Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

With just under two weeks to go until the special election in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district, the Cook Political Report crew moves the race from Lean R to Toss Up as Democrat Conor Lamb closes in on Republican state Rep Rick Saccone.

There's no doubt part of the problem for the GOP in PA-18 is the national political climate. During January, following the passage of the tax cut bill, Republicans had cut Democrats' lead in generic congressional ballot polls in half. But during February, Democrats' lead has returned to close to double digits, a turnaround that was in progress before the Parkland school shootings.

However, the climate alone wouldn't be enough to push a district as Republican as the 18th CD into the Toss Up column. After all, Trump is still a net asset to the GOP here, and Nancy Pelosi is unpopular. What's made the race so close, many Republicans admit, is that Lamb has simply proven to be a stronger candidate than Saccone. 

As a 33-year-old veteran from a prominent Irish-Catholic Pittsburgh political family, Lamb is well-positioned to tap into Western Pennsylvania's ancestral Democratic roots (Democrats still enjoy a slight voter registration edge in the 18th). He emphasizes protecting Social Security and Medicare from cuts, says he won't support Pelosi and talks about strengthening background checks without calling for new gun laws. 

Saccone, a 60-year-old mustachioed former Air Force counter-intelligence officer, hasn't made any major blunders. But he hasn't raised the resources to tell voters his life story as effectively as Lamb, and after seven years in Harrisburg, he can't credibly run as a political outsider. Moreover, Saccone's votes for right-to-work legislation have angered unions, still an important constituency in this part of the state.

Former GOP Rep. Tim Murphy, who won eight elections here before resigning in October upon the disclosure of an extra-marital affair, had solid working relationships with labor groups and routinely won the endorsement of the AFL-CIO. In this race, the state AFL-CIO chapter has snubbed the Republican and endorsed Lamb.

Yes, in a district where Donald Trump won by 20 points, the Democrat is running away from Nancy Pelosi.  Blue Dogs do that.  Not every constituency looks like Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco, but every House district in the country has Democrats in it somewhere who want to be represented by Dems and vote for them every election.

I'd move heaven and earth to have Conor Lamb here in KY-4 to take Tom Massie's ass down, his grousing about Pelosi and NRA support aside, because as much as you guys may not like Blue Dogs, a lot of us live in red states where 2018 means the Blue Dog or the Trump-supporting Republican asshole who wants to destroy the place completely.

I'll take the Blue Dog every single time.  I'm going to root for the Democrat in the race, thanks.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The heat is back on Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner as a new Washington Post story contends that America's friends and rivals are more than eager to take advantage of Kushner's inexperience to manipulate him...and Trump.

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.
Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.

It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner’s contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.

Kushner’s interim security clearance was downgraded last week from the top-secret to the secret level, which should restrict the regular access he has had to highly-classified information, according to administration officials.

H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser, learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials that he did not coordinate through the National Security Council or officially report. The issue of foreign officials talking about their meetings with Kushner and their perception of his vulnerabilities was a subject raised in McMaster’s daily intelligence briefings, according to the current and former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Within the White House, Kushner’s lack of government experience and his business debt were seen from the beginning of his tenure as potential points of leverage that foreign governments could use to influence him, the current and former officials said.

They could also have legal implications. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has asked people about the protocols Kushner used when he set up conversations with foreign leaders, according to a former U.S. official.

This is pretty big stuff.  Kushner's Top Secret clearance has been revoked, meaning he can no longer be a party to Trump's daily intel brief.  Kushner was basically using that information over the last year to try to cut side deals for his own real estate empire in NYC.  The notion that such an arrangement meant he was prime blackmail material for every foreign intelligence agent on earth apparently didn't occur to anybody in the White House until the last week or so.

And in the wings, Robert Mueller is watching Jared Kushner very closely.

Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein claimed Tuesday night that White House senior adviser Jared Kushner is “in the crosshairs” of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation after the president’s son-in-law had his security clearance downgraded.

“Jared Kushner is in the crosshairs of special prosecutor Mueller’s investigation, which is focused in part on Jared Kushner like a laser,” Bernstein said on CNN's “Anderson Cooper 360.”

“And there is every expectation in the White House and among lawyers that are representing other people in Mueller’s investigation that Jared Kushner has many, many strikes lining up against him in the Mueller investigation,” the Watergate reporter continued.

