The Next Domino To Fall

We know that former Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is under federal investigation for his connections to Russia, but now we know that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is also being investigated for his Russia ties, and again the old adage proves true: follow the money.

The Justice Department requested bank records of President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort as part of the federal investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department requested Manafort’s bank records from Citizen Financial Group Inc. in April. It’s unclear whether that was the only bank that was asked to turn over records, according to the report.

Manafort has come under intense scrutiny for his financial transactions. In March, the Treasury Department obtained financial records from Cyprus as part of a federal anti-corruption probe into Manafort’s past work in eastern Europe.

Those Cyprus accounts were investigated for money laundering, NBC News later reported.

Manafort also came under scrutiny for financial dealings immediately after he stepped down as Trump’s campaign chairman last year.

On the same day he stepped down, he formed a shell corporation and took out loans worth $13 million from Trump-connected businesses, according to The New York Times.

Manafort left Trump’s campaign as questions swirled around his finances and past lobbying work for Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted pro-Russia Ukrainian president and other pro-Russia figures.

So it's not just Flynn anymore.  And again, Manafort's been under investigation for Russia ties since last month.  We're finding out about this now because Trump moved up the game due to Comey's firing.  The leaks are going to start coming fast and hard now and my advice is to get ready, because things are going to move quickly now.  The message is clear: there are multiple investigations, multiple targets, and multiple connections between them, and none of them are going away.

If you thought this week was a whirlwind, the true hurricane is still on the horizon.

Spies Dislike Us, Con't

So remember last month when we found out that hacker group Shadow Brokers (who are totally not Russians) released the NSA's hacking toolkit worldwide to see just what chaos they could cause and of course people started asking some questions:

The real mystery here is why the Shadow Brokers released this data. Ordinarily, a hostile intelligence service wouldn’t tip their hand by showing that they had obtained this information but there are some clear strategic benefits to that kind of signalling. Releasing the vulnerabilities themselves goes a step further. It ensures not only that the NSA is unable to use the Windows 0-days against targets, but that you aren’t either. It is a matter of short time before these tools are patched, and thus unavailable to anyone. These are tremendously valuable tools to just burn that way, so it does make one wonder (and worry): what exactly is the intended payoff here?

Today we have our answer.

Employees and patients across multiple UK National Health Service facilities were displaced on Friday thanks to a large-scale cyberattack on network computers across Eurasia, including Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan. 

Doctors and hospital staff were locked out of patient files and forced to relocate emergency patients, the Guardian reported. The attack made use of ransomware, a type of malware that restricts file and system access by encrypting data. The hackers then demand payment in exchange for decrypting the data and restoring access. Patient records, emails, schedules, and phone lines were all ensnared in the attack. 

British health officials said its systems were not the target of the attack. But security experts believe the vulnerability exploited during the attack was discovered by the NSA, and was included among the many cyber tools previously stolen from the American intelligence community earlier this year, the New York Times reported. The ransomware was distributed via email. 

Hospitals and telecom companies in western Europe, Russia, and Asia were also affected, the MalwareHunterTeam told the New York Times. 

The hackers demanded each user pay $300 in bitcoin to a specific bitcoin account in the next three days, potentially totaling thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin. The ransom doubles if payments aren’t made in that time, according to the hacker’s message obtained by the Guardian, and files will be kept restricted “forever” if payment isn’t received in seven days.

Meanwhile, you'd be crazy not to suspect that somebody just gained access to thousands of medical files in the UK and that's just a drop in the bucket.  Maybe this was the work of the Shadow Brokers, maybe it was somebody else, but my money continues to be on Vladimir and his friends, who sure could use a massive global distraction from the Comey firing and Trump/Russia investigations making worldwide headlines right now, particularly a destructive move that affects our closest ally in Britain.

Suddenly the Brits are all tied up dealing with this cyberattack rather than looking into any Trump connections and backing up US investigators.  Nice plan if you can execute it, and like clockwork:

In light of today's attack, Congress needs to be asking @NSAgov if it knows of any other vulnerabilities in software used in our hospitals.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 12, 2017

Funny, the timing on this.  Just when the US intel community gears up to go to war with Trump over Comey's firing, this happens.

You do the math.

The Whole Goal Of The Troll Patrol

Former right-wing talk radio host Charlie Sykes takes to the NY Times to write an op-ed on recent events and finally finds what I've been saying for years: it doesn't matter what Republicans do to their own voters as long as they are making liberals second-class citizens.

