Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Another week, another arrest of a monster spurred on by Trump who wanted to kill Democrats, especially black Democrats.

Federal authorities today announced that John Kless, a 49-year-old resident of Tamarac in Broward County, called three Democrats at their Washington, D.C. offices April 16 and left voicemail messages threatening murder. The lawmakers included California Congressman Eric Swalwell, Detroit Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.

In all three messages, Kless referenced his hatred for Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar — repeatedly calling her a "towel head" and a member of the Taliban. In his message to Tlaib's office, Kless referenced Omar's recent "some people did something"comments about 9/11 — a statement Omar made to argue that all Muslims should not be punished for the actions of the few who committed the attacks. But conservatives have taken Omar's comments entirely out of context to falsely argue that Omar was diminishing the impact or tragedy of 9/11.

"It was your Taliban bitch, the one who opened up her fucking towel-head mouth about how 'some people did it,'" Kless allegedly said in his message to Tlaib. "You know what? She's lucky she's just getting death threats, bitch. So are you. All right? You're lucky they're just threats, motherfucker, 'cause the day when the bell tolls, whore, and this country comes to a war, there will be no more threats. Your life will be on the fucking line."

Kless allegedly continued to say the following: 

No one wants to fucking hear you or that other little whore. I'd like to take that bitch and throw her right off the Empire State Building, that fucking whore. Tell her to shut her fucking mouth. You fucking fuck her all the time probably. So tell her to shut the fuck up, all right? From one towel head to another. You stanking, fucking, smelly, fucking bitch. Fuck off. I wish all of you the worst. You can go fuck off in life. Fuck you, and fuck Mohammed too, you bitch fucking cunt.

Kless also allegedly criticized Swalwell's stance on gun control. Kless reportedly said if Swalwell enacted gun-safety laws, someone would kill the lawmaker. He also called Swalwell a communist.

"The day you come after our guns, motherfucker, is the day you'll be dead," Kless said, according to a federal indictment. He added, "You're gonna die. Don't wanna do that shit, boy. You'll be [on] your deathbed, motherfucker, along with the rest of you Democrats. So if you want death, keep that shit up, motherfucker."

Kless repeatedly used the N-word to refer to Booker and called him a "monkey," according to court records, adding he wanted to kill black men like the senator. "You're a fucking disgrace," Kless allegedly said. "We need to kill all you motherfuckers, man, every fucking one of you, man." He added that the terror attack in Charlottesville, Virginia — in which a white supremacist drove a car into progressive protester Heather Heyer — killed only "one fucking person." He then said Booker should tell his "colleague with the towel on her head to shut up about 9/11."

Wonderful man.

Really is a race at this point to see if Capitol Police and the FBI can keep Democrats safe from Trump fans.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Two things we did learn from the redacted Mueller report this week, one, that Russia definitely interfered with the 2016 elections, and two, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks were a part of that interference and Assange used the tragic death of DNC staffer Seth Rich to further his conspiracy.

Julian Assange not only knew that a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer wasn’t his source for thousands of hacked party emails, he was in active contact with his real sources in Russia’s GRU months after Seth Rich’s death. At the same time he was publicly working to shift blame onto the slain staffer “to obscure the source of the materials he was releasing,” Special Counsel Robert Mueller asserts in his final report on Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election.

“After the U.S. intelligence community publicly announced its assessment that Russia was behind the hacking operation, Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by WikiLeaks had come from Russian hacking,” the report reads. “According to media reports, Assange told a U.S. congressman that the DNC hack was an ‘inside job,’ and purported to have ‘physical proof’ that Russians did not give materials to Assange.”

Thursday’s long-anticipated release adds new details about Assange’s interactions with the officers in Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate. Still, it leaves one question unanswered: Why was Assange so determined to exonerate the Russian intelligence agents who gave him the material?

As laid out by Mueller, Assange’s involvement in Russia’s election interference began with a June 14, 2016 direct message to WikiLeaks’ Twitter account from “DC Leaks,” one of the false fronts created by the Russians to launder their hacked material.

“You announced your organization was preparing to publish more Hillary's emails,” the message read, according to Mueller’s report. “We are ready to support you. We have some sensitive information too, in particular, her financial documents. Let's do it together. What do you think about publishing our info at the same moment? Thank you.”

A week later, WikiLeaks reached out to a second GRU persona, Guccifer 2.0, and pitched WikiLeaks as the best outlet for the hacked material. On July 14, 2016, GRU officers used a Guccifer 2.0 email address to send WikiLeaks an encrypted one-gigabyte file named “wk dnc link I .txt.gpg.” Assange confirmed receipt, and on July 22 he published 20,000 DNC emails stolen during the GRU’s breach.

