Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

For Dems to take back the House in November, the time is now to put candidates in all 435 House districts and line up challenges to run against incumbent Republicans and for open seats, especially in winnable purple suburban districts.  One of those disctricts is OH-1, right here in Cincy, and GOP Rep. Steve Chabot may have finally drawn a considerable Democratic challenger in Aftab Pureval.

Washington Democrats could be close to landing their big-time candidate to take on Congressman Steve Chabot this fall. 

Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval is giving serious consideration to challenging Westwood's Chabot in the 1st Congressional District, Politics Extra has learned. 

A spokeswoman for Pureval's campaign confirmed he is being recruited, but declined further comment.

"I think he's our strongest candidate," Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley said. "He's the right kind of moderate that I think fits the district and can help move the political center of gravity back to the middle from its right-wing trajectory in Washington." 

Pureval was in Washington last week to meet with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which so far has struck out in its aggressive months-long effort to find someone to run in the red-leaning district. The DCCC began courting Pureval last spring, just months after he started his first job in public office. 

Washington Democrats also have recruited Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld and Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune, but both have taken a pass. State Rep. Alicia Reece has considered a run against Chabot, who is seeking a 12th term.

Pureval is a good guy as far as I can tell.  I was worried about Chabot once Sittenfeld and then Portune balked, but Pureval can win this. Right now the leading Dem in the race is Robert Barr, long time Congregation Beth Adam rabbi here in Cincy and he's got a fair chance of winning, but he has no political experience, whereas Pureval is County Clerk.

Still, either Pureval or Barr would be a welcome change from the awful Chabot, who has been John Boehner's local hatchetman in Ohio for decades.

We'll see, but with both Pureval and Barr now in the race, I'm feeling really good about taking down Chabot once and for all.

Trump Gets The Coaled Shoulder

Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry's big plan to save the coal industry has been completely wrecked by Trump's own appointees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who unanimously voted to scrap the Trump regime's plan to require states to use more "reliable" coal and nuclear power (and to stockpile coal and nuclear fuel as a "national security issue") over "unreliable" wind and solar.

As proposed, the rule aimed to improve the resilience and stability of the electrical grid. Citing some electricity problems that struck during the “polar vortex”-induced cold snap of 2014, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry proposed that utility companies should pay coal and nuclear plants to keep weeks of extra fuel on hand.

The Department of Energy, which Perry leads, doesn’t have the power to force utilities to follow such a rule itself. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, is charged by Congress with regulating interstate electricity sales and some power utilities. Perry asked FERC’s five commissioners to adopt his proposed rule within 60 days.

The plan was always controversial. Critics argued that Perry’s bailout would harm natural-gas plants, slow the growth of solar and wind energy, and introduce new and costly distortions to U.S. energy markets.

They also doubted the logic of the rule, saying that power plants rarely went down because they didn’t have enough fuel on hand. The Rhodium Group, an economics-research firm, found that only 0.00007 percent of U.S. power-outage hours between 2012 and 2016 were caused by a lack of available fuel.

Energy economists and environmental groups also maintained the rule would effectively subsidize carbon-dioxide pollution, which causes global warming. “Doing nothing [about climate change] is already not merited by economics,” Michael Greenstone, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, said in October. “This is like doubling down.”

Worst of all, critics said, the plan would spike Americans’ electricity bills. The energy-consulting group ICF estimated that the rule would cost ratepayers an extra $800 million to $3.8 billion every year.

In a statement on Monday, FERC thanked Perry for his attention to grid resiliency and said it would continue to research and pay attention to the issue. But individual commissioners were more cutting in their replies.

“The proposed rule had little, if anything, to do with resilience, and was instead aimed at subsidizing certain uncompetitive electric generation technologies,” said Richard Glick, a Trump-appointed FERC commissioner, dubbing the plan “a multi-billion dollar bailout targeted at coal and nuclear generating facilities.”

He added that he was sympathetic to the plight of coal miners and nuclear workers, but that helping them was outside the agency’s legal power. “We have a history in this country of helping those who, through no fault of their own, have been adversely affected by technological and market change. But that is the responsibility of Congress and the state legislatures. It is not a role that the Federal Power Act provides to the commission,” he said.

So, if Trump wants to give King Coal a bailout, Republicans in Congress are going to have to do that. And raise power bills for Americans.  In an election year.

Good luck, guys.

The funny part is Trump is so incompetent, he can't even get his own cronies to approve his own quid pro quo plans to reward wealthy coal baron donors.  This should have been a slam dunk, as Trump has appointed four of the five commissioners on the FERC board, and all five of them said "This is stupid even for Trump".

