Last Call For Bitter Home Alabama, Con't

Alabama GOP Gov. Robert Bentley has now resigned effective today, as the impeachment scandal involving his affair with Rebekah Mason, a former staffer, and his use of state police resources to try to cover up the affair has led his own party to begin formal impeachment hearings.  Rather than face ouster and a trial over felony corruption charges, Bentley is resigning and pleading to misdemeanor charges instead.

Embattled Gov. Robert Bentley this afternoon agreed to a deal that forced him to resign the office of governor, plead guilty to two misdemeanors and agree to never again hold public office.

The extraordinary agreement, hammered out over the weekend and throughout the day by lawyers for the Alabama Attorney General's office and Bentley attorneys Chuck Malone and Cooper Shattuck, requires Bentley to repay the state for misused funds and perform community service.

In response, the state attorney general's office will not pursue other felonies against Bentley, including those referred for prosecution last week by the Alabama Ethics Commission.

Bentley, as part of the deal, was expected to:

• Resign immediately and leave public life.
• Plead guilty to two campaign violations: converting campaign contributions for personal gain and failing to report campaign contributions.
• Serve one year of probation.
• Perform 100 hours of unpaid community service as a physician.
• Repay the $8,912 his campaign spent on the legal fees of former aide Rebekah Mason, whose involvement with Bentley led to the charges against him.
• Forfeit all the money in his campaign account, which is currently $36,912. The money will go into state coffers.

In response, the state attorney general's office will not pursue other felonies against Bentley, including those referred for prosecution last week by the Alabama Ethics Commission.

Whether the governor faces jail time on the misdemeanors - which are technically punishable by as much as a year in prison - is left to the judge who will sentence him. It is unlikely he will serve time.

He won't.  But the misdemeanors mean Bentley won't pull a Blagojevich and contest a conviction on state ethics laws.  Considering Bentley was facing the rest of his natural life in prison at age 77, he's taking the easy out his party is giving him.  100 hours of community service is a cakewalk compared to what he was going to get.

Another crooked Republican goes down.  Hopefully he won't be the last to resign in 2017.

A Double Helping Of The House Special, Please

I've talked about Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia running for now HHS Secretary Tom Price's seat in Georgia's 6th in what would be a major upset, but it turns out there's another special election for now CIA Director Mike Pompeo's old seat in Kansas' 4th district tomorrow, and Democrat James Thompson actually has an outside shot in that race.  Roll Call's Nathan Gonzales:

Former Capitol Hill aide Jon Ossoff, 30, is riding the Democratic energy stemming from Trump’s election and raised an astounding $8.3 million in the first three months of the year — a staggering amount for a House candidate. For some perspective, former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland took an entire cycle to raise $10.7 million for his Ohio Senate race last year.

In the beginning, Ossoff looked like a long shot to make the June 20 runoff, but now he has the opportunity to win the race outright by winning a majority in the open primary later this month. Democrats are dominating early voting and, most importantly, could be changing the makeup of the electorate by turning out low propensity voters.

Most public and private polls have Ossoff in the low to mid-40s and leading the field by a wide margin. Based on his position, the difficulty of accurately predicting special election turnout, the polls’ margins of error, and Ossoff’s financial advantage, we are changing the Inside Elections rating from Lean Republican to Toss-Up.

You can read the full analysis about the rating change in the April 7 issue of Inside Elections.

Republicans are also trying to avoid an unexpected problem in Kansas’ 4th District, where Mike Pompeo vacated his seat to become CIA director.

The April 11 race between Republican state Treasurer Ron Estes and Democrat James Thompson, a lawyer, hasn’t received a lot of attention, but the National Republican Congressional Committee recently began an ad campaign in a district Trump carried comfortably in November. National and local Democrats haven’t put in much time or effort into the race, but there is some GOP concern about the enthusiasm gap and the quality of the Estes campaign.

We’re changing the Inside Elections rating from Solid Republican to Likely Republican. You can read more analysis on the race in the April 7 issue of Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.

Ossoff has a better shot than Thompson does, but Pompeo won this bright-red district by 25-30 points since 2010. the fact that Thompson might make the race closer that double-digits is news in and of itself.

And of course the 800-pound orangutan in the room is Trump's sub-35% approval rating.  If he's worth this big of a shift towards the Democrats so far in special elections less than three months in, by the time November 2018 rolls around it could be a bloodbath for Team Red.

In related news I see this morning that Tom Perez and Ben Ray Lujan are already having a positive effect on bringing back the "50 states and every seat" strategy as the Democrats are making moves to flip seats in that reddest of red enclaves in California, Orange County.

Stay tuned, especially in Georgia.

Crime and Punishment And Punishment And Punishment

Keep in mind that the goal of "criminal justice reform" to the Trump regime and AG Jeff Sessions is not reversing Obama-era improvements or even going back to the bad old days of the Clinton crime bill, but to fully profitize the prison industry and create a permanent criminal underclass source for forced labor for local and state governments out of poor black and Hispanic kids destined to be stuffed into the prison pipeline from day one.   And the man you want to look to for this is Jeff Sessions's new point man on criminal justice, Steven Cook.