By then, it was no secret where the documents came from. The computer security firm CrowdStrike had already published its technical report on the DNC breach, which laid out a trail leading directly to Moscow and the GRU. Analysts at ThreatConnect independently presented evidence that Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks were fictional creations of that agency.

But rather than refuse to comment on his sources, as he’s done in other cases, Assange used his platform to deny that he got the material from Russians, and make statements at an alternative theory. On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks’ Twitter feed announced a $20,000 reward for “information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.”

We'll run this back one more time for the folks in the cheap seats:

• The Russians stole the DNC emails.
• The Russians gave them to WikiLeaks to disseminate them.
• The plan was to do as much damage to Clinton as possible.
• Donald Trump knew the leaks of the stolen emails were coming before they happened.
• After the leaks happened, Assange continued to stay in contact with his Russian sources.
• Assange covered for them by lying and saying Seth Rich was his source.

Any questions?

Deportation Nation, Con't

America's white supremacist terrorist problem is so bad that we've gotten to the point now where armed white supremacist militia groups are openly kidnapping migrant families at gunpoint and handing them over to ICE and Border Patrol.

A right-wing militia group operating in southern New Mexico has begun stopping groups of migrant families and detaining them at gunpoint before handing them over to Border Patrol agents, raising tension over the tactics of armed vigilantes along the border between the United States and Mexico.

Members of the group, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots, filmed several of their actions in recent days, including the detention this week of a group of about 200 migrants who had recently crossed the border near Sunland Park, N.M., with the intention of seeking asylum. They uploaded videos to social media of exhausted looking migrant families, blinking in the darkness in the glare of what appeared to be the militia’s spotlights.
Professed militias have long operated along the border with attempts to curb the flow of undocumented migrants into the United States. But targeting the recent influx of families, who are legally allowed to request asylum and often quickly surrender to Border Patrol agents, is raising tension with human rights activists in this part of the West.

The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the militia’s actions in a letter on Thursday that asked New Mexico’s governor and attorney general to investigate the group. The A.C.L.U. said the militia had no legal authority under New Mexico or federal law to detain or arrest migrants in the United States.

“We cannot allow racist and armed vigilantes to kidnap and detain people seeking asylum,” two lawyers for the A.C.L.U., María Martínez Sánchez and Kirsten Greer Love, said in the letter.

In a statement, Hector Balderas, New Mexico’s attorney general, said: “These individuals should not attempt to exercise authority reserved for law enforcement.”

History tells us these groups will be deputized to assist Border Patrol duties as Trump's personal brownshirts. It's only a matter of time before they injure or kill migrants and Trump will be under tremendous pressure to authorize this violence on the ground. 

At the very least, Trump will look the other way as the bodies pile up, or more likely, use the violence as an excuse to implement "emergency powers".

This is all happening according to plan, guys.  Trump is absolutely counting on militia groups like these to keep him in power regardless of the outcome of elections or of impeachment.

It won't take many of them, either.

StupidiNews!

• Car-sharing app Car2Go says that dozens of cars may have been stolen through its mobile app in the Chicago area, several people have been charged in connection with the fraud ring.
• Watergate-era investigative reporter Carl Bernstein says that the Mueller report paints a "vast narrative of a presidential cover-up".
• Game-maker Nintendo stock jumped by more than a sixth in value as the company announced a partnership with Chinese retailer Tencent to sell the Nintendo Switch console in China.
• ISIS forces are claiming their first ever attack in the Democratic Republic of Congo, near the Ugandan border, in what is being termed a "major development".
• NASA says ISS astronaut Christina Koch will extend her stay aboard the station to 328 days, Koch arrived on the station last month along with two other astronauts.

Last Call For Finally, Mueller Time

The Atlantic's Yoni Applebaum calls the Mueller report for what it is: Robert Mueller's impeachment referral of Donald Trump to Congress.

The redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report released on Thursday runs 448 pages. But its most important implication can be summarized in a single sentence: There is sufficient evidence that President Donald Trump obstructed justice to merit impeachment hearings.

A basic principle lies at the heart of the American criminal-justice system: The accused is entitled to a fair defense and a chance to clear his name. Every American is entitled to this protection, from the humblest citizen all the way up to the chief executive. And that, Mueller explained in his report, is why criminal allegations against a sitting president should be considered by Congress and not the Justice Department. The Mueller report, in short, is an impeachment referral.
In his report, Mueller took pains to detail why he “determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment” as to whether the president had broken the law by obstructing justice. He began by noting that he accepted the opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)—which issues guidance for the executive branch on questions of law—that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

That, Mueller explained, posed an insurmountable problem. A normal investigation would end with a prosecutor deciding to bring charges, or to drop the case. It’s a binary choice. But “fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought.” Ordinarily, a criminal charge would result in “a speedy and public trial, with all the procedural protections that surround a criminal case.” But if Mueller were to state plainly that, in his judgment, the president had broken the law and obstructed justice, it would afford “no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator.” In other words, because a sitting president cannot be indicted, making such a charge publicly would effectively deny Trump his day in court, and the chance to clear his name.