I mean it's obviously the definition of crony capitalism here.  But it was so obvious that even Trump's own cronies wouldn't do it.

How pathetic is that?

Three People Outside Jefferson City, Missouri

I haven't had too much to say on the subject of Missouri's GOP Govenor, Eric Greitens, as he seemed slightly less awful than his fellow Republican Governors, but that bar is so low that apparently Greitens has walked straight into it.

Governor Eric Greitens on Wednesday night confirmed to News 4 he had an extramarital affair, an admission a months-long News 4 investigation prompted.

In a recording obtained by News 4, a woman says she had a sexual encounter with Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens and that he tried to blackmail her to keep the encounter quiet.

The details were provided to News 4 by the woman’s ex-husband, claiming the sexual relationship happened between his now ex-wife and Greitens in March 2015. News 4 is not naming the woman and she has not made an on-the-record comment about the story.

According to the ex-husband, the recording was made just days after Greitens’ and the woman’s first sexual encounter. And also that Greitens took a photograph during the encounter to use as “blackmail” according to the ex-husband.

During his campaign and while serving in his first year in office as Missouri’s Governor, Eric Greitens has billed himself a family man. During his campaign announcement, he stated: “I'm Eric Greitens, I'm a Navy SEAL, native Missourian and most importantly, a proud husband and father."

A contrast to the acts the woman accuses Greitens of committing on tape saying his actions were “horrible and disgusting.”

The ex-husband provided details to News 4 of what he claims was a sexual encounter between his now-ex-wife and Greitens back in March of 2015. News 4 has spoken to the woman's attorney who has stated: “No Comment.”

His now ex-wife wife didn't know he was recording their conversation as she confessed intimate details to him.

This is about as ugly as an affair gets, blackmail, recordings, and a politician that had possibly larger hopes than just the Governor's mansion.  What is it with conservative Republicans who are always screaming about "family values" and then blackmailing women over affairs?

It's depressing stuff.  He allegedly duct taped the woman to exercise equipment in his basement, blindfolded her, and then too a blackmail photo to assure her silence. I hope Greitens leaves office, if any of his "I was a Navy SEAL" honor is intact.

Which, well, he's a Republican politician, so no.

StupidiNews!

• The death toll in California mudslides has risen to 17 as rescuers continue to look for survivors along Southern California coastal areas stripped of trees by last year's massive wildfires. 
• States on both coasts are scrambling for exemptions from Trump regime offshore drilling expansions after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke spared Florida's coasts from new oil drilling.
• Canada believes Donald Trump will announce the US pulling out of NAFTA after a sixth round of talks later this month in Montreal, but experts believe he may need Congress's permission.
• A new Cambridge University study finds that the UK could lose a half-million jobs over two years without a Brexit transition deal by the end of 2019.
• Japan will buy four Aegis missile defense cruisers from the US to protect the island nation from North Korean missiles, according to the Defense Department.

Last Call For Motor Voter Over

At every turn, Republicans want to make it harder for American citizens to vote.  They know that if they make it difficult for poor urban, elderly, college and minority voters to vote, they will remain with unchecked power.  No wonder then that they want to now kill the Motor Voter Act, which Mitch McConnell has been trying to destroy for nearly 30 years, and the Roberts Court may be the headsman that swings the axe.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the newest challenge to the law, concerning whether Ohio can remove voters from the rolls who don’t vote over a six-year period. If a voter in Ohio misses an election, doesn’t respond to a subsequent mailing from the state, and then sits out two more elections, he or she is removed from the registration list, even if this person would otherwise be eligible to vote. Critics of this process say it turns voting into a “use it or lose it” right and will open the door to wider voter purges.

Ohio purged 2 million voters from 2011 to 2016, more than any other state, including over 840,000 for infrequent voting. At least 144,000 voters in Ohio’s three largest counties, home to Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, have been purged since the 2012 election, with voters in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods twice as likely to be removed as those in Republican-leaning ones, according to a  Reuters analysis.

A federal appeals court ruled in September 2016 that the state’s purging of infrequent voters violated the NVRA, which states that someone cannot be removed from the rolls “by reason of the person’s failure to vote.” As a result of that ruling,  7,500 people who had been purged from the rolls were reinstated and were able to vote in the 2016 election.

