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Eugene Volokh | 7.21.2025 6:24 PM
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On the Friday Open Thread, some of our feckless commenters suggested that President Barack Obama had committed treason following the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president.
When I challenged these folks to substantiate that allegation with facts meeting the essential elements of the offense, we were met with radio silence. As Gomer Pyle, USMC was fond of saying, Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
To suggest that Barack Obama had levied war against the United States beggars belief. Who, then, are the enemies of the United States to whom his critics claim President Obama adhered and gave aid and comfort? By what specific actions or ommissions did he do so?
Insurrection.
Insurrection what?
See: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Declassified-Evidence-Obama-Subvert-President-Trump-2016-Victory-Election-July2025.pdf
"Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called for several Obama administration officials to face criminal prosecution for participating in a “treasonous conspiracy” surrounding the 2016 election"
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/18/tulsi-gabbard-2016-election-investigation-00463779
Why are you throwing random words around?
Did you read the Politico article you linked? Here is an excerpt:
Himes pointed to a report produced by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee during the first Trump administration, which is regarded to be the most thorough publicly available account of Moscow’s attempts to sway the election and the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials.
The committee’s three-year investigation concluded that the Kremlin waged an aggressive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
While it found that the Trump campaign team’s contacts with Russian officials presented a “grave” counterintelligence threat, the bipartisan committee report did not reach a conclusion either way as to whether the president’s allies had knowingly colluded with Moscow to boost his chances in the polls.
The Trump administration would never charge Obama with Treason, then they'd have to admit he's American and can't be deported.
Your being a wet noddle, of sorts, would not understand these legal matters concerning the integrity of those who have reported, come forward, or otherwise have disseminated reams of damaging harm by the Obama admin. It's out there, it's been out for all to see. Try looking for a change - "Treasonous conspiracy" being their crime.
Much like the Nuremburg trials were founded on a new set of crimes after the fact, because of their heinous nature , the Obama admin. committed, likewise, crimes against humanity. Think of all who died because of the reckless actions of that regime ?
" ... the Obama admin. committed, likewise, crimes against humanity." I recalled that I rather liked a couple of your recent posts. Thanks for disabusing me of that impression. Was the birth certificate of the negro ever really verified? I'm just asking questions!
Yes, he was verified as a Negro (the old "One Drop" rule)
If a man is raised by an entirely White family, included extended family, I consider the man to be White.
NvEric, treason and conspiracy to commit treason are are distinct offenses. Ex Parte Bollman and Ex Parte Swartwout, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 75 (1807). Conspiracy to commit treason would be punishable pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 371 by a fine or imprisonment of not more than five years, or both.
Assuming arguendo a conspiracy to commit treason, prosecution would be time barred by 18 U.S.C. § 3282(a) unless the most recent overt act occurred during the past five years.
Perjury is a crime.
Who do you claim committed perjury, Ed? When, where, and what material false statement?
Still waiting, Ed.
NG, feel free to offer your legal services to Pres Obama. He will need them. I do hope your courtroom lawyering capability is better than your legal prognostication capability.
XY, to what "enemies" do you contend President Obama adhered and gave aid and comfort?
Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution provides:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The federal treason statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2381, states:
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
Neither Article III, § 3 nor the statute defines "enemy," but the context indicates that treason is a wartime offense. A related set of statutes, enacted in 1917 and codified at 50 U.S.C. § 4301 et seq., prohibits trading with an enemy of the United States. Per 50 U.S.C. § 4302, "enemy" is defined as:
(a) Any individual, partnership, or other body of individuals, of any nationality, resident within the territory (including that occupied by the military and naval forces) of any nation with which the United States is at war, or resident outside the United States and doing business within such territory, and any corporation incorporated within such territory of any nation with which the United States is at war or incorporated within any country other than the United States and doing business within such territory. (b) The government of any nation with which the United States is at war, or any political or municipal subdivision thereof, or any officer, official, agent, or agency thereof. (c) Such other individuals, or body or class of individuals, as may be natives, citizens, or subjects of any nation with which the United States is at war, other than citizens of the United States, wherever resident or wherever doing business, as the President, if he shall find the safety of the United States or the successful prosecution of the war shall so require, may, by proclamation, include within the term “enemy.”
(a) Any individual, partnership, or other body of individuals, of any nationality, resident within the territory (including that occupied by the military and naval forces) of any nation with which the United States is at war, or resident outside the United States and doing business within such territory, and any corporation incorporated within such territory of any nation with which the United States is at war or incorporated within any country other than the United States and doing business within such territory.
(b) The government of any nation with which the United States is at war, or any political or municipal subdivision thereof, or any officer, official, agent, or agency thereof.
(c) Such other individuals, or body or class of individuals, as may be natives, citizens, or subjects of any nation with which the United States is at war, other than citizens of the United States, wherever resident or wherever doing business, as the President, if he shall find the safety of the United States or the successful prosecution of the war shall so require, may, by proclamation, include within the term “enemy.”
The present treason statute was enacted in 1948. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-62/pdf/STATUTE-62-Pg683.pdf#page=125 Statutes in pari materia are to be interpreted together.
Courts "generally presume that Congress is knowledgeable about existing law pertinent to the legislation it enacts." Goodyear Atomic Corp. v. Miller, 486 U.S. 174, 184-185 (1988). Laws dealing with the same subject -- being in pari materia (translated as "in a like manner') -- should if possible be interpreted harmoniously. A. Scalia and B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts § 39, 252 (2012). Penal statutes should be construed strictly. 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 88 (4th ed. 1770).
The treason criminal statute and the Trading with the Enemy Act (which carries both criminal and civil penalties) share a common purpose -- preventing enemies of the United States from gaining an advantage and punishing those who participate therein. The latter can give guidance in interpreting the former.
OK, and now look at the Insurrection statute...
The federal statute proscribing rebellion or insurrection, 18 U.S.C. § 2383, neither defines nor even mentions any enemy of the United States, Ed.
Still waiting, Commenter_XY (or any other MAGAt that wishes to chime in).
To what "enemies" do you contend President Obama adhered and gave aid and comfort?
Did I say treason? Nope, you did. I said Pres Obama will need expensive DC legal counsel and that is true. He is an ex-Prez, he has legal counsel no matter what. Feel free to help him out.
Did President Obama break any laws? Everything I have seen makes this one of the all-time greatest dirty political tricks in US history, to hobble one's successor. It succeeded fantastically; the Trump admin was hobbled from the start. Pres Clinton's staff satisfied themselves merely with removing the 'W' from the WH keyboards. What Obama and team did was something quite different. Illegal? It certainly crossed ethical lines, IDK about legal lines. We'll see.
This is an ex-President. Any evidence must be beyond a reasonable doubt; documents matter here. To me, it has to be glaringly obvious. That is the standard I would expect, since it is an ex-Prez.
No, it does not look like you said treason, Commenter_XY. You merely injected yourself into a discussion (initiated by me) of your MAGAt compatriots having falsely suggested that President Obama had committed treason following the 2016 election.
To the extent that I have misstated your position, I apologize for that.
(See, it is not so difficult to acknowledge having made a mistaken assertion.)
What did Obama do that was unethical or illegal?
Barack Obama permitted law enforcement agencies of the executive branch to engage in a sustained disinformation campaign against a presidential candidate. (The agencies knowingly over-stated Russian influence, through Trump, of the election.) That was a sitting President who tacitly used his power over DOJ to deceitfully attack a political adversary.
Does it having been Barack Obama somehow dignify that low-life behavior? Does it not look like low-life behavior when Donald Trump does it?
Did he not do that? Was that not unethical?
He did not do that.
Bullshit.
Mueller, Horowitz and Durham agree with me.
What didn't he do?
He permitted that. All he had to do was shake his finger at his Chief of Staff, and that would have been the end of that. (The boss's sentiments carry.)
Just like Democrats don't take responsibility for the open-'em-up border policies implemented by the Biden administration, they don't take responsibility for their Trump-is-a-Russian-stooge campaign, and Barack Obama having allowed the DOJ to amplify that campaign.
Man up. Don't play the fool.
1) It didn't happen, so Obama couldn't have done it. There was no "disinformation campaign," (other than by Trump). 2) Virtually everything public about investigations of Trump was released when Trump, not Obama, was president. 3) Up until Trump, it was an established norm that presidents do not interfere with DOJ investigations; shaking his finger at the Chief of Staff to get him to tell the FBI what to do about the situation would have been the corrupt thing to do.
"Barack Obama permitted law enforcement agencies of the executive branch to engage in a sustained disinformation campaign against a presidential candidate. (The agencies knowingly over-stated Russian influence, through Trump, of the election.) That was a sitting President who tacitly used his power over DOJ to deceitfully attack a political adversary."
Assuming (without conceding) every word of that to be true, what federal criminal statute(s) do you claim that violated, Bwaaah? Please cite by number.
I made no claim that he violated any criminal statute. I make no such claim.
So what's with the high dudgeon?
What "high dudgeon" are you speaking of? Is it something I said?
Everything I have seen makes this one of the all-time greatest dirty political tricks in US history, to hobble one's successor.
That doesn't make any sense. All of this began in the summer of 2016, when everyone, Democrat, Republican, and Turmp himself, was sure he was going to lose.
It succeeded fantastically; the Trump admin was hobbled from the start.
It was not.
Try again. Obama initiated the creation of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Dec. 9, 2016. You know....after the 2016 election was already over.
You try again. Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation of Russian interference in the campaign and possible collusion with Trump, central to the entire narrative, began in summer of 2016.
I know you're not that stupid, so we can conclude that you are once again demonstrating what a thoroughly dishonest hack you are. The "this" under discussion is the cancelling of Obama's security briefing (which was to include conclusions that Russia did not...and could not..."hack the election") and his ordering that a new assessment be created AFTER the election was over and Trump had already won.
Try again, "Hands up, don't shoot...human formula Ivermectin is horse dewormer...etc, etc...".
Did I say treason?
No. But Bondi talked about "a treasonous conspiracy," and you seemed to endorse her statement.
NG introduced the charge of "treason." And you say that Bondi used the phrase "treasonous conspiracy." So you (and NG too) think it follows that C_XY needs to justify a charge of treason?
Seriously?
Actually it was Riva who first referred to treason, in last Friday's open thread (to which I referred back). Other commenters have suggested the existence of a "treasonous conspiracy," which is a distinct offense.
You are the person who introduced into this conversation the terms "treason," "enemies" and "violation of federal criminal statute(s)." Having done so, you stand there tapping your proverbial foot waiting for C_XY, and me, to answer for them.
WTF? (With whom are you actually arguing, and on what basis? Is it all just so simple as fighting "MAGAts" to you?)
There are times when I think it's safe to take you seriously. And then you post stuff like this.
FFS.
Not exactly. When I challenged you to confront the facts contained in the memo and declassified files linked to in the press release, there was radio silence from you. You even took the term "radio silence" from my comments. Here's the press release again, for your convenience. One of the biggest scandals in American history and more to come this week. And you, who rant incessantly about Watergate, respond with "meh". And more to come this week.
" On Friday, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard revealed overwhelming evidence that demonstrates how, after President Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump." https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2025/4086-pr-15-25
“overwhelming!”
I guess they didn’t know how to spell “obviously!”
That silly press release doesn't feed the bulldog, Riva. The burden is on one who makes the scurrilous accusation of treason to support it factually, not upon me or anyone else who would deny such an ipse dixit assertion.
Suppose you were an AUSA charged with drafting an indictment for presentation to a federal grand jury alleging that President Obama committed treason. Riddle me this:
What facts indicate that President Obama has ever levied war against the United States? When, where and by what act(s) did he do so? To constitute treason, "there must be an actual assembling of men for the treasonable purpose to constitute a levying of war." Ex Parte Bollman and Ex Parte Swartwout, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 75, 126 (1807).
What facts indicate that President Obama has "adher[ed]" to any enemy of the United States? Which enem(ies)? Specifically when, where and by what act(s) did he do so?
What facts indicate that President Obama has given "aid and comfort" to any enemy of the United States? Which enem(ies)? When, where and by what act(s) did he do so?
Adherence and giving aid and comfort are separate and distinct elements, each of which is essential to the crime of treason. As SCOTUS opined in Cramer v. United States, 325 U.S. 1, 29 (1945):
the crime of treason consists of two elements: adherence to the enemy and rendering him aid and comfort. A citizen intellectually or emotionally may favor the enemy and harbor sympathies or convictions disloyal to this country's policy or interest, but, so long as he commits no act of aid and comfort to the enemy, there is no treason. On the other hand, a citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy -- making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength -- but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason.
What two witnesses do you contend are available to testify to the same overt act, Riva? And which particular overt act by President Obama would that be?
"The Constitution requires testimony to the alleged overt act, and is not satisfied by testimony to some separate act from which it can be inferred that the charged act took place. And while two witnesses must testify to the same act, it is not required that their testimony be identical." Haupt v. United States, 330 U.S. 631, 640 (1947). "The law of treason makes, and properly makes, conviction difficult, but not impossible." Id., at 644.
It’s not ipse dixit. The press release links to a mountain of evidence in the memo and declassified files. This is an abuse of power that makes Watergate look like amateur hour and apparently you couldn’t give a crap. What ultimate crimes, including treason, that may be provable under the standards of evidence governing criminal trials is not the measure of the significance of this historic corruption and abuse of power.
FWIW, a ctrl-f search of the 114 page, highly redacted, declassified report posted online, https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Declassified-Evidence-Obama-Subvert-President-Trump-2016-Victory-Election-July2025.pdf , shows that the word "treason" is not mentioned therein.
How does the report that Tulsi Gabbard released make out the essential elements of treason, Riva?
The elements of a criminal offense are like ingredients in a recipe. For example, suppose I were charged with the hypothetical criminal offense of baking a chocolate cake. The evidence shows that I mixed together sugar, flour, eggs, milk and various other ingredients, without adding chocolate or cocoa, baked things in the oven at the right heat and for the right duration, and applied white frosting. The jury would be obliged to find me not guilty of baking a chocolate cake.
How has Barack Obama engaged in conduct that makes out every element of treason? Your accusation; your burden of persuasion.
You seem to be arguing with yourself since you’re certainly not responding to anything I wrote. So, since you decline to even read my comments, we can consider this exchange concluded.
You lie once more, Riva. I have read your comments from today's and last Friday's open threads. Those comments include unsupported allegations that Barack Obama committed treason.
In order for those allegations to be true, President Obama would necessarily have to have committed every essential element of the offense. Once again, how has Barack Obama engaged in conduct that makes out every element of treason?
If you can't answer the question, just say so. I promise that it won't break your keyboard.
Still waiting, Riva (or any other MAGAt that wishes to chime in).
What facts indicate that President Obama has ever levied war against the United States? When, where and by what act(s) did he do so?
Still waiting, MAGAts.
There comes a time to stop singing it and start bringing it.
Still waiting, Riva and all other MAGAts.
As Louis XIV put it, “L’Etat, c’est moi!” President Obama committed treason in that sense.
Look, there’s a piece of paper saying that Elon Musk is responsible to and the employee - the servant - of a board elected by shareholders, is supposed to act only in their interests, and the board will rigorously supervise him and fire him if they think he doesn’t, and will be frugal with the shareholders’ money when they set his pay.
Look, does anybody but a delusional fool think that this piece of paper actually describes any practical reality? Elon Musk IS Tesla. He appoints his cronies to the board. The shareholders perfunctorily ratify his choices. The Board will give him whatever he wants. And if they don’t, out they go.
Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to run the United States government like a business. This is how businesses are run. “the constitution” creates some technical formalities, hoops his lawyers have to jump through to enable him to do what he wants. Pieces of paper say the citizens run things, but not only does nobody take these pieces of paper seriously, they are so removed from what actually goes on in the real world that few people are even aware that that’s what these pieces of paper say - one has to be unusually highly educated and something of a troublemaker even to concern oneself with the contents of these arcane pieces of paper. And the last kind of person to be appointed to the board is anyone who shows signs of being a troublemaker.
This is how Trump promised government would be run. He’s doing a pretty good job keeping this part of his promises, although he’s facing some obstacles. But while he doesn’t appoint every member of Congress, he has been successful enough at “primarying” those who oppose him that he effectively appoints all Republican members of Congress, who are currently the majority. So we have a form of government that’s remarkably like the business model. The judiciary is an obstacle, and life-tenure is a big departure from how businesses works. But because he gets to appoint them, he can hope to replace the trouble-makers over time.
It wasn’t even a hostile takeover.
ReaerY — Trump did not promise what he is doing. Trump did not run on a promise to again and again defy separation of powers, to flout the power of the purse, to ignore due process, and to govern by threat of private extortion leveraged via corrupted federal law enforcement agencies. He ran on promises to create impossible miracles, while leaving every question of means unaddressed. Voters who wanted miraculous results cast ballots for Trump.
If any of that twaddle you wrote was meant seriously, then your comment is nonsense. Otherwise, so what?
For the present, the most important political engagement anyone can undertake is an engagement never to concede that any of this is normal.
Are you calling it “twaddle” because you don’t think it accurately describes what the Administration is actually doing or their actual approach to how they do things?
Or are you calling it “twaddle” because it doesn’t conform to your idea of how US government officials SHOULD do things and how they should approach their work?
I thought I was clear enough. The administration is not doing what it promised to do. To pretend lawbreaking and constitutional violations were implicit in Trump's promises is sane washing on steroids.
It also presumes all MAGA advocates are alike in approving results regardless of what was done to deliver them. That is too cynical for me.
Stephen,
I think you are missing ReaderY's point. I don't he intended sanewashing.
He says, correctly, that businesses are not run according to the descriptions and procedures in lawbooks. Instead, management does what it damn well pleases and most often gets away with it.
So if Trump promised to run the government the way businesses are actually run, he was promising to ignore the formalities and rules and do as he pleases. He certainly is living up to that.
Last week Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, released formerly classified memo's and this timeline of how the Russian Hoax came about: In the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the Intelligence Community (IC) consistently assessed that Russia is “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.” On December 7, 2016, after the election, talking points were prepared for DNI James Clapper stating, “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome.” -On December 9, 2016, President Obama’s White House gathered top National Security Council Principals for a meeting that included James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and others, to discuss Russia. -After the meeting, DNI Clapper’s Executive Assistant sent an email to IC leaders tasking them with creating a new IC assessment “per the President’s request” that details the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.” It went on to say, “ODNI will lead this effort with participation from CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS.” -Obama officials leaked false statements to media outlets, including The Washington Post, claiming, “Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election.” -On January 6, 2017, a new Intelligence Community Assessment was released that directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2025/4086-pr-15-25
Gabbard, a former Democratic Congresswoman and Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee has also been the victim of baseless smears regarding Russia: "“She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far and that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up because she’s also a Russian asset.”
While Clinton did not mention Gabbard, a spokesperson confirmed the “Russian asset” comment referred to the Hawaii congresswoman." https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/22/tulsi-gabbard-sues-hillary-clinton-over-russian-asset-smear-102074
And Gabbard was also put on a terrorist watchlist by the Biden Administration for no known reason:
“The TSA placed me on the Quiet Skies domestic terror watchlist in what I can only describe as the ultimate betrayal,” she said in a post on X in September. “The Harris-Biden regime has now labeled me a domestic terror threat. Why? They see me as a threat to their power.”
Ultimately I somewhat doubt anyone in the Obama Administration will be held to account, both for reasons of a very complicated case, and statute of limitations, and a very friendly jurisdiction.
But I will settle for having all their security clearances yanked, and making sure none of them every get another dime from the US Government via USAID or any other government grants.
The important thing is now the information is fully out there that there was never any evidence to accuse Trump of Russian collusion only the Steele Dossier, bought, paid for, and manufactured by the Clinton campaign.
The fact Trump won twice, and has 3 1/2 more years to fully implement his agenda is recompense enough.
Do you think it will work?
The distraction attempt, I mean.
Distraction from what?
I don't think its detracting from his accomplishments so far. All of these seem to be getting plenty of attention. This is the first 100 days, I don't think there has been any letup in the 2nd hundred:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/05/president-trump-highlights-victories-for-americans-sets-path-for-next-100-days/
Epstein, of course. It's no surprise that Gabbard rushed out this insane conspiracy theory with no evidence right when Trump was getting pummeled for the whole Epstein thing.
Well I never thought Epstein was that big of a deal, so I don't think it needs to be distracted from.
I did say this in Trump's first term, I think its held up well:
"I heartily condemn the kid gloves treatment Epstein [got,] and I would like to see both federal and state investigations to see how he could get such lenient treatment, because its such an outlier.
However, I don't think this case should have been prosecuted by the feds at all. The doj prosecutes about 1000 x as many cases as it should. Any case where there is substantially the same state prosecution available should be prosecuted by the state. Only crimes that transgress against federal interests enumerated in the constitution should be federally prosecuted."
"Only crimes that transgress against federal interests enumerated in the constitution should be federally prosecuted."
Weird, because the other day you were all in on arresting and deporting immigrants (not enumerated in the Constitution) for growing weed (not enumerated in the Constitution or a federal interest).
I'm pretty sure it was just arresting and deporting illegal immigrants, purely for being illegal immigrants. That they were doing something contrary to (unconstitutional, I agree!) federal law, when arrested, is beside the point.
You sort of have a point about the (un)enumeration of immigration law, (As Ilya would agree!) except for the Migration and Importation clause, which makes no sense if you assume Congress has no such power in the first place.
Actually Congress is given authority over both naturalization and commerce, which includes people.
Congress doesn't generally call for prosecution, but removal.
"Well I never thought Epstein was that big of a deal, so I don't think it needs to be distracted from."
You can tell that a bunch of people do think it's a big deal, though, right?
Yeah, just like bombing Iran was a big deal, they'll get over it, or they'll get the grand jury testimony.
Eh, the Iran bombing was an attempt by various Democratic politicians to rile people up against Trump, but very few Republicans or members of his base cared that much because fundamentally MAGA doesn't care about policy.
On the other hand, the only durable trait of MAGA other than loyalty to Trump is that it is anti "groomer", so this one seems like more of a problem for him.
It was just a few malcontents like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens that broke with Trump on Iran.
Those are two separate claims. Whether you (or I) think it's a big deal has nothing to do with whether MAGA thinks it's a big deal. And if the latter is the case, then it needs to be distracted from.
It wouldn't be a solid attempt at distraction if the cult didn't buy into it and pretend the whole Epstein thing didn't exist.
Unfortunately, Trump's own lawsuit against the WSJ is going to keep it floating in the news for a while.
As there's nothing but 24/7 outrage coming from insufferable people like you, there is a 100% chance that this would be called a distraction no matter when it was released.
MAGA is mostly angry at people they don’t like. They are leas concerned with facts or policy or law.
Pre-Judge much? You obviously don’t proofread
No, Sarcastr0 is the human 'vibe meter'; or, the Human Vibrador of the VC Commentariat. He is into vibes.
Objective reality, maybe not so much.
MAGA is mostly angry at people they don’t like
Breaking News: People angry at other people they don't like.
I don’t think it occurs to Tyler that one could not like someone without anger, that says a lot about MAGAns generally.
I don't think it occurs to Malika that people can be angry at people that they don't like.
It occurs to me, it’s the heart of the MAGA movement.
Democrats aren't people?
Sure, they’re Evil People, don’t you read your Mad King’s screeds?
I don't subscribe to Trump's newsletters, but it's fascinating that you do.
I was t saying you read them, it’s more likely you see them on tv.
I don't watch TV, and I especially don't watch Trump on TV, but it's interesting that you do.
Cool story, bro!
Considering how routinely left-wing commenters on this site accuse conservatives of "hating" this or that group, just on the basis of not being willing to humor delusions or discriminate in their favor, I'm not sure that's a complaint that's specific to MAGA people.
You’ve literally said you can’t stand to look at trans people, Brett. That’s a bit above “don’t want to humor their delusions.”
Trannies look gross and stupid.
Not many people can stand to look at them. Especially their parents. (Unless you're a mid White woman with Virtue Points to gain, then you'll stare longingly at your fucked up kids while preening on social media seeking validation from strangers.)
"You’ve literally said you can’t stand to look at trans people, Brett."
Really? When?
Malika: "You’ve literally said you can’t stand to look at trans people, Brett."
Literally? I believe that's literally false.
“Trannies look gross and stupid.”
Says totally good-looking incel.
“Really? When?”
Here on this blog. You deny it?
“I believe that's literally false.”
Isn’t this the guy that cosplayed as a disenchanted liberal? He’d know literally false.
Yeah, I deny it. The few trans I've met were not especially difficult to look at, they just looked stupid, in a "Do you really think you're passing?" sort of way.
"Trannies look gross and stupid."