Mueller also pointed to the OLC’s guidance on seeking sealed indictments, which could be unsealed when a president leaves office, or leveling such charges in an internal (and, presumably, nonpublic) report. Secrecy, the OLC counseled, would be difficult to preserve—and so either step could place a president back in the same unfair situation, accused of a crime without the chance to clear his name.

Crucially, the same concerns don’t operate in reverse. If—examining the evidence and the law—a prosecutor were to determine not to charge an individual, there would be no fear that public disclosure of that decision would be unfair. But if Mueller believed he could not fairly say that the president had committed a crime, he also believed he could not honestly say that he hadn’t. “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” the report explained:

Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him

Attorney General William Barr reviewed the same evidence, though, and came to a different conclusion. In his summary of the report, he wrote, “Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”

There is a vital distinction here between the two findings. Mueller wrote that his evidence was not sufficient to clearly establish that the president had not committed a crime; Barr insisted that it was not sufficient to establish that he had. It’s possible to read the two conclusions as different ways of stating the same finding; it’s equally possible to read them as fundamentally at odds with each other.

This points back to Mueller’s basic concern about fairness. In the report, he laid out 10 specific incidents his team examined, each of which might constitute—singly or in aggregate—evidence of obstructive conduct on the part of the president. “The Special Counsel’s decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime,” Barr wrote.

But there is another, simpler way to understand Mueller’s report. A footnote spells out that a criminal investigation could ultimately result in charges being brought either after a president has been removed from office by the process of impeachment or after he has left office. Mueller explicitly rejected the argument of Trump’s lawyers that a president could not be guilty of obstruction of justice for the conduct in question: “The protection of the criminal justice system from corrupt acts by any person—including the President—accords with the fundamental principle of our government that ‘[n]o [person] in this country is so high that he is above the law.’”

But if Mueller believes a president could be held to account after he leaves office, he also spelled out another concern with alleging a crime against a sitting president: the risk that it would preempt “constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct.”

The constitutional process for addressing presidential misconduct is impeachment.

House Democrats immediately dumped cold water on this.

After the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told CNN that impeachment of President Trump is not worth the trouble with an election just 18 months away. “Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point,” Hoyer reportedly said. “Very frankly, there is an election in 18 months and the American people will make a judgement.” Earlier Thursday, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said that impeachment was “one possibility.” “We obviously have to get to the bottom of what happened and take whatever action seems necessary at that point,” he told reporters in a news conference. “It’s too early to reach those conclusions. It’s one reason why we wanted the Mueller report, we still want the Mueller report in its entirety and we’ll want other evidence too.”

So impeachment is not going to happen.

It has to or else.

America now has to decide if we're willing to go on with a president who was elected with Russian help and then tried to obstruct an investigation into that help — 10 times. What we're learning for sure is something Russia has known for years: Trump is eager and willing to accept its help, even if that means lying to the American people.

The Republican Party and Barr have made their decision — to let Democrats carry this burden alone. They know the responsibility to impeach a president will be a distraction for a party that just took over the House by campaigning on issues voters care about, like health care and corporate tax cuts.

But with an attorney general willing to do almost anything to protect this president, the question isn't "What's politically advantageous?" It's what will be left of our democracy if Congress doesn’t do its job.

Mueller brought the case for doing it. And so at this point, we are reduced to hoping that 2020 is a free and fair election that Democrats can even win, and that Trump will somehow leave office if he is defeated.

That's it.

That's where the story is right now.

We've bet our country on November 2020.

Louisville Slugged By Google

The whole Google Fiber disaster in Louisville is officially dead, and the tech giant will pay the city nearly $4 million as it was no match for incompetent installations, structural mishaps, legal roadblocks and its own greed.

Google Fiber yesterday shut off service in Louisville, Kentucky, and has agreed to pay the local government $3.84 million to remove exposed fiber cables left behind by the ISP's failed nano-trenching experiment.

Google Fiber service was scheduled to be shut off at midnight last night, according to a Louisville Metro Government (LMG) announcement of the exit agreement. Google Fiber had announced its intention to leave Louisville two months ago, admitting that it did such a bad job with fiber installation that it would have to "essentially rebuild [the] entire network" in order to fix the problems.

In Louisville, Google Fiber reportedly was burying cables in nano-trenches that were just two inches deep. The method was supposed to speed up deployment, but it didn't work as Google Fiber expected.

Google Fiber's payments totaling $3.84 million will be made over 20 months and cover the costs for "removing fiber cables and sealant from roads; milling and paving activities where needed; [and] removal of above-ground infrastructure," Louisville Metro said.