If there was one principle that used to unite conservatives, it was respect for the rule of law. Not long ago, conservatives would have been horrified at wholesale violations of the norms and traditions of our political system, and would have been appalled by a president who showed overt contempt for the separation of powers. 

But this week, as if on cue, most of the conservative media fell into line, celebrating President Trump’s abrupt dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James Comey, and dismissing the fact that Mr. Comey was leading an investigation into the Trump campaign and its ties to Russia. “Dems in Meltdown Over Comey Firing,” declared a headline on Fox News, as Tucker Carlson gleefully replayed clips of Democrats denouncing the move. “It’s just insane actually,” he said, referring to their reactions. On Fox and talk radio, the message was the same, with only a few conservatives willing to sound a discordant or even cautious note. 

The talk-show host Rush Limbaugh was positively giddy, opening his monologue on Wednesday by praising Mr. Trump for what he called his “epic trolling” of liberals. “This is great,” Mr. Limbaugh declared. “Can we agree that Donald Trump is probably enjoying this more than anybody wants to admit or that anybody knows? So he fires Comey yesterday. Who’s he meet with today? He’s meeting with the Soviet, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov! I mean, what an epic troll this is.” 

Given the enthusiasm of the president’s apologists, it is likely that much of Mr. Trump’s base will similarly rally to him as it has in the past.

But perhaps most important, we saw once again how conservatism, with its belief in ordered liberty, is being eclipsed by something different: Loathing those who loathe the president. Rabid anti-anti-Trumpism. 

In a lamentably overlooked monologue this month, Mr. Limbaugh embraced the new reality in which conservative ideas and principles had been displaced by anti-liberalism. For years, Mr. Limbaugh ran what he called the “Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.” But in the Trump era, he told his audience, he has changed that to the “Institute for Advanced Anti-Leftist Studies.” 

With Mr. Trump in the White House, conservative principles were no longer the point. “How many times during the campaign did I warn everybody Trump is not a conservative? Multiple times a day,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “How many times have I told you: ‘Do not expect Trump to be a conservative? He isn’t one.’ ”He went on to emphasize that the campaign was not about conservatism, because that’s not what Mr. Trump is about.

That was a remarkable admission, but it is also a key to understanding what is happening on the right. While there are those like Sean Hannity who are reliable cheerleaders for all things President Trump, much of the conservative news media is now less pro-Trump than it is anti-anti-Trump. The distinction is important, because anti-anti-Trumpism has become the new safe space for the right. 

Here is how it works: Rather than defend President Trump’s specific actions, his conservative champions change the subject to (1) the biased “fake news” media, (2) over-the-top liberals, (3) hypocrites on the left, (4) anyone else victimizing Mr. Trump or his supporters and (5) whataboutism, as in “What about Obama?” “What about Clinton?”
For the anti-anti-Trump pundit, whatever the allegation against Mr. Trump, whatever his blunders or foibles, the other side is always worse. 

But the real heart of anti-anti-Trumpism is the delight in the frustration and anger of his opponents. Mr. Trump’s base is unlikely to hold him either to promises or tangible achievements, because conservative politics is now less about ideas or accomplishments than it is about making the right enemies cry out in anguish.

I'm glad that Sykes arrives at this conclusion, it's important that we admit one party is now dedicated to the destruction of half of America in order to try to benefit themselves in the chaos and carnage. But again, this has been the obvious point of the Republican party since Reagan if not Nixon: crush the other guys and rule unopposed over them.

This is why we see the victimization complex on the right these days, that Christianity is always "under assault" (but not by the admitted serial adulterer, abuser of women and the literal walking poster boy for graven images).  They have to be the victims, because it gives them the excuse to take whatever measures are necessary to destroy us, crush us, kill us.

It was always about putting us in our place, and increasingly that place is a shallow, unmarked grave. That's why they will hold on to Trump as his regime crumbles around him, because if they don't, they will know what it's like to be us.  They can't handle it.  They will burn this country down rather than see another non-white president, and Trump will let them.

Cry out in anguish indeed.

Last Call For Depression Of Suppression

As I keep saying, the best ally Republicans have right now is the suppression of the black and Latino vote in purple and red states to make sure they stay that way, and the evidence is now in on why 2016 was so badly missed by the pollsters: voter suppression worked better than even the GOP imagined.