LexAquilia, where a transgender person successfully presents as trans, how do you know who is or is not trans?
"The few trans I've met were not especially difficult to look at, they just looked stupid, in a 'Do you really think you're passing?' sort of way."
Brett, how do you know that you have met just a few trans folks? The point of "passing" is avoiding detection by others.
The few trans I've met were not especially difficult to look at, they just looked stupid, in a "Do you really think you're passing?" sort of way.
Not a very logical statement, Brett.
If trans people are "passing" how do you know they're trans?
The Adam’s apple. Crocodile Dundee had a good test too.
I noted making everything about personal resentment supplants concern for facts or policy or law.
Or, it seems, engaging with arguments if you don't wanna.
And I noted that there's nothing special about it.
It's not just a MAGA problem. It's how human beings act and think.
I do think it is a MAGA-specific asymmetry. Lets take here for instance:
1. Owning the libs justifies the means shows up as a legit justification among the more shameless here, including fantasies about how sad or angry the imaginary libs are.
2. 'This institution is elitist and liberal lets own it' has been the public presentation of many of the administration's policies as applied to schools, law firms, science, medicine, Europe, and even the current administration in Brazil via tarrifs.
3. 'you only think that because you hate Trump' has become a replacement for argument more and more around here, particularly on Prof. Somin threads.
4. The comment of yours that set off this subthread is a great example of channeling your personal antipathy to DMN rather than dealing with what he actually said.
The cynic is a good friend to the authoritarian.
This is an availability heuristic. The Volokh Conspiracy's comments section is not a genuine reflection of society at-large. You may want to check DailyKos, reddit's r/politics, the comments sections at NYT, WaPo, and other places.
What you will find is that in many of those places, the hate from the left is so strong that conservatives are pushed out. They move into other forums like here at VC.
Yes. And the left routinely attacks the rich, businesses, right wing 'culture', and religion. I said "People angry at other people they don't like." I didn't say that both the left and right don't like the same people.
People are people. Despite jokes/insults to the contrary, you still have a human brain like I have.
See my reply to your first point. But since you brought up the Somin-hate, I'm going to direct you to the Blackman-hate as a counter-example in these very own VC comments.
This makes sense only if you are ignorant of David's animosity towards me. My response was not drafted in a vacuum.
If you're not going to count the asymmetry here, then I would point out that anti-elitist populism may be a song both sides play, but Democrats have never used owning the right as explictly behind a policy push of theirs.
And Blackman threads make fun of what he writes more than Somin threads, many of which include commenters proudly declaring they didn't read Somin's post.
And, as Malika noted, your cynicism is tantamount to supporting Trump admin's bad behavior.
You claim not to support Trump, but then you point left over and over again.
This makes sense only if you are ignorant of David's animosity towards me. My response was not drafted in a vacuum. Oops, you did it again!
but Democrats have never used owning the right as explictly behind a policy push of theirs
I have yet to see a Republican policy push that was caused by, directed by, and passed through by a desire to hurt Democrats, but I'm sure that, in your paranoia, you see every policy disagreement as that.
Ok, there, Chief. I wouldn't call those comments "making fun of" any more than I'd say that for Somin.
If I had a nickel for every time someone made a comment on a Blackman post that didn't read it (or deliberately misreads it), I could retire today.
If that's the case, then your dissembling is tantamount to supporting Democrats' bad behavior.
Yes, I'm a conservative and proud about it, too. I'm going to criticize the left.
I have yet to see a Republican policy push that was caused by, directed by, and passed through by a desire to hurt Democrats
Gonna leave this here and go do other things.
When you're done with those other things, go ahead and make a substantive reply. I'm eager to see a display of your paranoia.
"What you will find is that in many of those places, the hate from the left is so strong that conservatives are pushed out. They move into other forums like here at VC."
How are conservatives "pushed out" there?
Does that suggest that the liberals on this comment thread (who are less numerous than the MAGAts here) are made of sterner stuff* than the conservative commenters at NYT, WaPo, and other places?
____________________________ * W. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene II
How are conservatives "pushed out" there
Outright banning by mods and shadowbanning through algorithms. Pre-Elon Twitter was notorious for both, but a lot of other places would do it to.
Also, Reddit's downvote feature will not only hide your comment-something that forces other users to decide to unhide it- but your ability to post will actually be throttled regardless of what anyone does.
I'm not sure if you're trying to puff yourself up here, but until the VC mods start banning people who espouse certain political viewpoints it's hard to say whether you're a starveling(1) or a Sir Walter Blunt(2).
Banning people from interacting with your site is a pretty solid way to keep them from participating no matter how tough they are.
(1) W. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, Act II, Scene IV (2) W. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, Act V, Scene III
Tylertusta, do the New York Times and/or Washington Post ban commenters based on viewpoint or use algorithms that function in the manner that you describe? (Not a rhetorical question -- I don't comment there, and I don't know whether or how they moderate.) If not, why do you tar them with the same brush as the others you mention?
I'm not personally familiar with NYT since I've never subscribed there, but from what I've read, NYT will shadow-ban certain viewpoints. After 10/7, comments that were critical of Hamas and critical of racism towards Jews are some of the more recent and blatant occasions.
I have personal experience with WaPo from over a decade ago. WaPo started playing games with comment visibility after their ombudsman left in 2013. I admittedly stopped bothering with WaPo's comments around the time that VC moved over in 2014. I wasn't active in the WaPo comments when VC was there (2014-2017), so you're a better judge as to whether WaPo moderated VC post comments than I.
Given VC's agreement with WaPo I wouldn't be surprised if they were kinder with interventions than they were in, say, their op-ed pages.
He's literally doing the meme:
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes? Con: LOL no...no not those views Me: So....deregulation? Con: Haha no not those views either Me: Which views, exactly? Con: Oh, you know the ones
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no...no not those views
Me: So....deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
Sarcastr0 says I'm channeling antipathy towards David instead of replying to what he said.
And yet here David is doing just that. The irony is quite poetic.
For some reason being angry at policy (open borders) or law (ignoring immigration law) or facts (60M illegals) never crossed your mind!
You distill that down to "Dats Raycist!" and then stick your head in the sand and then up your own ass.
60M! Why not 300M?
You are actually a dirty racist tho'.
I know right? Drewski?
If I don't embrace "eradicating Whiteness" and White genocide and want to preserve my heritage and culture I'm a filthy racist!
But literally every other affinity group can do the exact same thing, and that's to be cherished, honored, respected and encouraged.
You sound awfully Jewish.
Kazinski : " ...there was never any evidence to accuse Trump of Russian collusion... "
1. For those of us concerned about Kazinski, this is actual encouraging. Just days ago he was claiming Tim Walz hired killers to assassinate Democrats. He did so with the same spittle-spraying flailing-frenzy seen here. This is 1-2% less cartoonish than that, so signals a slight improvement in his mental health.
2. Try asking a right-winger to explain what the “Russian Hoax” is. They can’t. As near as I can tell, their “thinking” is this : If any concern or issue raised during the investigation wasn’t proved by its end, the entire thing was a “hoax”. And yes, that’s as dumb as it sounds.
3. In fact, they’d need three things to make the charge stick: The investigation would have to be unjustified; it would need to be conducted improperly; it would uncover no substance while underway. Not one, but all three. They need to run the table. And they fail badly on every one.
4. Everyone agrees the investigation was justified, including the DOJ Inspector General. This is true even of a partisan hack like John Durham. He testified under oath before Congress that a Justice investigation of Russian links to Trump and his campaign was warranted. So right from the beginning, the “hoax” meme collapses.
5. And it only gets worse. There was nothing improper about Muller’s appointment or conduct. The first came after Trump bragged to the Russian Foreign Minister & Ambassador he’d fired Comey to shut the inquiry down. Then Muller proved an exemplary example of the Special Counsel breed. Compare him – for instance – to Brett Kavanaugh’s shlock “investigation” of Vince Foster suicide. Muller’s inquiry was a thousand-times broader & more complex, but he finished in half the time. And unlike Kavanaugh, he didn’t investigate by press leaks and partisan agitprop. His (Muller’s) conclusions were restrained, conservative, and refused to speculate beyond the facts. The “hoax” crowd is batting 0-for-2.
6. And it get’s much, much worse. Because Mueller kept finding more & more stuff. For instance, Trump’s campaign manager was deep in debt to figures tied to Russian intelligence & gave secret briefings to a Russian spy. Trump’s attorney snuck into Moscow multiple times during the campaign to secretly negotiate a massive business deal with Kremlin officials (even while Trump lied about his Russian business dealings on the campaign trail). Trump’s son was told by an intermediary that the Russian government wanted to secretly help his daddy’s campaign. He responded with glee (in writing). Many more examples like this are found in the GOP-led Senate investigation & Mueller’s Report.
So what is the Russian Hoax? Right-wingers make a fool of themselves trying to answer….
The Mueller Report was informative, and you hit some highlights.
As noted by others, there was also an investigation in Congress, with the results supported by the likes of Marco Rubio.
Truth is supporters of the Russian hoax are much like Election 2020 truthers, they got had and fell for it, and they never will be able to admit, especially to themselves they were had.
Uh huh. Let's cut thru your weaseling with a simple question: What in my account above is wrong, non-factual, or distorted? Try and explain how you find "truther" grade error in any of it.
But you can't. I'm just reciting the facts. You're the one whose head is off in a distant galaxy, residing on some multi-colored fantasy planet.
Granted, you beclown yourself here slightly less than with your Walz gibberish, but that's a low bar to clear.
Ok lets go through them: 1. I quoted verbatim what the killer said in a letter to the director of the FBI, a letter cited in the indictment, and that will be admitted in court. Given the speculation on Boelter's motive, and is concern the letter would be covered up, I thought it was of interest.
2. The Russian Hoax is the assertion that the Kremlin made a concerted effort to get Trump elected and their was a conspiracy between Trump and Putin to that end, and that Russia had compromat on Trump that made him controllable. That has been debunked.
3. The investigation was unjustified, and they didn't find anything on Trump, the target of the investigation.
4. Since neither Durham or Horowitz had access to these decisions declassified memos that the Director of National Intelligence had to dig out, I'm going to rely on the actual memos and the timeline. Remember Schumer Warinng to Trump, 'don't piss off the intelligence agencies, they can get you 7 ways to Sunday', he knew they what they were capable of.
5. Mueller's report was constrained because he didn't find anything to get Trump. Surely you can recall crying along with Rachel Maddow when the report was released, and there was nothing there to get Trump.
6. Manafort came on late to the Trump campaign in March after Trump was well in the lead and fired in August right after Trump got his first security briefing. So he had no role in the critical phases of the campaign, getting the nomination, and winning the fall campaign.
Surely you can recall crying along with Rachel Maddow when the report was released, and there was nothing there to get Trump.
I remember the time immediately after Mueller's report was released and after he was grilled by Congress. Besides the unsettled semantic arguments over what constituted "collusion," and quibbles over what constituted obstruction of justice by a President, there was a certain feeling of "Wait- that's it? Where's our 'All the Presidents Men' moment?"
It has not, in fact, been debunked. The first part is true. The second and third have definitely not been proven, but not disproven, either. (Well, I suppose one can argue that Trump is so dishonest and mentally unstable that there's no such thing as him being "controllable.")
The investigation was 100% justified. Even if your second part were completely correct, "they didn't find anything" is not an argument against conducting an investigation. And they did find stuff. ("Trump" was not in fact the target of the investigation; Russian interference with the election was.)
Since neither Durham or Horowitz had access to these decisions declassified memos
Why do you think that?
And why do you think those memos show anything interesting? You guys still are doing that thing you always do — see Abrego Garcia — in which you handwave about "the evidence" without actually citing anything specific or explaining how it's evidence.
Good, lord above! Your answers are such a mess! Let's start with the basics:
1. The Trump-Russia investigation started for a specific reason and that reason fully justified the investigation per the DOJ IG. Nothing you've produced challenges that in any way. The facts in Horowitz's report still exist. His conclusions still follow. You're left with arguing "vibes" somehow negate that for undefined formless "vibe" reasons that only you can see. None of that makes any sense.
3. See, your memos don't touch IG Horowitz's conclusions; they have zero relevance to the reason the investigation started. In fact, they have nothing to do with anything. OK: "Cyberattacks on election infrastructure" didn't happen. So what? The Russians still ran a cyber campaign of other measures to help Trump. Those measures are richly documented in Mueller's Report and the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation.
4. So you're left with the wacko "point" Obama saying “Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election.” was some kind of nefarious plot. Here's the problem: (a) it's a completely true statement, (b) it was fully proven and documented by the GOP-led Senate investigation & Mueller, and (c) it had nothing to do with Crossfire's beginning anyway. Can you explain what argument you think you're making?
5. As I see it, your muddled brain works like this: By lying to yourself, you pretend IG Horowitz's facts and conclusions don't exist. Then finding yourself then on some distant fantasy world where Crossfire began for a fantasy reason, you think that allows you to ignore all the findings on Trump and Russia that followed. You gotta be fully in the Cult to find B.S. like that persuasive.
6. Your: "....and they didn't find anything on Trump, the target of the investigation" is comically laughable. It ignores all those subsequent findings you're trying to pretend away: A few examples : Trump's campaign manager sneaks off during the campaign to brief a Russian spy; Trump's son-in-law asks for access to Russian's secure communication lines during the transition so his own government can't hear; Trump's NSA choice was on the Russian state payroll a few months before his nomination and lied to the Vice President about his Russian contacts after; Trump engaged in secret business negotiations with Kremlin officials DURING the United States presidential campaign and discussed bribing Putin with free real estate.
7. The last example extended right up to election's eve. And it's worth considering what a busy month that October was for Trump & his Russian friends: He was gushing about Putin in interviews to try and grease his secret Kremlin business deal. He had Michael Cohen successfully negotiating in Moscow (thru an intermediary) to suppress a sex tape faked by Russian criminal elements. He had the Access Hollywood story knock his campaign for a loop, but the Russians began leaking their stolen Podesta emails less than an hour after Access Hollywood broke. Friends help each other, don't they?
8. So plenty to investigate. Not much luck making it all go away. And good luck with your "hoax" lie given everything the "hoax" uncovered.
9. Muller's report was constrained because he's honest. I could see how that's wholly foreign to your nature.
10. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee report found that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s presence “created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign.” But I'm sure you, Kazinski, would find it not a "biggie" if (say) Joe Biden's campaign manager was a Russian spy.
11. Stop digging on Boelter. Everyone knows that's utter nonsense. Hell, even you know it when not in full troll-mode.
So much info. Thanks.
Since neither Durham or Horowitz had access to these decisions declassified memos that the Director of National Intelligence had to dig out, I'm going to rely on the actual memos and the timeline.
What in these memos contradicts what Durham or Horowitz concluded?
You got that backwards sport. The democrats are trying to distract from real evidence cataloguing one of the greatest scandals in American history with more of their Epstein obsession, complete with a new fabricated Dan Rather-esque document, written in the style of gay character from Twilight. All the AI out there and this is the best you could do? Rather beats you hand down, and his was a joke too.
“complete with a new fabricated Dan Rather-esque document”
Which Trump immediately lied about in trying to discredit it (“I don’t do drawings”).
Oh, it's the Democrats who have an "Epstein obsession" now...
TRUMP: “You know, it really doesn’t matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” (Esquire, 1991)
ALSO TRUMP: “I’ve known Paris Hilton from the time she’s 12. Her parents are friends of mine, and, you know, the first time I saw her, she walked into the room and I said, ‘Who the hell is that?’" (The Howard Stern Show, 2003)
ALSO TRUMP: “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” (Fortune, April 3, 2000)
Here’s the thing. Decades old so called quotations out of context do not make the latest Epstein fabrication true. Nor, more importantly, do they have anything to do with the disgraceful l abuse of power by Obama and his national security apparatus manufacturing intelligence to harm the Trump presidency.
Also Trump: "Obama and Biden wrote the Epstein files." Also Trump: "Yesterday I couldn't make it to the restroom in time, so Biden shit my pants."
Actual quote from Tommy Tuberville yesterday: "After President Trump was diagnosed with a chronic vein condition, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) suggested the president’s health condition could be a result of his efforts in “fighting the radicals.”" Trump: "Biden caused my cankles."
See above. Same response.
Strange how Epstein's dead and that should put and end to things, but the Trump administration wants to go back to the Russia Investigation.
Did Russia use cyberattacks against computer systems, or did they just perform a covert propaganda campaign? The former seems very unlikely (and that's how I read the December 7 note). The latter, I am neutral on.
Legally holding the intelligence community to account is an impossible task. Smear campaigns are not a crime, and there's no civil cause of action that I know of for these alleged acts, either. Standing and state-secrets privilege also bar many lawsuits.
Did Russia use cyberattacks against computer systems,
Yes. They hacked the DNC's emails, as well as Podesta's. But not into elections systems, which is what the December 7 note says.
I Haff Fotos of Naked Trump!
The Trump campaign was also coordinating with the Russians to release the most damaging emails.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign-planned-wikileaks-dump-tried-acquire-clinton-emails-mueller-n996081
Are you Stupid? I Haff Fotos!
Russia did not need photos they had something better. IOUs for all the mortgages they held on Trump and his campaign staff.
Moderation4ever : "The Trump campaign was also coordinating with the Russians..."
Even more telling is a small tidbit found in Mueller's Report. The Russians hacked John Podesta's email and secretly stole a trove of messages. They then sat on that haul for over seven months.
So when did they decide to begin leaking what they had? Mueller determined the first leak came less than an hour after the Access Hollywood story first appeared in the news, rocking the Trump campaign back on its heels. Under sixty minutes.
Their boy was in trouble, The Russians rushed to help.
Their
I Haff Fotos! Naked Trump!
No, Frank....
What you have ("haff") is no point, no argument, no facts, and no clue.
Fotos! I Haff Fotos! Naked Trump!!! are you Stupid!?!?!
The vast, sophisticated Russian “hacking” network asked Podesta for his password and he gave it to him.
Technically hacking, but they weren’t spending resources to obtain info. Think prince of Nigeria.
Yeah. It's called "phishing" and a standard tool of cybercriminals, both Russian & non-Russian.
Why are smear campaigns not a crime? I don't mean free speech wise, I mean government operations against its own citizens.
A trumpian lickspittle says this!
Okay, it's hard to figure out what you mean since you're trying to disclaim the speech aspect — but what crime do you think it would be?
The last part of my second sentence. Do you think it's good for government to smear citizens those in power don't like? Sounds like a misuse of government.
No, I asked what crime do you think it would be — that is, what statute do you think it violates?
And if "smearing" someone is in fact a crime, then does that mean you think that the current "Biden/Obama/Clapper/etc. are all guilty of treason!" constitutes the same crime? (Not to mention the last few decades of anti-Hillary agitation by the GOP?)
I've read the entirety of title 18. I couldn't find a single provision that would criminalize smear campaigns, at least the dictionary meaning of it.
In particular, section 241 does not apply because the Constitution protects life, liberty, and property - but notably, not reputation.
There's a whole WIKI page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections?wprov=sfti1
"Collusion" is not a legally defined term. This has allowed a whole lot of goalpost moving. The fact is that there was so much contact between the Trump campaign and Russians that it would have been malfeasance to not investigate.
Andy Kauffman's Alter Ego "Tony Clifton" has a whole Wikipedia Page, and actually more relevance than the whole Roosh-un Corrusion (Redacted) I know it's "Collusion" I'm trying to imagine how our "Japanese Student" would say it. " They Store Hirrarry's E-mairs! Lussian Corrusion!!!
Frank
The important thing is that this is a transparent lie. Every investigation said the opposite. The best possible defense you have for this lie is that you're too gullible to understand that Gabbard is trying to trick you by conflating hacking into voting machines with trying to influence the election.
That's the exact problem we're discussing: That they kept coming up empty, and reporting that they were finding stuff ANYWAY, at the direction of the political people.
There was a report. It found quite a bit more than nothing, just not a threshold of evidence sufficient to make a case.
It got some coverage. You claimed once to have read it.
Right, like I said: They were coming up empty, but the politicals ordered them to include rumors they had no evidence were true. Which is your "not a threshold of evidence sufficient to make a case".
The threshold of newsworthy is a lot lower than the threshold for convictable.
Which is what Gabbard is taking advantage of now. Or did you not notice your blatant double standard?
Is 'newsworthy' the standard you want to adopt for government-sponsored muckraking?
Because it seems like that's what you want to do.
Brett said 'no evidence.' His proof is that the Mueller report said there wasn't enough to move forward with criminal charges.
If you don't see the excluded middle there, I cannot help you.
"The threshold of newsworthy is a lot lower than the threshold for convictable."
And if they were the National Headline services, rather than the National Intelligence services, you might have something vaguely resembling a point.
As it is, you have an anti-point: The evidence free allegations were included in the reports in order to generate headlines, rather than in order to inform decision makers.
You need to check what 'evidence free' means.
The Mueller report laid out plenty of evidence.
Meanwhile Gabbard has just declared it 'overwhelming' and is faffing about with charges. Which is not what an investigation or report looks like.
It is what a distraction looks like.
It is of course improper to try to introduce in court rumors not backed by evidence. It is of course not improper to investigate rumors not backed by evidence; the investigation is how one determines whether there is evidence to back them.
This is a weird conversation. The original premise of the investigations that Gabbard and the usual Trump apologist crew here are so upset about was to understand how Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 election. This has nothing to do with the Steele Dossier or Trump collusion, etc. And they did find evidence that went well beyond the threshold of newsworthy--12 Russian agents were indicted for their illegal interference with the US election.
Republicans like to use the "no collusion" thing to wish away the whole investigation, but there's definitive evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election. That doesn't necessarily mean it changed the outcome, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for the intelligence community to have investigated.
There is more coming, Brett.
DC lawyers are about to hit retainer paydirt.
It's quaint that you think that Big Law won't be defending them pro bono.
I haff Fotos of Naked Trump!!
Hopefully they are of Melania.
Queenie's praying they're Don Jr.
"Every investigation said the opposite."
Well... let's break this down.
True or False: The Steele Dossier was paid for.
True. It was initially paid for by the the conservative media outlet The Washington Free Beacon.
and then it was paid for by...?
The Clinton campaign.
It was initially paid for by the the conservative media outlet The Washington Free Beacon.
Incorrect. Washington Free Beacon initially paid Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research but ended their relationship before work on the dossier started.
After WFB ceased their relationship with Fusion GPS, the company hired Christopher Steele using Clinton campaign cash. Steele utilized Clinton's contacts in government and in intelligence to both create his dossier and then push it to the FBI, CIA, State Department, etc.
As far as we know, Steele's information was completely independent from anything Fusion GPS got from their contract with WFB.
False. The WFB had paid Fusion GPS to collect dirt on the various Republican primary candidates, that much is true. But the Steele dossier was generated long after the WFB had ended that contract.
Here's a PBS piece flacking the "WFB funded the Steele dossier" line for the DNC.
"At the same time, Free Beacon denied paying for the Steele dossier or having any contact with him. Free Beacon said its research ended before Steele began his work."
Notice how they drop that little gem in, and then proceed as though it didn't exist, continuing to flack the party line. About the only hint that the party line is wrong, is that correction at the end: They changed the headline from "Conservative site was original funder of anti-Trump dossier" to "How the anti-Trump dossier came to be".
Here's the AP, being a bit more honest than PBS: Correction: Trump-Russia Probe story
"WASHINGTON (AP) — In a story Feb. 2 about a Republican memo on the Russia investigation, The Associated Press erroneously reported that a former British spy’s work on an opposition research project was initially funded by the conservative Washington Free Beacon. Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired by a firm that was initially funded by the Washington Free Beacon, he did not begin work on the project until after Democratic groups had begun funding it."
To be fair, google is pretty heavily promoting the original lie ahead of the corrections, so if you didn't look too closely you might not realize that it was a lie.
Please remember, the Steele Dossier was what is commonly called "raw intelligence". It was a collection of rumors and back-channel information that Steele collected from his sources. Almost everything Steele heard/reported had a degree of truth, though it was often only - say - 70% or 55%. The infamous sex tape is one example. Do I have to remind everyone it actually existed? It was a fake created by Russian criminals, but real enough for Trump to task Cohen with the job of suppressing it.
Another example: Steele heard Michael Cohen was holding secret meetings with Kremlin officials in 2016. The details were incorrect (there was no Prague trip) and the aim wrong (secret business deal vs campaign talk), but the rumors Steele heard had a real foundation in fact.
Likewise, Steele had Trump's campaign manager holding secret meetings with a Russian spy. That happened, so Steele was well ahead of the game there. His account was 90% true even if you accept everything Manafort's version was totally honest - and nobody does that.