"Louisville Metro Government and Google Fiber agreed to these payments to fulfill the company's obligations under its franchise agreement and local regulations, which require restoration of rights-of-way should a service provider end service in Louisville," the announcement said.

The city said it will repair the roads itself over the next 20 months. Google Fiber had been offering service in Louisville since late 2017.

"The agreement addresses network installations in Portland, Newburg and the Highlands, where Google Fiber offered services," Louisville Metro said. "Where necessary, construction will begin as part of the Public Works paving season currently underway."

With the city instead of Google Fiber performing repairs, Google Fiber General Manager Mark Strama said the agreement will let the local government "prioritize and execute all aspects of the required work based on the needs of the community."

In addition to the $3.84 million payment, Google Fiber is donating $150,000 to the Community Foundation of Louisville's Digital Inclusion Fund to support projects such as "refurbishing used computers for low-income individuals and the enrollment of public housing residents in low-cost Internet access through other companies providing service in Louisville." Google Fiber will also donate 275 refurbished computers to the Louisville Metro Housing Authority.

Good on Google to throw a pittance at the city before slinking away, but the reality is Google screwed up cabling so badly in order to do it cheap and fast that the entire infrastructure had to be scrapped.  If this were any other company on Earth, they'd have been driven into bankruptcy by the bad press from this alone.

Instead, Louisville now has one of the least competitive internet markets in America as a direct result, with 90% of service now falling to AT&T and Spectrum, and entire neighborhoods locked into one provider or the other with zero competition.

So yes, I believe the big tech companies need to be broken up, and what Google did to Louisville is a perfect example why.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Ten years ago, Dave Neiwert warned us of what the white supremacist GOP was becoming with his book The Eliminationists in which he described the right's violent rhetorical reaction to Obama's election as a precursor to what was coming in deeds, not just words, should they ever regain power. 

Eliminationism: a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.

Neiwert saw this coming a decade ago.  Here in 2019, the Anti-Defamation League has defined the next step in the process as the eliminationists have now become the accelerationists, to turn the words and strategy of eliminationism into the collapse of societal norms into chaos in order to take advantage.

Accelerationism is a term white supremacists have assigned to their desire to hasten the collapse of society as we know it. The term is widely used by those on the fringes of the movement, who employ it openly and enthusiastically on mainstream platforms, as well as in the shadows of private, encrypted chat rooms. We have also recently seen tragic instances of its manifestation in the real world.

The concept of acceleration has existed for years as a fringe philosophy. Some of the earliest examples are rooted in a Marxist notion that the intensification of an unhinged force, such as capitalism, for example, will inevitably result in that force’s own self-destruction. However, some white supremacists have adopted the terminology and determined that a societal collapse is both imminent and necessary. On March 21, 2019, one anonymous 8chan user, who promoted white supremacist views, wrote, “I used to think acceleration was a marxist [sic] trick…Now, however, I see its value.”

Brenton Tarrant, the alleged perpetrator of the mosque massacres in New Zealand, subscribed to accelerationism -- the concept was specifically articulated in his manifesto, which he posted moments before his shooting spree. Tarrant dedicates an entire section of his manifesto to this concept under the heading “Destabilization and Accelerationism: Tactics for Victory.”

Tarrant’s actions seemed to breathe new life into the discussion of accelerationism and spurred a resurgence of references, paired with praise for his actions, on platforms including Gab, YouTube, Reddit, 8chan and others.

The term “acceleration” references and encompasses two opposing forces. On one end, extremists identify “acceleration” as the perceived escalation by nefarious entities to advance “degenerate” values and influences such as multiculturalism, liberalism and diversity, among others. In line with deeply anti-Semitic views that dominate white supremacist beliefs, Jews are often blamed for their perceived role in promoting these elements—which white supremacists believe contribute to an imminent “genocide” of the white race. This view is expressly articulated by Discord user EagleJarl on November 4, 2017, “The jews [sic] are the real accelerationists.” Discord is a chat platform for gamers to communicate with each other in real time.

Accelerationism, however, also serves as a reactionary call against the antagonistic forces that are causing society to spiral out of control. In one Discord post from December 22, 2017, user Dr. Goebbowls wrote, “Anyone with half a brain and enough time can find the information to realize that accelerationism is the last resort of the white man of the modern age.”

Fueled by the perception that the future of the white race is bleak, these white supremacists believe they must employ any means necessary to expedite the collapse of the current system. Solutions to bring down the system range from the most extreme form, violence, to deliberate political engagement that supports destructive and divisive societal elements. For example, Tarrant referenced the need to bring about collapse by leaning in to disruptive forces, even those antithetical to white supremacist beliefs, writing, “A vote for a radical candidate that opposes your values and incites agitation or anxiety in your own people works far more in your favour than a vote for a milquetoast political candidate that has no ability or wish to enact radical change.”