Ohio says it should be allowed to remove these voters from the rolls under the NVRA, claiming that “a failure to respond to a notice— not a failure to vote—is the sole proximate cause of removal” under its purge program. Ohio adds that if the Supreme Court finds that the NVRA does prohibit its actions, it would raise “serious constitutional questions” about the law. A supporting brief by the American Civil Rights Union, a conservative group that has sued states to force aggressive voter purges, says that if “the NVRA indeed prohibits the states from utilizing inactivity as a factor that leads to deeming a registrant ultimately to be unqualified—as the lower court found—then the NVRA intrudes on the important federalist balance in the Constitution.”

One of the big reasons that Ohio went for Trump by 8 points in 2016 was that Jon Husted kicked nearly a million Ohioans off the voter rolls, the vast majority were registered Democrats.  Now the GOP wants to repeat Ohio's voter purges in other states.

For its part, the Trump administration has come out squarely in support of voter purges. The Obama Justice Department opposed the Ohio purge program, but Trump’s DOJ abruptly switched sides in the case. “After this Court’s grant of review and the change in Administrations, the Department reconsidered the question,” the DOJ informed the Supreme Court in August. “It has now concluded that the NVRA does not prohibit a State from using nonvoting as the basis for sending a [removal] notice.”

In June 2017, the DOJ also sent a letter to 44 states informing them that it was reviewing their voter list maintenance procedures and asking how they planned to “remove the names of ineligible voters.” If Ohio wins at the Supreme Court, it will “certainly embolden” the department and GOP-controlled states to undertake aggressive voter purges, says Vanita Gupta, who headed the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under Obama and is now president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

And that would open the door to broader challenges to the NVRA. “It’s a hugely significant case,” Gupta says. “If the court comes out with a broad ruling that says inactivity in voting is sufficient proof to kick a voter off of the rolls, that could have broad implications across the country for how voters are purged off the rolls per the National Voter Registration Act.”

In other words, if states are allowed to kick people off the voter rolls for not voting, then make it impossible to register to vote, we're done as a free country.

And the GOP knows it.

The Drums Of War

Over in Foreign Policy, Ed Luttwak calls for bombing North Korea, openly saying that the deaths of tens of millions on the Korean Peninsula should not and cannot stop Trump from acting.

Nothing can be known about this week’s talks between North and South Korea other than their likely outcome. As in every previous encounter, South Korea will almost certainly reward North Korea’s outrageous misconduct by handing over substantial sums of money, thus negating long-overdue sanctions recently imposed by the United Nations Security Council. Meanwhile, the North will continue to make progress toward its goal of deploying several nuclear-armed, mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, having already tested nuclear-explosive devices in October 2006, May 2009, February 2013, January 2016, September 2016, and September 2017

Each test would have been an excellent occasion for the United States to finally decide to do to North Korea what Israel did to Iraq in 1981, and to Syria in 2007 — namely, use well-aimed conventional weapons to deny nuclear weapons to regimes that shouldn’t have firearms, let alone weapons of mass destruction. Fortunately, there is still time for Washington to launch such an attack to destroy North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. It should be earnestly considered rather than rejected out of hand.

Of course, there are reasons not to act against North Korea. But the most commonly cited ones are far weaker than generally acknowledged.

One mistaken reason to avoid attacking North Korea is the fear of direct retaliation. The U.S. intelligence community has reportedly claimed that North Korea already has ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads that can reach as far as the United States. But this is almost certainly an exaggeration, or rather an anticipation of a future that could still be averted by prompt action. The first North Korean nuclear device that could potentially be miniaturized into a warhead for a long-range ballistic missile was tested on September 3, 2017, while its first full-scale ICBM was only tested on November 28, 2017. If the North Koreans have managed to complete the full-scale engineering development and initial production of operational ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads in the short time since then — and on their tiny total budget — then their mastery of science and engineering would be entirely unprecedented and utterly phenomenal. It is altogether more likely that they have yet to match warheads and missiles into an operational weapon.

It’s true that North Korea could retaliate for any attack by using its conventional rocket artillery against the South Korean capital of Seoul and its surroundings, where almost 20 million inhabitants live within 35 miles of the armistice line. U.S. military officers have cited the fear of a “sea of fire” to justify inaction. But this vulnerability should not paralyze U.S. policy for one simple reason: It is very largely self-inflicted.

When then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter decided to withdraw all U.S. Army troops from South Korea 40 years ago (ultimately a division was left behind), the defense advisors brought in to help — including myself — urged the Korean government to move its ministries and bureaucrats well away from the country’s northern border and to give strong relocation incentives to private companies. South Korea was also told to mandate proper shelters, as in Zurich for example, where every new building must have its own (under bombardment, casualties increase dramatically if people leave their homes to seek shelter). In recent years, moreover, South Korea has had the option of importing, at moderate cost, Iron Dome batteries, which are produced by both Israel and the United States, that would be capable of intercepting 95 percent of North Korean rockets headed to inhabited structures.