There was little in the Steele Dossier that was completely wrong. Some of his points of financial entanglements between Trump and Russia are unsubstantiated, but who knows what we'll eventually discover? Trump may be hiding his business dealings for reasons other that his typical rote criminality.
On the other hand, some of the Dossier was completely true. Steele wrote about the Russian effort to aid Trump's campaign and that's proved right. He wrote about the hacking of Ms. Clinton's friends, and that was true. All in all, it was a pretty stellar example of raw intelligence. (I say that as an expert, having read many a spy novel)
Lastly, a right-winger like Brett tries to imply Steele's Report was some fabricated put-up job. That's because he (Brett) cares zero about the facts. In truth, Steele clearly believed his own reporting and conclusions. He continued to press his findings to authorities long after the last check from Fusion was cashed. Indeed, the biggest criticism against Steele is he lost track of how raw his intelligence was. He became a believer, which is never good with intelligence work. That doesn't work with Brett's hive-mind meme on the Dossier, but that's because he let's his handlers think for him. Never good, that.
The best hoaxes have enough facts sprinkled in them to be plausible.
The Steele Dossier's major failure was that the most explosive part of it was it's claim of a criminal conspiracy between Trump and the Russians to subvert the 2016 election.
That conspiracy did not exist. The rest is just whistling past the graveyard.
There was little in the Steele Dossier that was completely wrong
Carter Page would disagree with that assessment.
In the words of Inspector General Horowitz:
...much of the material in the Steele election reports, including allegations about Donald Trump and members of the Trump campaign relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, could not be corroborated; that certain allegations were inaccurate or inconsistent with information gathered by the Crossfire Hurricane team; and that the limited information that was corroborated related to time, location, and title information, much of which was publicly available
tylertusta : "Carter Page would disagree with that assessment."
1. That would be the same Inspector General Horowitz who said the investigation into Trump-Russia ties was fully justified, not based on the Steele Report, and warranted by the facts.
See, someone like tylertusta knows nothing about this issue except a handful of factoids spoon-fed him by his handlers. Thus the poor guy is clueless how IG Horowitz alone demolished the entire "hoax" meme. Yes, he criticized one dishonest agent's doings while applying for a warrant, but that was a tiny flyspeck against the overall investigation and/or Horowitz's conclusions about it. In that, the IG's report can be accurately summarized as this: The investigation was warranted and Brett Bellmore / tylertusta are full of shit. To be fair, I don't think he mentioned either of you by name.
2. And there's even more tylertusta clumsy comedy in bringing up the "martyr" Carter Page! A reminder : The first FISA warrant against Page was issued long before he had any involvement with Trump. The U.S. counterintelligence people thought he was making the rounds in Moscow, trolling his services to make a quick score. This was confirmed later by an intercept of Russian Intelligence where Page was mentioned. They also noticed his efforts but considered him a bloviating clown and weren't interested. Thus it's almost certain Page was never a Russian asset, but not for want of trying.
So yeah, an FBI agent engaged in misconduct on the second FISA warrant - that is clearly established. But Page as holy matyr is just more right-wing myth.
That would be the same Inspector General Horowitz who said the investigation into Trump-Russia ties was ... not based on the Steele Report...
You must be talking about a fictional Horowitz, because the real life one said that the Page FISA warrants were drawn from the Steele Dossier:
As described in this report, information from Christopher Steele's reports-sometimes collectively referred to as the "Steele dossier"-that pertained to Carter Page was relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications (footnote 6)
It was the other parts, like the so-called "pee tape" that were not included in the warrant applications.
Horowitz's report has an entire section devoted to the FBI's receipt of the Dossier in the Page warrant applications starting on Chapter 4 (page 84) of the IG's report, and it described how the Dossier was used to support their application of probable cause in later chapters.
Here's one part talking about how one of the parts of the Dossier was utilized (page 100):
As described in Chapters Five and Seven, the FBI relied upon Report 95 [from Steele] to support probable cause in the Carter Page FISA applications. Report 95 was entitled "Russia/US Presidential Election: Further Indications of Extensive Conspiracy Between Trump's Campaign Team and the Kremlin" and cited repeatedly to information provided by "Source E." Report 95 alleged the existence of "a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation" between the Trump campaign and Russian leadership, and claimed that the campaign's manager, Manafort, used Carter Page and others as "intermediaries" to further the conspiracy.
Link to the report:
https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf
Yes, he criticized one dishonest agent's doings while applying for a warrant
Most of the rest of your comment is just rabid drivel, but this part I shall also reply to:
If you have ever paid attention to anything that I've written on this topic you would known that I have been extremely critical of the FBI's handling of the warrants beyond any action taken by Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI attorney who plead guilty to a 1001 charge. Clinesmith is just a bit player in this scandal.
The FBI undertook a deliberate scheme in which they lied to the FISC in order to fraudulently obtain their FISA warrants.
Page doesn't have to be as pure as snow for a violation of his rights to have occurred.
Stop digging, because you'll never make the lie stick:
1. “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced” the decision to open the FBI investigation, called ‘Crossfire Hurricane,’ the report says. “We found that Crossfire Hurricane was opened for an authorized investigative purpose and with sufficient factual predication.”
https://time.com/5746639/inspector-general-finds-fbi-probe-into-trump-campaign-was-justified-but-not-perfect/
2. So right off the bat, you lose. Your "hoax" meme is left in shambles. All your fantasies lie in pieces at your feet. But the problems don't end there. IG Horowitz also determined this :
"The inspector general's report "determined that Steele's reports played no role" in the opening of the FBI investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, though the report also faulted the FBI for relying on uncorroborated aspects of Steele's reporting in its request for permission to wiretap Trump campaign adviser Carter Page."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/12/10/ivanka-trump-christopher-steele-personal-friends/4382659002/
3. As I noted above, the Inspector General Report made mincemeat of every single major claim by the "hoax" crowd. It didn't leave a single one standing except for one case of misconduct by one agent concerning one warrant.
But since you're too uninformed to realize Horowitz demolished all of your masturbatory fantasies except this tiny little detail - one grain of sand in a beach - you keep returning to your precious grain of sand over & over & over.
Completely unaware what a spectacle you're making of yourself.
Heh.
In a comment thread about whether the Steele Dossier was uncorroborated (it was not corroborated), and now in our tangent on whether the Page warrants used the Steele Dossier (they did), grb has now moved the goalposts.
Having lost those battles, grb now pivots to whether the Crossfire investigation was properly predicated and whether there was bias within the FBI.
But not content to just lose his argument, he takes one parting shot, he still claims (still without evidence) that Horowitz said something he didn't actually say:
As I noted above, the Inspector General Report made mincemeat of every single major claim by the "hoax" crowd
No he didn't.
Ok.
You're the one continuing return back to Page over and over. The only point I've made was (a) U.S. counterintelligence consisted him a possible spy long before he had the slightest connection to Trump, (b) the misconduct found in his warrant was a microscopic part of the overall Trump-Russia investigation, and (c) the overall findings of Horowitz (microscopic part excepted) demolishes every single hoax-truther claim. Leveled'em down to the ground. Left not a single one standing.
In short, I don't give the slightest shit about Page. He was a shady character; he suffered law enforcement abuse; the abuser was exposed and punished. That has no relevance to me demolishing your lies about the Steele Dossier above, or me demolishing your lies about the "Russia hoax" further up. You clutch the miniscule little issue of Page's warrant to your chest like a small girl her precious doll. That's because you have nothing else. I freely admit Page was mistreated because I have everything else.
Repeat : Steele's dossier was surprisingly factual for what it was, correct across major sections of the report, and the sincere product of its author. You can't challenge any of that with facts, so you're endlessly on about little Carter Page.
Repeat : The Russian investigation was started for proper and justifiable cause. It was conducted professionally except for the miniscule & singular example of Page, and it uncovered a mountain of troubling evidence about Trump's links to Russia. You can't challenge any of that with facts, so on & on about little Carter Page.
All my points are still standing. You? It's all Carter Page all the time. You have absolutely nothing else.
You're the one continuing return back to Page over and over
Since this comment thread is about how the Page warrants used unverified, uncorroborated, and in many cases known-to-be probably false information, the reason why I'm returning to it is just me staying on topic. But go ahead, you can write about whatever you want just like I'll respond to what I want.
only point I've made was (a) U.S. counterintelligence consisted him a possible spy long before he had the slightest connection to Trump
How does a previous Page FISA warrant corroborate any of the information contained in the Steele Dossier?
If it doesn't, then it's irrelevant to this conversation.
(b) the misconduct found in his warrant was a microscopic part of the overall Trump-Russia investigation,
Lying to a court by omission is a strong sign that the people involved were not honest actors. Horowitz interviewed the three FBI team members plus the senior FBI staff that were still employed by the Bureau. Horowitz found a lot of very troubling behavior, a lot of inexplicable decisions during the course of Crossfire Hurricane, and a lot of sudden cases of amnesia.
No, I'm not talking about Kevin Clinesmith.
and (c) the overall findings of Horowitz (microscopic part excepted) demolishes every single hoax-truther claim. Leveled'em down to the ground. Left not a single one standing.
The only narrative that the OIG report hurt was that Horowitz found was that no one wrote on an email "we are staring this investigation for political reasons."
The OIG report made things much, much worse for the Bureau politically. Far from demolishing "hoax-truther claims", it poured gasoline on them. The follow-on order from the FISC that blasted the FBI for the same deceptions that Horowitz uncovered wasn't a notherburger either.
I believe the FISC said something along the lines of "When the FBI deceives the DOJ on a FISA warrant, the FBI also deceives the FISC, so don't omit facts just because they hurt the narrative you want to craft."
In short, I don't give the slightest shit about Page.
So you don't care about the FBI having uncorrborated, unsubstanted material from the dossier because the guy that they used uncorroborated, unsubstantiated information against was also someone you don't like.
What a wonderful imagination you have.
tylertusta : "Since this comment thread is about how the Page warrants used unverified, uncorroborated..."
No. It's. Not.
This comment thread is about the Right's "hoax" bullshit and the veracity of the Steele Report. Wherever you chose to see it beginning, those are the two subjects you'll find. By no coincidence, those are also the two subjects I address. You're the one continually introducing & reintroducing tiny little Carter Page into the discussion, nobody else.
Now that's fine. I don't demand you or anyone else stay on topic. But along with accepting that, three points:
1. It's kinda pathetic you insist (insist!) your miniscule little pet topic is the subject of the thread when anyone can scroll up and see that's not true.
2. It's even more pathetic you harangue me for "moving the goalposts" or "changing the subject" when anyone can scroll up and see that's not true.
3. And it's ultra-pathetic to be fixated on one FBI agent illegally fudging one warrant. Between Crossfire & Mueller's investigation, the inquiry lasted several years, involved scores of agents / investigators, millions of dollars, and extensive grand jury proceedings. Horowitz reviewed the investigation's beginnings and found them warranted. He demolished one hoax-truther claim after another. Except the tiny-winy morsel of Carter Page, he left you nothing.
Durham tried his best to service MAGA, but only humiliated himself. He kept promising the Cult he'd produce amazing findings, but it was all a tease. Except the tiny-winy morsel of Carter Page, he left you nothing.
So you, tylertusta, are welcome to go on & on about C.P. Find a streetcorner and live there, ranting about Page until your clothes are tattered & your beard grows to knee-length. As I've now noted several times : (a) I don't contest Page was mistreated, because (b) it's meaningless to the topic of this thread and, (c) it's irrelevant to the points I look to make.
Since this comment thread is about how the Page warrants used unverified, uncorroborated, and in many cases known-to-be probably false information,
This is a misunderstanding of the process. Warrants are investigatory, not accusatory, tools. No, law enforcement can't rely on information known to be false. (I would hope that would go without saying!) But information need not be corroborated or verified to be used to obtain a search warrant; police don't need two sources for each piece of information before they can use it to obtain a warrant to conduct an investigation to ind out whether it's true.
Worth revisiting how we got here:
"The best hoaxes have enough facts sprinkled in them to be plausible.
["There was little in the Steele Dossier that was completely wrong"]
Carter Page would disagree with that assessment."
And off you went...
Me upthread: “Carter Page would disagree with that assessment.”
The truth must hurt, doesn’t it?
You're the one continually introducing & reintroducing tiny little Carter Page into the discussion, nobody else.
You are evidently desperate to not want to talk about how the dossier was ‘55%-70% true’ (your words, not mine) and how the dossier had “little that was completely wrong.”
It’s obvious you don’t want to swell on the “little” instance where the dossier could “not be corroborated; that certain allegations were inaccurate or inconsistent with information gathered by the Crossfire Hurricane team; and that the limited information that was corroborated related to time, location, and title information, much of which was publicly available.”
The dossier was a political hit on Trump, and the people pushing it in from our government and our media are perpetrating a hoax, full Jacksonian stop. What little true information it contained was already publicly known and was sprinkled in to give the stuff that were made up a veneer of truthfulness.
Like I said, you’re a rearguard to the hoax. You’re like a flat earther and a moon-landing-hoaxer. When beaten upside the head with the incontrovertible facts, you deflect, diminish, and lie to yourself and then repeat your lies to us.
I call it like I see it.
3. And it's ultra-pathetic to be fixated on one FBI agent illegally fudging one warrant
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the cherry on the top. Either you haven’t read my comments or you’re deliberately lying about what I wrote. I don’t care about Clinesmith (that’s the name of the one FBI agent who got caught).
I even said, when discussing the FBI’s misconduct: “No, I'm not talking about Kevin Clinesmith.”
I’m talking about all of the FBI personnel involved in the clusterfuck that pushed the dossier, but especially those involved in Crossfire Hurricane and the Page warrant applications.
Durham tried his best to service MAGA
Wow. Where did Durham come into this conversation?
(c) it's irrelevant to the points I look to make.
You meander like a river. But don’t fret, I’m here to keep you on track.
Page’s mistreatment in ancillary to this saga; as I’ve said before, he could be pure and fresh fallen snow or he could be dirtier than Al Capone. For the purposes of this thread, he could have been handed a cookie or could have been clasped in irons and it wouldn’t have mattered for our conversation.
I’m talking about the lack of veracity of the dossier as the OIG uncovered in the investigation of the Page applications. What the OIG found was that the FBI knew that the Dossier was largely fictitious and could not be corroborated. And it was that misuse of the dossier in a FISA warrant app that violated Page’s rights.
If you’re unable to grasp this very simple concept, I can start quoting more of the OIG’s report and the FISC order at you until it gets drilled into your skull.
This is a misunderstanding of the process. Warrants are investigatory, not accusatory, tools.
This comment from David that I’m quoting here shows his misunderstanding of FISA warrants, whose purpose is counter-intelligence and not for investigatory purposes. I’m not surprised that he doesn’t know how they work since they don’t teach FISA at law school.
FISA warrants are quite a bit different from criminal warrants. Yes, they’re called a warrant, and they have to be signed off from a judge, and they also need a finding of probable cause.
However, unlike investigatory warrants, the FISC demands that all warrant applications contain all information relevant to the request including information that cuts against a finding of probable cause. The application has to include things like self-serving statements and source unreliability. It also requires that the FBI and DOJ attest that the counter-intelligence information cannot be obtained by any other means, as FISA is supposed to be an act of last resort for counter-intel against our nation’s external foes.
This is a heightened requirement. Congress and the FISC put in safeguards to prevent abuses of the nation’s spying powers on American citizens thanks to Nixon. The government effectively has to be helping the target of the warrant while in front of the FISC (as an aside, it was the government’s failure to perform its duty in the Page applications that caused the FISC to appoint more amici who will try to raise privacy and civil rights issues).
To meet the heightened requirements of the warrant application, the FBI adopted the Woods Procedures, a set of internal procedures that when followed accords with the FISC’s requirements. It was the flagrant failure to follow the Woods Procedures in the Page case that caused the OIG and FISC to really tear into the FBI.
But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s a link to the FISC’s 2020 Opinion and Order in reaction to the OIG’s report on the Page applications:
https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/Misc%2019%2002%20Opinion%20and%20Order%20PJ%20JEB%20200304.pdf
Here are a couple of quotes highlighting the heightened requirements:
Informing the FISC of a source’s unreliability:
The FBI did not, however, advise DOJ or the Court of inconsistences between sections of Steele's reporting that had been used in the applications and statements Steele' s primary sub-source had made to the FBI.
Failure to inform FISC of exculpatory statements that cut against a finding of PC:
Finally, the government omitted statements Page made to a confidential human source that contradicted the FBI 's theory of the case. In support of the contention that Page was participating in a conspiracy with Russia by acting as an intermediary for Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, the government included statements Page had made to the source in October 2016 that tended to support that theory, but omitted statements he had made to the same source that did not. (emphasis mine)
The FISC was so serious about including information that calls into question the accuracy of the FBI and DOJ’s information that as a result of the Page debacle, the FBI was, in all future applications involving US persons to have FBI agents declare:
I attest that, to the best of my knowledge, the Office of Intelligence of the Department of Justice has been apprised of all information that might reasonably call into question the accuracy of the information or the reasonableness of any FBI assessment in the application, or otherwise raise doubts about the requested findings.
No criminal search warrant in the USA has that kind of requirement, at least that I’m aware of.
During the OIG’s investigation of the Page warrant, the IG discovered instances where FBI team members tried to treat FISA as an investigatory warrant- where the information put in the application was expected to be confirmed by information gleaned by the electronic surveillance. As I recall- it was during his hearing in front of Congress I believe- Horowitz was quite upset by that discovery as it’s supposed to be the other way around: Every fact that goes into a warrant application has to be confirmed before the warrant is signed off.
Tyler still doesn't understand (counterintelligence is investigatory in nature; it just often doesn't lead to prosecution), but I don't feel like a long response now, so I will just bring up this one example:
Every fact that goes into a warrant application has to be confirmed before the warrant is signed off.
What has to be confirmed is that the fact fits the information in the government's possession — not that it is accurate. In other words, if the FBI wants to tell the court, "A source told us that Page met with SVR agents," the FBI has to confirm that its source said that. It does not have to confirm that Page met with SVR agents — something which might well be impossible to do. (Again, there is no "you need two sources for each fact you want to rely on.") That's what the Woods Procedures are about. Incidentally — this is unrelated to this discussion and your point here, but I thought it was worth mentioning — the judge who criticized the FBI i the link you provide was Boasberg, who MAGA is convinced based on their cult-like worship of the Dear Leader, is some far-left anti-Trump judge.
Tyler still doesn't understand (counterintelligence is investigatory in nature; it just often doesn't lead to prosecution)
Yawn.
What has to be confirmed is that the fact fits the information in the government's possession — not that it is accurate
The first part is correct, but not the second. Yes, the FBI has to confirm that the barebones facts fit the information in the warrant (e.g.: a confidential human source told the FBI X, X supports a finding of probable cause, and the FBI reports X in the warrant).
The other part is that the warrant has to include other relevant information that supports or casts doubt on the accuracy of what the confidential source said.
In one instance, as General Horowitz put it in his report, the FBI “omitted information relevant to the reliability of Person 1 [Igor Danchenko], a key Steele sub-source (who was attributed with providing the information in Report 95 and some of the information in Reports 80 and 102 relied upon in the application), namely that (1) Steele himself told members of the Crossfire Hurricane team that Person 1 was a "boaster" and an "egoist " and "may engage in some embellishment" and (2) the FBI had opened a counterintelligence investigation on Person 1 a few days before the FISA application was filed;”
In a reaction to the OIG’s report, the FISC blasted the FBI for doing exactly what David suggests is permitted.
(Let’s keep in mind that the title of the order from the FISC is “IN RE ACCURACY CONCERNS REGARDING FBI MATTERS SUBMITTED THE FISC” (emphasis mine)).
The FISC said in their 2019 order on the topic:
The FISC's assessment of probable cause can serve those purposes effectively only if the applicant agency fully and accurately provides information in its possession that is material to whether probable cause exists.
Link to order:
https://fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/MIsc%2019%2002%20191217.pdf
The January 2020 order from the FISC that I linked up above would then go on to say:
The need to re-verify the accuracy and completeness of information from prior applications is also emphasized, and the pertinent CHS handler must confirm the accuracy and completeness of each CHS reliability statement and all CHS-originated content in the FISA application.
The entire point of this process is to prevent unsubstantiated information from being the basis of granting a warrant- the facts as alleged in the application have to be confirmed to the best of the ability of the FBI.
No. You are quite simply misunderstanding what you are reading and quoting. What you are reading and quoting is that the government is required to include in their application any information in their possession that casts doubt on the reliability of their sources. That is true, but is not responsive to what I said.
No, it is you who are misunderstanding. You are correct that for a criminal investigation the police needn't need to verify the underlying facts alleged in a warrant to obtain probable cause, but as I keep needing to have to remind you, FISA isn't a criminal process.
You're basically restating the incorrect position that the FBI teams followed during the warrant applications (I'll add that the FBI doesn't seem to have any problem following the correct standards for FISA warrants not facially only tangentially involving one Donald J. Trump).
The Factual Accuracy Review that the FBI has to undertake requires that each factual assertion in the application is supported through thorough documentation, and this is supposed to then double- and triple-checked.
Footnote 288 gives a high-level review of the kinds of factual issues that were not verified:
As discussed in detail in Section IV below, we examined the completeness of the Woods File by comparing the facts asserted in the first FISA application to the documents maintained in the Woods File. Our comparison identified instances in which facts asserted in the application were not supported by documentation in the Woods File. Specifically, we found facts asserted in the FISA application that have no supporting documentation in the Woods File, facts that have purported supporting documentation in the Woods File but the documentation does not state the fact asserted in the FISA application, or facts that have purported supporting documentation in the Woods File but the documentation shows the fact asserted is inaccurate
Indeed, Appendix 1 of the OIG's report is the list of all of the many unverified facts that were included into the warrant- see the "No supporting documentation" and "Supporting documentation does not state this fact" columns in Appendix 1.
"There was little in the Steele Dossier that was completely wrong."
Well, duh, that's HOW you fabricate a believable smear job: You include innocent details that can be confirmed, and guilty details that can't, and count on people confusing verification of the first with verification of the second.
You'll maybe recall that the FBI actually interviewed Steele's primary source, and in the FISA warrant application said that the source seemed reliable, but neglected to mention that the reliable source had told them the dossier was a steaming heap?
Brett, you missed where he called it "raw intelligence." It's as if that framing is expected to give rumor and innuendo a scintilla of propiety.
That "raw intelligence" dodge was insufficient for any other President before Trump, yet with Trump our national security establishment and our national media have so debased themselves that they only belatedly and begrudgingly backed away from the discredited dossier. Our friend grb is just one of the rearguard who is stubbornly committed to believing a lie because it's a comforting lie.
It was a step below raw intelligence, it was "This was raw intelligence at one point, then we confirmed that it was just a smear job, and the supposed primary source says the guy who compiled it was just making things up."
Hilarious. I specifically noted the long trail of evidence that proves Steele personally believed his own findings. Long after the report was delivered to Fusion, Steele was out there trying to find someone - anyone! - to listen to him. This wasn't just one act or two, but month after month of evangelical effort.
Likewise I noted you, Brett, are too much of a dishonest hack to recognize that fact or admit it shreds your meme to pieces. Personally, I just can't get your mentality, guy. Month after month you peddle easily disproved horseshit, knowing it's completely fraudulent as you do so. Just a little self-respect would make that impossible, but......
"Long after the report was delivered to Fusion, Steele was out there trying to find someone - anyone! - to" keep throwing money his way thanks to his moment of fame.
I specifically noted the long trail of evidence that proves Steele personally believed his own findings
Steele is a sucker like you, grb. Some folks will believe anything against their political enemies.
Classic Bellmore. Yes, there was true stuff, but it was just thrown in to make the BS look good. Never, "There was some true stuff and also some they got wrong. Period."
Impossible for Brett to accept matters at face value. ANd to think he occasionally comments that liberals never accept that opposing arguments are made in good faith.
You're correct in that there are some true things in the dossier. Unfortunately for folks like grb, the true stuff was publicly known and was easily obtainable via basic web searches.
The important bits- mainly that Trump was engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians to subvert the election of 2016- turned out to be completely fictitious. It was made up.
You understand that "wasn't confirmed" and "completely fictitious" are different things, right? (Michael Cohen never traveled to Prague to meet with the Russians; that was indeed made up.)
Hope springs eternal, eh? I bet with just a bit more of the illegal warrants you'll find the proof of that grand conspiracy.
The biggest reason why I say it was a fiction: if there was a conspiracy involving Trump, Manafort, Page, Padapalous, and others working with the Russians, Mueller would have charged someone for the conspiracy.