Donald Trump Jr. is a complete meathead, the eldest son passed over for leadership, but really Jared has always been the Fredo Corleone of this tale, the one playing his side game to prove how smart he is only to not realize how much he's been played by everyone else.  In the end, Fredo becomes too much of a liability to the family and Michael Corleone has him taken care of.


I only wonder when Trump tosses Jared to Mueller in order to save his own ass.  Everyone who works with Trump eventually gets thrown to the wolves.

Immigration Nation, Con't

I've long said that the Trump regime won't stop at trying to deport undocumented immigrants, it's going to go after documented permanent residents too.  For these assholes, everyone admitted to the country since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 has to go along with all their children and grandchildren, and "birthright citizenship" has to be ended.

The Roberts Supreme Court, now with Justice Merrick Garland Neil Gorsuch, took a big step Tuesday towards allowing the Trump regime to permanently detain the country's tens of millions of documented immigrants with a terrible ruling.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that immigrants, even those with permanent legal status and asylum seekers, do not have the right to periodic bond hearings. 

It's a profound loss for those who were appealing their indefinite detention by the government. Many are held for long periods of time. On average, they are detained 13 months after being picked up for things as minor as joyriding. Some are held even longer. 

As we wrote in June 2017, the case "has implications for legal permanent residents that the government wants to deport because they committed crimes and for asylum seekers who are awaiting a court date after turning themselves in at the border. Immigrants' advocates contend that many of these immigrants have a right to be free on bail until their case is heard." 

But the court wrote in its 5-3 opinion Tuesday, "Immigration officials are authorized to detain certain aliens in the course of immigration proceedings while they determine whether those aliens may be lawfully present in the country." 

The majority opinion was penned by Justice Alito and joined by the court's conservatives. (Justice Kagan did not participate. She recused herself, stemming from work she had done as President Obama's solicitor general.) 

The decision reversed a Ninth Circuit ruling and the court remanded it for the Ninth to reconsider the case. 

Justice Breyer reading from his dissent, a rare move for the court that indicates just how passionately he disagrees with the majority opinion. 

The case has implications for legal permanent residents the government wants to deport, because they committed crimes and asylum seekers who are awaiting a court date after turning themselves in at the border. Immigrant advocates contend that many of these immigrants have a right to be free on bail until their case is heard.

The five conservatives on the Roberts Court made it clear that they do not, meaning that the Trump regime can now safely start disappearing documented and undocumented immigrants into the ICE deportation system, and permanently detain those who can't be deported.

If you were wondering what was going to be done with all the construction of new immigrant detainment centers by the Trump regime, well, they just got the green light to start filling them up.  If the Trump regime decides to round you up and deport you, away you go.

StupidiNews!

• Teachers in West Virginia return to school today after a four-day walkout as GOP Gov. Jim Justice agreed to demands of a 5% pay raise for the state with the lowest paid teachers in America.
• Mississippi Republicans are moving closer to a bill that would ban nearly all abortion procedures after just 15 weeks, a full state Senate vote on the state House bill is expected next week.
• EU antitrust regulators are expected to approve a mammoth merger between pharmaceutical giant Bayer and global seed titan Monsanto in a $62.5 billion deal.
• Arizona's April 24th race for the seat of disgraced GOP Rep Trent Franks has been set, Republican state Senator Debbie Lesko will take on Democratic newcomer Dr. Hiral Tipirneni.
• Google is bringing its Clips camera to consumers starting today, the $249 camera's AI automatically takes pictures depending on what it sees and what you deem to be interesting.

Last Call For We've Always Been Against Corporate Tax Breaks, Right?

In the wake of the GOP corporate tax cut giveaway passed last December, red states are moving to make their own laws even more generous to "job creators" to make sure that no corporation ever has to actually go through the tragedy of paying corporate taxes, and Georgia is no different as the state is working on a tax bill that will give airline giant Delta billions in state money.  

That was of course until Delta made the even bigger cardinal sin of Thou Shalt Not Piss Off The NRA, which has now led the state's GOP Lt. Governor and GOP leaders of the Georgia State Senate vow to kill any legislation that would benefit Delta until it capitulates to the holy gun.

The lieutenant governor in Georgia threatened on Monday to kill a proposed lucrative tax cut for Delta Air Lines after the company eliminated a discount fare program for the National Rifle Association over the weekend.

