Last Call For Just Like Old Times

With 73% support overall, 71% among Dems, 75% among the GOP, and 75% among independents, Americans seem to think putting an age limit on politicians is a really, really good idea.

 

We live in an era of stark political division, but there's at least one aspect of politics both sides agree on: a maximum age limit for elected officials. Most feel that after a certain age they should not be permitted to hold office.

There isn't just agreement across political lines, but across demographic groups, like age, too. Young and old, including seniors, favor maximum age limits for elected officials.

And far more Americans believe additional young people in elected office would be a positive for U.S. politics than a negative.

So what should that age be? When offered a list of ages, Age 70 is the top answer chosen. This is older than the current average age of members of Congress, but about a third of current U.S. senators are 70 years of age or older.

While young and old alike think elected officials should not be permitted to serve after a certain age, younger Americans are a bit more likely than older people to put that maximum age at 60 years old.

 

Some 74% collectively believe politicians should be out of office by age 70 or earlier. 

That'll never happen, but I tend to agree.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Turns out Donald Trump may have been keeping classified documents relating to his Russian collusion in his pool closet, in an effort to use them as leverage against the Justice Department investigation into his dealings with Moscow.

 

IN HIS FINAL days in the White House, Donald Trump told top advisers he needed to preserve certain Russia-related documents to keep his enemies from destroying them.

The documents related to the federal investigation into Russian election meddling and alleged collusion with Trump’s campaign. At the end of his presidency, Trump and his team pushed to declassify these so-called “Russiagate” documents, believing they would expose a “Deep State” plot against him.

According to a person with direct knowledge of the situation and another source briefed on the matter, Trump told several people working in and outside the White House that he was concerned Joe Biden’s incoming administration — or the “Deep State” — would supposedly “shred,” bury, or destroy “the evidence” that Trump was somehow wronged.

Trump’s concern about preserving the Russia-related material is newly relevant after an FBI search turned up a trove of government documents at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

Since the search, Trump has refused to say which classified government papers and top-secret documents he had at Mar-a-Lago and what was the FBI had seized. (Trump considers the documents “mine” and has directed his lawyers to make that widely-panned argument in court.) The feds have publicly released little about the search and its results. It’s unclear if any of the materials in Trump’s document trove are related to Russia or the election interference investigation. A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

But both Trump and his former Director of National Intelligence have hinted that Russia-related documents could be among the materials the FBI sought. “I think they thought it was something to do with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” Trump said during a Sept. 1 radio interview. “They were afraid that things were in there — part of their scam material.”

Former DNI John Ratcliffe told CBS days earlier that, while he had no knowledge of what was in the records, “It wouldn’t surprise me if there were records related to [Russia] there.” 

 

Yet another motive for Trump stealing classified documents. This keeps getting worse for him.

 

In a memo to the acting attorney general and intelligence officials sent the day before Trump left office, he claimed the Justice Department had sent him a binder of materials on the FBI’s so-called “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation in late December 2020. The department sent Trump that information, he claimed, “so I could determine to what extent materials in the binder should be released in unclassified form.”

The materials included “transcripts of intercepts made by the FBI of Trump aides, a declassified copy of the final FISA warrant approved by an intelligence court, and the tasking orders and debriefings of the two main confidential human sources, Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper,” according to John Solomon, Trump’s representative to the National Archives.

Trump White House Chief of staff Mark Meadows later wrote in his memoir that he “personally went through every page” of the documents to make sure the declassified portions didn’t “disclose sources and methods” and described his frustration by what he considered “push back” from the Department of Justice and FBI. 

Meadows and Trump worked to release the material up until “minutes before” Biden’s inauguration. Trump sent a memo on Jan. 19 accepting the FBI’s redactions and ordering declassification. Meadows sent a followup memo on Biden’s inauguration day. The material was never released publicly. But in a series of podcast interviews recorded before the FBI search, former Nunes and Trump official Kash Patel shed some light on the administration’s broader plans. He claimed Trump had asked him to help retrieve and publish so-called “Russiagate” material the White House counsel’s office had sent to the National Archives in the last days of the administration.