Instead, the best that Mueller could do with the 'grand conspiracy theory' was make innuendo about connections with the Russians while trying to tie Trump into knots with an obstruction case.
Unless he didn't think he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. (Donald Trump may be very stupid, but at least he knows not to take notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy.)
Mueller couldn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt because the crime didn't happen. He had the opportunity to say he thought the crime happened couldn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in his report, but he didn't.
Given how much classified information leaked about Trump and how leaky our government has been since then, no one can find a smoking gun.
Mueller's team had Flynn, Manafort, Papadapolous, Stone, and others in Trump's orbit by the balls. Given the people that Trump surrounded himself with, not one of them could corroborate this story.
At this point there's more evidence of Clinton's ties to Russia (through Danchenko) than there was of Trump's ties to Steele's conspiracy!
The role of a special counsel's report is to explain his findings and his prosecutorial decisions, not to give his personal opinion about what happened. And his findings were that they found that the evidence was "not sufficient" to support such charges, not that there was no evidence.
Um, except that Danchenko isn't Russia and Clinton had no ties to Danchenko; unless I've forgotten something there's no evidence Clinton even knew of Danchenko's existence.
Yes; that's why it was reasonable to suspect that the Hunter Biden laptop story was fake even if the laptop itself was genuine. That's what the Russians would've done: take legitimate files and emails that could be verified, and mix some really incriminating fake ones in there. (The fact that no incriminating ones were found is what ultimately convinced me that the laptop was actually genuine.)
How can you say that Hunter Biden discussing potential Chinese business deals in 2017, after Joe Biden had left office (and which also never got off the ground), wasn't "incriminating"? Surely, it was evidence of future potential retro-bribery and tax evasion on non-existent anticipated profits? Or something!
grb: You have to let the hayseeds remember things as they like to remember them. It's part of the halcion dream state they like to occupy
It’s such an easy thing to refute. Heck, having Manafort in a high campaign position was by itself justification for investigating.
Exactly. And there was much more beyond the fact Trump's campaign manager was deep in debt to people tied to the Kremlin and giving secret briefings on the campaign to someone U.S. Intelligence listed as a Russian spy.
Gabbard is trying to trick you by conflating hacking into voting machines with trying to influence the election.
TBH, both sides did this. I recall mentioning it as rhetoric used by Democrats years ago, when most people hear "interfere in the election", they think hacking voting machines, not having troll organizations astroturfing all over Hell's half acre, and the rhetoriticians rely on that misunderstanding.
I recall seeing a few years ago that many Democrats still believed that Russians actually changed vote tallies in 2016.
Do you recall a citation?
2018 Economist/YouGov poll
Page 96 42C. Political Accusations - Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President"
Democrats came in at 30% 'definately true" and 36% "probably" true, for a total of 66%.
People believe all kinds of stupid stuff, Brett.
According to a 2023 Monmouth poll (look at the complete report)
3 in 10 Americans (30%) – including two-thirds (68%) of Republicans – believe that Joe Biden only won the presidency because of voter fraud. This result has been a nearly constant percentage in Monmouth’s polling since the November 2020 election.
Emphasis added.
bernard11, I think your comment was better directed at me:
Yes, people believe all sorts of things both true and false. Democrats don't have a monopoly on stupidity.
Maybe, but it was Brett who posted the poll numbers. I just thought I'd add a bit more information.
Brennan, Comey and Clapper should go to prison.
As for Pres Obama, so much for legacy. He'll be worse than Nixon when all is said and done.
What statute do you think they violated, and what specific acts did they take that violated it?
we'll find one when it gets to that point
I toast your sarcasm.
[LeonardoDiCaprioAsTheGreatGatsbyHoldingUpAChampagneGlassToastingTheViewer.gif]
All in due time, David. For now, they twist in the process wind. They all better get very expen$ive DC lawyers on retainer.
Feel free to offer your legal services, David. They'll need them.
So no crime, you're just an angry Beria fan.
There’ll be 34 “No Crimes” it’s up to the Defendants to prove they didn’t commit them
According to the FBI documents and memos recently released, there doesn't need to be a predicate crime when the DOJ wants to investigate a president.
If they don't like an Administration, the FBI and DOJ lifers will find the predicate.
Team R is enforcing the rules that Team D made. Win elections.
Again, we get you don’t have principles, you don’t have to keep shouting it.
Queenie,
The people who told us no jab, no job; closed our synagogues and churches; threatened to take away children from parents who refused to vaccinate for Covid-19; tried multiple times to remove a leading Presidential candidate from the ballot; and cannot figure out what a woman is have absolutely ZERO standing to lecture anyone on morals, principles or ethics.
What you don't like is the shoe is on the other foot now. And will be for the next 42 months. Perhaps more.
Cry harder.
You're like a clown who is accusing somebody of not taking things seriously.
You and Sarcastr0 and Hobie lead the charge for the American Left, fueling revulsion in the Center and stoking glee in the Right. As serious voices put forth serious challenges to the more extreme positions of the Right (and the Left), you guys are the LOUDEST, reminding people how unsafe it is to side with the Left.
"Defund the police." "Green New Deal." "Mainly Peaceful Protests." "Abolish ICE." "Don't let them remove pictures of [gay] blowjobs on third grade school library shelves." (Oops...you guys never actually said the last one out loud.)
You have to admire his commitment to the bit!
Among my principles is to be peaceful and non-violent, however if a person regularly comes along and punches me in the face I do not believe it is a violation of my principles when I return that person's violence with violence of my own. What the left did over the last 10 years was violence of a sort and now that violence is being returned in kind. It would end if both sides were to agree for it to end but the left refuses to denounce what it did in the past and quite to the contrary seems to be doubling down with threats against ICE agents, riots and more threats to impeach/arrest opposition party officials. The right should not unilaterally disarm. You talk principles but for years and years you have supported the actions you now denounce as violations. If you want to be taken seriously about criticizing the principles of those on tje right a first step would be to clean your own house first.
What the left did over the last 10 years was violence of a sort
Yep, no principles here either. Just some of the lamest rationalization I've seen in a while.
Sarcastr0 I literally stated principles of non-agression unless attacked. Your side is literally screaming about Trump and Republicans responding in kind. "HOW DARE REPUBLICANS HIT BACK." If your side wants peace then it must act peacefully. If your side doesn't act peacefully why should conservatives?
You analogized policy to violence so you could claim discarding principles was self defense. And then say it's the lefts that are the real hypocrites.
Those aren't principles. Those are rationalizations to avoid having principles.
You response when called out is...make up some all caps shit about the evil left.
I'm all for some pragmatism - I don't like gerrymandering but I'm not going to become an idealist about it. But if you don't want to look like a tool, you need to examine where your lines are, without consulting the leftists in your head.
For me, I'm a big process guy. Process, well used, creates all sorts of goods. Trust, fairness, buy-in, harmonization across your institution. Trump and MAGA abusing process and rule of law does not change my fidelity to process.
"Defund the police." "Green New Deal." "Mainly Peaceful Protests." "Abolish ICE." "Don't let them remove pictures of [gay] blowjobs on third grade school library shelves." (Oops...you guys never actually said the last one out loud.)"
"Defund the police" was a lousy slogan, but what it was intended to get at was not a bad idea. The Green New Deal is a mixed bag, the protests were in fact mostly peaceful, and ICE in its present form, thuggery, should be abolished.
Oh, and the last accusation is, as you admit, manufactured.
Bernard11...I admit that Democrats did not say, "Don't let them remove pictures of [gay] blowjobs on third grade school library shelves."
However, more importantly, Democrats roundly opposed efforts to remove pictures of [gay] blowjobs on third grade school library shelves. They dismissed such efforts as an attempt at an "anti-trans" "book ban." So though it's a false quotation, it's not a "manufactured accusation" as you say, but to the contrary, it's a fact that Democrats tried to prevent the removal of pictures of [gay] blowjobs on third grade school library shelves.
Savor that unsavory fact.
Straight blow job depictions were fine there?
"Straight blow job depictions were fine there?"
No, I don't think so. Do you?
"All in due time, David. For now, they twist in the process wind. They all better get very expen$ive DC lawyers on retainer."
IOW, you have no freaking clue as to why, in your words, "Brennan, Comey and Clapper should go to prison."
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell, The reason why – I cannot tell; But this I know, and know full well, I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.
I can think of a few options. 18 U.S.C. § 371 comes to mind.
How so, Armchair?
What was the conspiratorial objective?
Who are the conspirators?
When was the conspiracy formed?
When, if at all, did the conspiracy end?
What overt acts furthered the conspiracy?
Although this language is very broad, cases rely heavily on the definition of "defraud" provided by the Supreme Court in two early cases, Hass v. Henkel, 216 U.S. 462 (1910), and Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182 (1924). In Hass the Court stated:
The statute is broad enough in its terms to include any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of government . . . (A)ny conspiracy which is calculated to obstruct or impair its efficiency and destroy the value of its operation and reports as fair, impartial and reasonably accurate, would be to defraud the United States by depriving it of its lawful right and duty of promulgating or diffusing the information so officially acquired in the way and at the time required by law or departmental regulation. Hass, 216 U.S. at 479-480. In Hammerschmidt, Chief Justice Taft, defined "defraud" as follows:
To conspire to defraud the United States means primarily to cheat the Government out of property or money, but it also means to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest. It is not necessary that the Government shall be subjected to property or pecuniary loss by the fraud, but only that its legitimate official action and purpose shall be defeated by misrepresentation, chicane or the overreaching of those charged with carrying out the governmental intention.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-923-18-usc-371-conspiracy-defraud-us
I'm sure you can fill in the details on what might be alleged. You seem smart enough.
Thank you, Armchair, for your kind words. I am very familiar with the law of criminal conspiracy in general. Thank you for taking a stab at answering.
I am at a loss, however, to see how any conduct by President Obama and/or his colleagues fits the essential elements of a § 371 conspiracy. Moreover, assuming arguendo that a conspiratorial agreement existed at one time, the beginning and ending dates of such a conspiracy are critical as to whether any prosecution therefor currently lies. (Pun intended.)
Barack Obama has been a private citizen since noon on January 20, 2017. If a conspiracy (hypothetically) began before he left office, that would require analysis as to whether Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), would or would not afford immunity from criminal prosecution.
A prosecution under § 371 must be initiated not later than five years after commission of the most recent overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. 18 U.S.C. § 3282(a); see, Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 396-397 (1957):
[W]here substantiation of a conspiracy charge requires proof of an overt act, it must be shown both that the conspiracy still subsisted within the [applicable limitation period] prior to the return of the indictment and that at least one overt act in furtherance of the conspiratorial agreement was performed within that period. Hence, in both of these aspects, the crucial question in determining whether the statute of limitations has run is the scope of the conspiratorial agreement, for it is that which determines both the duration of the conspiracy and whether the act relied on as an overt act may properly be regarded as in furtherance of the conspiracy. [Footnote omitted.]
This requires analysis of: (1) what the conspiratorial objective was, (2) whether and when such objective was achieved, and (3) whether any subsequent acts of concealment were in furtherance of the initial conspiratorial agreement. As the Grunewald> Court opined:
[A]fter the central criminal purposes of a conspiracy have been attained, a subsidiary conspiracy to conceal may not be implied from circumstantial evidence showing merely that the conspiracy was kept a secret, and that the conspirators took care to cover up their crime in order to escape detection and punishment. As was there stated, allowing such a conspiracy to conceal to be inferred or implied from mere overt acts of concealment would result in a great widening of the scope of conspiracy prosecutions, since it would extend the life of a conspiracy indefinitely. Acts of covering up, even though done in the context of a mutually understood need for secrecy, cannot themselves constitute proof that concealment of the crime after its commission was part of the initial agreement among the conspirators. For every conspiracy is, by its very nature, secret; a case can hardly be supposed where men concert together for crime and advertise their purpose to the world. And again, every conspiracy will inevitably be followed by actions taken to cover the conspirators' traces. Sanctioning the Government's theory would, for all practical purposes, wipe out the statute of limitations in conspiracy cases, as well as extend indefinitely the time within which hearsay declarations will bind co-conspirators.
Id., at 401-402, citing Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440 (1949), and Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604 (1953).
If legal analysis were easy, top shelf lawyers wouldn't get paid the big bucks.
Ah, you seem hung up on the statue of limitations.
A couple dates come to mind. One of which is....
1. October 6th, 2020: Brennan's publishing of a book regarding the Trump-Russia issues.
Now, you may be questioning whether publishing a book is either furthering the conspiracy (for material gain) or covering up the conspiracy with a new conspiracy (for material gain). I tend to thing of it as furthering the conspiracy. "Covering up" with a full blown publication seems odd. But either may be prosecutable.
So then on October of this year if Obama's not indicted you'll concede there's no case anymore?
LOL of course you won't. This is fan fiction here, anything's possible!
Armchair, the five year statute of limitations on a § 371 conspiracy begins to run with commission of the last overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.
Determining when that period of limitations begins to run depends on what the objective of the criminal conspiracy is, when, if at all, the objective of the conspiracy is achieved or the conspiracy abandoned, and whether what is said to be an overt act in fact furthered the conspiratorial objective.
No commenter on this thread has identified the conspiratorial objective that President Obama and those whom he allegedly conspired with hoped to achieve, which per § 371 would necessarily be the intended commission of a federal offense or a fraud upon the United States. That silence speaks volumes.
How does Mr. Brennan's publishing of a book further the intended commission of a federal offense or a fraud upon the United States? That seems counterintuitive at best.
" That silence speaks volumes."
You all are throwing up such a mass of BS that we just can't respond to it all. But, let's throw up a hypothetical situation for you.
Let's imagine that Trump and conspirators decide that Justice Jackson is undesirable. But...they can't directly get rid of her. The Senate would have to impeach her. Instead they manufacture evidence that, if true, would demand her impeachment. They then take that evidence and plant it in the government archives to be found. They wait 5 years. Past the "statue of limitations". They then point someone towards this evidence. Once the "evidence" is found, they demand Jackson be impeached. The evidence is true, they proclaim!. They publish a book about it even.
So, with all those facts, since you're a smart guy...
When did the conspiracy begin? What is the objective of the conspiracy? Does publish a book about it further the conspiracy?
Nice try, but that hypothetical includes insufficient information to determine the questions presented.
It fails to identify any intended offense against the United States or any intended fraud upon the United States or any agency thereof. Impeachment is not a federal crime -- it is expressly contemplated by the "good behavior" clause of the Constitution.
Justice Jackson has a property interest in her continued employment, but any "deprivation" thereof -- assuming that the effort to remove her from office is successful -- would not be attributable to the hypothetical conspirators, but to the House of Representatives bringing articles of impeachment and the Senate convicting. And impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate is all the process that she would be due.
IOW, it fails to identify any actionable criminal conspiracy whatsoever.
It is possible that in the process some conspirators may commit some substantive crimes for which they could be prosecuted.
Are you serious?
You haven't been doing too well on predictions lately.
It's not a prediction. It's a fantasy about how miserable people he doesn't like are.
And Gabbard was also put on a terrorist watchlist by the Biden Administration for no known reason
The reason is well-known, and has been publicly discussed at length. Gabbard went abroad to meet with Syria's Bashar Assad, when Assad was undoubtedly an enemy of the United States, a violent oppressor of his own people, and a terrorist sponsor.
Absent a coherent explanation, that meeting justifies the watch-listing. Gabbard has been anything but coherent.
My guess is that Gabbard was naive, stupid, or duped, intended some kind of foreign policy breakthrough, or at least a boost in her personal credibility as a foreign policy figure. She thus cornered herself.
She could not afterwards plead, "naive, stupid, or duped," and continue to pursue national political ambition. She feels now that watch-listing her was politically motivated, and could be right. So Gabbard got herself a MAGA perch, and is lashing out MAGA style, in complete disregard of reason and truth. That's good enough for Kazinski.
Also, the other stuff about treasonous attacks is based on deliberate conflations made out of context, to exploit ambiguity in two meanings of, "cyber." It would be cyber crime to meddle electronically with vote totals. It would be cyber crime for a foreign power to exploit false identities to pose as Americans to buy lying campaign ads to influence election outcomes. The latter happened. The former was investigated without finding proof.
All that was out in the open, and honestly reported. None of it could possibly be basis for a treason charge against anyone.
A treason charge requires proof of warlike activity against the United States, to overthrow government by violence. That has happened only once recently, during Trump's coup attempt. The open question whether Trump himself should have been tried for treason got covered up by a corruptly partisan Supreme Court. It put asking questions about Trump's crimes outside the scope of legal investigation.
Kazinski continues at his customary despicable level, lying on purpose to promote MAGA politics. The only plausible explanation is that he is himself a MAGA political operative with something personal to gain. Unless of course, he is naive, stupid, or duped, and also hates American constitutionalism. That, and a lot of time on his hands, could explain Kazinski's commentary, if not the sad but otherwise inexplicable example of Kazinski himself.
My guess is that the repulsive abuses of the democrats directed against her personally, helped to motivate her to work toward the release of the classified files exposing Obama and others.
I think it certainly helped push her into the pro-Trump camp.
That and the rubles!
It absolutely did. I also think her military experience with intelligence data in the field informed her judgment.
It's certainly interesting that while being put on a watch list by the Biden admin, Lt. Col Tulsi Gabbard, US Army Reserve, has somehow maintained her Top Secret clearance as the commanding officer of a civil affairs battalion. Despite the name seeming like it's a milquetoast unit, it's actually part of special operations.
One would think that had she been an actual security risk her clearance would have been pulled.
Gabbard sure asserted that, and was going to FOIA and provide a bunch of evidence.
Never materialized, though. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tulsi-gabbard-terror-watchlist/
This is why they can be so lazy with their distractions. You'll run with everything they drop and believe it as gospel years and years later.
FOIA'ing the government to get information on terror watch lists and the TSA's quiet skies program is like running uphill with a backpack during an avalanche. There have only been a handful of challenges that even made it to the merit stages and it took until last year for SCOTUS to allow one case through, and that case wasn't even on a FOIA request.
Notably your Snopes link doesn't claim that Gabbard's statements were false, just that the government refused to provide Snopes with any information.
But yes, call it a distraction... as if that will convince anyone.
The NYTimes said it happened.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/us/politics/tulsi-gabbard-trump-intel-pick-watch-list.html
Took 2 seconds to find that.
Who are you calling lazy?
But did you read the article?
Here's the subhead:
"Ms. Gabbard, President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was briefly subject to special scrutiny on airline flights last year, but not, officials say, for the partisan reasons she has alleged."
So....exactly what I said and what my link said. Or did you not click on that either?
So you lied about your link?
"Never materialized, though."
Yeah, that's what I did. I lied about the thing I linked. Yes. Seems the most obvious explanation.
If that's the sole criteria, then a whole lot of current and former congresscritters should have been put on terror watch lists.
Stephen Lathrop 3 hours ago Flag Comment Mute User "And Gabbard was also put on a terrorist watchlist by the Biden Administration for no known reason"
"The reason is well-known, and has been publicly discussed at length. Gabbard went abroad to meet with Syria's Bashar Assad, when Assad was undoubtedly an enemy of the United States, a violent oppressor of his own people, and a terrorist sponsor."
So what is the difference ? Assad was an enemy of the US in 2007 when Pelosi visited, Both were congressman at time of their visit.
There you go, Lathrop, bringing facts to a VC comment thread again.
Pelosi went abroad to meet with Assad too, and Assad has always been a Russian, and/or Iranian client.
That's the sort of thing Congesspersons, especially Democrats, do, along with going to high security foreign prisons, ICE detention centers, etc.
And certainly I'd be worth the money if some shadowy billionaire wanted to pay me, but alas, no one thinks influencing the Volokh comments section is worth paying for.
Agreed -
3,2,1... whataboutism - to hide behind leftists double standards.
As D!N. Tied. If the admin were serious about this they’d not have announced anything.
This is a transparent distraction. They aren’t even trying very hard. But they never need to try hard with you!
Surprised you aren’t on Comers plan to invalidate Justice Jackson’s appointment via auto pen shenanigans.
I love Judge Kagrungy, with the Nefarious RBG gone she’s the Courts comic relief, Curly Howard to Kavanaughs Fallstaff
I hope she never leaves. Every time Justice Bonecaller writes an opinion, the entire world is reminded how awful an idea DEI, and Marxism writ large, is.
“Comers plan to invalidate Justice Jackson’s appointment via auto pen shenanigans.”
Wut? He can’t be that fucking stupid can he?
No; he's not that dumb. I don't think he cares much about facts or law.
He's always been doing a show.
Comer doesn't have any such plan to go after Jackson: "The Republican lawmaker didn’t explicitly mention any of the jurists by name"
It may well that Biden had no idea about some of the judges he "appointed", but there is no doubt he knew about Jackson since he personally announced her nomination with her present.
And now for the rest of the quote from the article you decided to cut off:
“but in context, the segment began with a lengthy focus on Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — Biden’s only appointee to the high court — and Comer could be seen on camera shaking his head in an apparent disagreement in response to the justice’s public comments.”
he believes it’s an open question as to whether Biden’s judicial appointments, each of which was confirmed by a majority of the U.S. Senate, ‘are legal.’”
“The Kentucky Republican added, ‘I think all of these are in jeopardy of being declared null and void in a court of law.’”
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/shows/maddow/blog/rcna220073
I got it via discord but here is the clip:
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1947076840696529062
"Fox Host: Most importantly Biden appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson… Are you looking into Biden's judicial appointments as well?
Comer: Absolutely… … I think all of these are in jeopardy of being declared null and void in a court of law and that's a biggie for The Trump Administration."
The “Clinton Plan Intelligence” refers to intelligence the CIA received in late July 2016 from a Dutch spy agency. The Dutch had penetrated a Russian intelligence agency that appears to have hacked the emails of Clinton allies and Democratic officials. And it was from these communications that the Russians learned the Clinton campaign had devised a plan to smear Trump as a Russian agent to deflect attention from her use of a private email server.
According to Durham’s final report in May 2023, the U.S. intelligence official “who initially received the information immediately recognized its importance—including its relevance to the U.S. presidential election—and acted quickly to make CIA leadership aware of it.” Brennan himself, the report shows, “personally received a copy of the intelligence.”
According to Brennan’s handwritten notes, in an Aug. 3, 2016, meeting at the White House, he briefed Barack Obama and other U.S. officials, including then Attorney General Loretta Lynch and then FBI Director James Comey, about the Clinton Plan intelligence. The notes claim that he alerted them to the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”
Ratcliffe declassified Brennan’s notes in late September 2020, when Ratcliffe was Trump’s director of national intelligence. He also declassified a second Clinton Plan intelligence document that Durham found during his investigation. This was a CIA memo dated Sept. 7, 2016, addressed to Comey and FBI agent Peter Strzok, that referred the Clinton Plan intelligence for further investigative action.
What’s odd is that virtually no one working on the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, saw the CIA memo. According to Durham’s report, “None of the FBI personnel who agreed to be interviewed could specifically recall receiving this Referral Memo, nor did anyone recall the FBI doing anything in response to the Referral Memo.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/brennan-forgery-russiagate
It also appears that after discovering Clinton's plan, Brennan tipped off the Russians that the CIA was watching them, causing them to discover their penetration by Dutch intelligence.
Brennan is an avowed Communist after all. That's why Obama promoted him up so highly.
You forgot to say that he's also a Muslim convert; that's where you MAGA lunatics usually go.
This is of course a big joke. The Russians are the ones who created this pretend Clinton plan; the Russians did not "learn about" it.
"This is of course a big joke. The Russians are the ones who created this pretend Clinton plan; the Russians did not "learn about" it."
Any evidence to support this? All the evidence seems to be the Clinton Plan was to use a fake Russian plot to throw dirt under Trump.
Neither Horowitz or Durham reached that conclusion.
I read that Bannon, Vance and Loomer have been tasked to distract you rubes with familiar shiny objects:
Hate of media (now Murdoch) Russia Hoax
So we should expect lots of that today
Keep up with the MAGA times. Fox has been hated since they helped Biden and the Democrats steal the election in 2020.
Murdoch and most of Fox have never been America First.
That reminds me, when is the Trump DOJ going to finally investigate and report on who tried to steal the 2020 election and how they tried to do it? I mean, it's all Trump has talked about for four years
First things first. Nail the treasonous conspirators from 2015+ then nail the election stealers from 2020.
Note all the reform that's been going on to keep the Democrats from stealing again. That's not by accident.
That's another one I hope they relitigate: The Russian Hoax. So why aren't they?
Yeah, they paid a lot of money settling defamation suits for all that help!
Tech CEO fired for going to concert with coworjer.
boston.com
I'm impressed. In only ten words, you got two things wrong plus a typo. That's a lot of effort, given that it's approximately the least important story in the news today.