A record 137.5 million Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall voter turnout – defined as the share of adult U.S. citizens who cast ballots – was 61.4% in 2016, a share similar to 2012 but below the 63.6% who say they voted in 2008. 

A number of long-standing trends in presidential elections either reversed or stalled in 2016, as black voter turnout decreased, white turnout increased and the nonwhite share of the U.S. electorate remained flat since the 2012 election. Here are some key takeaways from the Census Bureau’s report, the data source with the most comprehensive demographic and statistical portrait of U.S. voters. 

The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks. (It’s also the largest percentage-point decline among any racial or ethnic group since white voter turnout dropped from 70.2% in 1992 to 60.7% in 1996.) The number of black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012. With Barack Obama on the ballot that year, the black voter turnout rate surpassed that of whites for the first time. Among whites, the 65.3% turnout rate in 2016 represented a slight increase from 64.1% in 2012.

The Latino voter turnout rate held steady at 47.6% in 2016, compared with 48.0% in 2012. Overall turnout remained flat despite expectations heading into Election Day of a long-awaited, historic surge in Latino voters. Due largely to demographic growth, the number of Latino voters grew to a record 12.7 million in 2016, up from 11.2 million in 2012. Even so, the number of Latino nonvoters – those eligible to vote who do not cast a ballot, or 14 million in 2016 – was larger than the number of Latino voters, a trend that extends back to each presidential election since 1996. Meanwhile, the Asian voter turnout rate increased to 49.3% in 2016, up from 46.9% in 2012 and surpassing Hispanics for the first time since 1996. Asians continue to represent a smaller share of voters than Hispanics: Overall, about 5 million Asians voted in 2016, up from 3.8 million in 2012.

Yet black and especially Latino voters were the most engaged voters in the polls, time after time.  If you factor in GOP voter suppression, these numbers make a lot more sense, particularly in states that passed voter suppression laws after 2013.  Those resulted in rock-bottom turnout for midterms and halted or completely reversed presidential election turnout model growth for both groups.

It worked so well, Donald Trump won.

I'll Have The Prosecutor Special, Please

It's clear now that Republicans will never allow a special prosecutor in the FBI Trump/Russia investigation.  Greg Sargent says that Senate Dems in particular could try to force one,

Trump also claims Democrats have no business attacking him for firing Comey, since they protested Comey’s conduct. But Democrats can still be furious with Comey’s handling of the newly discovered Clinton emails, while also pointing out that Trump’s firing of Comey is highly suspect and demands a special prosecutor. 

Regardless, multiple GOP senators — such as John McCain, Bob Corker, Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake and Richard Burr — are also troubled by that firing. But they can do something more about this if they wish to. The FBI’s investigation will now be led by Rosenstein. But Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey persuasively argue that the firing of Comey, amid an active investigation of his own campaign, “violates profoundly important norms of an independent, non-political FBI” and that Rosenstein, having already participated in this “tawdry episode,” can’t “credibly lead this investigation any longer,” necessitating an independent prosecutor. 

Wittes and Hennessey add, however, that senators and members of Congress “have tools at their disposal” that could help compel the appointment of an independent prosecutor. I contacted Wittes, a legal observer at the Brookings Institution who runs the Lawfare blog, to ask what these might be. 

Wittes suggested several ideas to me. He noted that, with all Democrats and a handful of Republicans upset about the Comey firing, there are enough senators “to create a blocking majority for the next FBI director,” who must be confirmed. This blocking majority, Wittes said, could theoretically condition its support for nominees to that post, insisting that the Justice Department produce a fuller accounting of the recommendation into the Comey firing or that the department appoint a special prosecutor on the Russia probe. 

Alternatively, Wittes noted, individual senators — in either party, but especially in the majority — can employ other tactics to force the issue. They could try to oppose funding for various other Justice Department priorities or block other nominations to the department. “I would not give that cooperation until the Justice Department names a special prosecutor,” Wittes said.

Finally, Democrats — with or without a handful of Republican allies, but preferably with them — can basically try to grind the Senate to a halt, by refusing cooperation on any legislation or nominations or anything, until GOP leaders and/or the White House agree to some form of independent investigation. “Every time they’re asked to cooperate on something, this needs to be front and center,” Wittes says. “They needs to be focused like a laser beam on that every time they’re asked to give unanimous consent.”

The Dems are opting to go for doors two and three so far.  They're starting to place holds on the many deputy/assistant level cabinet positions that the Trump regime is trying to fill, and they are slow-walking all other Senate business with procedural moves to piss off Mitch.