When the Obama administration launched a sweeping policy to reduce harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, rave reviews came from across the political spectrum. Civil rights groups and the Koch brothers praised Obama for his efforts, saying he was making the criminal justice system more humane.

But there was one person who watched these developments with some horror. Steven H. Cook, a former street cop who became a federal prosecutor based in Knoxville, Tenn., saw nothing wrong with how the system worked — not the life sentences for drug charges, not the huge growth of the prison population. And he went everywhere — Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, congressional hearings, public panels — to spread a different gospel.

“The federal criminal justice system simply is not broken. In fact, it’s working exactly as designed,” Cook said at a criminal justice panel at The Washington Post last year.

The Obama administration largely ignored Cook, who was then president of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. But he won’t be overlooked anymore.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has brought Cook into his inner circle at the Justice Department, appointing him to be one of his top lieutenants to help undo the criminal justice policies of Obama and former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. As Sessions has traveled to different cities to preach his tough-on-crime philosophy, Cook has been at his side.

Sessions has yet to announce specific policy changes, but Cook’s new perch speaks volumes about where the Justice Department is headed.

Law enforcement officials say that Sessions and Cook are preparing a plan to prosecute more drug and gun cases and pursue mandatory minimum sentences. The two men are eager to bring back the national crime strategy of the 1980s and ’90s from the peak of the drug war, an approach that had fallen out of favor in recent years as minority communities grappled with the effects of mass incarceration.

Crime is near historic lows in the United States, but Sessions says that the spike in homicides in several cities, including Chicago, is a harbinger of a “dangerous new trend” in America that requires a tough response.

If you want to know what's coming to America's cities in the next few years, think a Ferguson, Missouri in every state and you're starting to get the picture.  Turning drug possession crimes into felonies makes it easier to disenfranchise them, as well as control them.  This "dangerous new trend" is something Trump has been pushing for years, the idea that urban centers full of blue voters are somehow lawless hellholes that need massive police presences.

It's an old story, but the stakes are much higher now.

StupidiNews!

• Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will declare a state of emergency in the wake of the Palm Sunday bombings of two Coptic Christian churches by ISIS that killed at least 49.
• Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will be sworn in today in Washington DC after Senate Republicans both refused hearings for Obama's nominee and changed filibuster rules.
• Greek PM Alexis Tsipras agrees with Germany that Athens needs to implement more austerity measures before additional EU debt relief can be obtained.
• The upcoming French presidential election now appears to be a four-way race as left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon is gaining support in recent polls.
• Adidas wants to sell running shoes with 3-D printed soles with a process that could allow the German athletic wear company to make and sell 100,000 pairs in 2018.

Last Call For Advising A Shakeup

Looks like former FOX talking head K.T. McFarland is out as Deputy National Security Adviser, having been given the ambassadorship to Singapore as a consolation prize.

K. T. McFarland has been asked to step down as deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump after less than three months and is expected to be nominated as ambassador to Singapore, according to a person familiar with White House personnel moves.

The departure of the 65-year-old former Fox News commentator comes as Trump’s second National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, puts his own stamp on the National Security Council after taking over in February from retired General Michael Flynn.

McFarland proved not to be a good fit at the NSC, the person said, adding that Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was involved in the decision as well.

Her removal follows a reorganization of the NSC in the past week that removed Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor, from the principals committee, the Cabinet-level interagency forum that advises the president on pressing security matters.

Other officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were brought back onto the committee as “regular attendees,” reversing a move made in January. The changes were outlined in a presidential memorandum dated April 4.

Former Goldman Sachs executive Dina Powell stays on as another deputy national security adviser, and a second person is expected to be named to a similar role to replace McFarland.

Keep an eye on McMaster.  If Trump's response to his dismally low approval ratings is to start a war, McMaster and Homeland Security head John Kelly will be involved along with Defense Secretary Mattis, and right now, Trump's permanent focus on "winners" means if they deliver for him, they'll keep being the ones Trump listens to.

In other words, we may be approaching the point where Trump decides to surround himself with people who can actually attempt to carry out what he wants.  That's a problem.

Bitter Home Alabama, Con't

Yesterday I talked about the link between embattled Alabama GOP Gov. Robert Bentley's impeachment scandal and the move by the staffer he was having an affair with to close drivers' license offices in predominately black counties in the state in order to make it harder to get voter IDs.  Bentley is in a lot of trouble, and now the impeachment proceedings against him will get underway starting this week.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled on Saturday that impeachment proceedings against Governor Robert Bentley can start next week, halting a court order that had blocked hearings stemming from his relationship with a former aide.

Bentley, a 74-year-old Republican, has battled impeachment efforts over the last year and has defied calls from political leaders that he stand down.

The 7-0 decision by the high court allows impeachment proceedings to begin in the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee on Monday even as justices consider new filings in the case.

Bentley, who is in his second term, is accused of inappropriate use of state resources. His troubles began last year when recordings surfaced of him making suggestive remarks to a former adviser, Rebekah Mason, before his wife of 50 years filed for divorce in August 2015.