That’s our Ed!
lol
Okay, this is a long post - Japan had a national election for the upper house. As you might've already seen: the LDP-Komei coalition is not doing good.
Of the 248 seats in the whole House, 125 were contested: 50 nationwide proportional seats, 74 regular prefectural district seats, and 1 additional slot for Tokyo's vacancy created by resignation.
LDP won 39 (-13 from '19, 62 uncontested), and Komei 8 (-6, 13 uncontested). Counting seats not contested this cycle, the coalition only has 122. Thus, they lost majority in both Houses.
Of the liberal opposition parties, CDP won 22 (±0, 16 uncontested) - their non-insignificant loss in the PR was offset by pickups in prefectural seats. Communist is at 3 (-4, 4 uncontested), Reiwa 3 (+1, 3 uncontested). SDP retained the one seat (±0, 1 uncontested) - and most importantly, got more than 2% of votes in the PR district, maintaining its recognition as a "political party" eligible to receive taxpayer funds. Independents, who are only allowed to run in the prefectural districts (and usually aligned left), netted 8 (-4, 5 uncontested).
DPFP, a center-right party supported by the working class and younger generations, won a whooping 17 seats (+13, 5 uncontested). Ishin got 7 (+1, 12 uncontested). A new party named "Team Mirai" - led by entrepreneurs (or, more pejoratively, "tech bros") - received 2.6% of total votes, netting a single seat in the PR district (+1, n/a). NHK Party lost a seat (-1, 1 uncontested).
And then... there are the far-rights. It finally happened. Sanseito gained 14 seats (+12, 1 uncontested). Conservative Party gained 2 seats for the first time in the upper House (+2, n/a).
Nationwide PR reveals something deeper:
- LDP 12 (-7), 21.6%. A historic low. - DPFP 7 (+4), 12.9%. - Sanseito 7 (+7), 12.5%. - CDP 7 (-1), 12.5%.
CDP held the status for the biggest opposition party. They still will in the new upper house. But they are ranked fourth. The reason is obvious: CDP is a party mainly backed by old people (who like their clear anti-war, anti-nuclear message). CDP also signed a deal with the LDP on pensions this May; that was criticized for redirecting funds of the workers' pension system to the separate pension system for unemployed people.
Younger generations and the working class flocked to the DPFP. Their main policy? Tax cuts. In the 2024 cycle, they were the first party to propose increasing standard deductions - a suggestion the government had to accept this budget cycle.
Meanwhile, Sanseito played the Trump card. Their policy is literally that of Donald Trump. Criticize immigration (with baseless claims), spread pseudoscience and unsubstantiated claims on food safety (whether that's food additives, GMOs, and even things like milk or wheat), oppose all vaccines, deny climate change, denigrate minorities, and yes, draft a constitutional amendment repealing the bill of rights.
Unsubstantiated? Have you ever read the ingredients and nutritional breakdowns for Japanese food? Yikes. For sodium alone, I'm surprised there's any salt left for the rest of the world.
Salt seems fine to them. They're more concerned about the "Western lifestyle" of drinking milk and eating bread. If anything, their policy would increase sodium intake by promoting traditional, salty meal.
Rather think milk and bread are consumed worldwide, not only in the west. And no, the overconsumption of salt is not fine for anybody.
Milk not so much. A very large percentage of Asians are lactose-intolerant.
The western lifestyle that caused men's average height to increase 4 inches in the last 60 years, that's directly related to milk consumption.
Bread also has more protein than rice, but that isn't likely to be as much as a factor.
How does this affect PM Ishiba?
August 1st is right around the corner.
He doesn't have to resign - yet. Upper house elections do not dissolve the Cabinet. He lacks a majority in the lower house, however, and he is one impeachment vote away from being ousted. Even some LDP politicians rallied against his continued premiership.
There really isn't a great way to form a workable coalition. CDP would probably demand their progressive policies to be implemented (most notably, keeping pre-marriage surname and same-sex marriage), and because LDP operates on consensus, their right-wing factions would veto the idea. DPFP demands more tax cuts, angering LDP's fiscal hawks. Ishin might be the easiest.
Or, they just don't need a majority, perhaps? After the 2024 lower house election, LDP negotiated with the parties issue-by-issue. PM Ishiba himself won the position because he convinced DPFP/Ishin to cast invalid votes in the runoff.
Whatever happens, President Trump probably won't care. If it's TACO, it's TACO, and if he isn't, he isn't.
Prefectural districts were more interesting because they require a strategy.
For single-member districts, where DPFP and CDP cooperated, they won. Neither was too strong to defeat LDP. However, Sanseito, being a far-right conservative, caused a spoiler effect (by redirecting votes of otherwise LDP-supporting people). Sanseito performed better than expected in several multimember districts, netting many seats.
Now, what the heck would the new coalition look like? It's technically possible for the current majority to form a LDP-Komei-Sanseito coalition. Problem being, PM Ishiba is the opposite of the far right. He'd have to resign or be ousted should that happen.
Another option is the DPFP coalition. But DPFP might get criticized for this move - in fact their main attacks this cycle was that CDP betrayed their supporters by signing the pension deal. (CDP's predecessor, the Democratic Party, signed a deal in 2012 doubling the sales tax rate - a policy condemned by majority of voters.)
CDP has rejected forming a grand coalition government.
Funny thing is you guys make such great Radios
... and bloody good cameras.
...and watches.
...and humiliating TV game shows.
There is nothing the political establishment will not do, and no lie they will not tell, to hold on to their prestige and power at your expense -- Candidate Donald Trump, October 2016
Here we are, 9 years later. He was right.
Yeah, his administration is pretty bad, but as you say, he told us what it involved.
I didn't know Trump was so self-aware. His statement clearly describes himself.
And that includes organizing an insurrection in an attempt to keep the Whitehouse in 2020.
For those of you who are DIY finance types, this article (rather dense) has an excellent discussion of the finance aspects of OBBB. If charts and graphs give you MEGO, then do not bother.
https://www.kitces.com/blog/obbba-one-big-beautiful-bill-act-tax-planning-salt-cap-senior-deduction-qbi-deduction-tax-cut-and-jobs-act-tcja-amt-trump-accounts/
What is new to me is the 'stackable' feature of new deductions. It is game changing for the poor and middle class.
This legislation will have generational impacts.
"What is new to me is the 'stackable' feature of new deductions. It is game changing for the poor and middle class."
Ehh... not really. Not for most people. For most people in the poor and middle class, the new higher standard deduction outweighed the deductions that could be taken.
Still, the bill did need to be done from the GOP perspective. Otherwise, everyone would have seen their taxes go up, and they would have been upset.
Arm, do the math....married seniors increased their tax free space by over 33%; from ~32K to ~47K. That is game changing for them. Their ability to live a more comfortable life increased very substantially.
No tax on tips or OT is a Godsend to lower and middle class taxpayers. Incentivize work, and watch what happens. This is exactly the opposite of Obama and Biden, who incentivized sloth.
I would encourage everyone to read that article. It is excellent (but a little dense).
You (and most Americans) forget how low the tax rates are on low and low-middle earners. Under $100k of income (MFJ) tax rates are either 10 or 12%. So reducing taxable income by $15000 results is a max tax savings of $1,800 -- better than a sharp stick in the eye, but hardly game-changing. The effects will be bigger for higher-earning seniors, but most people's heart strings are not tugged by the plight of seniors eking out an existence on $200,000/yr.
Similarly, the deduction for tips is potentially nice, but will require all tips to be declared, which will require 7.65% (15.3% for independent contractors) SS and Medicare to be paid, which will significantly offset the tax benefits.
The OT one is probably the most meaningful, but remember it only applies to the OT premium, not all OT hours. So if you normally make $20/hr, so $30/hr in OT, only $10 of each OT hour is deductible. Still, that can add up, especially because OT earners are more likely to be in higher brackets than waitresses and retirees.
You really need to think about the lower half of the income scale, >50K all sources, and their life.
For the upper half, SECURE 2.0 was much more meaningful.
Increasing ACA premiums 75% and reducing the availability of food stamps, school lunch programs, and Medicaid are going to have a much larger and negative impact than any of these tax cut crumbs Trump has tossed the poor and middle class.
Meanwhile, the tax savings the wealthiest receive will, unsurprisingly, be sufficient to provide healthcare and food safety net programs to the working poor and middle class. Almost like we're watching a reverse "robin hood" in process.
I'm with Ridgeway here. For most people...not really. It's nice the deduction adds, but in the lower bracket, it ends up being pretty small. And affects a minority.
I think the major difference here is in the original tax cut bill not expiring. That would have been pretty dramatic for most people.
No tax on tips or OT is a Godsend to lower and middle class taxpayers.
No, it isn't. It's a random and arbitrary giveaway to a narrow class of people.
"No, it isn't. It's a random and arbitrary giveaway to a narrow class of people."
Also not entirely accurate. Those who benefit the most from this (tip income) are likely to be lower/middle class. It was specifically mentioned as a platform by Trump, so it was indeed planned for. Not "random" at all.
Those who benefit the most from this...are likely to be lower/middle class. Also true about the pennies I throw off the Empire State Building!
Those who benefit the most from this (tip income) are likely to be lower/middle class
So it's a random and arbitrary giveaway to an arbitrary segment of lower/middle class workers.
It's a stupid, unfair, idea. There are plenty of untipped workers who have the same total pay as tipped workers. It makes no sense that they should pay higher taxes. None.
It was specifically mentioned as a platform by Trump, so it was indeed planned for. Not "random" at all.
1. Trump advanced a lot of stupid ideas. 2. I don't think you understand the word "random."
". There are plenty of untipped workers who have the same total pay as tipped workers. It makes no sense that they should pay higher taxes. None."
Well, here's one. A lot of tip income is simply unreported, so people don't pay any taxes on it anyway. If, by contrast, you could deduct it... (but not deduct the SS taxes)..it may end up that people end up paying more.
it may end up that people end up paying more.
So now you're claiming it hurts people?
Potentially. If by "hurting" people, you mean they're paying taxes on income that they previously just didn't report (and were in essence committing tax evasion).
CBS is cancelling Colberts show, maybe they should try a comedy format.
Maybe they should go back to showing movies like they did in the 70's.
Cue the "The Syncopated Clock". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Hddbs4dJ4
I’ve heard there are pathetic weirdos who perform comedy characters on the comments of a legal blog, kind of a deranged busker. Maybe get someone like that?
CBS is waiting for your “Head Shot”(that’s a photo)
Too bad.
Look at this one’s impotent lil’ rage! So cute.
Colbert went overtly political. You can see it in his COVID vaccine sketches.
In 2020, when Trump was President, Colbert was anti-vax..with skits that implied they were just to make Pharma companies profits.
Come 2021, and Colbert suddenly is pro-Vax
https://grabien.com/file?id=2355127
So it was censorship, and you approve.
If Sacastr0 didn't have strawmen, what would we have?
Answer: Blessed silence.
They were losing $40M a year. Democrat policies & views aren't popular which is why the Democrats have to be so sneaky and cheat so much.
As Lex says the show had been losing millions for years, NOT dropping it was an unreported campaign donation to the Democratic party, which they finally got tired of making.
Maybe that's what it was. But then why bother criticizing him for being political?
Colbert has always been political. And open that it's his faith that drives him that way.
He got really political, and it probably kept his show going for a while despite the losses, because, like I said, they were running the show as a campaign donation to the Democrats. If it hadn't been political, but just straight comedy, those losses would have killed it sooner.
You rememeber when he got in trouble for saying Trump was Putin's cocksleeve?
'He got really political' my ass.
they were running the show as a campaign donation to the Democrats Another Brett conspiracy theory vibesed into existence.
If it hadn't been political, but just straight comedy, those losses would have killed it sooner. You're not a TV exec, you have no clue if this is true.
"So it was censorship"
He is just stating a reason for his poor show and its mediocre ratings.
Why is he being allowed to stay until next May if he is being "censored" genius?
Top raited in timeslot. The line is that the late night landscape is changing, not that his partisanship was the reason.
I think that is entirely possible. But then Armchair couldn't get mad because of Colberts sudden leftward turn (lol if you've paid attention to the guy)
Silly and more mad at a lib than a coherent thesis, but that's our Armchair.
"Top raited [sic] in timeslot."
Tallest midget. His average audience age is 68.
They are getting rid of his show, not just him. If they thought it would make money, they could find a cheaper host and make other changes to make it work. Telling they are not.
You should read beyond the first line of my comment.
You were always kind of a psycho but didn't used to be this lazy.
"kind of a psycho"
You are getting crazier each day.
You insist everyone is a partisan asshole like you and lies about it. You talk often about how having principles makes you a sucker.
You love love love the death penalty, and will gainsay the victims to insist what they really want is the state to kill on their behalf. You hate due process. Gets in the way of the death penalty. To the point you've used the cliche 'well I'm sure they were guilty of something.'
You have called Jews that criticize Israel collaborators with Hamas. ---- Psycho may be abusing the term, but you're a...moral outlier. Even around here.
"Psycho may be abusing the term,"
You think? I guess its a sane moment in your descent into craziness .
"Top raited in timeslot."
That's like Blockbuster being the top rated video store.
You also didn’t read the next line of my comment.
See, MAGA people routinely make stuff up, and I generally assume it's because they're dishonest. But another possibility is that they're just incompetent readers (listeners), who also have no senses of humor. Nothing about that first skit is "anti-vax."
Right...because a skit about how the pharma companies are making vaccines just to make money from you, and you need another medication to "get over" your hesitancy isn't "anti-vax".
2 things can be true at once:
1. pharma companies are in it to profit not make you healthy. 2. A lot of the stuff they develop, vaccines included, are good.
FOX News on the sketches: "While not abjectly partisan, Colbert aired a number of odd skits during the pandemic where animated needles did covers of various songs urging people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Even some vaccine proponents found the presentation off-putting.:
BTW where did you turn this up? I was looking for the sketches you were talking about and the only reference aligning with your take was cali.maga.barbie's instagram. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMO07ICRK4M/
Reports are it costs a cool hundred million a year to produce Colberts' show and the revenue stream it produced was not enough to cover that. Politics aside nobody wants a money loser.
Adjusting for inflation (you gotta adjust) Gas is the same price as it was in 1965, actually cheaper, as the taxes have increased
It's the inflation part that was the problem in recent years.
[Pink Floyd’s] Roger Waters is facing possible prosecution after pledging support for Palestine Action, a group that has been deemed a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom…
The United Kingdom banned Palestine Action under its anti-terrorism laws last week after its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged planes in protest of Britain’s support of Israel.
Following the protest, Parliament voted and proscribed the group as a terrorist organization, Fox reported. The governing body also determined that actions such as “inviting support, expressing approval or displaying symbols” of the group could bring a sentence of up to 14 years in prison and/or a fine.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/legendary-rock-star-could-spend-123710425.html
Pledge support for terrorist organizations that invade military bases and destroy national defense infrastructure....
This surprises you that prosecution may occur?
I do think 14 years for merely pledging support for such a group is surprising (and I like how “broke into” and “invade” get equated, I guess the Jan 6 boys, and in some cases gals, invaded the Capitol).
I mean, it's "up to 14 years". I'm reasonably sure if he pleads guilty, it'll get knocked down to 5 or less. If he throws in a public retraction and condemnation of the group, it may just be community service.
But what do you think the maximum sentence should be for inviting support of a terrorist group? Do you think there should be any?
For mere speech as in this case? None.
Got it. You think openly inviting support for terrorists, like with Al Queda should be "zero" jail time. Not a crime.
If you merely said “I support Al Qaida” what crime could you be convicted of in the US?
Are you a citizen?
Yes (and only of one country, the US). And Waters is a UK citizen.
Are we in the US?
Are we just saying "I support Al Queda" or are we putting out invitations for support for Al Queda on mass social media organizations, acting as a conduit to coordinate more support for terrorists....
Look at those flying goalposts.
Correct. I know the UK doesn't have the 1A… but usually MAGA whine about that, instead of celebrating it.
Lotsa Al Queda supporters here....
Based on public information, Palestine Action is no more a "terrorist organization" than Stop the Steal was.
I don't usually support any kind of "direct action" protest groups, but they're not terrorists.
Except, you know, according to legal definitions of "terrorist".
No exception required.
Besides "We're not Donald Trump"...what platform should the Democrats run on in 2028?
Whatever Mullah's Zoran and Omar approve
There's a lot of things they should campaign on, but what they're going to do instead is focus on being anti-Trump. He's like a drug to them.
It's a big...if not the biggest...problem with Democrats these days. They've got no message other than "we're not Trump". A message of hate on the big boogie man only gets you so far.
Yeah, it has to be a message of hate on the boogie men (illegal immigrants, Muslims, etc), amirite?
What an example of every accusation is a confession. The GOP has become essentially a cult around Trump.
I actually kinda agree with you on this. We're living in a 21st-century American Dreyfus Affair.
They could run on being the party with the least amount of child traffickers and sexual predators
Funny that all you can think of is Trump Trump Trump...
FYI, Trump won't be on the ballot in 2028.
Remember how Putin jumped back and forth between being elected prime minister and president in order to meet Russian law at the time? Trump could run as VP in 2028 or be selected for Speaker of the House.
"Dude", don't be a killjoy.
It's pretty early to think about 2028; the political lay of the land will likely be nothing like what we imagine right now. But look at what won the NYC primary. Look at the Buttigieg clip that went viral.
Kitchen table issues and a return to normalcy seems to be doing gangbusters within Democratic circles and without.
The Dem leadership that are acting like everything is still normal are finding their support plummeting.
I'm kind of impressed at how Democrats are trying to learn from their loss, which is in stark contrast with how they handled their 2016 defeat.
Whether this will end up like the GOP's 2012 Post Mortem remains to be seen, but I'm very doubtful that they will be able to resist the temptation that Trump offers when it comes to defining issues.
It's pretty weird that Democrats think nominating communists is a way to return to normalcy, but I guess as far left as the Democratic party has drifted at this point, communists have started looking normal.
Turns out listening to red-baiting fools is not a good policy.
You have no idea what communism is, anymore.
A guy can literally spout that stuff at great length at a socialist convention, and you will deny he's what he's saying he is.
Now, if you wanted to claim that Mamdani is no longer a communist, you'd be in a better position. Not a good position, just better.
Breezy switching from communism to socialism and back is a tell you're just redbaiting.
Like anybody who isn't trying to defend communists actually thinks "redbaiting" is a bad thing. The guy is literally on record only a few years ago talking about seizing the means of production, and you want to pretend he's in the political mainstream.
You just redbaited my criticism of your redbaiting. Learn that the Cold War is over, you tool.
Redbaiting is the empty invocation of communism in order to short-circuit actual criticism.
Think Nazi-baiting and you'll get the idea.
The guy is literally on record only a few years ago talking about seizing the means of production As was pointed out by a number of posters, he 'talked about it' as in said the words in that order.
"Redbaiting" is what people who don't want communism and communism adjacency criticized call all criticism of communism. You can call anybody you want to punch a "Nazi", but you're never, ever, supposed to notice somebody is a communist, even if you've got a recording of them raving about seizing the means of production and abolishing private property.
I don't want to punch anyone.
When I said 'think Nazi-baiting' your reply seems to think it's bad. And yet you think redbaiting is good.
Do you see the issue?
raving about seizing the means of production See, this is just lying now. I figure by the end of the day you'll have him with a shrine to Stalin in his closet.
"raving about seizing the means of production See, this is just lying now."
See, this is just listening to the damned recording. At about 10 minutes.
Yes, we all talked about the recording last week. Hardly raving. And hardly actually about seizing the means of production.
I'm sure to your distorted lens he's basically declaring NYC will join the USSR. After all, to redbait others first you must redbait yourself.
He can literally say, "seizing the means of production", and you'll claim that wasn't about seizing the means of production.
I think you've actually given up on convincing anybody at this point, (including yourself) and are just phoning it in now. Just a pro forma refusal to admit the obvious.
You now have new goalposts. I can say something but not be talking about it,
You were there last week.
I've got a copy of RACTER somewhere around here. It makes more sense than you currently do.
This was gone over last week. I watched the video then. You were one of those posting about it. It didn't go well for you and your lazy table pounding back then. https://reason.com/volokh/2025/07/18/friday-open-thread-29/?comments=true#comment-11131202
But yet here you are again, seeming with amnesia. And still not knowing the difference between communism and socialism. Doesn't matter, they're just talismanic evils for you to shake around.
That doesn't work on many people anymore, Brett. And it's worse when you need to ignore what he said and just insist the important thing is invoking those 3 words in order.
You're hallucinating it not going well for me. The definition of "not going well" isn't "Sarcastr0 continuing to deny the obvious". I made my point with hard evidence, and it doesn't really matter to me that you don't CARE about evidence when you're in denial mode.
The guy only a few years ago was speaking at a Socialist conference about seizing the means of production, and how important it was not go give up on the issues where the public wasn't with them yet, and you want to pretend it was some stupid metaphor or something.
It wasn't, the guy is a genuine ideological radical, and we have no reason at all to suppose he changed his mind about these things in just a few years. You simply want everybody to ignore the evidence.
I saw this a couple of weeks ago and it resonated:
https://www.threads.com/@debpixcom/post/DL3X7WHP5u6/media
Boomers are still stuck thinking that if they call things "Communist" or "Socialist" that it's like a magic spell that will cause people to be afraid of it. But since Boomers also managed to create the first generation in modern history that will earn less than their parents, it's perhaps unsurprising that younger generations view "socialist" countries as attractive rather than scary.
Old Republicans are listening for and reacting to Mamdani's Marxist language; young people are mostly just hearing that he wants to make sure everyone has somewhere to live.
"it's perhaps unsurprising that younger generations view "socialist" countries as attractive rather than scary"
Maybe you should read this before you go all giddy over socialism:
https://circle.tufts.edu/2024-election#youth-vote-+4-for-harris,-major-differences-by-race-and-gender
Yes, young people are very unhappy with the status quo and will generally vote against it.
I do think that Democrats should come up with a positive message around affordability. Start by going after policies that continue to favor rich old people at the expense of their children. Follow California's lead and look at which well-meaning regulations result in housing and infrastructure becoming outrageously expensive. Don't just focus on student debt forgiveness or moving medical debt off of people's credit reports, but get at why those things are expensive in the first place. Don't be afraid of government directly providing services where it makes sense to do so (e.g., let's make state colleges and universities affordable again and not worry about subsidizing education at private colleges), but also recognize that governments can become very inefficient and look for places where the best answer is getting out of the way of the private sector.
"Yes, young people are very unhappy with the status quo and will generally vote against it."
Well, that's one way to interpret those polls. Not a good way though.
Nice goal moving though.
Not sure what goal you think I'm moving. My argument is that people under the age of 60 don't really care if someone is a communist or socialist, and may in fact think socialism is a positive. Your poll shows that young people voted for Trump a lot more than they had for Republicans (including Trump) in the past. In other words, your poll neither proves nor disproves my hypothesis.
Yeah, I wouldn't say all Boomers are stuck in that age, but plenty of are. Which makes the MAGA-Russia support all the more ironical.
"young people are mostly just hearing that he wants to make sure everyone has somewhere to live."
Through....nationalizing people's homes and handing them out to other people? Or maybe just some nice rent control like Stockholm, where you wait 10-20 years to get a nice place to rent.
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/rent-control-again
Maybe it's worth trying once. But...we've tried it once. Other people have tried it once. It. Doesn't. Work. It makes things far worse.
So you have no idea of his policies and don’t care to look it up. But you are willing to speculate!
Strawman for the win...
Your second paragraph is purely 'I don't know but will speculate.'
No, I don't think calling things what they are is a magic spell. I think it's important to identify when somebody is espousing a totalitarian philosophy that has caused a dystopian nightmare every time somebody espousing it got any power.
I find it disturbing if the present generation has been indoctrinated to not recognize just how evil communism is.
"Old Republicans are listening for and reacting to Mamdani's Marxist language; young people are mostly just hearing that he wants to make sure everyone has somewhere to live."
And that attitude is utterly stupid. It's like somebody saying they're going to feed you rat poison, and you're mostly just hearing that they're going to feed you.
You heard 'means of production' and were off. No discussion of actual policy platform. Hell, you use socialism and communism and Marxism interchangeably.
That's the beauty of redbaiting; saves on engagement. Call it evil, don't worry overmuch about defintions, and get real mad if people note how shallow your criticism is.
Brett, what is your evidence that Mamdani has ever been a communist?
I'm not going to pretend I haven't already linked to it.
Maybe you want to draw some distinction between "communist" and "socialist who wants to seize the means of production and abolish private property"? I think that's a pointless exercise, it's like arguing about whether it's rat poison or Warfarin that somebody's proposing to feed you.