The move by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who presides over the State Senate, immediately put the legislation in jeopardy and put him at loggerheads with other top state officials, including the governor, who had championed the tax deal. The showdown between one of Georgia’s most powerful politicians and one of the state’s largest employers was the latest clash in a national debate around guns after the deadly school shooting in Florida this month.

Mr. Cagle, a Republican, fired the salvo at Delta on Twitter on Monday afternoon, saying that the Atlanta-based company must restore its program with the N.R.A. “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back,” Mr. Cagle, who had expressed his support for the bill earlier this month, said on Twitter.

Mr. Cagle, who received an A+ grade by the N.R.A. when he was running for his position in 2006, did not return a call seeking comment on Monday evening. As the Senate president, Mr. Cagle wields significant influence over legislation and how it flows through the Senate, where Republicans hold a 37 to 19 majority over Democrats.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Nathan Deal, who had said the tax bill was necessary to encourage airlines to open direct routes from Georgia to destinations around the world, did not return an email seeking comment.

Other Republicans in the State Legislature also on Monday pulled back their support for the bill, which would grant a $50 million sales tax exemption on jet fuel, primarily benefiting Delta. Among the new critics was the House speaker, David Ralston, who said on Monday that he was disappointed with Delta and wished it had announced the decision before the House approved the tax bill on Thursday. The legislation moved the next day to the Senate, where it seemed to have broad support.

But on Saturday, that support all but evaporated after Delta announced it had eliminated a discount fare program for travelers to attend the N.R.A.’s 2018 annual meeting in May. The airline, which had come under growing pressure from its customers and others to cut ties with the gun group, said its decision “reflects the airline’s neutral status in the current national debate over gun control amid recent school shootings.”

Delta said in a statement on Saturday that it supported the Second Amendment but has refrained from political issues before. The airline noted that it withdrew financial support of a New York production of “Julius Caesar” last summer because it depicted the assassination of a Trump-like Roman ruler.

It's interesting that the GOP stance is "we will openly and publicly punish companies that do not take our political positions".  Considering a dozen major corporations have cut ties with the NRA since the Parkland shooting on Valentine's Day, it's only now that suddenly Republicans are against corporate tax breaks for giant corporations, especially when it can be used to compel them to support Republican policies.

It used to be under the table, or in smoke-filled back rooms that deals like this were made, but in the Trump era, we now have public social media fights over which companies will be allowed to benefit from the taxpayer trough for supporting the regime in power, and which will be punished for not sufficiently doing so.

And the right happily applauds this.

In the end, it always comes down to authoritarianism with these guys.  Play ball or else.

 

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Who could have known that the "demise" of the Democrats' generic ballot lead in January was nowhere near reality now that the dust has settled on Trump's tax scam bill and Republicans have reverted to form on putting guns everywhere?

Democrats once again hold a wide advantage in a generic congressional matchup, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, backed by a base of supporters who are more enthusiastic than Republican partisans and more motivated by core issues. 

The poll finds 54% of registered voters say they back a Democrat in their congressional district, 38% say they back a Republican. That's a shift in favor of the Democrats since January, bringing their advantage in a hypothetical generic matchup to about the same level as early 2006, a year in which the party won control of both the House and the Senate. 

Read the full poll results 

This also mirrors their advantage on the question last fall, before a January full of good economic news brought a shift toward more positive numbers for both President Donald Trump and his party. The same poll also found Trump's approval rating declining -- a metric that's frequently closely tied to his party's performance in a midterm election year.
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents remain more enthusiastic about voting this fall than Republicans and Republican-leaners. Overall, 51% of that Democratic base say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in November compared with 41% of the Republican base. 

The poll also suggests that the issues on which Republicans have largely pinned their electoral hopes -- the economy, taxes and immigration -- are carrying less weight with voters than are health care and gun policy -- two issues where the Democrats typically have stronger backing from the public overall. 

Health care and gun policy are deemed deeply important by about half of voters (53% and 49%, respectively, call them extremely important), while about four in 10 say they are as motivated by the economy (43%) and immigration (38%). Sexual harassment is a sharp motivator for 36% of voters. Taxes, an issue Republicans have said will move voters as they realize the benefits of the tax changes passed last year, is extremely important for 35%. The investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election rounds out the list, with just about a quarter (26%) calling that extremely important to their vote.