But over these past four decades, South Korean governments have done practically nothing along these lines. The 3,257 officially listed “shelters” in the Seoul area are nothing more than underground shopping malls, subway stations, and hotel parking lots without any stocks of food or water, medical kits or gas masks. As for importing Iron Dome batteries, the South Koreans have preferred to spend their money on developing a bomber aimed at Japan.

In other words, Ed Luttwak is saying that the coming loss of life from Pyongyang's inevitable retaliation of a decapitation strike against the Kim regime is going to be South Korea's fault, so f'ck em if they die, we've got Evil™ to bomb.

EUUU ESSSS AYYYY!
EUUU ESSSS AYYYY!
EUUU ESSSS AYYYY!

Which, coincidentally, is exactly what the Trump Regime is apparently planning.

The Trump administration is debating a "bloody nose" attack on North Korea, recent reports say, with the president's inner circle split and apparently teetering between endorsing a strike and holding out hope for diplomacy.

Both The Telegraph and The Wall Street Journal have portrayed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis as trying to caution President Donald Trump against a strike, and the national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, as advocating it.

The reports come after months of mixed messages and dozens of shifts in the US's stance on North Korea.

The bloody-nose strategy, which calls for a sharp, violent response to some North Korean provocation, puts a lot of weight on the US's properly calibrating an attack on North Korea and Pyongyang's reading the limited strike as anything other than the opening salvo of an all-out war.

For that reason, even the limited strike envisioned by North Korea hawks carries a tremendous risk of global — and possibly nuclear — catastrophe.

No big deal.  I'm sure the Trump regime's experts will thread the needle and see the world through this mess safely.

Right?

Corker Flips The Script

A few months ago, SC GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham was among Trump's loudest critics.  Now he is firmly in Trump's corner, defending Trump on TV as his friend and golf buddy. Graham still believes Trump won't fire Robert Mueller and he's also currently ruling out joining the Trump administration in a cabinet position, but he's done a complete 180 since last year.

And now we see yet another Republican senator and now former Trump critic is doing the same thing, in this case, Tennessee's Bob Corker.

Sen. Bob Corker, who is traveling Monday on Air Force One with President Donald Trump, has repaired his relationship with the commander in chief after the two men exchanged fierce words in the fall, sources familiar with their discussions told CNN. 

The two have spoken several times since late last year, particularly as Corker was weighing whether to support the sweeping tax overhaul. Ultimately, Corker reversed his position and backed the tax bill -- and endured sharp criticism over what he said was erroneous reporting suggesting he backed the bill because of a provision that would enrich him financially. Corker complained about the news coverage to Trump, who deemed it "fake news," the sources said. 

Corker's moves to make amends with Trump reflect a calculation among many Senate Republicans: While they may complain about what they view as his erratic behavior, they will soothe over tense relations and look past previous disputes to get on his good side in order to influence him over key decisions. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, two men who have exchanged bitter words with Trump in the past, have taken similar tacks, which seem to have worked with the transactional President. 

For Corker, who serves as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, fixing the Iran nuclear deal is a key priority -- one that will require the President's support. As they bonded over the tax bill and their complaints about the media, Corker has been working behind-the-scenes with senior administration officials -- including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster -- to make changes to the Iran deal through new legislation in Congress, sources say.

Here's the thing though, Corker is retiring at the end of the year.  He announced that in September. So why is he suddenly being Trump's buddy?  In fact, so many Republicans are now heading for retirement despite controlling all three branches of government that the Blue Wave scenario is coming true through GOP attrition alone.

Unlike Lindsey Graham, I think Corker wants that Secretary of State job after Rex Tillerson leaves. Or maybe, like Graham, he's being blackmailed like many Republicans may be.

We'll see.  But all these GOP "never Trump" critics are suddenly coming around even as Mueller closes in.  These are not stupid people.  There's a "why" here and we need to find out what it is.

StupidiNews!