 

If Trump had "classified evidence" of a plot against him, don't you think he would have used it before now?

 

Just because he stole classified documents that he thinks are evidence, doesn't mean they are evidence.

But boy, suddenly this explains why Trump would refuse to give up his stolen goods, doesn't it?

Stealing documents like these is not an accident, not an oversight, not about a debate over whether they were Trump’s or not—which is how Trump’s defenders have sought to frame the discussion. There is simply no defense for this. The punishment for stealing such secrets (even if no one else ever saw them) is and should be severe.

The risk involved in taking these documents and then lying about having them is extraordinarily high. Therefore, the decision to do so must have been carefully made, even by a reckless narcissist like Trump. As such, there must have been a careful calculus made to take and hold these ultra-sensitive secrets.

It is essential that we find out why he took them, why he lied about having them, why he did not return them when subpoenaed, who may have seen them, whether copies were made, whether there are other such documents in his possession, and much much more. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Indeed, contrary to the measured pace of the investigation to date, when documents like these are stolen the issue must shift from caution and deference to a former president to swift containment of what could be a grievous national security breach. It is time for action and the severest penalties the law allows.

As a consequence, and given the gravity of Trump’s almost certain crimes, this moment presents a new and defining test for Attorney General Merrick Garland. It also presents one for President Joe Biden and for our justice system. There are no close calls here, and the costs of inaction, slow action, or tentativeness are incalculably high. Indeed, it is important to accept and acknowledge that these revelations, should they be true, make it clear that the “go slow” approach of the Department of Justice has proven to be ill-considered. Very ill-considered.

Much as Judge Cannon has erroneously argued should be done (a fact acknowledged even by Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr), the Justice Department has treated Trump as though he were due special treatment. The DOJ has gone slow. It has given him multiple opportunities to resolve the issues associated with these documents that would not be afforded to any of us.

Perhaps that would be understandable were Trump any other president. Perhaps that would be understandable had Robert Mueller not found a strong case to be made that Trump serially obstructed justice. Perhaps that would be understandable were Trump not responsible for a deadly coup attempt that culminated in an armed assault on the U.S. Capitol.

It seems far-fetched that such a man should be granted special courtesies, that his word and assurances should be accepted at face value, and that arguments that he had special prerogatives long denied other presidents by the courts should be considered. But once it became clear that he was likely in violation of the Espionage Act, likely obstructing justice, and likely putting the lives of our human intelligence assets at risk, it should have been clear that the time for deference to this one-man assault on our interests and values should have come to an end.

 

The issue remains that the kind of documents Trump supposedly stole would be worth, you know, billions to the right people as well.

We're in solid traitor territory, folks.

BREAKING: Queen Elizabeth II Passes At 96

Britain's longest-reigning monarch has died today, with her family in Scotland's Balmoral Castle.

Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning British monarch whose rule spanned seven decades, died on Thursday at the age of 96, Buckingham Palace has announced. 

Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952, on the death of her father, King George VI. She oversaw the last throes of the British empire, weathered global upheaval and domestic scandal, and dramatically modernized the monarchy.

She died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland after doctors said they had become concerned about her health on Thursday. 

Elizabeth ruled over the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms, and became one of the most recognizable women ever to have lived. Her son, Charles, immediately became King upon her death.

 

She ruled as long as the Zandarparents have been alive, and *that* always throws me for a loop.

 

We now enter the era of King Charles.

 

Press The Meat, Con't

A disgraced former Clark County Democrat is the prime suspect in this week's murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German.

 

Less than a day after asking for the public’s help in identifying a suspect in the stabbing death of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German, police served a search warrant Wednesday at the home of Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles.

The search marked a stunning development in the police investigation because it indicated for the first time that the killing might be related to German’s work exposing public wrongdoing. German’s investigation of Telles this year contributed to the Democrat’s primary election loss, and German was working on a potential follow-up story about Telles the week he was killed.

Tuesday afternoon, police released photos of a vehicle tied to the homicide suspect: a red or maroon GMC Yukon Denali. Later that evening, Review-Journal reporters observed Telles in the driveway of his home, standing next to a vehicle matching that description.