Bentley has denied having a physical affair with Mason, who is married. She resigned as questions about the pair's relationship began to dominate Alabama politics.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court stayed a temporary restraining order issued by a circuit court judge on Friday. The order had halted the impeachment process until hearings could be held on Bentley's claim that lawmakers did not give enough time to present an adequate defense.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Mike Jones hailed the decision, saying in a statement, "This is a great day for the Constitution of Alabama."

The Judiciary Committee will make a recommendation to the full House on whether to impeach Bentley.

Even Republicans want Bentley gone, and it seems difficult to imagine how he survives this now that it's gotten to the point of actual impeachment proceedings being led by his own party, when that party has supermajorities in both the state House and Senate.  If they wanted Bentley to stay, they could have made this vanish at any point.

We'll see where this goes.

Sunday Long Read: The Man Who Can't Shut Up

Coming from North Carolina, being a college basketball fan is in my blood, I grew up in a place where the ACC Tournament meant elementary school teachers would bring out the TVs so we could watch for a while because nobody was paying attention to class anyway with one earbud hidden up our jacket sleeves for the second half of winter.

And the voice and face I've connected to college basketball all my life is ESPN's legendary broadcaster Dick Vitale, who has been the play-by-play firehose of praise for "diaper dandies"and "primetime players" since I could dribble a ball.  And in the age of social media, the 77-year-old Dickie V is even happier...and louder...than ever.

At Le Colonne, an Italian restaurant in Sarasota, Florida, there’s a young woman who sits near the outdoor hostess stand and sings karaoke. One Sunday night last month, she was drowned out by a bald man at a nearby table, who was performing his own hits from the ’80s, the ’90s, and today.

“Hi, everybody! Dick Vitale here. What a night in college hoops!”

For nearly four decades, Vitale has looked into the red light of an ESPN TV camera and spoken those words. Tonight, he was looking into his smart phone, recording a video for Instagram. Howie Schwab, the former ESPN producer and star of Stump the Schwab, held Vitale’s phone aloft. Lorraine, Vitale’s wife of 46 years, looked on with the indulgent expression of someone who has seen many dinners — and even life itself — come to a halt so her husband can talk.

To date, the marriage of 70-something sports announcers and social media has mostly been a loveless one. Brent Musburger told me his sons discourage him from logging on at night after he’s had a few drinks. But for Vitale, who is 77, social media provides two things he desperately craves.

One is a microphone that no producer can switch off. Vitale used to do color commentary only on college basketball. Now, he does color on his own life.

“Hey, baby,” Vitale said in a March Periscope video he recorded in the lobby of the Bellagio hotel. “Just arrived. Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas …” This is one of the more accomplished entries in the Vitale cinematheque. Another recent video had Vitale walking down his driveway in Sarasota while a camera swung around wildly as if it were attached to a linebacker’s helmet. “We laugh our asses off behind the scenes about how he uses the phone,” said Dave O’Brien, a frequent ESPN play-by-play partner.

The second thing Instagram and Periscope offer Vitale is more important. It’s a method for Vitale to absorb the adoration of the masses — to be held aloft digitally as he is by the Cameron Crazies. As Vitale told me, “I like the fact that I can exchange feelings with people.”

Vitale and his companions were dining in Sarasota on the first Sunday of the NCAA tournament. There were games on — including a thriller between North Carolina and Arkansas — but Vitale wasn’t watching. He seemed just as happy to meet fans. Some sports broadcasters skip restaurants to avoid the endless line of selfie seekers. Vitale eats every meal out, seven days a week, so he’ll never miss them.

On this night, Vitale brought autographed copies of his books to the restaurant, which he handed to startled admirers. “People come over and say hello,” he said. “I give ’em a book.”

One recipient was a middle-aged woman who stopped at our table after the appetizers had been cleared. She said her son had heard Vitale at one his many paid speaking gigs.

“Did he like me?” Vitale asked.

“He took a picture with you,” the woman said.

Lorraine Vitale had an idea. Vitale and the woman could take a picture, and the woman could text it to her son, thus completing a selfie circle of life in which everyone in the family had their picture taken with Dick Vitale.

Now, Vitale pointed to another woman three tables over who’d been eyeing him. “C’mere!” he said. The women told Vitale that she knew Steve Prohm, the basketball coach of Iowa State. She and Vitale took a picture, which she promised to send to Prohm, thus extending the Dickie V brand deeper into the heartland. “People are so nice,” Vitale said.

“One of the beauties of traveling and doing games with Dickie V,” said Musburger, “was the fact you never — as in ever — had to call ahead for a reservation at a restaurant. Dickie V would always lead the way. He would burst through the door, and everybody would look up and there would be smiles all around. Anybody and everybody would get us a table. Dickie V would obligingly sign all the autographs. Then it was 50–50 whether the restaurant would pick up the check or bring it to me.”