How effective this will be, I can't tell you.  We'll see, but I'm thinking the Dems will eventually have to do something about Comey's replacement, and they will need at least some Republican help for that.

Speaking of Ben Wittes ar Lawfare Blog, he does have another option for a special prosecutor that would involve Deputy AG Ron Rosenstein choosing to go out like a hero after Trump hung him out to dry yesterday:

The trouble is that while Rosenstein got what he wanted, Trump’s idea of correcting the record was to say publicly exactly the thing about a law enforcement officer that makes his continued service in office impossible: That Trump had used his deputy attorney general as window dressing on a pre-cooked political decision to shut down an investigation involving himself, a decision for which he needed the patina of a high-minded rationale. 

Once the President has said this about you—a law enforcement officer who works for him and who promised the Senate in confirmation hearings you would show independence—you have nothing left. These are the costs of working for Trump, and it took Rosenstein only two weeks to pay them. 

The only decent course now is to name a special prosecutor and then resign.

I wouldn't count on that happening unless we get some bombshell news on the investigation (which is entirely possible).  But it could happen.

The much larger question is if any of it actually matters anymore.

Sex, Lies, And Videotape In NKY

The big local story this week in Northern Kentucky is the precipitous fall of former Campbell County district Judge Tim Nolan, a major player in the state's GOP and Trump's county campaign chair.  Nolan has been involved in the Kentucky Republican party since before I was born, so it was a huge shock around here to see a grand jury charge him last week with multiple counts of rape, human trafficking of a minor, human trafficking of five adults, witness tampering and prostitution.  Nolan was in court yesterday on arraignment, and things got weird.

Tim Nolan pleaded not guilty to an 11-count indictment that included rape, witness tampering, human trafficking of a minor, human trafficking of five adults, unlawful transaction of a minor and prostitution.

But then his attorney Margo Grubbs made impassioned arguments and accusations that prompted Kenton County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Lape to remark that this was a bond hearing and “not a comment on the justice system.”

Among the things revealed:

• Grubbs said they believe one of the grandmothers of the victim is a tenant on Nolan’s sprawling farm in southern Campbell County and pays rent to him.
• There are nine alleged victims covered in the indictment, according to prosecutor and Assistant Attorney General Barbara Whaley.

Grubbs argued the bail was too high, accused police of not interviewing all the witnesses and said someone, they believe mother of one of the victims, has tried to contact Nolan to see if he’s all right. She also revealed she believes that the accusations against Nolan are connected to a lawsuit.

She confirmed to the press after the hearing the lawsuit she referred to was the defamation suit Nolan filed against some Republicans behind GOPFacts.org.

It's another bizarre wrinkle in what has become a convoluted case that has shocked Northern Kentucky.

Nolan, dressed in a gray suit, sat calmly in court as his attorney unfurled arguments why she thinks authorities violated his rights. The Campbell County police went into his rural farmland “with guns ablazing” when they searched his property in February, Grubbs said in court.

Nolan could face more than 100 years in prison if convicted on all counts. He’s maintained his innocence. After the hearing, he tried to talk to the press as his attorney desperately tried to pull him toward the courtroom elevators.

“This is my attorney and my attorney tells me I cannot make any statements,” Nolan said. “I’d love to other than I can tell you we have a great Constitution and I have a great attorney and we will vigorously defend this.”

This is about as close to "Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard ending up in court on sexual assault crimes" as it gets, folks, and I guarantee you that this case is going to get far uglier as it goes on.  I'll keep an eye on it as things go but this is going to be huge around here.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions is telling federal prosecutors to reverse an Obama-era criminal justice reform policy by seeking to charge suspects with the most serious crime possible.
• The Justice Department will open an investigation into the shooting death of Texas teenager Jordan Edwards by a former police officer, Roy Oliver already faces state murder charges.
• South Korea's government is getting tough on the country's two biggest automakers as officials have ordered a mandatory recall of 240,000 Kia and Hyundai vehicles over safety concerns.
• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has announced a bilateral trade deal with China this week, more natural gas and beef will go to China and the US will import more poultry from Beijing.
• Music services Spotify and Apple iTunes will be coming to the Windows Store later this year as Microsoft expands its selections for Windows apps.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

Here's a thing, maybe the Trump regime should stop admitting to obstruction of justice on national television.