Accelerationists believe that setting off a series of reactions, even if they result in changes that directly threaten the white race, can actually be a useful tool for motivating more reticent white supremacists. Following an extremist terrorist attack such as the Tree of Life shooting or Christchurch rampage, accelerationists identify a domino effect that is set into motion – a chain of societal reactions that further exacerbate the feeling of alienation among white supremacists, and, theoretically, a greater impulse to engage in violence or other destructive behavior.

And if this doesn't succintly explain what is going on right now, from the White House on down to the grubby social media cesspools of Discord, Reddit, and Gab, I've yet to see a better explanation.

Break the world, indeed.

StupidiNews!

• Former radical activist Judy Clark has been granted parole after nearly 40 years of imprisonment for her role in a 1981 Brinks armored car robbery that killed three people.
• Energy Secretary Rick Perry is planning to leave the Trump regime this year as the Department of Homeland Security has already seen a massive shake-up in the last few weeks.
• An 18-year old woman reportedly obsessed with the Columbine school shooting has been found dead after a manhunt, schools in the Denver area canceled classes as a precaution she might try to attack.
• North Korea has tested a "tactical weapon" according to state media, in what Pyongyang experts believe is a message to the Trump regime about stalled nuclear talks.
• Reviewers getting their hands on Samsung's new Galaxy Fold are discovering the bendable screen is far more fragile than advertised, causing a major ruckus on tech sites.

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

The jig on the Barr coverup of the Mueller Report is so far up it's heading for a neighboring galaxy.

Not all of Robert S. Mueller III’s findings will be news to President Trump when they are released Thursday morning.

Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about the conclusions made by Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, in recent days, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have aided the president’s legal team as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings.

A sense of paranoia is taking hold among some of Mr. Trump’s aides, some of whom fear his backlash more than the findings themselves, the people said. The report might make clear which of Mr. Trump’s current and former advisers spoke to the special counsel, how much they said and how much damage they did to the president — providing a kind of road map for retaliation.

The discussions between Justice Department officials and White House lawyers have also added to questions about the propriety of the decisions by Attorney General William P. Barr since he received Mr. Mueller’s findings late last month.

Mr. Barr and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, determined that Mr. Trump did not illegally obstruct justice and said the special counsel found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia’s 2016 election interference. Mr. Barr told lawmakers that officials were “spying” on the Trump campaign, raised ominous historical parallels with the illegal surveillance of Vietnam War protesters and pointedly declined to rebut charges that Mr. Mueller’s investigators were engaged in a “witch hunt.”

Spokespeople for the White House and the Justice Department declined to comment. Mr. Barr, who plans to hold a news conference at 9:30 a.m. Thursday to discuss the special counsel’s report, refused to answer questions from lawmakers last week about whether the department had given the White House a preview of Mr. Mueller’s findings.

I mean, at this point Barr is literally helping Trump's lawyers prepare a rebuttal to information before that information is made public, and at this point anything that is public should be considered highly suspect.  This is the equivalent of the White House writing its own report on the investigation into itself.  It stinks to hell and back.

And none of Mueller's team will be at the press conference tomorrow morning, let alone Mueller himself.  This is a screw job of epic proportions.

Once Trump and Barr bury this, it's done.  If we don't raise hell here and now, we are done.

It's About Suppression, Con't

The latest feigned outrage by House Republicans where they tell Elijah Cummings, a black Democrat, to know his place, is over Democrats investigating GOP efforts to suppress millions of votes in red states. This of course is something Republicans have to have in order to survive as a party and to keep red states red, so they're pretty upset over this.

House Democrats overstepped their authority by asking state officials for information as part of an inquiry into allegations of voter suppression, top Republicans on the U.S. House’s investigatory committee said Monday.

The Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee voiced their objections Monday in a letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the committee chairman, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who chairs a subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties. The two Democrats sent letters to officials in Georgia, Texas and Kansas earlier this year asking for documents related to controversial election decisions in 2018.

“We have serious concerns that your letters appear to be an attempt to insert the Committee into particular state election proceedings, for which we do not see a legitimate legislative purpose,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the ranking member on the committee, wrote in a letter signed by three other Republicans. “By seeking voluminous records relating to election administration of sovereign states, your investigation offends state-federal comity. In fact, the respective states are already working to resolve any issues with their election administration.”

The U.S. Constitution gives states the authority to determine the “Times, Places and Manner” of elections but also gives Congress the authority to make its own regulations or “alter” state election laws.

The Republicans also wrote directly to the officials in the three states the committee is focused on and suggested the inquiry was not legitimate. One of the state officials, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), told the committee last week he was rebuffing the request for information. GOP Reps. Chip Roy (Texas), Jody Hice (Ga.) and Michael Cloud (Texas) also signed Jordan’s letter.