I really enjoyed this profile of the man.  He's been a part of my life since the amazing runs of the ACC teams of the early 80's, Michael Jordan and Dean Smith in 1982 and Jimmy Valvano and the Cardiac Pack the following year, and the eternal war between Duke and Carolina.  I got a kick out of this one, and yeah, I expect Dickie V will be back this winter for another season.

On And On To Pyonyang

Well now is where things start getting interesting on the North Korea front, as a carrier strike group anchored by the USS Carl Vinson is on its way to say hi to the neighbors.

A U.S. Navy strike group will be moving toward the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force, a U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday, as concerns grow about North Korea's advancing weapons program.

Earlier this month North Korea tested a liquid-fueled Scud missile which only traveled a fraction of its range.

The strike group, called Carl Vinson, includes an aircraft carrier and will make its way from Singapore toward the Korean peninsula, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity.

"We feel the increased presence is necessary," the official said, citing North Korea's worrisome behavior.

The news was first reported by Reuters.

In a statement late Saturday, the U.S. Navy's Third Fleet said the strike group had been directed to sail north, but it did not specify the destination. The military vessels will operate in the Western Pacific rather than making previously planned port visits to Australia, it added.

This year North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, have repeatedly indicated an intercontinental ballistic missile test or something similar could be coming, possibly as soon as April 15, the 105th birthday of North Korea's founding president and celebrated annually as "the Day of the Sun."

Oh good hooray!

Well at this point we've already shot at Syria, so we might as well be efficient and go harass North Korea while we're at it, right?

Look, I know this is saber-rattling at its finest and all, but frankly the odds of two unstable leaders with nuclear weapons having an incident that escalates very quickly should something go wrong is spectacularly high here.  Even if you're convinced Hillary would have taken the same actions, there's no way she would be as bugnuts as Trump is when it comes to being so obviously goaded into taking a stupid, dangerous action.

So yes, considering Trump has made the worst possible decision at every turn so far, I do not have a good feeling about this at all.

Last Call For Looney Suit Larry

Hey guys?  Just a reminder that stupid, unhelpful conspiracy theories are not the sole province of the right, as Lawrence O'Donnell floats the idea that last week's chemical strike in Syria was...Putin's doing.

A volley of U.S. cruise missiles had barely been launched into Syria before the Internet filled up with fact-free theories about the real reason for an international crisis.

A popular one on the right-most fringes: The U.S. government actually carried out the chemical weapons massacre in Syria last week — a “false flag” to trick President Trump into retaliating, thus entangling himself in a foreign war.

A slightly more convoluted strain on the left: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the chemical weapons massacre to help Trump — distracting Americans from an investigation into Trump's campaign ties to Russia by provoking the missile strike.

That theory — evidence-free — was laid out on a small anti-Trump website shortly after the missile strike.

But it went mainstream Friday night, when Lawrence O'Donnell advanced similar speculation on his MSNBC show, “The Last Word.”
“Wouldn't it be nice,” O'Donnell asked a nodding, smiling Rachel Maddow, “if it was just completely, totally, absolutely impossible to suspect that Vladimir Putin orchestrated what happened in Syria this week — so that his friend in the White House could have a big night with missiles and all the praises he's picked up over the past 24 hours?”

The theory was impossible to rule out, O'Donnell said, because of the Trump campaign's ties to the Russian government.

A few minutes later, the host elaborated on his theory under banner text: “Wag The Dog?” — recalling a similar conspiracy theory that President Bill Clinton launched missiles in 1998 to distract from his own scandal.

“It changes the conventional wisdom about the dynamic between President Trump and Vladimir Putin,” O'Donnell said. “President Trump has finally dared to do something Vladimir Putin doesn't like. It changes everything.”

O'Donnell didn't offer any evidence on his theory, promising only that “you won't hear ... proof that the scenario I've just outlined is impossible.”

Jesus hell, Larry.

It's one thing for Trump to spout nonsense, because frankly he's a chronic liar and has all the credibility of a soggy bowl of corn flakes.  But moonbat bullcrap like this, with no evidence, blurted out on cable news, well it's just as moronic when the left does it.

I'm not sure what O'Donnell is doing with this one, but it's only going to help Trump continue to erode the country's stability, especially when actual evidence exists that Putin really is a serious problem.

Knock it off, man.

Bitter Home Alabama, Con't

I've covered the two biggest messes in Alabama GOP politics, the state's GOP leadership stuck in a massive impeachment scandal that has already taken down the state's House Speaker Mike Hubbard while Gov. Robert Bentley is facing an impeachment scandal after the ridiculously failed cover-up of an affair with one of his staff, and the state's attempt to disenfranchise black voters by passing a strict voter ID law and then closing 90% of drivers' license offices in predominantly black counties, a move that generated enough national outrage that the state reversed the closings.

It turns out that Bentley's scandal and the DMV office closings have a connection, and it's Rebekah Mason, the staff member Bentley was having an affair with.

Governor Robert Bentley's former top advisor and secret paramour Rebekah Mason led a politically-motivated effort in 2015 to close 31 driver's license offices in mostly black counties, a move that embarrassed the state and was later reversed.

The decision also led to a federal investigation and drew civil rights protesters such as Jesse Jackson to the state.