Earlier Thursday, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Comey firing may hasten the agency's investigation into Russian meddling. 

"We want this to come to its conclusion, we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity," she said, referring to the FBI's probe into Moscow's interference in last year's election. "And we think that we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen." 

The statement had come as a surprising admission from the White House that Comey's sudden dismissal on Tuesday may have an effect on the Russia probe. Officials have insisted the removal came because of Comey's handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server, and was unrelated to his oversight of the look into Russia's election hacking and possible ties between Trump advisers and Russian operatives. 

Earlier in her briefing Thursday, Sanders claimed that Comey's firing had not altered the Russia investigation at all. 

"Any investigation that was taking place Monday was taking place today," Sanders said, suggesting that was an indication that Comey's firing would not impact the ongoing probe. 

Now, you can make the argument that the "make that happen" Sanders was referring when it came to removing Comey from his job was modifying the word "integrity" rather than "conclusion" and that she wanted the "integrity" part to happen as a result of Comey's firing.

Well, you could argue that if Sanders or anybody in the regime had any credibility on this, which they do not (and Sanders certainly did not help anyone with her bad choice of wording.)

Still, nobody believes that Comey's firing was the reason Trump gave on Tuesday.  That ship has sailed.  We're deep in the weeds on this one for now, and we'll just have to see what the FBI investigation finds.

Operation Trump The Vote

You guys know I've been talking about Kansas GOP Secretary of State Kris Kobach for a while now, as he's been the leading Republican on the party's national voter suppression efforts for the last several years now.  Kobach was also in the running for Trump's Attorney General but that ultimately went to Jeff Sessions.

However, it seems that Trump has found something for Kobach to do, and that is to officially lead up the regime's efforts to disenfranchise millions of Democratic voters in 2018.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today establishing a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the American election system, multiple senior administration officials tell ABC News. 

The officials say Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be announced as Chair and Vice Chair of the ‘Presidential Commission on Election Integrity’ in a press release today. It's not clear whether the White House will allow coverage of the order signing. 

The commission, which will include Republicans and Democrats, will be tasked with studying "vulnerabilities" in U.S. voting systems and potential effects on "improper voting, fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting," according to one official with knowledge of the announcement. 

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Trump claimed widespread voter fraud explained why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerged with nearly 3 million more popular votes. To date, neither Trump nor his team has provided evidence to substantiate the claims, but they have promised an investigation. 

“You can never really find, you know, there are going to be -- no matter what numbers we come up with there are going to be lots of people that did things that we're not going to find out about,” Trump told ABC News' David Muir in January. "But we will find out because we need a better system where that can't happen." 

Administration officials would not provide a draft copy of the order but described its scope to ABC News. The commission's review is expected be broad in scope, and will not just address Trump's allegations about the 2016 election but also "systemic issues that have been raised over many years in terms of the integrity of the elections," one official said. 

There's no doubt in my mind that this commission is the first step on the way to de facto national Voter ID laws ahead of 2018 midterms and especially 2020 presidential elections, and the GOP effort to keep millions, maybe tens of millions of people from being able to ever vote again.

That was always the plan once the GOP got back in power again.  Looks like more than ever that this plan is on.

Drain Your Own Swamp For Once

Back in October, Hurricane Matthew tore up Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba as a Category 5 storm, killing more than 500, and then dumped feet of rain on the Carolinas and killing 50 more before stumbling into the Canadian Maritimes and setting rainfall records.

The flooding damage in North Carolina was particularly bad, especially near the border with SC and last month Gov. Roy Cooper and NC House Republicans requested nearly a billion dollars in FEMA aid for the state from the Trump regime to help families in the Fayetteville and Wilmington area. Lumberton, where interstates 74 and 95 cross, was the hardest hit.

This week the Trump regime got back to them on that request and told them to go pound sand.

The State of North Carolina requested $929 million from the federal government to help with costs associated with Hurricane Matthew, but the state will be receiving far less than that, according to an announcement by Gov. Roy Cooper. 

North Carolina will receive only $6.1 million from the Trump administration. That’s 99 percent less than the requested amount. 

In a letter Cooper sent to the president and other officials today, he expressed “shock and disappointment in the lack of federal funding for Hurricane Matthew recovery efforts.”
The governor had worked with Sen. Thom Tillis and Representatives David Price (D) and Rep. David Rouzer (R) in April to come up with a request to Congress to help cover the costs associated with the destruction left by Matthew. 