The bottom line is that he's an adherent of a totalitarian philosophy that predictably causes disaster everywhere people espousing it get power, and whether you want to call it "communism" or "socialism" makes no difference.
And people like Sarcastr0 want that ignored, because the only bottom line for them is that the guy who wins the election has to have a D after their name, and if the public pays any attention to what this guy really believes, he might lose even in NYC.
It's no different than when Biden tried to nominate as comptroller of the currency a communist educated academic who was advocating nationalizing everybody's bank accounts, and Sarcastr0 demanded that we ignore her CV.
Gonna lean on DMN a bit here. He agrees with me that you're wrong as to the meaning here. He also disputes your read that on the other lady being a communist.
DMN is very much not a communist.
You're just dramatic and see what you want to see.
So the only evidence you claim to have that Mr. Mamdani has ever been a communist is his being identified as a speaker at a conference of Democratic Socialists, Brett? That is mighty thin gruel.
As the Sesame Street jingle goes, one of these things is not like the other. That you conflate them says far more about you than about Mamdani.
"So the only evidence you claim to have that Mr. Mamdani has ever been a communist is his being identified as a speaker at a conference of Democratic Socialists, Brett?"
No, what he SAID as a speaker at that conference.
"But look at what won the NYC primary"
As NYC goes, so goes the country, right?
That's why so many NYC mayors become governor, US senator, president too I guess.
He favors terrorizing Jews so I hope a miracle happens and he loses but I encourage Dems to follow his views otherwise.
"But look at what won the NYC primary. "
Communism and antisemitism. Nationalizing the means of production and globalizing the intifada.
If that's the Democrat's plan. It's gonna be a loooong time.
Believe it or not, that's not what the primary was about.
Feel free to look it up. Not that you will.
No, I perfectly well believe that isn't what the primary was about. It's still what the primary delivered.
So the guy ran on the parts of his agenda he thought were popular, and was quiet about the parts of his agenda that he knew weren't. That's not remotely the same as having given up on the latter parts of his agenda.
President Trump mounted a vigorous rebuttal on Thursday night to a report in The Wall Street Journal that he sent a birthday greeting with a sexually suggestive drawing to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
His alibi: “I don’t draw pictures,” he wrote on Truth Social.
But a review of the president’s past reveals that, for years, Mr. Trump was a high-profile doodler — or at least suggested he was. In the early 2000s, he regularly donated drawings to charities in New York.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/us/politics/trump-drawings-epstein.html
The New York Times as your source? couldn't find anything in a more authoritative publication like "Screw" or "Dirty Hot Boys!"??? as someone once said about Dan Quayle, "Somewhere a Village is missing it's Idiot"
Frank (not my real name*)
* Duh
Our lil’ internet busker is wired today, something must have happened to babies or Israel.
Thousands of Babies will be murdered today, behind closed doors, by "Providers" in White Coats, in "Women's Health" Clinics, if I was really a Race-ist I'd be happy, because the dead tend to be on the darker end of the Color spectrum I think Israel can take care of itself.
He’s weeping already, poor deranged and dumb.
Even Hey-Zeus wept, and I’m telling Him what you said about Him
You sure that's where you'll end up?
I'm a personal friend of JC (that's what His friends call Him) We patched up that whole "30 Pieces of Silver" disagreement years ago
I'm glad you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
We can go back to being e-friends again.
I would say that no, the letter doesn't obviously sound like Trump wrote it, but if his best defence is absurdly claiming he "doesn't draw pictures", he's got no defence.
What's most interesting about this WSJ allegation is that they almost certainly had lawyers all over this before publication, and nevertheless concluded they had no potential liability for defamation. Probably because, reportedly, the letter was physically bound into a "50th birthday" book, among dozens of other letters from other Epstein associates, and that book is itself part of the "Epstein files", which Trump and his associates had long promised to release (before recently reneging).
The discovery phase of Trump's lawsuit should be quite revealing, if ya know what I mean...
How dumb can Trump be? (Don't answer that) Now they get to discovery his ass three ways to Sunday. And depose him! Didn't they try to impeach Clinton for a dodgy deposition?
"Didn't they try to impeach Clinton for a dodgy deposition?"
Bill Clinton was impeached for allegedly giving perjured testimony before a federal grand jury. He was acquitted.
A separate article alleging giving perjured testimony at a discovery deposition was approved by the House Judiciary Committee but rejected by the full House of Representatives. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/articles-impeachment-adopted-the-house-representatives-committee-the-judiciary-0
Either they thought that they had no potential liability for defamation, or thought it was worth paying damages if they successfully damaged him politically. A lot of corporations have management willing to take a financial hit to the corporation to advance their personal politics, it's hard to understand a lot of the boneheaded moves they make otherwise. And this is particularly common in the media.
Brett's once again the Real expert, and the experts disagreeing with his take is proof they are bad faith liberals.
When you'll delude yourself to preserve your self-regard.
A lot of corporations have management willing to take a financial hit to the corporation to advance their personal politics,
They do not.
It's an excellent example of dissonance reduction.
Corporations are in business to make money, maximize profits, etc.
Yet some corporations do political things that rate to cost them money.
Hence, it must be that the managers are willing to take the losses to advance their political goals, even to the extent of risking their jobs. Let's overlook the fact that the WSJ is hardly a hotbed of Democrats.
Tell us, Brett. Suppose Trump files and wins a defamation suit against the WSJ. How long do you think the WSJ employees behind this article will stay employed there?
And one more thing, Brett. Do you have any idea of the political leanings of the WSJ?
I would say that no, the letter doesn't obviously sound like Trump wrote it,
Trump's name and signature, and in possession of his best friend at the time.
It seems pretty obvious that he did write it.
We need to be careful here, because Trump is playing games with this:
The lawsuit against WSJ claims that “the […] article was false in claiming that President Trump authored the purported letter, which he did not”
However, the WSJ article does NOT say that Trump authored the letter.
More evidence that they and their lawyers thought long and hard about what they could safely publish.
Ben Wittes has some fun things to say about suing for libel knowing the claims are true.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-situation--the-wilde-hiss-effect
Alger Hiss and Oscar Wilde are instructive examples here.
I truly hope this gets to discovery, but my guess is that this goes the way of the Des Moines Register lawsuit.
Not sure what to make of the "authored" nuance. It could be he had someone else write the little dialogue in the letter. But I suspect what happened is that FBI agent(s) had seen the letter in the book and told the WSJ about it.
The WSJ published, believing in good faith that the letter (and drawing) was real, despite never seeing it directly. Which is a good defense to liable.
Trump is suing thinking that WSJ will settle like his other suit targets have and have the intended chilling effect.
The tricky thing with discovery is the main document is in the hands of the government, not Trump, and I'm not sure they could actually get their hands on that for a civil suit.
The WSJ could presumably ask for other docs Trump has that link him to Epstein, but we all know how effective a subpoenas are against Trump.
“It could be he had someone else write the little dialogue in the letter”
Yes. Most likely Ms. Graff.
Or, he assumes that WSJ can’t prove he wrote it.
But again, that’s besides the point: WSJ stops short of saying what Trump says they said.
I truly hope this gets to discovery,
I mean, the lawsuit is subject to immediate dismissal because he failed to follow Florida law in bringing it.
but my guess is that this goes the way of the Des Moines Register lawsuit.
He dismissed and immediately refiled it, in an attempt to get out of federal court and avoid Iowa's anti-SLAPP law.
I was referring to the text of the alleged letter. I'm no Trump literary expert, but I've been exposed to a little bit of Trump's writing (and speaking) style over the past 10 years or so, and I would have to conclude that he's got a fairly identifiable way of speaking and writing. Perhaps you have also noticed this?
The text of the letter just doesn't sound like his style to me. However, it was allegedly written over 20 years ago, and it is possible that Trump wrote and spoke differently back then. He certainly would have written it differently now...
"Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.
Donald: Absolutely right. There is more. Tremendous more. But I’m not gonna tell you what it is — that’s top secret, very exclusive.
Jeffrey: Same here. I know exactly what it is — and believe me, it’s big. But I’m keeping it quiet. Very classy mystery.
Donald: We’ve got a lot in common, Jeffrey. Smart guys. Winners. The best people.
Jeffrey: You’re right, Donald. Now that I think about it — very true. We’re on the same wavelength.
Donald: You ever notice, Jeffrey? Real enigmas — the true originals — they never age. They stay sharp, stay relevant. Just like me.
Jeffrey: You know, I saw it last time we met. Crystal clear. Legendary presence.
Donald: You’re a great pal, Jeffrey — really fantastic. And let me just say this: Happy Birthday. I hope every single day brings another tremendous, beautiful secret."
Maybe we can get a reprise of "she's not my type" and then identifying her as his wife in a deposition.
I haven't seen the letter. Can you link to a picture of it?
I think this request would be better directed towards Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, no?
You're the one who brought it up and made conclusions about it. I was sure you had seen at least a picture of it.
The WSJ never said they had the letter (or even a copy) only that they had looked at it. It is suppose to be in the FBI's evidence. Seems like someone may have leaked it and I would bet the FBI/administration is trying to find out who for obvious reasons. Given my assessment of Trump over the years saying he did not write it may not mean he did not have someone else write it (and even sign it). While I am convinced Trump is a crass braggart who treats some women as disposable playthings the wording and artwork seem out of character for him.
Better Late Than Never: Across the 18 states that have banned or tightly restricted abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, questions have persisted over when doctors can perform abortions in medical emergencies.
State lawmakers out of Texas say a newly passed law called the Life of the Mother Actshould clarify for doctors in the state where to draw the line. Reproductive rights advocates and medical groups are watching to see if it saves lives.
A diverse coalition contributed to the writing of the bill, including medical associations and anti-abortion groups. The new clarifications: * Specify that a pregnant woman's death or impairment does not have to be "imminent" for the exception to apply * Clarify that doctors can talk about abortion with patients or colleagues while determining if it's the best treatment option * Confirm that the burden of proof is on the state if a doctor is accused of violating the law.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/19/nx-s1-5445143/texas-abortion-life-of-mother
"Better Late than Never"?? OK, unfortunately your mom didn't make the right "choice" with you, now's your chance to rectify her mistake. Just look at it as a really really really really late 3rd Trimester Abortion
Deranged and dumb doesn’t think of the women that have died in TX for whom these clarifications came too late, but sad weirdos often have strange ideas regarding women.
Even if no one has died in such a way that an abortion ban can be described as the but-for cause, women have been put in extremely risky situations under the law. And it should have been obvious this would happen: write a new law, notoriously risk averse hospital counsel advise medical staff to strictly comply because the felony and licensing consequences are more serious than a negligence suit (and the law would obviously be a solid defense to negligence in the event of a suit).
Somebody gets killed with every "Successful" Abortion, nobody ever asks their opinions
And he cries over each and every one.
I don’t actually “cry” because I’m a grown man (OK, maybe when Ole Yeller gets shot) and grew up in a time when only women and homosexuals cried in Pubic, and Mao was right, that Sex Criminal Floyd George gets memorials, 60 million dead Babies are a footnote
Keep crying, Mrs. Lovejoy. Won’t someone think of the babies!
You’re why Don Zaluchi kept the Narcotics in the Black Neighborhoods
Really? They confirmed that the burden of proof is on the state in a criminal prosecution? I guess that's at least a sane reassurance, after putting a doc at risk of criminal prosecution for practicing medicine.
One of the more frustrating things the past few years is seeing people insist there were no negative consequences to any abortion ban, no matter how strict, and that any difficult situations were caused by evil leftist doctors and hospital lawyers on the theory that they actually wanted to harm their own patients and clients to advance abortion rights.
What is really frustrating is that the actual rate of abortions is up because most abortion are done medically and the medication can be mailed to the patient. The people most hurt by abortion bans are pregnant women experiencing medical complications.
https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/abortion-trends-before-and-after-dobbs
As noted, the overall rate of increase will not erase individual burdens. People can debate how this all is "worth it" to promote federalism or something, though I think many are more concerned about stopping abortions. THAT probably is better done in other ways.
CBP Agent shot in New York by an Illegal Alien of course, surprised they arrested the shooter and not the shoot-ee Only Question is if Mayor Sliwa will require his Cabinet to wear Red Berets
Deranged and dumb.
“An off-duty customs officer was shot in the face and arm during a robbery attempt at a park in Manhattan late Saturday night, police officials said…. The commissioner said there was no indication that the officer, whom the police have not named, had been targeted for his employment. He is expected to recover from his injuries.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/nyregion/customs-officer-shooting-migrant-nyc.html
Oh, my bad, it was just your normal Illegal Alien shooting somebody in the face incident, even that Oompa Loompa Eric Adams is pissed off about NY being a "Sanctuary" City
Between the Letitia James/Adam Schiff mortgage fraud and the Obama/Clinton treason ring, most of the DC leadership might be wearing orange jumpers.
The AOC/Zohar wing of the Democrat Party should welcome this house cleaning. It makes room at the top for more of their kind. The overt-marxist/fascist instead of the covert ones the Democrats have now.
You’ve got the fascist thing already covered.
All I see is a grey box, but it somehow seems much much gayer than usual. Is that you , Queenie?
Weird reply to someone you’ve muted. Got your fee-fees hurt? We really need a better quality of white supremacist trolls here.
As a MOTT I’ve run into some WS, they play up (or down) to their Enemies
Your Jew half is projecting. T here are hundreds of examples of Jews "apologizing for White Supremacy" on social media, only to later claim they are Jewish not White.
You can also find hundreds of examples of Jews calling for White genocide too.
and Hitler was a Meth addicted Homo, every group has their "Black Sheep"
I think it's funny that Lex keeps trying to bait left-leaning commenters here to stand up and defend criminal behavior by Democratic politicians since that would obviously be the move by Republicans.
But after trying repeatedly, no one has bit. If people commit crimes, they should go to jail (and shouldn't be in public office) regardless of which party they're in. You should try that out as a way to approach politics!
Vance and Trump not on same page about Epstein letter:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lu7a4k4zwk2e?ref_src=embed&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%252F2025%252F07%252Fthe-murder-of-the-slaying-of-the-homicide-of-parody
The Democrats are launching an investigation into Stephen Colbert getting canned. It was a show that was losing $40M a year.
Do you think that's why they are investigating? Because losing money and being wasteful is so important to them? (By the looks of their governance, the answer is yes.)
Interestingly 40 million is what Beezos is bribing, er, paying for with the Melania documentary.
It's obvious why they are doing it. Making Trump happy is bad. It's not obvious what they expect to get out of an investigation. They are very unlikely to find a quid pro quo raising the decision to bribery. Maybe cancellation was a legitimate business decision. At worst, it is like firing Norm Macdonald for insulting O. J. Simpson. Media companies get to decide who deserves more favorable coverage. If Democrats want to be more "rule of law" than Trump they should accept that not all bias is actionable.
Acting on new authority from the One Big Beautiful Bill, CMS has scanned the Medicaid rolls, and found that an astonishing 2.8 million people were enrolled in either Medicaid programs in multiple states or both Medicaid and an Obamacare exchange plan. Ending this double-dipping alone will save an estimated $14 billion per year.
This kind of thing is why leftists don't want the federal government to be able to share data with the federal government.
Along those lines...
"Washington (State) Ceases Publishing Legally Required Annual Assisted Suicide Reports"
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/washington-ceases-publishing-legally-required-annual-assisted-suicide-reports
I'm sure there's no reason for that...
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2023/11/07/physician-assisted-deaths-in-washington-hit-new-high-in-2022/
Some people hate other people exercising autonomy.
Actual Autonomy...suicide, no assistance.
"Less" Autonomy...."Physician assisted" suicide
"Less" Autonomy + Secrecy: "Physician assisted" suicide plus hiding the records of when it was done.
I’m not exercising autonomy when I contract with another adult consensually? Interesting take.
Is that what they’re calling it now? I remember when it was just “Buggery”
Hmm, no link….
See, when it's quoted like that, you can literally copy and paste it into google and find it.
Or you can pretend to be blind.
Here you go https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-finds-28-million-americans-potentially-enrolled-two-or-more-medicaid/aca-exchange-plans
A press release from Doctor Oz! No wonder Mikie P gave no link initially.
You should've known better than to waste your time.
Yeah, Lex is going to lick the boots of the federal agency that releases press releases every time, so asking for the source in that case triggers no critical thinking, just slavish fealty.
When you got the source what did you do? Read it? No, of course not. Dismiss it like a 4 year old? Of course you did.
Your reaction is predictable, and thus responding to any of your demands is a waste of time.
Lex can’t imagine critically thinking about a federal government press release, instead his bootlicking kicks in.
"Potentially!"
It's not clear how someone being enrolled in Medicaid in two different states actually costs the (federal) government extra unless this somehow enables them to use more medical care. If they're actually using Medicard but the federal government is paying the subsidy for a private plan, that's definitely wasteful; not so much if they're enrolled in both but just using the private plan.
I suspect the cost savings is a lot less than $14B, but it's a reasonable thing to check for.
If it's true — and again, note the weasel word "potentially" — then there's no issue with dealing with the problem, but note that $14 billion is like 1% of the budget deficit. You can't eliminate said deficit by finding a few people double dipping.
The "It's only a little percentage" fallacy.
"Well, now, about this new budget. It’s a billion here and a billion there, and by and by it begins to mount up into money."
Originally written in 1938.
I don't see how it costs anything unless they file duplicate claims.
I suspect that, like fraudulent SS payments to 120-year olds, this will turn into a big nothing. Probably a lot of people were in one plan or the other and then enrolled again when they moved to a different state, without actually doing anything wrong.
A Massachusetts judge wants state prosecutors to preserve the iCloud account of a police officer. The account is known to contain information damaging to his credibility. Defense attorneys hope it contains the one bit of evidence that will set their clients free. The problem is, state prosecutors got access to the account from federal prosecutors. Federal prosecutors had a federal judge put it under a double secret protective order. Even the text of the protective order is a secret. The state judge can't give due respect to a federal order he isn't allowed to see.
https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/07/18/karen-read-case-fallout-defense-attorneys-fight-for-ex-trooper-michael-proctors-digital-files/
"Defund the Police"....another horrible idea by liberals.
The idea was to "reallocate" funds from the police department elsewhere.
What it ended up with was cutting thousands of officers in major cities like LA.
What actually happened was that costs skyrocketed, as now the officers left were pulling way more overtime to cover the gap.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/video/2025/07/18/defunding_disaster_lapd_costs_are_soaring_by_millions_amid_staffing_cuts_1123630.html
Similar to how Marxism's "abolish private property" really means "redistribute it to them".
Yawn!
April 2023: "Trump says Republicans in Congress should ‘defund’ Justice Department, FBI" https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/05/trump-defund-fbi-justice-department/
March 2024: "The GOP Votes to Defund the FBI" https://www.newsweek.com/no-country-law-men-gop-votes-defund-fbi-opinion-1882085
When most people think of the police, they think of their state and local police office and sheriffs. They aren't thinking of the FBI.
March 2025: "House Republicans vote to defund D.C. police and schools"
A budget that didn't cut police and so far hasn't been shown to cut police is somehow defunding police and schools?
Not for lack of trying. As with who tried to steal the 2020 election, can we at least get our parties straight as to who actually has been actively trying to defund the police forces in this nation?
We certainly can get our facts straight: It was Democrats that promoted it and then passed cuts. They were pushed by their left flank to specifically target and remove funding for police departments. In some cases they came very close to actually disbanding their police forces altogether:
Portland City Council defunds police bureau by $15 million
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/defunding-portland-police-city-council-budget-15-million-cuts/283-239c5e3a-cfed-4dce-8775-d2c52a9df9aa
Minneapolis City Council Members Pledge to Abolish the Police Department
https://truthout.org/articles/minneapolis-city-council-members-pledge-to-abolish-the-police-department/
Minneapolis City Council votes to cut nearly $8 million from the police budget
(After finding out that they were unable to actually abolish the police, the City Counsel settled for defunding them)
https://www.koco.com/article/minneapolis-city-council-votes-to-cut-nearly-dollar8-million-from-the-police-budget/34926896
After a summer of protests, Seattle cuts police department budget by nearly 17%
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/after-summer-protests-seattle-cuts-police-department-budget-nearly-17-n1248795
...and the best retort you could come up with was a non-specific funding bill that didn't cut any police or teachers.
Okay then. Have a nice day.
A general problem I've observed in these places is that the Democrats tried to include in their coalition the local gangs, failing to properly appreciate that they were, after all, criminal organizations, and didn't have remotely the same interests as the general population.
What the fuck are you talking about? How did you observe that?
Or are you taking criminal justice reform as some kind of sop to criminal gangs.
Reliably crazy speculation about liberals real plans.
We stole the election (it was MAGA). We are the pedophiles (it was MAGA). We contracted with gangs. Logic dictates that in a couple of weeks we will all find out that MAGA has been working with gangs all along. This whole charade is highly amusing to me. Next thing you know they'll say Biden wrote the Epstein files
Arm, I have come to the conclusion: Let them.
If Blue State paradises want to defund police, go for it. By all means, do what you like. Do not ask for federal funds to bail you out later.
For multiple reasons we have to save the left from themselves on policing. We cannot turn a blind eye to anarchy and expect to call ourselves a nation.
Think about the LA riots in the 60's. It was walled off and surrounded by police and national guard with orders to shoot on sight. The authorities let the LAX Watts residents 'wild' for a few days, and dissipate.
The Republic managed to survive; so did LAX.
Let them stew and marinate in their own shit.
Yes, let us do that. Also, let us keep the billions of dollars we pay into the federal government in excess of what we consume. Let states like Texas live on their own wealth and stop taking welfare from Blue states.
"Defund the Police" was not a horrible idea as much as it was a horrible slogan. Certainly there are many things that could be better and more cheaply done that using the police. Removing police as first responders is a good example as is the elimination of most no knock raids and searches.
The problem is that it was both a horrible slogan AND a horrible idea, because, surprise, a lot of the people using the slogan actually meant it.
Evergreen: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html
You nutpicking sure is evergreen.
The NYT forced out two of its editors over an editorial by Sen. Tom Cotton published just days before that opinion piece. Who got the sack as a result of the NYT publishing the piece you think came from a "nut"?
That perspective was mainstream on the left. Own it, and grow out of reacting to every criticism with denialism.
So a NYT opinion from 2020 piece is a surefire tell of what Dems broadly believe today.
That kind of old that's what nutpicking looks like.
I'm not going to offer some Steve Bannon 2020 piece as the GOP position either, without some additional tie.
Was it the first time M4e wrote "was" that confused you about past tense? Or was it the second time?
And no, nutpicking is not at all the same as pointing out a past mainstream view that you would like to disclaim. No new goalposts!, to coin a phrase.
pointing out a past mainstream view
You did not do this. The NYT opinion page is not the definer of the mainstream of the Democrats or the left.
Clearly not -- after all, they force editors out the door for publishing non-mainstream-Democrat perspectives, such as that of Sen. Cotton.
They've recently published him again, so are they mainstream Democratic Party arbiters now, or did that stop? And when they at first published Cotton, were they on vacation from their important mainstream defining duties, and then snapped back to it when there was public outcry?
You may need to go back and come in again.
"The NYT opinion page is not the definer of the mainstream of the Democrats or the left."
You are correct that there is no such "definer of [blah] [blah] [blah]."
You got a better place to take a sample read on current Democratic opinion than the NY Times?
Your arguments are so consistently beside the point.
There's polling if you want that. Or elections.
You wouldn't like if I picked some random WSJ editorial and said that Spoke For The Republicans.
So quit defending that here.
A single data point, but among my Democratic peers online, there is no love lost with the NYT.
The NY Times is not "a single data point." It's a major news gatherer that presents many data points from different perspectives. And it's not a point of view; it aggregates and presents many points of view.
It makes no difference whether your "Democratic peers online" like the Times. The Times is a good place to go to get a lot of the gist of what Democrats across the country are currently harping on.
Again...You got a better place to take a sample read on current Democratic opinion than the NY Times? I don't think so.
(Yes. I know. You shouldn't rely on just one source.)
The NY Times is not "a single data point." It's a major news gatherer that presents many data points from different perspectives. And it's not a point of view; it aggregates and presents many points of view
It’s a presenter of many points of view from many perspectives but also
The Times is a good place to go to get a lot of the gist of what Democrats across the country are currently harping on.
Also, the NYT has endorsed the Dem Presidential Candidate correctly 3 out of 6 times recently.
"The NYT opinion page is not the definer of the mainstream of the Democrats"
Its a reflection.
And quite a reflection it is.
It’s almost like a US Senator > a self described activist.