• A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump regime from deporting DACA recipients and ruled that the government must resume renewing applications pending multiple legal cases.
• A three-judge panel has unanimously struck down North Carolina's federal election districts as unconstitutional, the 191-page ruling gives lawmakers until Jan. 29 for a new map.
• Senate Democrats have released a report showing two decades of Russian interference in European elections, demanding Donald Trump protect elections in the US. 
• A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck off the cost of Honduras in the Caribbean Sea late Tuesday, the quake was felt across the region and did light damage, no casualties have been reported.
• GOP Sen. Susan Collins says she will vote for a Democratic bill to restore net neutrality rules, but the bill has no chance in the GOP-led House, let alone surviving a Trump veto.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Kentucky GOP House Speaker Jeff Hoover resigned from his leadership position last month after it came out that he had settled a sexual harassment claim with a female staffer using taxpayer money. There's only one problem as the 2018 Kentucky General Assembly session got underway last week: Jeff Hoover was still House Speaker.  On Monday, Hoover finally resigned, but only after a 20-minute tirade where he declared himself the real victim.

Oh, and he's staying in the KY House.

On Monday, after vacillating for weeks about whether to step down, Hoover announced in a bitter and defiant speech from the House floor that he would give up his role as speaker but hang onto his seat in the legislature.

In remarks lasting more than 20 minutes, Hoover portrayed himself as the victim of a wide-ranging conspiracy to oust him from power, accusing the governor and fellow lawmakers of lying about his actions.

With his wife of 26 years watching from the balcony, he acknowledged having traded inappropriate texts with the staffer, but denied any misconduct, saying that while the messages were ill-advised, they were consensual.

“What’s the one thing you’re most ashamed of that you have done in the past five years?” Hoover asked the chamber. “What if you woke up one morning and that one thing that you’re sitting there thinking about was on the front page of every newspaper in this state?”

His voice quavered as he explained how the scandal had impacted him and his family, saying he had lost 33 pounds in the span of four weeks because he couldn’t eat.

“I laid on my couch day after day after day in the fetal position,” he said. “I got down on the floor when no one was at home, crying uncontrollably and screaming out to almighty god to help me through this situation and to help my family and my daughters. I went into depression. I went into isolation.”

In defying calls to quit the House entirely, Hoover stands as something of an exception among the dozens of powerful men in government, media and entertainment who have been toppled by sexual misconduct claims in recent months. Many have been fired or forced to resign as a growing wave of women, and some men, have come forward with allegations of rape, assault and harassment.

Unfortunately there's not a lot Kentucky Dems can do at this point.  Indeed, the state party is crumbling in the House as major retirements are starting to mount.  GOP Gov. Matt Bevin still believes Hoover should leave the House as well as the remaining GOP leadership in the Kentucky House and Senate, but that seems very unlikely now.

Oh, and let's not forget Hoover is an awful human being.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Last week, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, the man who employed Christopher Steele to create the now infamous Steele Dossier on Trump, demanded that the closed-door testimony that Simpson gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee on the dossier be released to the public.  Republicans balked, so ranking Democrat on the Committee California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, released the transcripts.

And they are pretty shocking, even at this point in the proceedings.

The British ex-spy who authored a dossier of allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was told the FBI had someone inside Trump’s network providing agents with information, according to a newly released transcript of a congressional interview.

Glenn R. Simpson, a founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, spoke to investigators with the Senate Judiciary Committee for 10 hours in August. As the partisan fight over Russian interference in the 2016 election has intensified, Simpson has urged that his testimony be released, and a copy of the transcript was made public Tuesday.

It was released by the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. That decision marks the most serious break yet in the cooperative relationship she has had with the Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).

[Read the full transcript of Glenn Simpson’s Senate testimony]

Fusion GPS was hired in mid-2016 by a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to dig into Trump’s background. Earlier that year, the firm had been probing Trump for a conservative website funded by a GOP donor, but that client stopped paying for the work after it became clear Trump would win the GOP nomination, according to people familiar with the matter.

The FBI had a mole in the Trump campaign, and we know that because the FBI said as much. The FBI said as much because Steele corroborated their inside person on the Trump campaign.

Steele first reached out to the FBI with his concerns in early July 2016, according to people familiar with the matter. When they re-interviewed him in early October, agents made it clear, according to Simpson’s testimony released Tuesday, that they believed some of what Steele had told them.

“My understanding was that they believed Chris at this point — that they believed Chris might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization,” Simpson said. Using the parlance of spies and law enforcement officials, Simpson said the FBI had a “human source from inside the Trump organization.” Simpson added that his understanding was the source was someone who had volunteered information to the FBI or, in his words, “someone like us who decided to pick up the phone and report something.”