Raskin pushed back on the letter in a statement Monday evening, saying the committee had broad investigative power.

“The U.S. Congress has the power and obligation to enforce the voting rights of the people as spelled out in the 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, and 24th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, a power we have exercised repeatedly in statutes like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Americans with Disabilities Act to shut down state action hostile to democratic participation,” he said in a statement.

Cummings replied in a statement Monday night, “It’s disappointing that Rep. Jordan is so opposed to oversight at so many levels. With a Democratic President, there was no allegation too small to investigate, but now that Donald Trump is in the White House, there is apparently no scandal too big to ignore. Democrats will do everything in our power to investigate reports of voter suppression, and we expect full compliance with the Committee’s requests.”

Kansas, Georgia, and Texas especially are ignoring the requests.  They figure they can tie them up in court until after Republicans win back the House in 2020 and make that permanent in 2022 after the Trump census and redistricting.  It's not a bad plan for them to have and it's very possible that things will work out this way.

The reality is without gaining control of the White House and Senate, Democrats will never be able to fix the Voting Rights Act, and demographics favor Republicans with a near-permanent Senate majority as smaller states get older and whiter as Millennials and Gen Z move out to blue states. 

That's a fight Democrats are going to have to find a way to win down the road, but more immediately, we have to keep the House and win back the White House next year.

Immigration Nation, Con't

The Trump regime plan is to spark an actual immigration emergency in America by breaking the system the processes undocumented immigrants so badly that the regime believes it will have the necessary public outcry to use draconian, fascist measures to "solve" the immigration "problem" once and for all.

Attorney General Bill Barr is doing his part to make the immigration system as busted as he can, ruling Tuesday that the Justice Department will not interfere in ICE slow-walking asylum cases and that the DoJ will effectively deny bail to any and all asylum seekers starting in 90 days.

The Trump administration on Tuesday took another significant step to discourage migrants from seeking asylum, issuing an order that could keep thousands of them in jail indefinitely while they wait for a resolution of their asylum requests.

In an effort to deliver on President Trump’s promise to end “catch and release” at the border, Attorney General William P. Barr’s order directed immigration judges to no longer allow some migrants who have sought asylum to post bail.

The order will not go into effect for 90 days, and is all but certain to be challenged in federal court. But immigrant rights lawyers said it could undermine the basic rights of people seeking safety in the United States.

“They want to send a message that you will get detained,” said Judy Rabinovitz, a deputy director of the Immigrants Rights’ Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s really obscene. We are talking about people who are fleeing for their lives, seeking safety. And our response is just lock them up.”

For more than a decade, migrants who are deemed to have a “credible fear” of persecution in their home countries have been allowed to request a bond hearing so they can be released on bail while they wait for their asylum cases to be heard, sometimes months or years later.

A federal judge in Washington State this month affirmed the rights of individuals with a bona fide claim for asylum, saying they must be given the opportunity to seek bail within seven days of a request.

But Mr. Barr’s order came in a case involving an Indian man who crossed into the United States from Mexico and claimed asylum. Mr. Barr, exercising his authority as the top official overseeing the immigration courts, said that migrants in similar cases do not have the right to bail.

Such an immigrant, “after establishing a credible fear of persecution or torture, is ineligible for release on bond,” Mr. Barr wrote in his order, which overrules a previous Board of Immigration Appeals case from 2005.

A migrant seeking asylum could still ask the Department of Homeland Security to be released under a grant of parole, but that is entirely at the discretion of the department, which under Mr. Trump has sharply cut back on such releases.

Mr. Barr’s decision does not affect migrants applying for asylum at one of the two dozen ports of entry along the border with Mexico. It affects people who are apprehended after they cross into the United States illegally in the often vast, rural stretches of the border.

Mr. Barr’s order is the latest effort by the Trump administration to reduce the number of immigrants who are able to seek protection from violence, poverty and gangs by asking for legal status in the United States.

Of course the indefinite detainment policy is designed not to discourage undocumented folks from crossing into the US, it's designed to overload the system to the point where Trump will use "emergency powers" to resolve the situation, and those measures will be absolutely brutal.

Everything the Trump regime has done on the immigration front since the Mueller report was completed has been designed to deliberately shatter the immigration processing machinery in this country and to create absolute chaos on the boder and in ICE facilities.  The solution will be extraordinary use of force against these asylum-seekers and the beginning of a mass detainment and deportation pipeline that will terrorize tens of millions.

And eventually this pipeline will be used against Trump's political foes as well who are already US citizens.