The $929 million requested would have been used to “help communities and families fix homes, repair businesses and recover from the historic flooding,” Cooper said. 

“Families across Eastern North Carolina need help to rebuild and recover, and it is an incredible failure by the Trump Administration and Congressional leaders to turn their backs,” said Cooper said in a statement released to the press. “Matthew was a historic storm and we are still working every day to help families return home and rebuild their communities. North Carolinians affected by this storm cannot be ignored by the Trump Administration and Congressional leadership, and I will continue to work with our Congressional delegation to get North Carolina residents affected by the storm the help they deserve.”

Southeastern NC?  Voted big for Trump and the GOP.

Here endeth the lesson.

StupidiNews!

• Under police watch, city parks crews in New Orleans have begun the removal of the city's Jefferson Davis memorial, the second of four Confederate monuments slated for relocation.
• China has issued warning statements to US members of Congress who visited the Dalai Lama in India last week, saying that it sends the wrong message about the status of Tibet.
• Pope Francis is expected to announce canonization of two Portuguese shepherd children who first reported visions of the Madonna a century ago in the town of Fatima.
• European airlines are already working to inform passengers to the US of the Trump regime's expected laptop ban being expanded to all incoming flights from Europe this week.
• Tech company Tesla is launching its solar roof panel nationally this week, pre-orders for the roof system require $1,000 to get on the waiting list.

Last Call For Houston, We Have A Model

If you want to know what America in 30 years will look like according to demographic projections, take a look at the most diverse major metro area in the country today in Houston.

Houston boomed through the mid-20th century, thanks to the oil bonanza, and most of those who came to get rich were white. Large numbers of Vietnamese refugees began arriving in the 1970s, and after an oil collapse in 1982, they were followed by an influx of Latinos driven by cheap housing and employment opportunities. Whites, meanwhile, started drifting out. 

The multi-ethnic boom has occurred deep in the heart of a state that has often seemed to regard conservatism, and Texas identity, as an element of religion. 

The state’s Republican leadership has helped lead the fight this year not only on sanctuary cities, but to defend President Trump’s order on border security and immigration enforcement. Texas went to court in 2015 to successfully block expanded deportation protections for young “Dreamers” and their parents who brought them here illegally. 

Yet demographic experts say the Houston metro area, home to the third-largest population of undocumented immigrants in the country — behind New York and Los Angeles — is a roadmap to what U.S. cities will look like in the coming decades as whites learn to live as minorities in the American heartland. 

Census projections have opened a window into the America of 2050, “and it’s Houston today,” said Stephen Klineberg, a sociology professor at Rice University. 

“This biracial Southern city dominated by white men throughout all of its history has become, by many measures, the single most ethnically diverse major metropolitan area in the country,” Klineberg said. “Who knew Houston would turn out to be at the forefront of what’s happening across all of America?”

Ahh, but the political fight to shape 2050 is happening in 2017 and 2018, in states with far less diversity that are doing everything they can to keep it that way.  History teaches us that while the moral arc of history bends towards justice, it only does so slowly and it takes tremendous pressure to force that bending at all.  And like in 2016, sometimes that arc gets bent violently in the other direction by reactionary forces, erasing a lot of hard work.

It's taken centuries, but America does move on.  Eventually. Kicking and screaming.  Also, occasionally a war or two is necessary.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Once again, FBI Director James Comey was fired because he was investigating Trump's ties to Russia.

President Donald Trump weighed firing his FBI director for more than a week. When he finally pulled the trigger Tuesday afternoon, he didn’t call James Comey. He sent his longtime private security guard to deliver the termination letter in a manila folder to FBI headquarters. 

He had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

Trump’s firing of the high-profile FBI director on the 110th day after the president took office marked another sudden turn for an administration that has fired its acting attorney general, national security adviser and now its FBI director, whom Trump had praised until recent weeks and even blew a kiss to during a January appearance. 

The news stunned Comey, who saw news of his dismissal on TV while speaking inside the FBI office in Los Angeles. It startled all but the uppermost ring of White House advisers, who said grumbling about Comey hadn’t dominated their own morning senior staff meetings. Other top officials learned just before it happened and were unaware Trump was considering firing Comey. “Nobody really knew,” one senior White House official said. “Our phones all buzzed and people said, ‘What?’” 