That's a big reason there why the Democrats are suddenly back into a comfortable double-digit lead: gun policy matters to voters this time around.  Whether it will still matter in November is a major question, but for now America has been reminded again why the Republicans are so bad at governance.

Five Thirty Eight has the combined generic ballot polling results giving Team Blue a healthy 10 point lead.

We'll see, but it definitely appears that the slide Democrats were on in January has definitively ended as we head into March.

Here's the bad, bad news for the GOP from that CNN poll though:

If 42% of white voters are now less likely to vote for an NRA-backed candidate and only 16% more likely, then the the GOP will get barbecued in November, plain and simple.  On the flip side, white voters are more likely to vote for gun safety candidate, 35% to 26%.

And that includes a  31% to 20% margin that gun-owner households are less likely to vote for an NRA-backed candidate now.

Like the #MeToo movement and tolerance for sexual harassment, something has fundamentally changed with gun control in America in the Trump era, and November could be even worse for the GOP than people think.

Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Kentucky GOP Gov. Mat Bevin has given up on trying to stop school shootings so we really shouldn't even bother trying or something, it's all very tragic but what can you do, right?

Gun control and metal detectors won’t guarantee student safety in schools because evil finds a way in, especially if the nation doesn’t address it, Gov. Matt Bevin said on National Public Radio Monday. 

There is no immediate solution to improve school safety, Bevin said in remarks similar to those from other Republicans who question limits on assault weapons or other gun restrictions after the mass school shootings in Florida and Kentucky. Nineteen students died, dozens more were injured in the shootings that occurred within weeks of each other. 

“It’s just a matter of time before somebody will breach whatever security measure is put in place,” said Bevin in the interview on NPR’s Morning Edition, “If someone truly wants to perpetrate evil, it has always been able to be done. It’s a sad and tragic reality.”
Lawmakers have to be serious and open-minded about school safety to determine evil’s root cause. 

Asked whether it should be harder to obtain a weapon that can kill a large number of people, Bevin said assuming that is a solution is “naive and premature.” 

While host Steve Inskeep said the amount of guns per capita has nearly doubled in the last 40 years, Bevin argued the availability of guns is not necessarily higher. 

“There have always been a lot of guns per person, and the access to them by children with no restrictions, no rules (and) no laws has long existed,” he said. “But yet children did not go to school and kill other children.”

I'm quite tired of Bevin embarrassing the state with his staggering ignorance and look forward to voting him out of office next year.   We have to be "open-minded" about stopping school shootings, but apparently nothing actually involves Kentucky Republicans in the state legislature actually doing anything about it, just bleating platitudes about "evil will find a way" and shrugging it off.

I use the phrase "emotionally cauterized" to describe Trump a lot when he's actually empathetically cauterized, he's emotional, it's just the only emotions that matter are his own.  Bevin on the other hand really is emotionally void in the center, there's nothing there.

This is the kind of lousy argument Republicans made 20 years ago about gun control, and it led to the rise of "superpredator" theory and incarcerating black and brown kids.  Why he's dragging it up now, I have no idea.  The libertarian "Molon Labe" argument is much more chic these days.

Both remain terrible copouts thought.

StupidiNews!

• Chinese President Xi Jinping has abolished presidential term limits, meaning he will most likely remain in power for the foreseeable future.
• Attorneys General from 20 Republican states are suing the Trump regime, arguing that the repeal of the individual mandate by the GOP tax law now renders the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.
• The global watchdog organization on chemical weapons is investigating the recent Syrian regime attacks on the Ghouta region of the country to determine if chemical weapons were used.
• Cable giant Comcast has made a $31 billion offer for British pay-TV broadcaster Sky, the offer could spark a bidding war for the network among Comcast, Disney, and 21st Century Fox.
• AT&T has lost its court bid to avoid FCC fines for throttling unlimited data plan users as the 9th Circuit ruled Monday that the FCC's jurisdiction does cover wireless plans.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

The response to the indictments last week unsealed against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and the plea deal by Manafort's business partner and former Trump aide Rick Gates, at least from congressional Republicans, is that despite the money laundering and tax fraud charges against the person who ran Trump's campaign, any investigation into Trump's finances will remain off limits for the congressional committees looking into Russia's interference in the 2016 elections.

Top Republicans on Capitol Hill have made a concerted decision in their Russia inquiries: They are staying away from digging into the finances of President Donald Trump and his family. 