Mason's role was highlighted in a 131-page report released Friday by the investigator leading impeachment efforts against Gov. Bentley, a report largely focused on the relationship between Mason and Bentley.

The report and exhibits can be found here.

According to that report, which was compiled by lead investigator Jack Sharman, it was Mason who "proposed closing multiple driver's license offices throughout the State" and asked the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to "put together a plan."

According to Sharman's report, former ALEA head Spencer Collier understood Mason's intentions were to have the plan "rolled out in a way that had limited impact on Government Bentley's political allies."

Collier, according to the report, claims he then reported the closure plan to then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's office because he was concerned about a Voting Rights Act violation.

Collier assented to the closure plan, but through the use of an "objective measure based on processed transactions per year to determine which offices to close," the report states.

The closures were estimated to save around $200,000, an extremely small savings in a General Fund that typically has annual shortfalls ranging from $100 million to $200 million.

So yeah, the Governor's mistress very much wanted to keep black people in Alabama from being able to vote, and wanted to do so in a way that "protected" her lover.  Nice lady, huh.  Meanwhile, the impeachment proceedings against Bentley continue, and the former state AG?  He's now Senator Luther Strange, Jeff Sessions's replacement.

Alabama keeps on keepin on in the corruption department.

Negasonic Teenage Warmongers

It seems that the feud between White House "evil geniuses" Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner has finally gotten the notice of Trump, and he's sick of the kids fighting in the back seat and he will turn this car around, dammit.

Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner, two warring senior White House aides, had a bury-the-hatchet meeting ordered by President Donald Trump, after arriving at Mar-a-Lago this week.

The sit-down, which was confirmed by two White House officials, was an attempt to smooth over tensions between the two men, which have dominated headlines for days. Whether the meeting was successful in creating a détente – and how long it lasts – is an open question, especially in a White House that has been dominated by infighting.

Bannon and Kushner had for months been allies. In recent weeks, though, there has been substantial discord between them. The fight, people in the administration say, centers on policy differences. Bannon, White House chief strategist, is a flame-throwing populist who formerly ran Breitbart News. He has criticized Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, for his more politically moderate approach. Kushner is suspicious of Bannon’s fiery style and has been concerned about how he’s influencing the president.

Suspicion between Bannon’s team and Kushner’s has intensified in recent days, with both sides accusing the other of planting negative stories in the media.

It's not the fact that Bannon and Kushner are acting like spoiled teenagers in a fight over who gets to be student body president, it's the fact they're doing it while they are affecting the direction of the entire United States of America.

Frankly I don't care which one of these jackasses gets grounded by dad first, the fact is the whole regime needs to go, and the sooner the better.  By 2020 there might not be an America left for these idiots to run into the ground.

It's Quite A Kushner Job If You Can Get It

The worst-vetted White House staff in modern American history continues its greatest hits, this time it's Trump's newest wonder boy and son-in-law Jared Kushner who has run afoul of the security clearance process, and once again the reason why is to hide contact with Russia.

When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, sought the top-secret security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. 

But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest. 

The omissions, which Mr. Kushner’s lawyer called an error, are particularly sensitive given the congressional and F.B.I. investigations into contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. The Senate Intelligence Committee informed the White House weeks ago that, as part of its inquiry, it planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meetings he arranged with Mr. Kislyak, including the one with Sergey N. Gorkov, a graduate of Russia’s spy school who now heads Vnesheconombank. 

Mr. Kushner’s omissions were described by people with direct knowledge of them who asked for anonymity because the questionnaire is not a public document. 

While officials can lose access to intelligence, or worse, for failing to disclose foreign contacts, the forms are often amended to address lapses. Jamie Gorelick, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, said that the questionnaire was submitted prematurely on Jan. 18, and that the next day, Mr. Kushner’s office told the F.B.I. that he would provide supplemental information. 

Mr. Kushner’s aides said he was compiling that material and would share it when the F.B.I. interviewed him. For now, they said, he has an interim security clearance. 

In a statement, Ms. Gorelick said that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the F.B.I.: “During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a point-of-contact for foreign officials trying to reach the president-elect. I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. … I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts.” No names were disclosed in that correspondence.

Surprise!  Jared Kushner is just as deep into the Russian mess as the rest of the Trump regime, if not more so because he actually knows what's going on as Trump's right-hand and being married into the family.

Why Kushner has anything remotely resembling a security clearance after, you know, actively lying to the FBI about "dozens of contacts" is a mystery to me, as is why Kushner isn't currently languishing in federal prison (which is what you or I would get if we lied to the FBI dozens of times.)

Hopefully the FBI will quickly remedy both of these glaring issues.  Keep that in mind while Trump tries to distract the world with Syria.

Syria's As A Heart Attack

Didn't even take Trump three months to get into a situation where his "leadership" failed so spectacularly on the domestic front that he pulled a "Wag The Dog" move and launched several dozen Tomahawks into a Syrian airbase.

The United States fired cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. 

In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency so far, Trump ordered the step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: directly targeting Assad's military as punishment for the chemical weapons attack which killed at least 70 people. 