Police arrived at Telles’ home in the western valley around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday and blocked off nearby streets. Shortly before 9 a.m., police released a statement saying they were “currently serving search warrants” in connection with the homicide investigation.

“No further information will be provided at this time,” police said in the statement.

Detectives interviewed Telles during the search of his home, according to authorities.

The GMC vehicle and a second vehicle were towed from Telles’ property at about 12:50 p.m on Wednesday. The residence is less than 6 miles from the home where German was found dead on Saturday.

Attempts to reach Telles for comment on Wednesday were not successful. When he arrived home at about 2:20 p.m., he was wearing what appeared to be a white hazmat suit. He did not respond to reporters’ questions as he entered his garage and closed the door.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson declined to comment on the homicide investigation.

German spent months reporting on the turmoil surrounding Telles’ oversight of the public administrator’s office.

The 45-year-old Democrat lost his re-election bid in June’s primary after German’s findings were published. German also had recently filed public records requests for emails and text messages between Telles and three other county officials: Assistant Public Administrator Rita Reid, estate coordinator Roberta Lee-Kennett and consultant Michael Murphy. Lee-Kennett was identified in previous stories as a subordinate staffer allegedly involved in an “inappropriate relationship” with Telles.

German, 69, was found dead on Saturday morning outside his northwest Las Vegas home, the Metropolitan Police Department reported. Police said they believe he was fatally stabbed during an altercation the day before.

 

This case seems open and shut.

 

For all the dangerous rhetoric from Republicans about hanging reporters from trees as "enemies of the people" it was almost certainly an elected Democrat that actually murdered a reporter over having his criminal actions exposed.

 

A man is dead as a result. Cue Republicans wailing about "Biden's stochastic terrorist speech" last week.

 

It's a sober reminder that our side is far from perfect, but we can't let the perfect become the enemy of the good, either.

Racist Bannon Meets His Match

Trump Regime Secretary of Racism Steve Bannon has beaten Mueller's federal charges after being pardoned by Trump, and beaten the January 6th Committee by stalling out his conviction on Contempt of Congress by tying it up in the courts until the Committee runs out of authority at the end of the year. He's currently a free man as a result...and all that changes tomorrow when Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg gets his hands on his dirty ass and tosses him in the slammer on state fraud charges.

 

Stephen K. Bannon is expected to surrender to state prosecutors on Thursday to face a new criminal indictment, people familiar with the matter said, weeks after he was convicted of contempt of Congress and nearly two years after he received a federal pardon from President Donald Trump in a federal fraud case.

The precise details of the state case could not be confirmed Tuesday evening. But people familiar with the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sealed indictment, suggested the prosecution will likely mirror aspects of the federal case in which Bannon was pardoned.

In that indictment, prosecutors alleged that Bannon and several others defrauded contributors to a private, $25 million fundraising effort, called “We Build the Wall,” taking funds that donors were told would support construction of a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which handles state-level prosecutions, has been evaluating Bannon’s alleged involvement in that scheme since shortly after Trump pardoned him, The Washington Post reported in February, 2021.

Presidential pardons only apply to federal charges and cannot prohibit state prosecutions.

Bannon, a former top strategist for Trump who was briefly a White House aide, pleaded not guilty to the federal charges in August 2020, after authorities pulled him off a luxury yacht and brought him to court. He was accused of pocketing $1 million in the scheme.

Months later, in the last hours of his presidency, Trump included Bannon on a sweeping clemency list of about 140 people.

Two other men, including disabled veteran Brian Kolfage, pleaded guilty in federal court in connection with the fundraising scheme. A trial involving a third alleged participant, Timothy Shea, ended in a mistrial in June when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.

 

It took 18 months, but Bannon's going to finally face the music. No doubt Bannon is surrendering tomorrow because he wants to plea bargain his way out, and maybe, just maybe, Bragg's price will be for Bannon to give up info on Trump in time for next month's NY state trial against the Trump Organization. 

 

We'll see.

That's The Sound Of The Police, Con't

Why yes, Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem™ is currently powered by your local police department, and it has been for quite some time.