Six Republican leaders of key committees told CNN they see little reason to pursue those lines of inquiry or made no commitments to do so -- even as Democrats say determining whether there was a financial link between Trump, his family, his business and Russians is essential to understanding whether there was any collusion in the 2016 elections. 

Republicans have resisted calls to issue subpoenas for bank records, seeking Trump's tax returns or sending letters to witnesses to determine whether there were any Trump financial links to Russian actors -- calling the push nothing more than a Democratic fishing expedition. 

While the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee has acknowledged that his panel lacks the resources of special counsel Robert Mueller to dig deeply into financial matters, several Democrats on committees with financial experts on their staff have sought such records. In the House Intelligence Committee, for instance, Democrats have asked for subpoenas to Deutsche Bank, the institution that has been a major lender to the Trump Organization as well as Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser. 

"I think the allegations on money laundering are credible enough that we ought to, in the exercise of due diligence, see if this was one of the other vectors of the Russian active measures campaign," California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel, said earlier this month. "To me, that is far more potentially compromising than any salacious video would be." 

Republicans have rebuffed them, arguing that falls outside the scope of the committee's probe. 

"I don't see the link at this stage," Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican leading the House Russia investigation, told CNN. "Deutsche Bank is a German bank -- I don't see the nexus." 

Asked about exploring Russian-Trump business transactions, Conaway was not moved. "I bet every big bank has a Russian customer somewhere," he said.

Not a Russian customer who happens to be the guy in the Oval Office though. Just saying.

Seriously, this is a marker from the GOP that they don't see Trump's finances as important, and this is vital because the next level above Manafort is going to be someone in Trump's family: either Jared Kushner or Trump himself.

Republicans are content to say that Manafort was a bad apple and that with his indictment, Gates cooperating, and Mueller's indictment two weeks ago of 13 Russians, and that this is as far as they're going to go on their own committees.

Should Mueller move up the ladder however, expect major pushback from the GOP to shut down to Mueller probe for "exceeding its mandate".

Either way, at this point you can consider the House and Senate investigations into the Russia matter effectively over, especially as campaign season approaches.

Trump's Plane Silly Idea

Donald Trump apparently wants to put his long-time personal pilot in charge of the FAA, because we don't even rate banana on the banana republic scale at this point, we're really more of a bunch of rotten plantains. Jon Swan:

The president’s personal pilot is on the administration's short list to head the Federal Aviation Administration. Trump has told a host of administration officials and associates that he wants John Dunkin — his longtime personal pilot, who flew him around the country on Trump Force One during the campaign — to helm the agency, which has a budget in the billions and which oversees all civil aviation in the United States. 

What I'm hearing: One industry insider equated this to the Seinfeld episode when Cosmo Kramer used his golf caddy as a jury consultant. A senior administration official told me that comparison is completely unfair. The source confirmed Trump recommended Dunkin and that he’s sat for an interview for the post. That source said he was impressive.

“He’s on the list because he's the president’s pilot, but if he gets the job it won't be because he's the president's pilot,” the source said. 

In response to my questions for this story, another administration source stressed that while no decision has been made, Dunkin has the appropriate experience to get the job. 

“John Dunkin isn’t just a pilot," the administration official told me. "He’s managed airline and corporate flight departments, certified airlines from start-up under FAA regulations, and oversaw the Trump presidential campaign’s air fleet, which included managing all aviation transportation for travel to 203 cities in 43 states over the course of 21 months.”

This is akin to putting your brother-in-law Randy in charge of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration because he's been a station dispatcher for FedEx for 12 years.  It isn't just ridiculous, as Steve M points out it's Trump killing expertise in the ballroom with the candlestick.

Trump loves this sort of thing. He thinks everything that's bad in America can be corrected by a really smart guy like him who sees (or is made aware of) a simple, obvious solution all the supposed "experts" miss. Solving problems doesn't require knowledge or hard work -- you just have to pick up on the one detail thagt the people who've been in charge for years haven't noticed, and then all difficulties will magically vanish.

It's not just Trump who believes this, we have an entire country that for decades has said "Well what do these idiots in charge know?  I'm smarter than they are!"

(Yes, I know that's the entire point of my blog for the last decade, but I'm not running for president either on grounds that I think I'm smarter than everyone else when I'm not.  Thanks.)

This is a sitcom plot, not a way to run a country, but what do you expect from a reality TV show host?

