Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

Meanwhile, Attorney General Bill Barr is gearing up for yet another investigation into the Mueller investigation.

Attorney General William Barr has assembled a team to review controversial counterintelligence decisions made by Justice Department and FBI officials, including actions taken during the probe of the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, according to a person familiar with the matter.

This indicates that Barr is looking into allegations that Republican lawmakers have been pursuing for more than a year -- that the investigation into President Donald Trump and possible collusion with Russia was tainted at the start by anti-Trump bias in the FBI and Justice Department.

“I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” Barr told a House panel on Tuesday.

Barr’s inquiry is separate from a long-running investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters. The FBI declined to comment. Barr said he expected the inspector general’s work to be completed by May or June.

The issue came up as Barr testified before a Democratic-controlled House Appropriations subcommittee. Most of the questioning concerned demands for Barr to give lawmakers Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s full report and the evidence behind it. But the issue is sure to get more attention when Barr appears Wednesday before the panel’s GOP-led Senate counterpart. 

Republican Lindsey Graham, who’s a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has already pledged to pursue the issue in the Judiciary Committee he leads.

The practical upshot of all this is that by July or so, Barr and Graham expect to have the Mueller report safely buried in legal limbo awaiting SCOTUS, and that the IG report and Senate investigation will both call for a special counsel, which Barr will appoint, to investigate Carter Page's FISA applications and the FBI and invariably the Clintons and Loretta Lynch, and all this circus will be drowning out the Democrats for the next year and change.

They really believe they've won now, and that they will get away with it, right into a second Trump term with no holds barred and no accountability whatsoever, depending on the twin threats of a Trump police state and armed Trump voters to keep liberals in line.

That's their plan, anyway.  How successful that will be is up to us.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Texas Republicans want to overturn Roe v Wade so badly they're willing to outright criminalize abortion procedures in the state and subject both medical professionals and women choosing to end their pregnancy to the death penalty, because nothing says "pro-life" like capital punishment. 

House Bill 896 would criminalize abortion and classify it as a homicide. Women who have abortions could be sentenced to the death penalty. 

How essentially one is okay with subjecting a woman to the death penalty for the exact… to do to her the exact same thing that one is alleging that she is doing to a child,” said State Rep. Victoria Neave, a Democrat from Dallas.

“I think it’s important to remember that if a drunk driver kills a pregnant woman, they get charged twice. If you murder a pregnant woman, you get charged twice. So I’m not specifically criminalizing women. What I’m doing is equalizing the law,” said State Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a Republican from Arlington. 

The hearing in the House Judiciary Committee wrapped up at 3 a.m. Tuesday. 

The bill now goes before the full Texas House for debate.

As soon as Roe is struck down by the Roberts Court, this will become law in several red states.  And ladies in red states?  If you conceive, you will bear the child or die.  And the best part is in a state that already has one of the highest maternal death rates in the country, higher than several "third-world" nations, criminalizing abortion is a death sentence anyway.

The road to Gilead is paved with Republicans "equalizing the law".

Out In The Real World

Outside the social media bubble that Democratic activists are in, Democrats who will decide the primaries are increasingly moderate if not conservative, believe political correctness is a major issue, don't follow the news, and most of all, are far more likely to be black voters.

Perhaps the most telling poll of the Democratic primary season hasn’t been about the Democratic primary at all — but about the fallout from a 35-year-old racist photo on a yearbook page. Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was pummeled on social media after the revelation, and virtually every Democratic presidential candidate demanded his resignation.

Yet the majority of ordinary Democrats in Virginia said Mr. Northam should remain in office, according to a Washington Post/Schar School polla week later. And black Democrats were likelier than white ones to say Mr. Northam should remain.

Today’s Democratic Party is increasingly perceived as dominated by its “woke” left wing. But the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate.

The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically don’t post political content online, according to data from the Hidden Tribes Project. This latter group has the numbers to decide the Democratic presidential nomination in favor of a relatively moderate establishment favorite, as it has often done in the past.

Even these results might understate the leftward lean of the most politically active, Democratic Twitter users, who often engage with political journalists and can have a powerful effect in shaping the conventional wisdom. In an informal poll of Democrats on one of our Twitter accounts on Monday, about 80 percent said they were liberal, and a similar percentage said they had a college degree. Only 20 percent said political correctness was a problem, and only 2 percent said they were black.

The relative moderation of Democrats who are not sharing their political thoughts on social media, and therefore of Democrats as a whole, makes it less surprising that Virginia Democrats tolerated Mr. Northam’s yearbook page. It makes it easier to imagine how Joe Biden might not merely survive questions about whether he touched women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, but might even emerge essentially unscathed.

It also helps explain why recent polls show that a majority of Democrats would rather see the party become more moderate than move leftward, even as progressives clamor for a Green New Deal or Medicare for all.

Obama understood this.  Clinton did too.  Social media/beltway bubble activists are not the base, and Bernie Sanders found that out the hard way.  And if you think the nominee is going to be from the far left of the party, I've got news for you.

They won't be.   For all the yelling I do on here, I'm under no illusions that somehow I'm going to make a difference in a red state other than my own voice and my own vote.

StupidiNews!

• Acting Homeland Security Secretary Claire Grady is resigning immediately, less than 24 hours after Kirstjen Nielsen, this clears the way for Trump to name Kevin McAleenan to run DHS.
• The Dalai Lama has been released from a New Delhi hospital after a "routine" check-in for chest pains, the 83-year-old Buddhist monk is reportedly in "good" condition.
• Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be on his way to an unprecedented fifth term after Tuesday's national elections, despite facing indictment for corruption and bribery.
• Illinois lawmakers are moving forward with Democratic Gov. J.D. Pritzker's plan to scrap the state's flat tax, the bill would put the question of a 4.95% tax on the state's wealthiest 3% before voters.
• China's government is considering a total ban on using computers in cryptocurrency mining, Beijing currently dominates the global production of Bitcoin and other blockchain-based currencies.