That catapulted the United States into a confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground assisting its close ally Assad. 

"Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said as he announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

"Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack," he said of Tuesday's chemical weapons strike, which Western countries blame on Assad's forces. "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." 

The swift action is likely to be interpreted not only as a signal to Russia, but also to other countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency. 

The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people at its air base near the city of Homs. It called the attack "blatant aggression" and said it made the United States a "partner" of "terrorist groups" including Islamic State. Homs Governor Talal Barazi told Reuters the death toll was seven. 

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow. Putin regarded the U.S. action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext", spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. 

Russian television showed craters and rubble at the site of the airbase and said nine aircraft had been destroyed.

Let's review this from the point of view of the various audiences Trump performed this action for, shall we?

First up, Trump's base.  They were starting to seriously stray from side, with his overall approval ratings sinking into the mid-30's.  Trump and the GOP have suffered losses (with the extremely important exception of the completion of the theft of Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat, but that entirely because it had nothing to do with Paul Ryan and the House GOP) on repealing Obamacare, on numerous executive orders running into immediate judicial buzzsaws, and most importantly on the Russian investigation front.

Now, they have a big, manly win to be proud of, and anyone left who is somehow surprised that "Never Trump" pundits and commentators will suddenly come around to embrace Trump, the guy who would fire missiles into Syria when wimpy, wussy Muslim Obama wouldn't, needs to get a lot of other things checked too.  This was always going to happen, it just happened far more quickly than even I anticipated.  If the "Never Trump" movement wasn't dead before, its death by self-flagellation using the huge war boner from this missile strike will come by the weekend.  The stories on MikeFlynn go away, the hagiography of Mad Dog Mattis and H.R. McMaster being firmly in charge now are the story of the day. Can I get a Hoorah and a Semper Fi from the congregation?

And that brings us to number two on the list: the Village.  America's worthless media pundits do so love a good Tomahawk-ing of sandy countries full of swarthy men with funny clothing.  They're falling all over themselves congratulating Trump this morning.  FOX News has been running missile porn for hours and will for days.  Serious-minded thinkers on the left and the right will tell us that Trump made the right choice, and that more importantly since we learned precisely nothing over the last 16 years, we'll be told once again that challenging this action is no longer allowed and that it's time to support "our president".

Again, there's nothing more the Village loves than a big national tragedy that sells, and now they can talk war, giving them a very convenient reason to completely forget the narrative of the last several months.  Trump wanted a story to make the Obamacare repeal disaster and Russian investigation go away, and he's got it for at least the rest of the month.  Trump will see the effectiveness of the action and will continue down this path, guaranteed.  He wants to be a "winner" and this is a "win" in the eyes of the Village press.

Number three of course is Putin and Assad.  The Russians want out of Syria and with both Assad and Trump working for Vlad, it's easy to game the system.  This is the next phase of Moscow's plan, and it's working wonderfully so far.  I know, you're saying "But if Putin wants out of Syria, why have Assad do something guaranteed to make Trump step in?"  Well, what better way to disarm Russian critics in the US than to be the shadowy bad guy behind baby-gassing Assad, right?  Russia can't possibly be working with Trump if we're at loggerheads in Damascus, you see,  And Putin gets his cover, after all he wants this Russia investigation to go away too.

Besides, it's not like Putin and Trump are mortal enemies now.  Both need each other.  A chemical weapon attack followed by a bunch of cruise missiles that just happen to all get through Russian SAM defenses that are protecting Syrian air bases is a scheme that stinks so hard it's visible from space.  Trump let Vlad know (and Vlad let Trump think it was his idea), Vlad let Bashar know, and anything important was not at that airbase that got blown up last night.  A win for everyone involved, right?

Ahh, but let's not forget contestant number four in our game, China's Xi Jinping.  There's a reason all this happened on the night Xi was staying in Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach for a summit, with North Korea rattling its playpen bars and wanting attention.  Golf and glitz doesn't impress Xi.  Missiles and warships on the other hand, we'll that just kinda changed the game on today summit talks, don't they?  Suddenly the Trump Foreign Policy Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight pulled this off with the manly generals in charge and you have to wonder.

China's been running circles around Trump in the Pacific as of late, but now Xi has quite a bit to think about on the trip back home.  The US is a player in the Pacific, but so is Russia. Trump's move throws a wrench into the already delicate machinery of the Great Game.  Xi's not dumb enough to buy this "Russia and the US at odds" thing any more than you are, dear reader.  They'll move cautiously, which is what Trump and Putin both want.

So where does that leave us?  Is this a one-time deal meant to buy time for when the Russian investigation shoe drops?  Does Trump really want a boost to his numbers this badly?  Does Vlad care that his machinations are this obvious?