I think this comment elides an inconvenient truth: Democrats who didn't support defunding the police were unable to escape the damage caused by those who did.
It was a slogan, and in some instances it was actually policy. The loudest voices among the left and the media were like Wile E. Coyote in discovering that they had run off of a cliff.
https://youtu.be/_O4a4pdiF5g
You had about 4 people point out you don’t have any idea what’s going on and have what defund the police is wrong.
Your chosen ignorance lets you make old law and order arguments more at home 30 years ago than today.
As I've pointed out to you before, an argumentum ad populum is a fallacy. All five of you (I'm including you with the other four (?) here) plus anyone else who believes otherwise is just wrong. Ground control to Major Tom: please put your helmet on and return to Earth.
Pretending that "Defund the Police" didn't happen and it meant something other than what the words say are the same sort of head-in-sand mentality that cost Democrats the election in November.
Removing police as first responders? I guess you want ambulance/fire/rescue out there directing traffic around a fire or accident. Not sure how that makes it cheaper or better.
I’m not sure how much more a no-knock raid cost than a normal raid. Maybe you do. Maybe you aren’t a fan of no-knock raids. I am not either, but it’s not based on cost.
Who else do you want conducting searches. Seriously? Maybe hire a group of pre-law dropouts at minimum wage and hope they don’t steal the drugs you were looking for.
Look, there were definitely some prison/police abolitionists on the left. But the majority of people are talking about things like when your neighbor or whatever is having some sort of mental health crisis, you should call mental health professionals rather than cops. You know, people trained to deal with those having mental health crises, rather than people trained to shoot whoever makes them feel scared.
So who is determining the mental health crisis will not turn violent? The 911 caller? What do they say? “My next door neighbor is going crazy, but just send a social worker.”
Even if I bought your suggestion, that is one example. I am not sure how much funding that saves. Especially if your are talking hiring credentialed psychologists. They make less than police officers?
This is not training the police have.
It is training mental crisis response teams should have.
This is less about savings and more about avoiding people getting shot.
So who is determining the mental health crisis will not turn violent?
The person trained to deal with crazy people to keep them from turning violent. As opposed to the person whose training is in using violence.
Almost certainly, yes, but that wasn't supposed to be a proposal to save money; it was supposed to be a proposal to lessen violence. It was "take money from the police budget and give it to the mental health budget."
It did not.
It did. The number of police officers employed by the major cities is public information.
Yes, and thousands of officers were not cut in Los Angeles. Or in any other U.S. city.
It did. Thousands of police officers were cut in major cities in the US. In LA alone over 1000 were cut. In 2019, LA had over 10,000 sworn officers. Today, it's under 9,000.
Public information.
Trump sends nukes to UK as Putin deadline looms
For the first time in over a decade, the US has reportedly deployed nuclear weapons on British soil as President Donald Trump intensifies his 50-day ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to cease the war in Ukraine.
Several B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bombs have been transported to RAF Lakenheath, in Suffolk, UK, which is believed to have a newly built storage facility, last week.
These weapons are speculated to have been flown from the US Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, in New Mexico, marking the return of a US nuclear deterrent to UK soil for the first time since 2008.
The 2008 removal of around 110 nuclear warheads signified the end of a 54-year presence of US nukes in the UK, dating back to the Cold War, as the global superpower reduces its nuclear arsenal across Europe, reports the Express.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-sends-nukes-to-uk-as-putin-deadline-looms/ar-AA1IZ7u8?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=687e36a5fe1a4e65806ea9d73f8637d8&ei=63
Welp, it was nice chatting with everyone.
An interesting bit of saber rattling. I suspect this is in retaliation for Russia staging nukes in Belarus.
That should be "deployed *additional* nukes" since we've had them there for decades.
The TRO requiring HHS to pay Planned Parenthood contrary to a statutory prohibition on such funding expires today. Briefing on a preliminary injunction appears to be complete. I expect a new order very soon.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70721678/planned-parenthood-federation-of-america-inc-v-kennedy/
The Trump administration has not yet filed a notice of appeal in the case. I think the administration will have a strong argument against a preliminary injunction: getting paid only after several years of expensive litigation is not normally considered irreparable harm.
Yeah, it appears that the government is eager to get this case away from this district court judge, and by not rushing to appeal theyre signalling that the district court's rushed TRO was wrongly granted.
On July 11, 2025 the court dissolved the Temporary Restraining Order issued on July 7, 2025, and entered an Amended Temporary Restraining Order, which also remains in effect until today. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.286600/gov.uscourts.mad.286600.46.0.pdf
It appears that a preliminary injunction hearing was held on this past Friday, July 18, 2025.
Yesterday the District Court granted the Plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction in part, with all other issues to remain under advisement. The Court prohibited enforcement of Section 71113 against Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and other Planned Parenthood Federation of America Members who will not provide abortion services as of October 1, 2025, or for which the total amount of Federal and State expenditures under the Medicaid program under title XIX of the Social Security Act for medical assistance furnished in fiscal year 2023 made directly to them did not exceed $800,000. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.286600/gov.uscourts.mad.286600.62.0_1.pdf
The Court further ordered the Defendants to take all steps necessary to ensure that Medicaid funding continues to be disbursed in the customary manner and timeframes to Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and other Planned Parenthood Federation of America Members who will not provide abortion services as of October 1, 2025, or for which the total amount of Federal and State expenditures under the Medicaid program under Title XIX of the Social Security Act for medical assistance furnished in fiscal year 2023 made directly to them did not exceed $800,000.
Separate and apart from the legal issues involved, defunding Planned Parenthood should make no sense who fatuously label themselves as "pro-life." With or without federal funding, PP is going to perform abortions where that is legal. Without such funding, however, the organization cannot as efficiently perform its non-abortion services which prevent or preclude the need for abortions.
At page 7 of her memorandum order, Judge Talwani observed:
Planned Parenthood Members offer various services depending on the needs of their communities. Id. ¶ 22. However, typical services include providing contraception (including long-acting reversible contraceptives), contraceptive counseling, physical exams, cancer screening, hormone therapy, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (“STIs”), pregnancy testing and counseling, vasectomies, and colposcopies. Id. Members also provide abortion where it is legal. Id. Abortions comprise approximately 4% of Planned Parenthood Members’ services nationwide. Id. ¶ 23.
That organization's providing and promoting contraception results in a net reduction of abortions -- an embryo or fetus which is never conceived will never be aborted.
Planned Parenthood, whose clinics are mostly located in geographic areas underserved by other medical facilities, also provides wellness and preventive care, including vaccines and prenatal and postpartum services. https://www.plannedparenthood.org/get-care/our-services This helps to ensure healthier mothers and healthier infants.
There is nothing "pro-life" about defunding Planned Parenthood.
Given the increasing tendency of ICE, SWAT teams, etc. to conduct raids completely unidentified - masks, unmarked vehicles, plainclothes or uniforms with no evidence of official status - I am surprised that we haven’t gotten cases when people shot at officers and then successfully claimed self-defense.
Perhaps nobody has survived to do so - people who fire at officers get shot, not arrested.
But if it happened, and the person survived, it seems to me a self-defense defense would be perfectly good. The defense is based on what the person knows at the time, not what is absolutely true. And if law enforcement officers fail to identify themselves, and if they don’t conduct themselves in ways people expect law enforcement officers to behave, it seems to me they run the risk that people will reasonably mistake them for criminals and simply kill them. And do so perfectly lawfully. Qualified immunity, after all, is a defense to lawsuits in court. But it doesn’t change the common law, which lets people lawfully kill people that they reasonably perceive as attempting to invade their homes or kidnap them.
While qualified immunity may mean that law enforcement officers suffer no legal consequences if they engage in secret, completely anonymous raids, masked, in plainclothes, with unmarked vehicles, and with no identification of their status, it seems to me that the common law permits practical consequences.
Even before these current tactics, there were examples of citizens shooting at cops entering their houses (usually no-knock raids) if they didn't realize they were police officers. Sometimes they're prosecuted, but this article has several examples of people who weren't prosecuted or were acquitted because they were acting in self defense:
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/10/28/texas-police-raid-stand-your-ground
Breonna Taylor's boyfriend is maybe the most famous example of this: he was initially charged for attempted murder, but a judge threw out the charge.
I'd imagine similar logic would apply if a bunch of unarmed people show up and try to kidnap you without making it clear they're law enforcement officers, especially in states with Castle Doctrines.
Wow. Not a mere jury acquittal on self-defense grounds. A state Court of Appeals decision directing a trial court to issue a writ of prohibition prohibiting a person who shot at and wounded police officers conducting a raid from being prosecuted on grounds of statutory Stand Your Ground immunity, prior to the commencement of any trial.
I wonder if this case made police in Florida more inclined to identify themselves and wear uniforms when conducting raids.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/fl-district-court-of-appeal/2060119.html
Yes, I've heard of occasional cases where that happens. It really helps if you can prove they didn't identify themselves, or allow you a chance to confirm they really were police.
Typically in such cases the biggest challenge isn't winning in court, it's surviving to REACH the court.
A major purpose of search warrants is to inform the subject of the search that the person presenting it actually IS legally entitled to enter and conduct the search. IIRC, in the founding era somebody attempting to conduct a search without one would be treated as a burglar even if you could identify them as an officer of the law.
As such, most of the point of the warrant is lost if you don't present it.
This might be partly due to the types of people these raids largely target (non-criminal) and the places they target them (work, school, court.) Law-abiding residents (undocumented entry aside) don't normally take weapons with them when they drop off their kids at preschool, go to work, or attend their legal immigration appointment in a courthouse.
On Friday, during an interview on CNBC, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, claimed that President Trump was among the most popular people to ever occupy the Oval Office.
The president is the most maligned and attacked political figure in the history of American politics. There’s no question about it, but he’s also the most resilient. And you see at the same time, his approval ratings are skyrocketing. CNN had a story, I think, a day or two ago. He was at 90 percent approval rating. There’s never been a president that high….
The House speaker’s assertion that Trump was at a “90 percent approval rating” is the kind of falsehood you might hear from authoritarian state media. It is a servile display of allegiance as much as it is an attempt to mislead viewers. It’s Johnson telling Trump he is his man….
My immediate thought upon seeing Johnson’s performance on air was to reflect on this relationship between self-respect and self-government. To tell such egregious lies for the approval of some higher authority is to prostrate yourself — to show, for the world to see, your lack of self-respect. This becomes all the more egregious when one considers that Mike Johnson, as speaker of the House of Representatives, is more an equal to the president, in the American constitutional order, than he is a subordinate. He should have the dignity, at least, to act as a peer and not a supplicant.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/opinion/mike-johnson-trump-approval-rating.html
Like running from a Grizzly Bear, “45/47” didn’t have to be “Popular” just more “Popular” than Hillary Rodman and Common-law. That “Electoral College Interstate Compact” doesn’t look so good anymore does it?
Weirdo deflects.
Learn something new every day. To conceptualize the energy in a nucleus, and why nuclear bombs are so much more energetic than chemical reactions, there's the strong force holding neutrons and protons together.
The binding energy, needed to overcome it and split them apart, is on the order of a lobbed baseball, for one single pair. That's what the YouTube video said, anyway. A macroscopically observable amount of energy for stuff on nano scale.
Yes, I’ve heard it’s even called the “Strong Nuke-ular Force”
And it doesn't take many fissioning atoms to cause a massive amount of destruction. In the Hiroshima explosion, less than 1kg of Uranium actually underwent fission.
That's equivalent to a sphere of Uranium a little over 4 centimeters in diameter, or 1.6 inches across.
I never forgot when pointed out the amount of mass converted to energy in a nuclear blast was about a paper clip's worth. I assume that's all the strong force binding energy being released?
Mostly binding energy, yes. Some of it is going to from be kinetic energy that the previously bound atoms/neutrons had and a tiny amount from radioactive decay from highly radioactive isotopes.
You need about 1Mev, 1 million electron volts. That sounds like a lot, until you realize that it's ONE electron going through a million volt difference, and it takes 6.02*10^23 electrons to make up a coulomb. So it's actually 1/(6.02*10^17) watt seconds, a very tiny amount of energy.
The very highest energy cosmic rays have about the momentum of a lobbed baseball, in one particle. Maybe your youtube video was based of an AI account of things, I checked and Gemini makes that mistake.
I recall it also said 230 Newtons, and used the baseball analogy for that. I looked that up and it's a lot more than a lobbed baseball. Something funny is going on.
If it makes a difference, they were discussing two neutrons in the context of a neutron star. From what I understand with two protons the 1M is what's left over from subtracting the electrical repulsion force from the strong force.
Well, yes, that probably does make a difference, I was talking about the amount of energy necessary to initiate fission of a U235 atom. Which is so close to splitting anyway that it does so spontaneously at an appreciable rate.
A newton is a unit of force, not energy or momentum. I could easily believe that the peak force (EM minus strong nuclear) between two protons got that high as they were pushed together, (It's a lot higher than that inside the nucleus!) but it wouldn't represent much energy, (Force TIMES distance.) because that force would only be reached when they were femtometers apart, so the distance they'd be moving through would be vanishingly short.
All the forces inside the nucleus are insanely high by human standards, because the forces we deal with in our daily lives are mostly either almost completely canceled out EM forces, or gravitational forces, and gravity is a REALLY weak force. But they still don't represent huge amounts of energy for a single nucleus, because those forces are only that high over absurdly short distances, and drop off to being tiny well before you even get out to the diameter of an atom.
The article interviews a reporter who wrote a well-received book on Jeffrey Epstein.
The bad actors here, the people that he sent some of these victims to, they know who they are. And he really only used this whole sex-trafficking operation as a way to pressure them to help him in some way, to either invest in, or give them his money to invest, or just to make money. So as long as they were cooperating with him and doing that, there was no reason to say, I have you on a list. That wasn’t the way he operated.
But that said, there are still names in those files, of people who were involved with Epstein’s operation. He could never have done this all by himself. He had people. We know he had assistants. We know he had lawyers. We know he had people helping him get visas for women that he was recruiting from overseas countries. So there was a network here of people that were working for him and helping him.
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/07/the-line-between-conspiracy-theory-and-actual-conspiracy/683569/
She suggests the so-called "client list" was likely more of a "black book" sort of thing -- a list of people he was involved with as a whole.
And it was these copies that were printed out from a computer, and every time Epstein or Maxwell met somebody important, they would get their contact information, and they would put it in this file.
LOL
A rolodex, he's describing a computer based rolodex.
And we've already seen Epstein's!
Still though, I favor release of all of it. Grand Jury transcripts, video footage, pictures: all of it. The predators that molested young girls must be publicly identified, and prosecuted.
Jes Staley, Reid Hoffman, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and a host of other sick men and women should face social and financial ostracism, if not incarceration.
If not for those currently in power, that might happen. Although, given the known depravity Trump has already been forgiven for by his fans, I don't hold out much hope that he'd be treated the same as others despite his deep connections to Epstein.
1. Grand jury transcripts cannot be released as a matter of law. 2. Video footage/pictures (of children being abused) cannot be released as a matter of law, because it's child porn. 3. The predators that molested young girls were publicly identified and prosecuted already.
"That said, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), which enshrines the traditional rule of grand jury secrecy, establishes exceptions that allow grand jury materials (such as transcripts of witness testimony) to be disclosed to certain outside parties in limited circumstances. Some of these exceptions allow for automatic disclosure—to necessary government personnel, for example—but many of the exceptions require that disclosure be authorized by the federal district court in the jurisdiction where the jury is convened, as the court ultimately has some degree of “supervisory authority” over the grand jury. Rule 6(e)(3)(E) provides in relevant part that the court “may authorize disclosure . . . of a grand-jury matter” (1) preliminarily to or in connection with a judicial proceeding; (2) to a defendant who shows grounds may exist to dismiss the indictment because of something that occurred before the grand jury; or (3) at the request of the government, to a foreign court or prosecutor or to an “appropriate” state, state-subdivision, Indian tribal, military, or foreign government official for the purpose of enforcing or investigating a violation of the respective jurisdiction’s criminal law. Persons seeking court authorization under one of these exceptions must make a “strong showing of particularized need” that “outweighs the public interest in secrecy.” 1. Grand jury transcripts cannot be released as a matter of law. ???
Oh, JFC; it was a comment on a blog, not a legal brief. Yes, of course grand jury transcripts can be disclosed; otherwise, there wouldn't be much point to them in the first place. The context was clear: grand jury transcripts cannot be released as a matter of law for reasons like this. There's no "it's hurting the president in the polls" provision of Rule 6(e).
DOJ’s plan to release “pertinent” grand jury records is a classic limited hangout, as discussed.
But I wonder if there is something else being accomplished here by the Trump people: is this also a way to screw up a potential Maxwell retrial?
Here is what Maurene Comey had to say about unsealing these records and the effect it might have on a future retrial:
https://legacy.www.documentcloud.org/documents/25997444-comeydecradarfoia013024/
Obviously an outright pardon of Maxwell would be politically untenable— and Ghislane clearly knows where certain bodies are buried. She and her lawyers have also been pretty chatty recently, saying things like “Trump honors his deals” (I know… LOL… but, still). She still has an active appeal, and one of the possible outcomes is a new trial. Is the release of this GJ info designed to make a re-trial difficult or impossible, thereby effectively pardoning Ms Maxwell?
"effectively pardoning Ms Maxwell?"
Funny how you guys are now the conspiracy theorists about Epstein.
You got something you want to say about the filing I linked to? The section discussing FOIA and likely interference with Maxwell’s trial begins on p. 5.
Obviously intent is unproven but I think it’s fairly safe to say that the release of Epstein GJ materials would have some effect on a potential Maxwell retrial, for the reasons laid out by Ms. Comey in December 2023. Why is Trump risking the conviction of a sex trafficker?
You got me, Trump read a Maureen Comey declaration filed 18 months ago and triggered a plan to get Maxwell freed.
How could I be so blind!
“Trump read”
Hahaha. Now THERE’S a wild conspiracy theory!
Deflections noted.
Comey laid out 18 months ago (before this all blew up again) why releasing this info would impair the ability of prosecutors to secure a conviction on retrial. Trump wants to do it anyways. Why is Trump risking the conviction of a sex trafficker?
I think the only thing more damaging to MAGA than this sudden pretending the Epstein files don't exist, would be if The List gets produced and Trump's name is NOT on it. Think about it...
"Deflections noted."
Mocking is not deflection.
All your Epstein comments are what we used to call "concern trolling". Un-serious.
Same with all the other suddenly concerned libs here.
Your orders are to no longer talk about the Epstein/Trump child trafficking, Bob. So why are you even commenting here? You just run along and leave the matter to us adult Libs. What with the child sex rings among the Christian Nationalist FLDS and Southern Baptists, us Libs have plenty of crime to deal with without your input
Estragon : "Hahaha. Now THERE’S a wild conspiracy theory!"
1. I disagree your theory is the most credible. Though possible, it requires Trump to do some of that "fourth-dimensional chess" the cult always posits to explain DJT's latest child-like behavior. To my eye he's just making noise, assuming his cultists are too stupid and easily conned to notice.
2. I agree the idea of Trump reading is hilarious. There's a reason he paid people to take his tests in college. There's a reason his national security team has to remake his daily briefing in some close to cartoon form.
Doing a limited hangout with friendly NYT reporters is hardly 4-D chess. It’s standard crisis management/distraction.
"Funny how you guys are now the conspiracy theorists about Epstein."
Yeah, it's been pretty fun. I see why you rubes traffic so much in them
Compare and Contrast:
Meet Luis Leon, an 82-year-old Chilean national granted political asylum almost forty years ago after fleeing the Pinochet regime. One month ago he went to an ICE appointment to replace his green card after losing his wallet. He was then "disappeared" without notice, process, or legal rights. His wife was held at the ICE office for ten hours before being released, but was told nothing of Leon's fate. The family begged for answers from the authorities, but their pleas were ignored. It wasn't until a month later the old man was found in Guatemala. There are some accounts this was "caused" by a decades old DUI charge, but ICE has yet to provide any "explanation". Besides, we already know the answer: America's new gestapo has a quota of "subhumans" they must disappear into the gulag, and the man scheduled to process Luis Leon's green card replacement was running light on his numbers. The old man was just unlucky, which has consequences when the rule of law has been completely abandoned. An account in Leon's hometown Pennsylvania newspaper:
https://www.mcall.com/2025/07/18/luis-leon-allentown-grandfather-ice-guatemala/
Now meet José Ramón Hernández Reyes. He's has been convicted of of multiple felonies and illegally reentered the United States five separate times after being deported. He also pleaded guilty to "deadly conduct" in connection with a incident where he drunkenly fired a gun in a Texas community.
Unlike the old man, Reyes was released early from federal prison to a halfway house and granted permission to stay in the U.S. for at least a year. That's because he's committing perjury at the behest of Dear Leader. After three separate statements given to an ICE agent saying there was no sign or evidence Kilmar Abrego Garcia was involved with gangs, that agent was replaced and Reyes changed his story 180-degrees for his new handler. Everyone then made out like a bandit: The new ICE guy got the story he dictated; Reyes was released from prison and his deportation proceedings canceled; Dear Leader got "evidence" for his promised show trial (however much it reeks).
The only one who didn't come out ahead was the original ICE agent, who resigned from the agency after this was all packaged and engineered. The guy didn't think crude frames were part of job description. Some people are such delicate flowers, eh?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/us/politics/kilmar-abrego-garcia-trump-deportations.html
You're going to want to pump the brakes for your rage over Luis Leon, especially since the source for the initial report is just the family.
ICE said it was still checking to see if they ever had him. Guatemala says they never received him. A related NGO said no one matching Leon's description was sent to Guatemala.
Here's the Morning Call's latest story from today:
https://www.mcall.com/2025/07/21/guatemala-denies-that-chilean-green-card-holder-was-deported-from-the-united-states/
As I posted last week, sometimes it's better to just sit back and let the facts come out before you make a judgement.
Where's the fun in that?
The man went into an ICE office by appointment to get a replacement green card. He never came out. Given the security at those places, it's a real locked-room mystery, eh?
If we're weighing the odds of (a) illegal thug actions by ICE, vs (b) some convoluted conspiracy by the family that has no purpose, no objective, and no chance not to be immediately exposed, I feel comfortable with the current reporting by the Allentown, PA local paper, national news outlets and international press. If you can come up with ANY evidence that better explains why a Chilean national and U.S. green card holder disappeared from here and reappeared in Guatemala, I'm all ears. Something better than a self-serving Guatemalan press release, that is....
You're quite willing to take things at face value when reporting now indicates the opposite. There's already a growing list of questions here as the family's initial story is growing holes pretty darn fast:
The man went into an ICE office by appointment to get a replacement green card.
Why would Leon go into ICE offices for this? ICE doesn't do Green Cards. Those are done by US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Furthermore, replacement cards are handled by mail. This is like going into the Post Office and demanding to see the Attorney General to report a crime.
ICE handles removals, so if he actually was going to an ICE office then he may have already been going through removal proceedings and may have been far along down the process if he was actually sent to Guatemala.
Obviously you won't just take my word for it, but here's the USCIS website about applying for a replacement card:
https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/after-we-grant-your-green-card/replace-your-green-card.
He never came out.
Is there anything else here except the family's shifting claims? What about Luis Leon himself, who was found by his family but after going to renew his Green Card now inexplicably does not want to return?
This story is fishy. No convoluted conspiracy is necessary because this wouldn't be the first time that family members lied to others for their own interests. At this point I'm wondering if this story ever happened, but I'll reserve final judgement for the future when more facts come in.
I recall many here getting very upset about an explosive story of a young American citizen child that was deported along with her non-citizen mother without due process. Except it came out that the mother chose to take the kid with her instead of having the kid remain in the USA (the ACLU withdrew their lawsuit). ICE followed the law but the family lied to the press, the ACLU, and through their attorneys, the courts.
One quick point: I said ICE office. The actual news story description was "Philadelphia immigration office". As an aside, I've actually been there since my ex-wife was German and we once had our own appointment sometime about 25yrs ago. As for your "handle by mail" shtick, is it possible Leon's urgency precluded waiting on the mail? Given the current situation, that would be understandable.
Those quibbles aside, I'm perfectly happy waiting for additional details to emerge and settle matters. It's just within the realm of the possible your freakish fantasies (conspiracy details to follow) are true.
In contrast, it's entirely commonplace that ICE acted with zero legal process, callous indifference to his family, and pointlessly cruel brute force. These days, that's as likely as the sun rising in the east.
25 years ago you may have had to go in to get a replacement green card, but that isn't necessary today.
We were there as a preliminary to getting her initial green card. Our interview was wholly genial but - while there - a young woman exploded in frustration screaming, "you can't treat people like this".