Count on that.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump has issued his second veto of his term, striking down the Yemen War Powers Resolution and stating the US has no military personnel "in or affecting Yemen".
• Disgraced former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has landed on his feet after resigning in scandal, Zinke is now working for a Nevada gold mining company pursuing contracts on federal land.
• French President Emmanuel Macron is vowing that Notre Dame cathedral in Paris will be rebuilt after Monday's devastating fire and that the work will be completed within five years.
• The proposed T-Mobile/Sprint cellular carrier merger is running into steep opposition from the Trump Justice Department, the merger would create the world's second-largest mobile company.
• Five mothers are suing New York City's mandatory vaccination order as the Big Apple is suffering a seven-month outbreak, falsely claiming the vaccine is more of a public health risk than the disease.

Last Call For Faster Than The Speed Of Lies

The alt-right did everything they could in order to tie Monday's devastating fire at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris to "Muslim terrorism" and they did it at record speed thanks to the power of social media.

As a conflagration spread through the ancient timbers of Notre Dame Cathedral’s attic on Monday, a parallel fire was spreading on social media. This one was willfully set, a series of conspiracy theories neatly slotted into preexisting cultural biases. And soon enough, willing believers were aflame with hate.

The conspiracy theorizing began almost as soon as the blaze did, right when people saw the shocking, transfixing video of the cathedral’s spire toppling. While French authorities began to assert almost immediately that the fire was apparently accidental, the brief gap between the startling images’ generation and their explication was enough for far-right figures to exploit with their own sinister insinuations. Their prevailing view was nearly identical and, apparently, completely false: that the fire was deliberate and most probably set by Muslims.

Conservative gadflies on social media were among the first to leap to dark conclusions about the blaze, even as it raged: Matt Walsh, a conservative blogger who identifies himself as a “theocratic fascist” in his Twitter bio, wrote, “I don’t understand how a fire of this magnitude could happen accidentally,” accumulating nearly 9,000 likes. Infowars, a conspiracy-oriented outlet helmed by Alex Jones, immediately publicized unverified rumors claiming the fire had been “deliberately started” and linking the blaze to “anti-Christian attacks.” Katie Hopkins, a racist British provocateur, was far more explicit, claiming that “Jewish and Christian Parisians” are being “hunted out of the city by Islamists, fleeing in their thousands,” and affixing the hashtag #NotreDame.

Many figures on the right took the opportunity to turn Notre Dame into a metonym for Western civilization as a whole, intimating that far more than a cathedral was in peril. Just as the fire hit social media, conspiracy theorist and brain-supplements salesman Mike Cernovich dramatically tweetedthat “The West has fallen.” Shortly thereafter, fast-talking far-right pundit Ben Shapiro called Notre Dame a “monument to Western civilization” and “Judeo-Christian heritage.” Given the already-raging rumors about potential Muslim involvement, these tweets evoked the specter of a war between Islam and the West that is already part of numerous far-right narratives; it was also a central thread in the manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, the alleged Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter. (On Tuesday, Shapiro called this article “simply gross” and said he called Notre Dame a monument to Western civilization “because it is,” not because of “malicious intent.“) Richard Spencer, professional racist and coiner of the term “alt-right,” openly advocated for such warfare, stating (and misspelling) his hopes that the fire would “spur the White man into action — to sieze power in his countries, in Europe, in the world,” and declaring such an insurgence a “glorious purpose.” And, as Buzzfeed’s Jane Lytvynenko reported, other, more oblique figures managed to go even further, from provocation in the abstract to more concrete incitement. A parody account masquerading as Fox News fabricated a tweet from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) that said, “They reap what they sow #NotreDame.”
Omar, under relentless attack by the right — including the president — became something of a totemic figure for those on social media already predisposed to see the fire as a Muslim conspiracy. Blogger David Futrelle, an expert on the worst of the Web, gathered dozens of tweets claiming that Omar was either celebrating the fire (variously “smiling inside,” “happy as a muslim terrorist,” “giddy and laughing”) or, somehow, had caused it. Multiple accounts questioned whether Omar was in Paris and whether her relatives had set the fire or asserted falsely that she was affiliated with a Muslim group that had set it.

It's pretty clear that any disaster like this is going to be repurposed in order to cause the violent right to cause bloodshed, either they inspire another Christchurch or Las Vegas shooter and terrorize the rest of us, or they constantly mark Muslims and their allies on the left for violence.  After a while, the numbing despair exacts a psychic as well and health toll.

They're winning this war.  They have a playbook ready to go for disasters of all shapes and sizes and it will be used again and again and again.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Just so we're all clear, the heavily redacted Barr version of the Mueller report will drop on Thursday, and Trumplandia is totally not packing at all because of course the report totally exonerates Trump and nobody is worried about being exposed as the source of any detrimental information about Trump who is completely innocent of wrongdoing and everything is great.

