019 10:51 xDaunt wrote:

I wouldn’t get too comfortable with Adam Schiff if I were you. Trump and the House GOP seem to be targeting him for something bad, perhaps criminal prosecution, likely over leaks. The other person who is getting explicitly called out right now is Brennan.

On March 29 2019 19:24 Doublemint wrote:

quite the feint some people are trying to pull here, make the investigator the investigated.

"Another such victory, and I am undone."-Trump( if he were even remotely self aware -and read...something,anything really- instead of being "President stable genius". . .)

you don't come out dirtier after an investigation is concluded if you are >actually cleared<. even some folk at Faux News think so.

Fox's Napolitano predicts Mueller report will prove Schiff 'correct' on some collusion/viaThehill

and to emphasize, I don't _really_ have a horse in this race, other than not seeing the world burn even brighter... and I really would not put it past democrats to NOT actually mock it up - again - after being handed an actual *trump*card with President *moralvacuum* at the helm and basically NOTHING to show for the trillions in tax cuts that go to people who don't need it.

Chicago city officials on Thursday ordered the Empire actor Jussie Smollett to pay $130,000 to cover the cost of the investigation into his report of a street attack that police say was staged to promote his career.

A letter from the city’s legal department to Smollett and his attorneys said that figure covers overtime worked by more than two dozen detectives and officers who spent weeks looking into Smollett’s claim in January, including reviewing video and physical evidence and conducting interviews.

Those resources, the letter said, “could have been used for other investigations”. Hours earlier, Donald Trump tweeted that the FBI and the Department of Justice would review the “outrageous” case, calling it an “embarrassment” to the country.

Prosecutors infuriated the Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, and the police chief this week when they abruptly dropped 16 felony counts that accused Smollett of making a false police report about being the target of a racist, anti-gay attack in January.

The key issue is this: will Mueller’s report corroborate any important part of the dossier — particularly the portions used to secure the FISA warrants? I’m pretty certain that the answer is no.

directly linking the number of green cars provided to the death of the Republican Party

On March 29 2019 22:45 Gahlo wrote:
Oh lawd. You'd think when he got to the part about black people he'd have some sense to say "hmmm, I probably shouldn't say this part in public."

Dowd, who was Trump's lawyer from June 2017 to March 2018, said Mueller was hampered by two daunting problems. The first was that Mueller could not establish that a crime had occurred — that there had been conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to fix the 2016 election. Indeed, the Mueller report, as quoted in Attorney General William Barr's summary of its findings, said "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities" and "the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference."

Mueller's second problem, as Dowd and the Trump team saw it, was that precedent from a Clinton-era independent counsel investigation, the Mike Espy case, held that to overcome a presidential claim of privilege, a prosecutor had to show that the president's testimony would provide evidence that was directly relevant to a criminal matter, and that that evidence was not available from any other source. Dowd argued that the White House had cooperated so extensively with Mueller, had provided him so much material that helped explain the president's actions, including contemporaneous accounts of what Trump said in private conversations, that Mueller could not effectively claim that he had no other source of information.

"[Mueller] said, 'Well, John, I need to know what was in the president's head,'" Dowd recalled. "I said you already do, you know in real time."

The conflict dominated a difficult March 5, 2018, meeting. "I asked, what's the president's status?" Dowd said. "[Mueller said] he's a witness-slash-subject. And I said, you mean he has no exposure? He said that's right. So I knew then for sure, by inference, that [Mueller] had nothing to proceed on in the collusion and conspiracy area."

Still, Mueller said he needed to interview Trump, and that he might subpoena the president.

"He dropped that on the table, and I reacted very strongly," Dowd recalled. "I said go ahead, you're threatening this president with a subpoena. It's doubtful whether the [Justice Department] Office of Legal Counsel would have approved such a thing. ... But beside that, I said, well go ahead. I want to hear what you tell the court is your basis to do it when you don't have a crime, you've just told me [Trump] doesn't have any exposure, so what are you going to tell a U.S. district judge? Because we're going to move to quash this thing. And Jay Sekulow and his team were ready to do it ... We're ready to do it if you want to do it."