By ousting the FBI director investigating his campaign and associates, Trump may have added more fuel to the fire he is furiously trying to contain — and he was quickly criticized by a chorus of Republicans and Democrats. “The timing of this firing was very troubling,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican.

Mitch McConnell moved swiftly this morning to kill any talk of a special counsel.  No Republican has taken up the call for one, not a single of them.  They all know Trump is guilty and they are either complicit or they don't care.

By the way, the Trumpies were tipped off last week that the hammer was coming when Comey asked for more resources in order to expand the investigation.

Days before he was fired, James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, asked the Justice Department for a significant increase in resources for the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election, according to four congressional officials, including Senator Richard J. Durbin. 

Mr. Comey made his appeal to Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who also wrote the Justice Department’s memo that was used to justify the firing of Mr. Comey this week, the officials said. 

“I’m told that as soon as Rosenstein arrived, there was a request for additional resources for the investigation and that a few days afterwards, he was sacked,” said Mr. Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois. “I think the Comey operation was breathing down the neck of the Trump campaign and their operatives, and this was an effort to slow down the investigation.” 

Mr. Comey briefed members of Congress in recent days, telling them about his meeting with Mr. Rosenstein, who is the most senior law enforcement official supervising the Russia investigation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself because of his close ties to the Trump campaign and his undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador. 

The timing of Mr. Comey’s request is not clear-cut evidence that his firing was related to the Russia investigation. But it is certain to fuel bipartisan criticism that President Trump appeared to be meddling in an investigation that had the potential to damage his presidency.

As I told you yesterday, the investigation is now far beyond Flynn.  Comey asking for more resources was the event that triggered the plan to fire him before the investigation could reach critical mass and start threatening Trump.

The GOP at this point doesn't care.  Mitch and Paul Ryan will not allow anything to go forward because if they do, they will be indicted and imprisoned, and they know it.

Whoever replaces Comey will be under tremendous pressure from Trump to end the investigation.  I fully expect that to happen before the end of the month.  Even if Democrats move to filibuster a replacement, Mitch will move to kill the filibuster.

Pray there's elections still in 2018.  For the first time I feel that will be in doubt.

StupidiNews!

• Newly-elected South Korean President Moon Jae-in was sworn in today with a message of diplomacy towards North Korea as he wants the return of the "Sunshine Policy" between them.
• A tunnel partially collapsed at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State yesterday, no injuries were reported and no radioactive material was released.
• Defense Secretary James Mattis is criticizing build-up of Russian troops near the Balkans, saying the US could deploy Patriot missile batteries for NATO exercises there in July.
• Donald Trump will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the White House today, less than 24 hours after firing FBI Director James Comey.
• New medical studies show that US life expectancy varies greatly by which county you live in, and that these more than two-decade discrepancies are only getting larger.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

We now know why the White House was in full-blown panic mode for the last 48 hours, culminating in the firing of FBI Director James Comey:  the fecal matter has just impacted the oscillating atmospheric turbine unit as the FBI is now starting to close in on the regime, beginning with grand jury subpoenas of people related to former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.

Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn seeking business records, as part of the ongoing probe of Russian meddling in last year's election, according to people familiar with the matter. CNN learned of the subpoenas hours before President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey. 

The subpoenas represent the first sign of a significant escalation of activity in the FBI's broader investigation begun last July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia. 

The subpoenas issued in recent weeks by the US Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Virginia, were received by associates who worked with Flynn on contracts after he was forced out as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, according to the people familiar with the investigation. 

Robert Kelner, an attorney for Flynn, declined to comment. The US Attorney's Office in Alexandria, the Justice Department and the FBI also declined to comment. 

Investigators have been looking into possible wrongdoing in how Flynn handled disclosures about payments from clients tied to foreign governments including Russia and Turkey, US officials briefed on the matter have told CNN. 

The Flynn inquiry is one piece of the broader investigation, which FBI Director James Comey testified in a Senate hearing last week is led jointly by the Alexandria US Attorney's Office and the Justice Department's National Security Division.

For those of you asking just where the leaks were if there really was a smoking gun in the Trump/Russia investigation, you have just been presented with your answer within hours of Trump firing the man in charge of said investigation.  There is no doubt that Comey was fired because of this grand jury investigation, and because the grand jury investigation will end up going up the chain well above Flynn.

He was fired to end this investigation, so that he could be replaced by someone who would try to stop it.

They believe they will get away with it.

America must disabuse them of this notion, or we deserve Trump to rule for life.