Some of the more than one dozen current and former White House officials who cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller are worried that the version of his report expected to be made public on Thursday will expose them as the source of damaging information about President Donald Trump, according to multiple witnesses in the investigation.

Some of the officials and their lawyers have sought clarity from the Justice Department on whether the names of those who cooperated with Mueller’s team will be redacted or if the public report will be written in a way that makes it obvious who shared certain details of Trump’s actions that were part of the obstruction of justice probe, people familiar with the discussions said. But, they said, the Justice Department has refused to elaborate.

Of particular concern is how Trump — and his allies — will react if it appears to be clear precisely who shared information with Mueller, these people said.

“They got asked questions and told the truth, and now they’re worried the wrath will follow,” one former White House official said.

Some of those who spoke with Mueller's team, such as former White House counsel Don McGahn, witnessed Trump’s actions up close and were privy to key moments in the obstruction investigation and spent many hours with investigators.

One person close to the White House said there is “breakdown-level anxiety” among some current and former staffers who cooperated with the investigation at the direction of Trump’s legal team at the time.

There is also concern that new facts in the report could be disclosed that do not reflect favorably on the president, two people familiar with the discussions said.

“You have a whole bunch of former White House officials and current White House officials, but especially former White House officials, who were told to cooperate,” the former White House official said. “So people went and did that, and now the uncertainty is just how much of that information is going to be in that report and how identifiable to individuals is it going to be. And nobody knows.”

Steve M has a theory on the panic mode.

I don't know how much of the Mueller report we'll actually get to read. I've been assuming that there'll be more redacted than unredacted words in the document released by Attorney General Bill Barr. But I think Barr will leave in just enough mildly negative information about the president and his circle to make it seem, to credulous observers, that he's done an honest job and hasn't engaged in a cover-up.

So if very little much damaging information is made public, the press will need to cover some other aspect of the story -- and what could be more tempting than backstairs gossip? We may reach the point where the press is talking less about the crimes of Russiagate than about boldface names and their proximity to Trump's doghouse.

I hope this doesn't happen, but I won't be at all surprised if it does.

I would suspect that the more likely point of Barr's redactions will be that they are just clear enough that Trump can point to departed staffers and cabinet members and say "See, it was all them. I'm clean".

Barr is going to throw people under the bus by, well, the busload.  His job right now, as Steve M has pointed out, is to collect heads for Trump's wall.  It'll start with the redactions pointing to WH staffers to crucify, and the next step will be going after Obama, Clinton, and DNC staff.

If you thought Trump's scorched earth tactics at State in 2017 or DHS in the last few weeks was bad, stay tuned.

Another Hat Lands In The Ring, Con't

And for once it's a Republican, and they're running against Donald Trump as a Republican.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld announced Monday he is officially entering the race for president, becoming the first Republican to challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 race. 

"Ours is a nation built on courage, resilience, and independence. In these times of great political strife, when both major parties are entrenched in their 'win at all cost' battles, the voices of the American people are being ignored and our nation is suffering," Weld, who had previously formed an exploratory committee, said in a statement. 

"It is time for patriotic men and women across our great nation to stand and plant a flag. It is time to return to the principles of Lincoln -- equality, dignity, and opportunity for all. There is no greater cause on earth than to preserve what truly makes America great. I am ready to lead that fight." 

In 2016, Weld was the vice presidential nominee on the Libertarian Party ticket with former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. He previously served two terms as the governor of Massachusetts in the early 1990s. 

Weld ran for Senate in Massachusetts in 1996 and lost against John Kerry. He later moved to New York and in 2005 unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor. 

Weld told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead" that it would be a "political tragedy" and he would "fear for the Republic" if the country had six more years of Trump as President. 

"I really think if we have six more years of the same stuff we've had out of the White House the last two years that would be a political tragedy, and I would fear for the Republic," he said. 

"I would be ashamed of myself if I didn't raise my hand and run," he told Tapper. 

Weld said he will not run as an Independent if he does not win the Republican nomination. 

Trump enjoys a nearly 90% approval rating among Republicans, according to Gallup. When asked about the President's historically high approval rating and whether Weld believes he can beat him in the primary, Weld said, "Yeah, I do."

It's ironic, as the Johnson/Weld Libertarian ticket basically put Trump in the White House in the first place.  The ticket's totals in Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, and Pennsylvania all exceeded Trump's win margins over Clinton (and exceeded Clinton's win margin over Trump in Nevada).

We know that the Russian disinformation campaign in 2016 was designed to get younger voters to abandon Clinton in favor of Johnson and Jill Stein, and it worked well enough to give Trump the White House.

You'll excuse me then if I think Johnson's running mate, deciding he's a Republican again, stinks to high heaven.

The larger problem is that Trump is a symptom of the diseased Republican Party, sick beyond recovery.  Replacing Trump with Weld won't make a lick of difference.