We'll find out.  Stay tuned, guys.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump has launched a large Tomahawk cruise missile strike at a Syrian airbase in response to this week's chemical weapon attack by the Assad regime.
• Russia has condemned the attack and will pull out of its agreement with the US on military air safety rules of engagement in Syria.
• After changing the rules yesterday to eliminate a Democratic filibuster, Senate Republicans are expected to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court by a simple majority vote today.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping wraps up his two-day summit visit to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump confirms he informed Xi of the Syrian airstrikes last night.
• Researchers have discovered a botnet that permanently disables internet-connected appliances, possibly as a "scorched earth"effort to prevent the devices from being taken over by others.

My Congressman Is An Idiot, Folks

As a Kentuckian, it's embarrassing enough being a constituent of Senators Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell most days, but the fact that Rep. Thomas Massie makes northern Kentucky look like a bunch of meatheads too is really piling abuse upon abuse here.  Massie's latest massive gaffe on the national stage came courtesy of CNN yesterday as my congressman happily explained to Kate Bolduan that he didn't think Bashar al-Assad was responsible for this week's ruthless chemical weapons attack in Syria somehow, a fact that even the notoriously fact-averse Trump regime seems to recognize.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie expressed doubt Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for Tuesday's chemical attack, and reinforced his stance that US intervention could "end up making the situation worse." 

Speaking on CNN's "At This Hour" with Kate Bolduan, the Kentucky lawmaker told the host that he didn't think the Syrian leader launched the attack, and that further intervention by the US government may aggravate the situation. 

"Frankly, I don't think Assad would have done that," Massie said. "It does not serve his interests." 

Dozens of people -- including at least 10 children -- died, and more than 200 people were injured in a suspected chemical weapons attack in northern Syria Tuesday. Activist groups and some US officials have attributed the tragedy to Assad and his regime, including President Donald Trump who cited Assad's administration Wednesday. 

When a visibly stunned Bolduan pressed Massie on who -- if not Assad -- may be responsible for the attack, Massie seemed to suggest that the incident could have been unintentional. 

"You've got a war going on over there," Massie said. "Supposedly that airstrike was on an ammo dump, and so I don't know if it was released because there was gas stored in the ammo dump or not -- that's plausible."

If that theory sounds familiar, it's because that's the line both the Asaad regime and Moscow are taking on this, that Russian airstrikes on a "rebel-held chemical weapons factory" accidentally released the weapons into the surrounding area.  It's one thing to hear such an obvious lie coming from Putin.  It's quite another to hear the lie coming from your own Representative in Congress.

Massie needs to go, folks.  I don't know if anyone's filed to run against him yet, but when they do, I'm volunteering for campaign help.

StupidiNews!

• The Senate will vote on the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Democrats are expected to filibuster, and Republicans are expected to change Senate rules to bypass it. 
• Convicted former Mexican drug kingpin Alfredo Beltran Leyva has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to federal conspiracy charges following his extradition last year. 
• Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet with Donald Trump today and tomorrow at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, North Korea, trade, and the environment are among topics expected.
• Investors in the legalized marijuana business are looking north to Canada to set up capital companies ahead of Ottawa's national legalization expected later this year.
• Ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft are blaming a new Massachusetts background check law as thousands of potential drivers for the services have failed to pass scrutiny.

Last Call For Georgia On My Mind

Meanwhile, since Trump HHS Secretary Tom Price moved from the House to take over the task of letting several million people lose their health coverage and left his House seat behind, Democrat Jon Ossoff has been making his move to flip the seat in what could be merely the first major win in the 2018 midterm blue wave.

Democrat Jon Ossoff has raised more than $8.3 million for his campaign to represent suburban Atlanta in Congress, the most significant sign yet that the political newcomer has become a national symbol of the resistance to President Donald Trump.

Ossoff’s financial disclosure, to be released Thursday, shows he has $2.1 million on hand for the final stretch of the campaign. His contributions came from across the nation, including more than $1 million raised by the liberal advocacy site the Daily Kos. Sure to raise eyebrows in Georgia, however, is the campaign’s revelation that 95 percent of all of Ossoff’s donors are from out of state.

The fundraising haul is an astounding figure for a 30-year-old former congressional aide virtually unheard of in Georgia political circles before he jumped in the race to represent the state’s 6th District.

You read that right.  Ossoff has raised $8.3 million.  As a Democrat in Georgia.  For a House special election.  "Unheard of" doesn't begin to cover it.  This is the kind of race that maybe sees half a million combined.  And Republicans in the district are now so terrified they're in full panic mode and going for broke on vicious attack ads.

Just look at this new web ad from the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC “focused exclusively on preserving and expanding a Republican Majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.” The ad attempts to tie 30-year-old Ossoff to Osama bin Laden — who was killed by President Obama’s administration in 2011 — and suggests that Ossoff is being funded by terrorists, by using ominous music, a photograph of bin Laden, and an old quote from American Journalism Review, an obscure online publication that shut down in 2015.

They've got nothing left at this point other than to call the Democrat a terrorist.    Ossoff is helped by the fact that the field is flooded by Republicans who never thought he had a chance and they're splitting the conservative vote.  If Ossoff can get to 50% +1 he wins outright, if not, the top two vote-getters advance to a June runoff.

But now Ossoff has the ammunition to battle back for this seat.