Somebody who volunteered to the FBI that something bad was going on.  This was the reason why the Trump campaign got caught up in FBI surveillance.  I surmised as uch, Simpson all but said so last week and essentially said "I stand by my testimony, make it public."  He did that because of course the GOP is demanding an investigation into Steele himself for lying to the FBI...only the transcript kills that dead when it was released.

Sen. Feinstein did just that, although parts are heavily redacted.  Still, the transcript backs up Simpson's story. The FBI knew that parts of the Steele Dossier were credible because they had a person inside the Trump campaign saying the same thing.

So who was the whistleblower in the Trump campaign?  We don't know.  Yet.  We may never know.  But the GOP isn't standing still on this, they're fully going after the FBI and the media for daring to report on Dear Leader Trump.

Broadening their political counterattack in defense of the White House, President Donald Trump's allies in Congress are placing new scrutiny on contacts between top Justice Department officials and reporters covering the Trump-Russia investigation.

In recent weeks, GOP congressional investigators have publicly and privately questioned senior Justice Department and FBI leaders about interactions with reporters covering the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. The goal, according to a half-dozen lawmakers and aides, is to expose any concerted effort by law enforcement officials to spin an anti-Trump narrative in the media through unauthorized leaks.

"There are a number of other inappropriate communications that have transpired between the FBI/DOJ and media outlets that have not been disclosed," said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a top House conservative and member of the Oversight Committee.

On Thursday, Republicans demanded more information from the Justice Department officials about a meeting Andrew Weissman, a career federal prosecutor now on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team, held with reporters last April. In a Jan. 4 op-ed, Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to be replaced, citing in part an "alarming number of FBI agents and DOJ officials sharing information with reporters."

Last month, House Republicans cast public suspicion on communication they say occurred in the fall of 2016 between former FBI general counsel James Baker and a Mother Jones reporter who wrote stories at the time about the FBI’s probe of Trump-Russia ties. The lawmakers cited Justice Department documents for the claim but have provided no further details.

Republicans have offered no evidence of wrongdoing and say they are merely seeking more information for now. Democrats call the focus on reporter contacts the latest front in a wide-ranging campaign by some GOP lawmakers to discredit the Russia probe as an anti-Trump conspiracy fueled by what Trump has characterized as a “deep state” determined to bring him down.

We now know why the GOP is so eager to attack the FBI now.  Stay tuned.

Nevada Justice, Gunmerica Style

The federal government has dismissed all charges against Cliven Bundy and his co-conspirators for his 2014 armed standoff in Nevada.

A judge in Las Vegas has decided to dismiss criminal charges against a Nevada rancher and his sons accused of leading an armed uprising against federal authorities in 2014.

Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro signaled when she declared a mistrial last month that she might dismiss the case outright against 71-year-old Cliven Bundy, sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy, and Montana militia leader Ryan Payne.

The judge severely criticized prosecutors for what she called “willful” violations of due process rights of defendants, including failing to properly turn over evidence to their lawyer.

But she gave the government a chance to submit written documents opposing dismissal of all charges.

The Monday decision is sure to reverberate among states’ rights advocates in the Western U.S., where the federal government controls vast lands that some people want to protect and others want used for grazing, mining and oil and gas drilling.

The tense armed standoff outside Bunkerville, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Las Vegas, stopped a federal Bureau of Land Management roundup of Bundy cattle from public land including what is now Gold Butte National Monument.

About three dozen heavily armed federal agents guarding corrals in a dry riverbed faced hundreds of flag-waving men, women and children calling for the release of some 400 cows. The cattle had been rounded up under court orders issued over Bundy letting his herd graze for 20 years without paying government fees.

No shots were fired before the outnumbered and outgunned federal agents withdrew.

Several gunmen among the protesters who had assault-style rifles were acquitted of criminal charges in two trials last year.

As I said almost four years ago, if Cliven Bundy weren't white, he'd be dead.  Feds would have mowed him down and FOX News would have cheered the same way they did when Ferguson and Standing Rock happened.

Ryan Payne still faces charges from the armed takeover of a federal wildlife office in Oregon in January 2016, but most of those charges have been dismissed as well, especially against the Bundy family.  They're basically clear as of today.

Nice gig if you can get it.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time

Trump's lawyers are apparently trying to get out ahead of any request by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to interview Donald Trump himself as Mueller's investigation closes in on the Oval Office.