This was back when the immigration bureaucracy was just callous and unaccountable. Now they have the freedom of unhampered criminality and a religion of pointless cruelty.
Anecdotes are amusing.
grb, when my wife obtained citizenship, I must say that the INS bureaucracy at that time was formidable. It was terrible. And we had been married for years at that point, with children. It was a 5 year arduous process. She has now been a naturalized citizen for 25 years. We celebrate that anniversary every year.
I have considerable empathy for legal green card holders married to American citizens that face hurdles and obstacles in becoming American citizens. The reality is, there are many, many bad actors who try to fraudulently game the system that make it horrible for everyone else.
As for illegal aliens, they don't respect our laws, or our people, or our way of life. They need to leave immediately. And if they are stupid enough to try and become violent with ICE officers, they are taking their lives into their hands.
Yeah, I've been through that, and the actual immigration process I've described as jumping through flaming hoops set at right angles to each other. OTOH, she went though the naturalization process substantially more recently than your wife, and it wasn't remotely that bad. Went pretty smoothly, actually.
To be fair, our process went smoothly as well. But the immigration bureaucracy has long been notorious for being accountable to nobody & contemptuous of simple courtesy and basic service norms.
(and that was before they were told they could break the law without consequence)
I think it goes smoothly if there aren't any complications at all, but it's not designed to be forgiving of complications.
The thing that gave me trouble was that the US embassy had given us the directions and fee schedule for the financee visa, but didn't bother telling us the fee schedule was about to change. So I sent in the requested pile of documents via express mail, along with a check that was $5 too little, and they spent more than that $5 sending it all back to me by parcel post, along with a request for a larger check... That delayed things several months.
Brett Bellmore : "I think it goes smoothly if there aren't any complications at all, but it's not designed to be forgiving of complications."
That's as good a way to describe it as any. Before we met, my Ex went down to Costa Rica as part of the (U.S.) graduate program she was in. When everybody else came back, she was stuck there over a week trying to get permission to reenter the country.
After we were together bur pre-marriage, we took a trip to Berlin to see her folks. First day there, we delivered the critical paperwork for her return to the U.S. Embassy, then returned back on multiple occasions to confirm it was processed. After nearly two weeks our flight was approaching and we were told the paper was forwarded to Köln and still undone. Frantically, we discussed renting a car and driving there, but I first went into the embassy as a citizen and talked to an official. The paper was there all along and they processed it in twenty minutes.
Never a dull moment.....
Commenter_XY : "As for illegal aliens, they don't respect our laws, or our people, or our way of life."
1. "they don't respect our laws" : Fair enuff. As "illegal" immigrants, that point is incontestable to a minor degree.
2. "or our people" : Citation needed. I've met several people who were (or possibly were) illegal. My personal experience runs the exact opposite. They were generous, warmhearted & friendly.
3. "or our way of life" : Now here you're just wrong. The vast majority of illegal immigrants come here and work their asses off to try and get ahead, just like immigrants have done throughout United States history. It's closer to say they embody our way of life.
As for illegal aliens, they don't respect our laws, or our people, or our way of life.
Yes, they do. The vast majority are law-abiding, more so than citizens. We should deport MAGA, and keep the illegal aliens.
Illegal aliens respect our laws by being here unlawfully?
That's a new one!
Because you say so doesn't make it so.
The above comment was directed at David Notimportant. Also, if they are illegal aliens, how do they support themselves without breaking further laws?
"As for your "handle by mail" shtick, is it possible Leon's urgency precluded waiting on the mail?"
You don't have to do this via snail mail:
"USCIS allows lawful permanent residents to file Form I-90, Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card, online to renew or replace their green cards. The online filing system provides a convenient way to apply, track your case, and communicate with USCIS."
Thanks, I didn't catch that.
It resolves nothing, but here's Snope's summary:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/07/21/luis-leon-ice-guatemala/
However, we could not independently confirm the details of Leon's alleged deportation as reported by The Morning Call. Since the publication of Leon's story, the Guatemalan Institute of Migration, the Guatemalan immigration service, said in a statement that no persons matching the "name, age and nationality" in reports about Leon's alleged deportation had entered Guatemala. Attempts to contact Leon's family to confirm reported details proved unsuccessful.
Yeah, as I said, this story is smelling fishier and fishier as time goes on. Now the family isn't talking to the media?
tylertusta : "Yeah, as I said, this story is smelling fishier and fishier as time goes on"
Sigh. You may be right. My original hesitation to question the story was based on (a) the recent record of ICE, and (b) the lack of any motive for the family plus the certainty their lies would quickly be exposed if it was a fraud.
But those reasons are starting to fray. Yes, ICE is frequently criminal and dishonesty these days, but this case would be a dissimilar kind of dishonesty compared to their previous lies. On the other side, I could see this as a way for the family to hustle some charitable donations. It would still be destined to quickly fall apart, but criminals are frequently stupid.
So I guess we must wait and see. If I was wrong, this might be the ugliest mea culpa since I predicted Putin wouldn't fully invade Ukraine (I didn't think that criminal was that stupid either).
As someone who is very frequently wrong, tylertusta, how do you handle these situations?
I totally get it, man.
As I said at the very beginning of this comment chain, what I try to do is just wait. If there's a news story that is just going to make me angry- and I mean really angry, those are the ones I've found that I'm most likely to miss the potential holes in the story where you should be questioning the veracity of what's being claimed. I'll just put a pin in it and come back to the story a day or even a week later.
Caution is the better part of valor when dealing with viral news stories.
Except it came out that the mother chose to take the kid with her instead of having the kid remain in the USA
That did not, in fact, "come out." ICE claimed that, and the family denied it.
the ACLU withdrew their lawsuit).
The suit was to block the illegal deportation. Once it had happened, the lawyers for the mother said that she wasn't sure how she wanted to proceed, and so they were going to withdraw it for now.
They denied it so hard that they withdrew their lawsuit where they made their claims.
The suit was to block the illegal deportation
I know you're like me in that you've been watching district court judges demand the return of illegal aliens to the tune of "turn the planes around." Yet here we have an American Citizen having no legal recourse where they must withdraw their lawsuit at the same time that illegal aliens have every basis under the sun to remain in court.
Riiiiiight.
Incorrect, of course. The lawsuit did not make such claims; it could not because it was filed before the deportation. The lawsuit was intended to prevent the deportation. Once said deportation was confirmed to be complete, they had to decide how they wanted to proceed. And they chose to withdraw the lawsuit at that time, as opposed to, e.g., amending it to seek damages.
"Once it had happened, the lawyers for the mother said that she wasn't sure how she wanted to proceed, and so they were going to withdraw it for now."
I suppose if they want to, they can send her back and go after the government for travel expenses.
Don't forget this one too:
"Los Angeles woman federally charged for allegedly making false claim that she was kidnapped by ICE, DOJ says"
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/woman-federally-charged-false-claims-kidnapping/
"Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, 41, is charged in a federal criminal complaint with conspiracy and making false statements to federal officials.
The complaint cites a June 30 news conference held by Calderon's family and attorneys from Movement Legal, where they claimed that five days before, Calderon had been kidnapped by "masked men" at a Jack in the Box restaurant parking lot in downtown LA and taken to the border in San Ysidro.
The family also claimed that while there, Calderon was presented to "[a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] staffer" and given voluntary self-deportation paperwork. When she allegedly refused to sign the paperwork, she was "punished" and sent to a warehouse at an undisclosed location.
The complaint also alleges that Calderon's daughter set up a GoFundMe page to help her."
You think that is relevant to any of the above?
Same as ‘hoaxes of racist crimes exist, which means racism is no longer a thing’
Hot Pursuit was a lesser 1980s John Cusack film.
More recently, it is the name of a 2015 film starring Reese Witherspoon and Sofía Vergara.
Vergara was in the middle of her Modern Family run. She played largely to type, if with a bit of an edge, when we find out her ultimate motivations.
Reese Witherspoon plays more against type as a by-the-books, uptight police officer. She goes along to escort a witness, which, as movies tell us, is generally a dangerous job.
And, there are some dangerous and serious moments in this film. These films often are curious affairs. We are not supposed to take them too seriously. OTOH, people are put at risk and might be killed. Deep down, it is not a laughing matter. Others would say not to take things seriously. It's only a movie. Oh well.
This film is largely a comedy, as the mismatched duo flees multiple bad guys. It's an amusing lark of a movie, not to be taken very seriously. The leads are good. Witherspoon is quite good in a change-of-pace role. Jim Gaffigan has an amusing cameo.
I'm still pushing the Soderbergh film, Black Bag, released earlier this year. It's a spy film that is tight, sleek, well-acted & well-directed adult entertainment. Everything is made with crisp assurance, right down to the jazzy film score. The leads, Michael Fassbender & Cate Blanchett, were both perfect for their roles. The supporting cast (suspects in the nefarious macguffin-style plot) were all uniformly excellent. It's not a film with deep pretensions, but had an extra layer of meaning in the two lead's absolute devotion to each other and their marriage. This is contrasted to the lies & betrayals inherent in the spy biz - something manifested in the relationships of every other character.
If you get a chance, see't.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/black_bag
What was up with the Cate Blanchett movie, Rumours?!? Seriously, WTF??
Ofcom recommends legislation requiring YouTube to promote videos from British public service broadcasters. The agency also recommends that said broadcasters make more shows that people want to watch. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyl07nekzxo
Been a "Perry Mason" fan from way back ("TOS" not the more recent re-boot) MeTV runs 2 episodes a day, without cutting out the credits (or even more important, the Opening) Saw "The Case of the Fancy Figures" recently, interesting, as the Black Frank Silvera played the Father of 2 Very WASP-y characters, had almost every PM staple, Paul Drake chases down Microfilm Shops in San Fran Sissy-Co, PM meets with client in San Quentin, and the client's wife turns out to be not really be his wife (that pesky former marriage she never took care of) so she CAN testify against him.... Tried diagramming this one, looks like the friggin Krebs Cycle....(Google it, you Biochemical Illiterates)
Frank "Burger loses again...."
I wonder if people ever consider that Perry Mason was not really a lawyer TV show as much as it was a detective TV show. Perry Mason never got his client off by winning the case on law but rather he won by finding the real criminal.
They wanted Perry to be a sympathetic character, after all. Getting guilty people off on a technicality would hardly have made the series popular.
Who is "they"? It was a series of books.
David Nieporent : "Who is "they"? It was a series of books."
Which I read copiously of as a small boy. Probably there was matter in them inappropriate for my age, but I was too young to notice. For a while it made me consider a life in law. I have a vague memory of pulling down a law book from the reference section of my elementary school library, but fortunately THAT proved a tedious read and (whew!) the whole lawyer bit was a disaster averted.
I've tried twice in recent years to read one of Erle Stanley's books, including one (Howling Dog) that I had a wisp of a positive memory from dating back over 50yrs. Neither would take.
I read every single one, probably in my tweens. Given the time period when they were written, there certainly wasn't inappropriate content, unless the very idea of an extramarital affair described in no detail at all was too much for your sensibilities. (Well, also, lots of murder, LOL.) I loved mysteries and I loved law (though there wasn't actually a whole lot of law in them. even if the mysteries were always solved in the courtroom.)
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On the MAGA Gospel front: - Jerome Powell has had a criminal referral over fraud committed during the $2.5B, yes BILLION, renovation of the Federal Reserve Building - Obama and his conspirators are still within the statute of limitations - Obama does not have presidential immunity because his acts were not lawful - Let's pray that justice is coming
If you were gullible, easily duped, & deeply stupid - i.e, a right-winger - LexAquilia's ranting might seem impressive. But back on Planet Earth:
1. The "criminal referral" was by a nobody loser GOP congresswomen, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. Nobody with greater brain wattage than a chihuahua considers it anything other than a joke. No doubt she was wearing her big floppy shoes and bright red rubber nose when she "referred". LexAquilia may be impressed as he bounces up & down yelping like a chihuahua. No one else is.
2. Obama may be within the statute of limitations, but so what? After five years of watching the Right claim they'd finally found dirt on Joe Biden - only to humiliate themselves every time - normal people are used to the sordid spectacle of cult-types wallowing in their masturbatory fantasies in public.
It's ugly and cringle-worthy to watch, but ultimately harmless.....
Do you think it's any different than the "It's Mueller Time" Trump v1.0 era of the BlueAnons or the times leading up to the 2024 election?
Also, Trump 2.0 is different than Trump 1.0. The Deep State was still in control during 1.0.
They're getting dismantled in 2.0. Good riddance.
Geez ..... The above is some kind of weird cult language that normal people can't follow. It sounds like gibberish to us. Maybe if we had a chihuahua on hand to translate......
What do you mean "we," do you have a mouse in your pocket?
And here grb acts like the Robert Mueller investigation didn't exist and wasn't a day-in and day-out source of hopium for the TDS'ers.
Who appointed Mueller??
The Deep State after they maneuvered to get Jeff Sessions to recuse.
D'uh
You might not know that since it happened more recently than 1940 when all your cultural references are from.
"If you were gullible, easily duped, & deeply stupid - i.e, a right-winger...."
So, that's you shtick, anyone who disagrees with you politically is stupid. Got it.
The "criminal referral" was by a nobody loser GOP congresswomen, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla.
Yes, but the larger issue is that "criminal referral" isn't a thing.
What does the Library of Congress say about that? https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10879
>Although there is no established or accepted definition, a congressional criminal referral is a non-binding communication to the DOJ, made either by a congressional committee or by individual Members of Congress, that specifically articulates evidence supporting the possible commission of a crime and asks the DOJ to either conduct further investigation or otherwise pursue the matter.
In your face, DavidNotImportant
Yes, that's what I said: "no established or accepted definition." "Non-binding communication." It's just someone telling DOJ (or any other law enforcement agency) that they think someone should be investigated or prosecuted. Any person can do that, and it has no legal effect of any sort.
LexAquilia, what criminal offense do you claim that "Obama and his conspirators" committed, as to which immunity does not attach pursuant to Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024)?
If you claim that a criminal conspiracy existed, what was the conspiratorial objective? Who are Obama's co-conspirators? When was the conspiracy formed? When, if at all, did the conspiracy end? What overt acts furthered the conspiracy?
Please be specific.
Will this question be on the final, professor?
Dude, read the materials for yourself and stop sea-lioning like a choad.
It's all over everywhere.
No, Lex. It's your (lame) assertion. It's up to you to support it.
If you can't do that, just say so. I promise that won't break your damn keyboard.
Bleating "It's all over everywhere" just reinforces the Big Lie. As one infamous dictator wrote:
Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favorable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favorable to its own side. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must, of course, be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Nazi_Germany (ellipsis in original; footnote omitted)
not guilty, I am not going to ingest all the source materials and then regurgitate like some big momma bird in your required format and spoon feed it to you so your baby bird brain can understand it.
You are just sea-lioning and it's stupid.
>Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
I'm not "feigning" anything, LexAquilia. I have parsed and discussed the elements of criminal conspiracy -- as to which I am most assuredly not ignorant, nor do I claim to be -- and I have challenged the proponents of accusations of criminal conduct to show how, in your words upthread:
- Obama and his conspirators are still within the statute of limitations - Obama does not have presidential immunity because his acts were not lawful
I don't care one whit whether the discussion is civil or raucous -- either way, you show yourself to be both stupid and ignorant.
As the comedian Ron White is fond of saying, "You can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take. There's not a class you can go to. Stupid is FO'EVAH!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDvQ77JP8nw
It's weird that the guy who refuses to read original documents calls the guy "stupid" that he's begging to read them and synthesize them on his behalf.
lmao wtf
I'm not the one making feckless, scurrilous allegations against President Obama, LexAquilia.
I'm the one calling bullshit on those who do.
A criminal offense is composed of essential elements. The burden is on the accuser to show beyond a reasonable doubt that each such element is met by the accused's conduct.
If you don't like that, tough noogie. Innuendo is where to put an Italian suppository.
I'm just repeating claims our government officials are making.
Where has any government official alleged that President Obama entered into any criminal conspiracy, Redhead? Please be specific.
The one making feckless, scurrilous accusations was Obama. But he was too chickenshit to do it directly, so he had his henchmen do it instead.
The five-year clock on conspiracy charges starts from the last overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy (when an overt act is required) or from the point where the object of the conspiracy is either achieved or abandoned (when no one act is required). The conspiracy in the case continues to this day.
And you continue to lie about basic principles of law, in furtherance of this company and other Democrat efforts to survey the United States. The prosecutor is the one who had the burden of proving each element beyond a reasonable doubt. Your unreasonable objections are irrelevant both to public debate and to courts.
The conspiracy in the case continues to this day.
OMG!
I see the House is considering a subpoena.
Get a lawyer, Barrack.
Michael P, what was the conspiratorial objective? Who are the conspirators? When was the conspiracy formed? When, if at all, did the conspiracy end? What overt acts furthered the conspiracy? Which of those overt acts, if any, occurred during the past five years?
If you've got bupkis, man up and admit that.
1) It's Barack, not Barrack. Pretty bad that you can't even spell a president's name. 2) He is a lawyer, but I'm quite certain he already has one, also.
“He who serves as his own counsel has a fool for a lawyer and a jackass for a client” Attributed to A. Lincoln. In the case of Barrrrack that seems absolutely true.
It's Barack, not Barrack. Pretty bad that you can't even spell a president's name.
Yeah, what kind of clueless knucklehead would commit that kind of typo? "President Barrack Obama carries a cake into the Oval Office birthday party . . ."
The "original documents" don't show anything criminal, corrupt, or interesting.
I think he was referred for lying under oath by Rep Luna. She says he testified they simplified the renovation that did not include marble finishes, water features, and a rooftop garden. The completion included all of the above. Why they need a rooftop terrace is crazy. The building is on Constitution Ave literally across the street from Constitution Gardens and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Govt waste at its finest!
“Obama does not have presidential immunity because his acts were not lawful”
….what do you think an immunity is?
it's indisputable that obama and biden were gay lovers in the oval office. the only question is, who was the pitcher and who was the catcher? was obama pitching his chocolate love stick deep into biden's cornhole, or was obama grabbing the edge of the desk while biden plowed him good and hard, leaving a massive load of creepy old man cream to drip out in front of moochelle?
So hot.
- Obama does not have presidential immunity because his acts were not lawful
This is beyond retarded. Immunity is precisely for unlawful acts.
The White House is removing the Wall Street Journal from the pool of reporters covering the president’s weekend trip to Scotland, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told POLITICO.
The move follows the Journal’s report alleging that President Donald Trump sent a sexually suggestive message to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.Trump has denied the existence of the letter and POLITICO has not verified it.
Must be a coincidence.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/21/journal-removed-white-house-pool-epstein-00465548
It's not a coincidence at all. A shitty paper with poor editorial standards and an axe to grind shouldn't be taking space in the most prestigious assignments.
It's called Quality Control.
A lot of media silencing going on...definitely not 1938
Thinnest skinned, fee-fees always hurt President.
Scorecard on Trump Administration court cases on X. May 1 - June 23 (yeah, an odd choice of a date window):
District Courts 82-5 against Courts of Appeal 15-7 against Supreme Court 15-1 for
https://x.com/EWess92/status/1947342324243054771?t=qp3uWLYVDoi8Gr1fW25wcA&s=19
The Supreme Court is making new law for Trump. When they don’t shadow docket for inscrutable reasons.
Lower Courts are following the precedents as they must.
This data is supposed to imply that the lower courts are consistently getting it “wrong” or are bending the law to rule against Trump. But that presupposes that the majority on SCOTUS are actually better judges and lawyers than every other judge and lawyer and that they are right by virtue of their talent and wisdom rather than their position. This is a completely unwarranted assumption and it’s actually pretty embarrassing for SCOTUS to constantly reverse lower courts on a wide range of topics. Basically shows that they’re high on their own supply and don’t care about the views of their just as talented colleagues.
As Justice Jackson said, SCOTUS is final not because they are infallible, they are infallible because they are final.
But yeah, this shows more that the Court has abruptly changed course on a lot of stuff than lower courts are some vast liberal conspiracy.
I love how you lean into the dumbest, most activist justice on the bench.
You must be the only person left that still respects her diary entries and treats them as real opinions.
Who’s going to tell him?
The person is likely not a big fan of Robert Jackson.
Not sure about Howell E. Jackson.
What about Samuel L Jackson??
LOL, this is absolutely priceless
A bunch of grey boxes below me, I must've really nailed that homo to the wall with that comment! lmao
Nailing homos to the wall a big deal for Lex!
Why do so many Right-wing whack-jobs have a feverous obsession with male gay sex? Oh, they're "against" it to be sure, but you can never be sure whether that isn't just an excuse to talk about it constantly - often with details that are included for no discernable reason besides inner compulsive need.
"A bunch of grey boxes below me, I must've really nailed that homo to the wall with that comment! lmao"
No, Lex, the commenters are amazed that even you would confuse Justice Robert Jackson, whose opinion concurring in result in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 540 (1953), observed, " We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final[,]" with Justice Katanji Brown Jackson.
The two are as different as night and day. Or should I say, as different as LexAquila and erudition?
ITT:
BlueAnons with their heads in the sand.
FLDS - the Christian sect is basically a child trafficking cult Southern Baptists - "Sexual abuse cases in Southern Baptist churches" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_cases_in_Southern_Baptist_churches I see Vance and you have appropriated the Catholic Church lately...need I say more? Madison Cawthorn (the wierdo) and Matt Gaetz - child traffickers Trump/Epstein
I don't know what more proof you insurrectionists need to identify that your entire MAGA movement is just a gigantic child sex trafficking ring.
Like Mr/Mrs. Malika has been saying recently: accusations are confessions with you folk.
Libs stole the election. But it was MAGA Libs are the pedophiles. But it was MAGA
Every time you open your traps...it means YOU
And don't even get me started on your exploitation of the Jews. I'll happily lay it out for you
I am not surprised that Judge Talwani enjoined an appropriation bill but still. I can't say I have read a more dangerous opinion. If court a can actually make congress fund something, I don't think it can be said we have an elected government.
Good to see Hunter Biden is “working the steps” Looks like he’s on “Anger” (and Crack)
When do weird, sad MAGA Shamans get to the punctuation step?
Frank, that is not what “working the steps” means.
Are you perhaps confusing it with the Kübler-Ross stages of grief?
Do you perhaps lack the part of the Brain that recognizes Sarcasm?
You're being too gracious thinking he lacks only part of his Brain.
It sure looks like the admin is still running scared on the Epstein front.
The open and unhidden marching orders going out for everyone to turn on a dime and say no big deal did not go as intended.
The release of the 2016 Hillary Clinton emails files, The MLK assassination files, AND DNI saying she's gonna seek indictments (as DMN pointed out, announcing is the opposite of doing in this arena).
I'm skeptical there's anything more we'll learn on the Epstein front. But it is funny! Hard to say with bitter lunatics...maybe it'll work. Maybe calling the media lapdogs to heel will suck the oxygen out. Some on here sure got distracted with dangling Obama's scalp before them for the umpteenth time. Or MLK for some of the oldsters.
Who knows? It is fun watching them dance though.
They will never release all the files because it will implicate Israel and Mossad.
What does Washington DC love more than America? Israel. Who does Trump love more than MAGA? MIGA.
This is what ZOG looks like.
Groundhog Day continues at the VC.
FYI, the FBI released their 2024 Active Shooter Report.
In 2024, the FBI designated 24 active shooter incidents in the United States, a 50% decrease from 2023 (48). There were 106 casualties (23 killed and 83 wounded), a 57% decrease from 2023 (244).
The 24 active shooter incidents in 2024 occurred in 19 states and represent five of the seven location categories
https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/reports-and-publications/2024-active-shooter-report/view
How many of those shooters were trannies? Half?
Hugely out of proportion to their fraction of the population, but, no, not half.
These incidents tend to go through a regular several year cycle. Driven by the copycat effect, I suspect: A spontaneous event gets publicized, which prompts a spate of copycat crimes, but this results in the people interested in doing this sort of thing, always a tiny, tiny fraction of the population, being used up, and the rate drops for a while, until you build up enough new perpetrators to get another copycat cascade.
As a result you get regular ups and downs in the number of events, considerably in excess of what you'd expect from just random variation.
Looking at these data, it seems like the copycat cycle is a relatively new situation though.
We'll see in about 4 - 5 years.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/811487/number-of-mass-shootings-in-the-us/
Ghislaine Maxwell did not commit suicide.
It does look like she's forced Trump into a deal. A pardon for swearing up and down that Trump has nothing to do with her old boss?
Ozzy Osbourne dead at 76. R.I.P.
He had Parkinsons disease but didn't disclose that until relatively recently.
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Jacob Swartz | 9.5.2025 5:20 PM
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