Hopefully it will the first of many newly blue seats.

Abandon Ship On A Bannon Ship

Looks like Trump regime Minister of White Supremacy Steve Bannon might be on the way out.

President Donald Trump reorganized his National Security Council on Wednesday, removing his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, and downgrading the role of his Homeland Security Adviser, Tom Bossert, according to a person familiar with the decision and a regulatory filing. 

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was given responsibility for setting the agenda for meetings of the NSC or the Homeland Security Council, and was authorized to delegate that authority to Bossert, at his discretion, according to the filing. 

Under the move, the national intelligence director, Dan Coats, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, are again "regular attendees" of the NSC’s principals committee. 

Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, was elevated to the National Security Council’s principals committee at the beginning of Trump’s presidency. The move drew criticism from some members of Congress and Washington’s foreign policy establishment.

Imagine that.  Ol' Steve looks to be in more than a bit of trouble over the recent revelations involving NSC leaks, Devin Nunes, and former Trump staffers cooperating with the FBI.  Kicking Bannon out of the intelligence loop and restoring DNI Dan Coats to the position (shockingly Coats and the friggin Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Joe Dunford were not on Trump's National Security Council) may mean that Trump is serious about using military muscle on someone, likely North Korea or Syria.

The big winner in this shuffle is new National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.  If he's calling the shots and Bannon is out of the way, I'm betting these recent events overseas has enabled somebody to talk Trump into taking a much more belligerent tone, starting with turning the NSC towards a "war room" setting.  If McMaster, Dunford, and Coats are calling the shots now, things could get very serious, very quickly.

So we've gone from the NSC being Bannon's toy and front for laundering Russian propaganda and playing spy games to Bannon getting booted and the military now being in charge.  I'm not sure which will be worse in the long run for the world.

We're going to find out shortly, I'd imagine.

TrumpCare 2.0 Is Just As Dead

Hopes by the Trump regime to get to a point where Trumpcare legislation is cruel enough and kills enough poor Democratic voters to satisfy House GOP Freedom Caucus members are quickly turning to ashes as what constitutes the slightly less monstrous rump of House Republicans are fleeing in droves from the plan.

It's a bad sign for Republicans ahead of Vice President Mike Pence's visit to the Capitol tonight. From a senior Republican source:

While we haven't picked up any votes yet, this concept is already showing signs of losing a ton of them.

The Freedom Caucus and conservative group perspective: The bill's text is changing for the worse, and it no longer looks like some of the Obamacare regulations will be waived. Conservatives are growing doubtful that the White House and House leadership are willing to get rid of Obamacare's ban on charging sick people higher premiums. Conservatives also want to know what leadership has to say about the "medical loss ratio," or the Obamacare regulation limiting how much of insurers' revenue can be profit.

They're also not happy about the accusation that getting rid of the Obamacare ban on charging higher premiums would nullify its protections for pre-existing conditions.

A Freedom Caucus source: "We've never ever wanted to go after pre-existing conditions. That's spin (well a lie) meant to undermine us. Pence said he supports our plan of reforming, and funding changes to high risk pools, specifically to deal with pre-existing conditions."

House leadership perspective: Where the plan is heading will potentially lose more votes than it picks up. The Freedom Caucus, they say, is moving the goal posts again and trying to shift blame.

And all indications are that the meeting with Mike Pence last night didn't help at all, more meetings will reportedly continue, but the odds of an actual vote ahead of Easter recess are approaching nil.  The basic issue persists: after seven years and the largest margin in the House since the New Deal, House Republicans still don't have the votes to pass their own health care legislation, and there's no reason to believe they ever will, mainly because their barely unrestrained glee at killing millions of people keeps getting in the way of their plans.

The Freedom Caucus wants to dump millions of people into "high-risk pools" which is to say that "They'd be able to afford their individual insurance plans if they weren't lazy poors" and "I'm glad they're not driving up insurance premiums for my constituents still on group employer plans" although technically, they will be.  But of course who's counting, poor people don't actually count.

Meanwhile the slightly less evil Republicans don't want any part of this plan because they know it's going to get them killed in 2018 elections.  People hate it.  Most importantly, Republican primary voters hate it because even they've figured out at least some of them will be losing their health insurance, meaning they can't pay for health care and will, you know, get sick and die.

The answer to the age-old question of "Republicans: evil or stupid?" is, as always, both.

StupidiNews!

• Russian officials blame Syrian rebels for a deadly chemical weapons attack that has killed 70 in Syria, saying Moscow had no choice but to strike a "rebel-held chemical weapons factory".
• The White House continues tough talk against North Korea over its missile tests, saying that "all options are now on the table" in further dealings with Pyongyang.
• Islamic State militants are being blamed for a deadly suicide attack on a police compound in Tikrit, Iraq that has killed 31 and injured scores more.
• Republican lawmakers are taking aim at voter-approved state minimum wage increases, looking to delay or even roll back wage hikes set to take effect over the next few years.
• Both Democrats and some Republicans are looking to move forward legislation that would prevent US border searches of electronic equipment belonging to US citizens.