Last Call For Sour Grapes

Bernie Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver is outright accusing the Democratic National Committee and chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz of fraud in the 2016 Democratic primary process, demanding that "someone" be "held accountable" for the information contained in the leak of DNC emails stolen by Russian hackers and released by WikiLeaks.

Weaver said the emails showed misconduct at the highest level of the staff within the party and that he believed there would be more emails leaked, which would "reinforce" that the party had "its fingers on the scale."

"Everybody is disappointed that much of what we felt was happening at the DNC was in fact happening, that you had in this case a clear example of the DNC taking sides and looking to place negative information into the political process.

"We have an electoral process. The DNC, by its charter, is required to be neutral among the candidates. Clearly it was not," Weaver said, responding for the first time to the growing controversy. "We had obviously pointed that out in a number of instances prior to this, and these emails just bear that out."

Another member of Sanders' staff, Rania Batrice put it this way: "Everything our fans have been saying -- and they were beaten down for and called conspiracy theorists -- and now it's in black and white."

I've been asked to comment on this by Sanders supporters here, and my response is this:

Are you serious?

Are we seriously going to let Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump play Sanders supporters like the idiots you are here over this non-story?  Leave it Trump and the Russians to actually make me have to defend Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a person whose resignation I've called for on numerous occasions as DNC chair, when it's painfully clear Weaver is more than happy to take a bit from this poison apple in order to try to give Putin his preferred candidate in November.

Let me be absolute about this: this was an operation by the Russians to steal email from the Democrats in order to sow discord, and a purposeful leak in order to try to wreck the DNC convention.  The timing was 100% on purpose here, and if you can't see how ridiculously obvious this is, I can't help you.

Christ.

The Gunmerican Disease Spreads

Friday saw yet another mass shooting, this time in Munich, Germany. Nine people were killed in a McDonald's near a shopping center by what looks like an 18-year-old obsessed with mass shootings. Plenty of those in the news, yes?

The 18-year-old gunman who killed nine people in Munich was obsessed with mass shootings but had no known links to the Islamic State group, German police say.

Written material on such attacks was found in his room. Munich's police chief spoke of links to the massacre by Norway's Anders Behring Breivik.

The gunman, who had dual German-Iranian nationality, later killed himself.

His name has not been officially released but he is being named locally as David Sonboly.

He had a 9mm Glock pistol and 300 bullets in his rucksack.

Police do not yet know how the weapon was acquired, but said he had no permit for it and the serial number had been obliterated.

They are investigating whether he may have lured his victims through a Facebook invitation to the McDonald's restaurant where he launched his attack on Friday evening.

 He ended up injuring 27 more, some critically, including kids.

The disease is spreading around the world, it seems.

Voted Off The Island

So apparently Virginia's Supreme Court has no problem taking the right to vote away from thousands of people.

The Supreme Court of Virginia on Friday struck down Gov. Terry McAuliffe's sweeping executive order that restored voting rights to more than 206,000 Virginia felons.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court declared McAuliffe's order unconstitutional, saying it amounts to a unilateral rewrite and suspension of the state's policy of lifetime disenfranchisement for felons.

The court ordered the Virginia Department of Elections to "cancel the registration of all felons who have been invalidly registered" under McAuliffe's April 22 executive order and subsequent orders. As of this week, 11,662 felons had registered to vote under McAuliffe's orders. The court gave a cancellation deadline of Aug. 25.

"Never before have any of the prior 71 Virginia Governors issued a clemency order of any kind — including pardons, reprieves, commutations, and restoration orders — to a class of unnamed felons without regard for the nature of the crimes or any other individual circumstances relevant to the request," Chief Justice Donald W. Lemons wrote in the majority opinion.

"To be sure, no Governor of this Commonwealth, until now, has even suggested that such a power exists. And the only Governors who have seriously considered the question concluded that no such power exists."

The ruling is a potentially fatal blow to an executive action that could have been a highlight of McAuliffe's gubernatorial legacy.

"He spent 90 days bragging about this being the high point of his governorship," said Del. Robert B. Bell, R-Albemarle, who's running for attorney general in 2017. "And the court made it very clear that he acted unconstitutionally."

Governors have no unilateral right of clemency?  Well, okay then.

Maybe it's because the majority of the people getting back their right to vote under McAuliffe's executive order are black?  Just going to put that out there.

Virginia has always kinda had a problem with that.