"Then he backed off, he said don't get upset," Dowd continued.

"I said, look, what basis do you have to do it? We're not afraid of a grand jury subpoena. You want to do it, you've got yourself a war and you're going to lose it. There's no way [Mueller] could win that. I think he concluded that, even with all the firepower he had on his side, I think they knew they couldn't do it. I think they thought they might scare us into it, but we were not going to go there."

The subpoena never came.

On March 29 2019 22:38 Plansix wrote:
The president mocked all asylum seekers last night at a rally, claiming the whole thing is a con. It is especially disheartening that this is the message that be be carried abroad about the US. And risky to US citizens abroad.

https://twitter.com/colbyitkowitz/status/1111425704942395393

On March 29 2019 23:42 xDaunt wrote:
Byron York has a fascinating piece today shedding some light on why Mueller did not subpoena Trump (unlike the fake news quality garbage that is in WashPo today). The source is John Dowd, who was the first head of Trump’s legal team. Here is the key segment:



Source.

Translating this, Mueller had two big hurdles to overcome in subpoenaing Trump. The first mentioned is a basic due process hurdle: is there probable cause to get the subpoena? The second is an executive privilege hurdle. I promise you that the due process hurdle is what gave Mueller pause. He knew that if he had to fight Trump over the subpoena, he would have to explain to a court in detail what the predicate for the subpoena was. The obvious problem with this is that there was no predicate. Here’s what Dowd says about his conversations with Mueller:



This conclusion raises two further points. First, this is yet more evidence that Mueller never had anything to support and warrant investigating Trump for Russia collusion. His case was so weak that he wouldn’t risk a fight over a subpoena (and let’s not forget that Mueller declined to renew the FISA warrant after he learned about the IG having the Strzok/Page texts). So everyone banking on there being something in the Mueller report that is going to damn Trump on the Russia investigation is likely due for more heartbreak. Second, this raises the question of when did Mueller figure out that he had nothing to support the Trump/Russia collusion narrative. If he wasn’t willing to have the subpoena fight, he must have known very early in the process. I think the latest date would be by the end of July 2017 when the IG told him about the Strzok/Page texts and before he had Rosenstein issue the second scope memo in August 2017. What Mueller should have done was hold a press conference and exonerate Trump on that part of the investigation. Instead, Mueller needlessly dragged the country through another year and a half of Russia collusion hoax nonsense. Mueller is not a good guy here.

On March 29 2019 23:42 xDaunt wrote:
Byron York has a fascinating piece today shedding some light on why Mueller did not subpoena Trump (unlike the fake news quality garbage that is in WashPo today). The source is John Dowd, who was the first head of Trump’s legal team. Here is the key segment:



Source.

Translating this, Mueller had two big hurdles to overcome in subpoenaing Trump. The first mentioned is a basic due process hurdle: is there probable cause to get the subpoena? The second is an executive privilege hurdle. I promise you that the due process hurdle is what gave Mueller pause. He knew that if he had to fight Trump over the subpoena, he would have to explain to a court in detail what the predicate for the subpoena was. The obvious problem with this is that there was no predicate. Here’s what Dowd says about his conversations with Mueller:



This conclusion raises two further points. First, this is yet more evidence that Mueller never had anything to support and warrant investigating Trump for Russia collusion. His case was so weak that he wouldn’t risk a fight over a subpoena (and let’s not forget that Mueller declined to renew the FISA warrant after he learned about the IG having the Strzok/Page texts). So everyone banking on there being something in the Mueller report that is going to damn Trump on the Russia investigation is likely due for more heartbreak. Second, this raises the question of when did Mueller figure out that he had nothing to support the Trump/Russia collusion narrative. If he wasn’t willing to have the subpoena fight, he must have known very early in the process. I think the latest date would be by the end of July 2017 when the IG told him about the Strzok/Page texts and before he had Rosenstein issue the second scope memo in August 2017. What Mueller should have done was hold a press conference and exonerate Trump on that part of the investigation. Instead, Mueller needlessly dragged the country through another year and a half of Russia collusion hoax nonsense. Mueller is not a good guy here.