An ICE Storm In Oakland

The ongoing war between the Trump regime's immigration goons at ICE and California's state and local governments continues to escalate, with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaal warning the people of her city ahead of time of a planned major ICE raid over the weekend.

The relationship between U.S. immigration officials and California’s liberal leaders soured long ago, but Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s decision to warn potential targets of federal arrest that an immigration sweep could be imminent was an extraordinary escalation. 

Schaaf said she issued the alert Saturday night after receiving confidential tips from “credible sources” who revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, was planning arrestsacross the Bay Area as soon as Sunday. 

She and Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick discussed the reports before Schaaf concluded that the information was solid enough to warrant going public, according to people familiar with her thinking. Schaaf said she also conferred with legal counsel to make sure she wasn’t opening herself up to federal prosecution.

The news release that resulted — which Schaaf said was intended “not to panic our residents but to protect them” — was among the most assertive maneuvers by a local politician to counter the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. The message: Not only will Oakland and its police force not cooperate with ICE, but the city will actively seek to thwart efforts to detain and deport immigrants.

“I know that Oakland is a city of law-abiding immigrants and families who deserve to live free from the constant threat of arrest and deportation,” Schaaf said in her Saturday night statement. “I believe it is my duty and moral obligation as Mayor to give those families fair warning when that threat appears imminent.”

ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Schaaf’s action. Officials provided a statement to KGO-TV saying, “There are ICE operations every day and it is unclear what the mayor is referring to.”

Trump has previously said that he's wanted to put California mayors and lawmakers in jail over defying ICE, so Mayor Schaal's actions are definitely going to come at a cost.  Over at Hot Air, Jazz Shaw calls Schaal's actions a felony, and says Trump should act ASAP.

Do we really need to say much more than this? The White House has shown no hesitation in pursuing a termination of federal funding for cities engaging in this behavior. The President seems to be a big fan of the idea of “lock them up” when it comes to such violations. Why is the Mayor of Oakland exempt from this law? 

Not to mention the fact that this isn’t some average citizen we’re talking about. This is the chief executive of a major city who was elected and took an oath to uphold the law. Rather than doing so, she is actively thwarting the efforts of federal law enforcement officials. Clearly, the legislators and the general populace of Oakland would have no interest in removing her from office, but she’s certainly not immune from federal prosecution. Nobody is. It’s simply insane that we’re now living in a society where such a thing has been normalized.

What happens from here I don't know.  But Trump has never shown restraint in the past when it comes to punishing those who have defied him in some way.  If Trump wants to make an example of someone, he's just been handed a potential target on a platter.

StupidiNews!

• Florida GOP Gov. Rick Scott has ordered a state investigation into the Broward County Sheriff Deparment's response to the Parkland school shooting, pressing for "full accountability".
• Hollywood production giant The Weinstein Company will file for bankruptcy this week after a deal for the company collapsed after new legal action against co-founder Harvey Weinstein.
• South Korean President Moon Jae-in is pressing both North Korea and the United States to drop preconditions for talks and jointly resolve the issue of Pyongyang's nuclear program. 
• Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers are considering limited gun safety measures as Congress returns this week, but the NRA and many Republicans oppose any new legislation.
• Nokia continues to bring back updated versions of its decade-plus-old designs with the 8110, made popular in The Matrix.

Last Call For Trump's War On Drugs

Donald Trump wants to not only reverse Obama's sentencing reforms on drug dealers, he wants the death penalty for drug traffickers as well.

In Singapore, the death penalty is mandatory for drug trafficking offenses. And President Trump loves it. He’s been telling friends for months that the country’s policy to execute drug traffickers is the reason its drug consumption rates are so low.

"He says that a lot," said a source who's spoken to Trump at length about the subject. "He says, 'When I ask the prime minister of Singapore do they have a drug problem [the prime minister replies,] 'No. Death penalty'." 

But the president doesn't just joke about it. According to five sources who've spoken with Trump about the subject, he often leaps into a passionate speech about how drug dealers are as bad as serial killers and should all get the death penalty. 

Trump tells confidants a softer approach to drug reform — the kind where you show sympathy to the offenders and give them more lenient sentences — will never work.
He tells friends and associates the government has got to teach children that they'll die if they take drugs and they've got to make drug dealers fear for their lives. 

Trump has said he would love to have a law to execute all drug dealers here in America, though he's privately admitted it would probably be impossible to get a law this harsh passed under the American system. 