 

The names of hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of a far-right extremist group that’s accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report released Wednesday.

The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military.

It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August. The membership information was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets.

The data raises fresh concerns about the presence of extremists in law enforcement and the military who are tasked with enforcing laws and protecting the U.S. It’s especially problematic for public servants to be associated with extremists at a time when lies about the 2020 election are fueling threats of violence against lawmakers and institutions.

“Even for those who claimed to have left the organization when it began to employ more aggressive tactics in 2014, it is important to remember that the Oath Keepers have espoused extremism since their founding, and this fact was not enough to deter these individuals from signing up,” the report says.

Appearing in the Oath Keepers’ database doesn’t prove that a person was ever an active member of the group or shares its ideology. Some people on the list contacted by The Associated Press said they were briefly members years ago and are no longer affiliated with the group. Some said they were never dues-paying members.

“Their views are far too extreme for me,” said Shawn Mobley, sheriff of Otero County, Colorado. Mobley told the AP in an email that he distanced himself from the Oath Keepers years ago over concerns about its involvement in the standoff against the federal government at Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada, among other things.

The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, is a loosely organized conspiracy theory-fueled group that recruits current and former military, police and first responders. It asks its members to vow to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” promotes the belief that the federal government is out to strip citizens of their civil liberties and paints its followers as defenders against tyranny.

More than two dozen people associated with the Oath Keepers — including Rhodes — have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Rhodes and four other Oath Keeper members or associates are heading to trial this month on seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors have described as a weekslong plot to keep then-President Donald Trump in power. Rhodes and the other Oath Keepers say that they are innocent and that there was no plan to attack the Capitol.

 

"Not all cops!" are Oath Keepers of course, but a hell of a lot of Oath Keepers are current or former law enforcement officers (and current/former military). And a hell of a lot of Oath Keepers are terrorist seditionists, and a hell of a lot of Oath Keepers are running for office as Republicans.

 

All cops are still bastards though.

Last Call For The Coming Supreme Blow

Republicans are staring to line up behind next summer's most destructive Supreme Court case that could spell the end of democracy in America and the advent of permanent, one-party rule in red states.

 

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has lined up behind a U.S. Supreme Court case legal experts believe could radically reshape how federal elections are conducted by handing more power to state legislatures and blocking state courts from intervening.

Ashcroft announced last week that his office had filed an amicus brief in support of Republicans in North Carolina who are asking the nation’s highest court to restore a Congressional map that was rejected as a partisan gerrymander by that state’s Supreme Court.

The North Carolina Republicans argue the state court had no authority to throw out the map under the so-called independent state legislature doctrine.

“Secretary Ashcroft is the first elected official to file an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court in support of state legislatures in historic elections case,” the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office tweeted last week.

The independent state legislature doctrine would give state lawmakers the power to set election rules and draw congressional maps without any review by state courts.

Some legal experts contend the doctrine could also be interpreted as allowing a legislature to refuse to certify the results of a pres­id­en­tial elec­tion and instead select its own slate of elect­ors.

A version of the theory was pushed in 2020 by allies of then-President Donald Trump in their effort to toss out legitimate election results in swing states won by Joe Biden and have electors appointed by Trump-friendly legislators.

The North Carolina case concerns the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause, which says: “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”

Proponents of the independent state legislature doctrine argue the Election Clause clearly gives legislatures sole responsibility for drawing congressional districts — and state courts have no role to play.

In his amicus brief, Ashcroft argues that interpretation of the Elections Clause would not “leave individuals affected by redistricting without a remedy to complain about all kinds of map drawing.”

Courts would still have a role, Ashcroft’s brief argues, in certain areas such as “one-person, one-vote and racial gerrymandering.”

Henry Chambers Jr., a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, wrote last month that if the U.S. Supreme Court adopts the independent state legislature doctrine, it would “leave partisan gerrymandering unregulated.”

“State legislatures, unconstrained by state law, could then create aggressively gerrymandered congressional districts,” Chambers said, “possibly leading to an ever more partisan Congress with accompanying gridlock and policy failures.”