Anticipating that special counsel Robert Mueller will ask to interview President Donald Trump, the president's legal team is discussing a range of potential options for the format, including written responses to questions in lieu of a formal sit-down, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Lawyers for Trump have been discussing with FBI investigators a possible interview by the special counsel with the president as part of the inquiry into whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

The discussions were described by one person with direct knowledge as preliminary and ongoing. Trump's legal team is seeking clarification on whether the president would be interviewed directly by Mueller, as well as the legal standard for when a president can be interviewed, the location of a possible interview, the topics and the duration. But the president's team is also seeking potential compromises that could avoid an interview altogether, two of those interviewed told NBC News.

With the possibility now looming that the president himself could be subject to an interview by the FBI or Mueller's investigators, Trump's legal team has been debating whether it would be possible to simply avoid it. One individual familiar with the strategy said those internal discussions within Trump's legal team began shortly after the president's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was indicted in late October for money laundering in connection with his business dealings with Ukraine.

Trump's legal team sat down with representatives from the special counsel's office in late December.

In a statement to NBC News, Trump lawyer John Dowd said: "The White House does not comment on communications with the OSC (Office of Special Counsel) out of respect for the OSC and its process. The White House is continuing its full cooperation with the OSC in order to facilitate the earliest possible resolution."

Peter Carr, spokesperson for the special counsel's office, declined to comment.

Of course Trump is going to refuse. He'd be stupid not to. Mueller will either have to subpoena Trump or accept whatever garbage deal comes from his lawyers.  That's why the attacks on the grand jury proceedings from Trump's media enablers have been so heavy in the last month or two.  They've known for some time now that eventually Mueller was going to subpoena Trump.  They've been attacking the proceedings for six months now.

So sometime soon we're going to be in a position where Mueller subpoenas Trump, and Trump can either comply or face federal contempt charges.  It's at that point where we determine whether or not rule of law applies to Trump.

That is, of course, unless Mueller is fired first.

Immigration Nation, Con't

As threatened, the Trump regime is ending all federal protections for some 200,000 Salvadoran refugees that have been in the US for years, saying get out or get deported out.

Nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who have been allowed to live in the United States for more than a decade must leave the country, government officials announced Monday. It is the Trump administration’s latest reversal of years of immigration policies and one of the most consequential to date.

Homeland security officials said that they were ending a humanitarian program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Salvadorans who have been allowed to live and work legally in the United States since a pair of devastating earthquakes struck their country in 2001.

Salvadorans were by far the largest group of foreigners benefiting from temporary protected status, which shielded them from deportation if they had arrived in the United States illegally. The decision came just weeks after more than 45,000 Haitians, the second largest group, lost protections granted after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, and it suggested that others in the program, namely Hondurans, may soon lose them as well. Nicaraguans lost their protections last year.

Immigrant advocates and the El Salvadoran government had pleaded for the United States to extend the program, as it has several times since 2001, saying that conditions in El Salvador were still dire. A sense of dread gripped Salvadorans and their employers in California, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere.

“We had hope that if we worked hard, paid our taxes and didn’t get in trouble we would be allowed to stay,” said Veronica Lagunas, 39, a Salvadoran who works overnight cleaning offices in Los Angeles, has two children born in the United States and owns a mobile home.

But the Trump administration has been committed to reining in both legal and illegal immigration, most notably by ending protections for 800,000 young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, beginning in March unless Congress grants them legal status before then.

Understand that the goal among Trump's white supremacist followers is not just the end of undocumented immigrant, not just the de facto end of legal immigration, but the end of bitrthright citizenship and the near-complete reversal of the last 50 years of immigration and the American-born children of these immigrants and the resulting deportation of about one-fifth of our population.

This is what Republicans mean by "immigration reform".  It's time to stop pretending otherwise. The corporate wing of the GOP figures their cheap labor can be replaced by robots or mass incarceration and besides, they just got the best tax deal since Reagan.  They'll comply. The courts will follow suit as Trump continues to pack them and they will define what the Republicans want "citizenship" to mean.

Trump's deporting hundreds of thousands now.  Soon it will be millions, and after that it will be tens of millions.  2018 and 2020 are our last chance to stop this.

The Up At Noon Presidency

Grandpa Donny is sick of the job these days because it's cutting into his Twitter and Yelling At The Teevee time. Jon Swan:

President Trump is starting his official day much later than he did in the early days of his presidency, often around 11am, and holding far fewer meetings, according to copies of his private schedule shown to Axios. This is largely to meet Trump’s demands for more “Executive Time,” which almost always means TV and Twitter time alone in the residence, officials tell us.

The schedules shown to me are different than the sanitized ones released to the media and public.