Kellyanne Conway, who leads the White House's anti-drug efforts, argues Trump's position is more nuanced, saying the president is talking about high-volume dealers who are killing thousands of people. The point he's making, she says, is that some states execute criminals for killing one person but a dealer who brings a tiny quantity of fentanyl into a community can cause mass death in just one weekend, often with impunity.

Trump also wants to go after pharmaceutical companies, which will last about as long and go about as far as his previous efforts to "deal with the opioid crisis" last year, which is precisely nowhere, considering Big Pharma gives millions to the GOP.

But Trump will never miss an opportunity to enact a policy that hurts black people.

Trump may back legislation requiring a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for traffickers who deal as little as two grams of fentanyl. Currently, you have to deal forty grams to trigger the mandatory five-year sentence. (The DEA estimates that as little as two milligrams is enough to kill people.) 

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, and much of it is manufactured in Chinese labs. It can be lethal in extremely small doses. Of the 64,000 people who died of drug overdoses in 2016, more than 20,000 overdosed on synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to the National Institute for Drug Abuse.

Fnetanyl is definitely dangerous, but locking up street dealers isn't going to fix the problem.  Nailing pharmaceutical companies to the wall for tens of billions in fines would be a good start, but that will never happen.

Fake News Fakery

The digital efforts to discredit and destroy news organizations in the Trump Era are only getting more sophisticated and intense as we get closer to another election.  The tools used to do it aren't hard to find, and they're relatively easy to use, and social media means the old adage about a lie traveling halfway across the globe before the truth can even put on boots exponentially more applicable.  The Miami Herald in the wake of the Parkland, Florida school massacre is just the latest outlet to be hit.

Two incidents hit The Miami Herald in recent days that underscore new tactics by those seeking to discredit mainstream media, and they augur what experts said are dark days in the battle between credible news and misinformation.

Both incidents came in the wake of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14 when a teenage gunman killed 17 students and adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In the first incident, a perpetrator used a software tool to create two fake tweets that looked like they came from the account of Alex Harris, a Herald reporter preparing tributes to the slain students. One fake tweet asked for photos of dead bodies at the school and another asked if the shooter was white.

The reporter almost immediately began getting angry messages.

“It was hampering our ability to cover this terrible tragedy in our own backyard because we’re having to deal with the backlash,” said Aminda Marques, executive editor of The Herald.

In a second incident, someone again used a software tool to create a phony Miami Herald story — in the high tension following the Parkland shooting — saying that a Miami-Dade middle school faced threats of “potentially catastrophic events” on upcoming dates, indicating that a new mass shooting was in the offing.

Screenshots of that fake story were passed along on Twitter and Snapchat, two social media platforms, said Monique O. Madan, a Herald reporter whose byline appeared on the fake story.

“It looks super real. They use the same font that we use. It has our masthead. It has my byline. If I weren’t a journalist, I wouldn’t think twice about it,” Madan said.

Worried parents and teachers grew alarmed, thinking it was a real Herald story. Dozens called or messaged Madan. “My phone just would not stop ringing,” she said.

The motive behind the hoaxes was not clear, but someone sought to create alarm.

“It seems to be consistent with a pattern of people trying to disparage or discredit the news media,” said Edward Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Wasserman is a former executive business editor at The Herald and columnist on the media for McClatchy.

“Obviously this has broad civic consequence if you have a citizenry that doesn’t know where to turn to get truthful information,” Wasserman said. “Your information flows are being contaminated in ways that are very difficult to discern and very difficult to disentangle.”

Of course, when this effort is coming from the top of the current American regime (and the Russian, no doubt) then it becomes massively difficult to counter.  Controversy sells, and the reason why these efforts are so successful is that social media companies prioritize it.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

After two weeks and with the first iteration blocked by Donald Trump, California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff has released the Democrats' side of the House Intelligence Committee's story on the FISA surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page. Vox's Zack Beauchamp:

Late on Saturday afternoon, House Democrats surprised the country by releasing their rebuttal to the so-called Nunes memo — the document, prepared by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), that has become a key part of the conservative argument that the FBI is biased against President Donald Trump. The Democrats’ rebuttal memo, written by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), argues that the Nunes memo is full of “distortions and misrepresentations” that don’t stand up to scrutiny based on the underlying classified evidence.

Having now read both memos, I can say with confidence: Schiff makes his case. Schiff quotes key FBI documents that explicitly contradict the Nunes memo’s core arguments. Any fair-minded observer who reads these two documents side-by-side can only conclude one thing: Nunes is either deeply misinformed or straight-up lying.

“This is a pretty thorough demolition,” Julian Sanchez, an expert on surveillance at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote on Twitter after reading Schiff’s memo.

And it is.  But we know Nunes recused himself from the investigation because of his personal involvement in leaking information to the Trump White House, and yet issued the memo anyway.  Nunes is in trouble and has been for a while now.  How he's still chair of the House Intel Committee, well, you'll have to ask the also-compromised House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The Nunes memo’s core allegation is that the FBI and Department of Justice misled at least one federal judge on a Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA) court during the Trump-Russia investigation.

In October 2016, the FBI requested a FISA warrant to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. FBI and DOJ officials argued that Page had troubling connections to the Kremlin, and wanted to check him out as part of their overall investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

An “essential part” of the application, Nunes argues, came from the so-called Steele dossier — the document containing major allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia that was put together by former British spy Christopher Steele (it’s also the source of the “pee tape” rumors). The problem, Nunes argues, is that Steele’s research was partially funded by Democrats — but the FBI purposely neglected to tell the court about that source of funding.

In essence, Nunes alleges that the FBI used opposition research put together by a Democratic political operative to go after the Trump campaign without disclosing that clear conflict of interest to the court. This was, according to Nunes, “a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.”

Schiff quotes a lengthy passage from the actual application the FBI sent to the FISA court asking for permission to snoop on Page. In the key line, the application explicitly notes that “the FBI speculates” that Steele had been hired to find “information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s [Trump’s] campaign.”

That’s it. That’s the ballgame. The FBI clearly states right there in the FISA application that they believe Steele was hired to find dirt on Trump. Since the core contention of the Nunes memo is that the FBI didn’t do that, Nunes’s entire argument falls apart.

Nunes's argument was always dumb, predicated on that it was a witch hunt for Trump when the reality was that the FBI had its eyes on Carter Page for over five years, well before Trump's campaign began.  The FISA court judge wasn't "misled" by the FBI...and the judge was appointed by Bush.

But notice Trump's reaction to the Schiff memo blowing his last bit of cover out of the water.

Saying there were "no phone calls, no meetings, no collusion," President Donald Trump on Saturday pushed for an investigation of "the other side" amid the FBI probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, while claiming "we need intelligence that brings our country together."

"A lot of bad things happened on the other side, not on this side, but on the other side. And somebody should look into it, because what they did is really fraudulent and somebody should be looking into that and by somebody, I'm talking about you know who," Trump told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a reference widely interpreted to mean Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

In a free-ranging phone interview, Trump said the Democratic memo released by the House Intelligence Committee on Saturday afternoon was a "total confirmation" of the GOP memo released three weeks ago by Rep. Devin Nunes (D-Calif.), even though the Democratic response purports to rebutRepublican claims that the FBI and the Justice Department relied on the disputed Steele dossier in an application to spy on a Trump campaign adviser.

Trump has repeatedly said there was no "collusion" between his campaign and Russian officials and has publicly urged Sessions to investigate top officials at the FBI over their handling of the investigation. Sessions' recusal from overseeing what has become special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is reportedly a frequent sore spot in his relationship with the president.

Trump outright lies and again calls for the investigation of his political enemies.  He's done this again and again whenever he's cornered.  Let's not forget that AG Jeff Sessions is doing exactly that.

The president also returned to one of his familiar foils, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who as the top Democrat on the intelligence panel crafted his party's response to the Nunes memo. Trump claimed Schiff leaks information to reporters in actions that were "probably not legal."

"You see this Adam Schiff has a meeting and leaves the meeting and calls up reporters and then all of a sudden they'll have news and you're not supposed to do that -- it's probably illegal to do it. You know he'll have a committee meeting and he'll leak all sorts of information. You know, he's a bad guy."

Trump added that the blame for not stopping "Russian meddling, if you want to call it that" in the 2016 presidential election rests with President Barack Obama, since he was in office when Russian interference occurred. But he added: "We should all be on the same team. We should all come together as a nation."

It's very clear what Trump wants and believes: Democrats need to be rounded up, Obama needs to be blamed, and Trump needs to be hailed as the smartest human being alive.

Reality will differ somewhat.