• The schedule says Trump has "Executive Time" in the Oval Office every day from 8am to 11am, but the reality is he spends that time in his residence, watching TV, making phone calls and tweeting. 
• Trump comes down for his first meeting of the day, which is often an intelligence briefing, at 11am. 
• That's far later than George W. Bush, who typically arrived in the Oval by 6:45am. 
• Obama worked out first thing in the morning and usually got into the Oval between 9 and 10am, according to a former senior aide. 

Trump's days in the Oval Office are relatively short – from around 11am to 6pm, then he's back to the residence. During that time he usually has a meeting or two, but spends a good deal of time making phone calls and watching cable news in the dining room adjoining the Oval. Then he's back to the residence for more phone calls and more TV.

The "hardest-working president ever" is of course a gigantic lie.  Trump only cares about Trump and that's always been true.  The truth also happens to be that he's lazy, bigoted, arrogant and generally awful on top of being 100% unfit for the office of President, but we've known that for years.

Doesn't matter now, he got the job and nobody's willing to fire him as long as he signs whatever Mitch and Paul put on his desk.  That's the state of the presidency today: he's a cartoon fascist with a pen.

Beating Trump At His Own Game

I still haven't bought a copy of Michael Wolff's new tell-all book on the first year of the Trump Regime, Fire & Fury, and I don't plan on it.  I'm pretty angry that the anecdotes about Trump in the book clearly show he's unfit for office and that the rest of the Village stenographers covering Trump all seem to think Wolff's profile of Trump as an incurious, clinical narcissist who can't handle the physical, emotional, or intellectual rigors of the job are "common knowledge" and "an open secret".  I'm angry that these same journalists didn't have the guts to expose Trump time and again 18 months ago when our Republic might have been spared.

But over at GQ, Drew Magary makes the argument that Wolff is the man who beat Trump at his own game with his book, doing what our fourth estate wouldn't do when it decided to become a fifth column instead.

I’m gonna begin this post with the same disclaimer that needs to come with every post about Michael Wolff, which is that Wolff is a fart-sniffer whose credibility is often suspect and who represents the absolute worst of New York media-cocktail-circuit inbreeding. But in a way, it’s fitting that our least reliable president could finally find himself undone at the hands of one of our least reliable journalists.

All of Wolff’s excerpts from Fire & Fury so far (the book was rushed into stores today) read like jayvee fan fiction. They read like a pilot that Steve Bannon himself wrote, pitched to Hollywood, and had rejected 17 times over. They read, in short, like bullshit. And yet…Wolff has audio. He’s got hours upon hours of audio. Not only that, but the book has already caused legitimate upheaval in the administration, opened a permanent rift between President Trump and Bannon, AND it confirms what we have all always known to be true: that the president severely lacks the cognitive ability to do this job, and that he is surrounded at all times by a cadre of enablers, dunces, and outright thieves. As much as I wanna discredit Wolff, he got receipts and, more important, he used them. Wolff got it all. Wolff nailed them.

And look how he did it. He did it by sleazily ingratiating himself with the White House, gaining access, hosting weird private dinners, and then taking full advantage of the administration's basic lack of knowledge about how reporting works. Some of the officials Wolff got on tape claim to be unaware that they were on the record. Wolff denies this, but he's very much up front in the book's intro about the fact that he was able to exploit the incredible "lack of experience" on display here. In other words, Wolff got his book by playing a bunch of naive dopes.

Thank God for that. Wolff has spent this week thoroughly exploiting Trump and his minions the same way they've exploited the cluelessness of others. And he pulled it off because, at long last, there was a reporter out there willing to toss decorum aside and burn bridges the same way Trump does.

The argument that it took a journalist who trashed the usual presidential coverage norms in order to expose a chief executive who trashed the usual norms is pretty solid, frankly.  I'm still not buying Wolff's book.  But I understand why people would, and I'm glad he went the regime when our more...credible...journalistic outfits are still playing Access Journalism Bingo.

The Emperor has no brains.  Everyone can see that now.  Trump is seething on Twitter and will continue to seethe for days, if not weeks.  But he's been pantsed on the national stage, by the people he most dearly wants to buy respect from, and they know he's a joke.

Maybe this is where Trump starts to go down along with the ship, I don't know.  But at least somebody took action, even if it was a fart-sniffing asshole like Wolff.  Trump's exposed now, and the rest of the news outlets finally smell blood in the water, even though it's been red for months.

Here's CNN's Jake Tapper destroying Trump adviser slash neo-Nazi Stephen Miller for ten minutes. It's brutal.  Miller gets decimated.

Maybe the Village is learning, or is at least now seeing the benefits of enlightened self-interest.  I'll take that.