 

We're already seeing the future of this in Ohio, where the GOP-dominated state legislature is simply ignoring the state Supreme Court's multiple rulings that the Republican-controlled gerrymander committee's maps are unconstitutional, but the federal courts have ruled that 2022 elections must proceed anyway under these broken, unconstitutional maps.

 

The real problem is that under the most extreme version of this doctrine, state legislatures would have the final say on every single election in the state, and could theoretically reverse any state or local election result they wanted to.

One-party rule forever. The legislature would simply overturn any election result that would put Democrats in power, everywhere. If you don't think SCOTUS would do this, I point you to the jurisprudence garbage fire that is Alito's Dobbs decision.

Just saying.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Why yes, Donald Trump had classified nuclear secrets lying around his pool closet, and they weren't just our nuclear secrets apparently.

A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.

Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation.

Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location.

But such documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago, with uncertain security, more than 18 months after Trump left the White House.

After months of trying, according to government court filings, the FBI has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago this year: 184 in a set of 15 boxes sent to the National Archives and Records Administration in January, 38 more handed over by a Trump lawyer to investigators in June, and more than 100 additional documents unearthed in a court-approved search on Aug. 8.

It was in this last batch of government secrets, the people familiar with the matter said, that the information about a foreign government’s nuclear-defense readiness was found. These people did not identify the foreign government in question, say where at Mar-a-Lago the document was found or offer additional details about one of the Justice Department’s most sensitive national security investigations.

 

This alone should warrant, well, a warrant. If you had this document lying around your house, you would already be serving decades in jail.

 

The damage from all of this will be catastrophic, and that's before factoring in the very real possibility that Trump and his family saw these classified documents and that they may have been deliberately exposed to foreign governments in exchange for favors, money, or both.

 

Lock. Him. Up.

The Jackson, Hole, Con't

Jackson, Mississippi's water continues to remain under a boil notice as GOP Gov. Tate Reeves says that water pressure has been restored for now, but any future solutions for the city's ageing water plant don't seem to include using any of the $4.5 billion the state got from the Biden infrastructure bill in replacing it.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced “significant” improvements in the Jackson water system on Labor Day while telling reporters he is open to numerous long-term solutions, including leasing its management to a private company.

“One week ago today I stood on this podium and I told you the state was going to take historic and unprecedented steps to intervene in Jackson’s water system because it had reached a crisis level,” the governor said at a Monday morning press conference in the capital city. “Not only were there issues with the quality of the water, but with the quantity of the water. The city could not produce enough running water for Jacksonians.”

The Republican governor said health officials told him this morning that the beleaguered O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant is now “pumping out cleaner water than we’ve seen for a very, very long time.” He said he is hopeful that “we will be able to measure potential for clean water and the removal of the boil water notice” within “days, not weeks or months.”

“We know that it is always possible that there will be more severe challenges. This water system broke over several years and it would be inaccurate to claim it is totally solved in the matter of less than a week,” he said. “… There may be more bad days in the future. We have however reached a place where people in Jackson can trust that water will come out of the faucet, toilets can be flushed and fires can be put out.”

Despite his optimism, the governor cautioned that while “the risk with respect to quantity of water has not been eliminated, it has been significantly reduced.” Jackson currently remains under the boil water notice that began on July 29, 2022.

Water distribution sites remain available in the City, he said, but school locations will no longer provide distribution tomorrow as Jackson Public School students return to classes. Schools went virtual last week due to the lack of water.

“As we turn to long-term problems in the future, I want to clarify a few things: There are indeed problems in Jackson that are decades old, on the order of $1 billion to fix,” Reeves said. “The crisis we intervened to solve is not one of those problems.”

When it comes to addressing the water system’s troubles beyond the immediate crisis, he said he is “open” to all ideas.

“Privatization is on the table,” the governor said. “Having a commission that oversees failed water systems as they have in many states is on the table. I’m open to ideas.”

 

No private utility company is going to take on Jackson's water system unless they can profit from it. A billion-dollar history of neglect means the any company that does take it on will be charging residents astonishing rates for water service, and who knows when the city's water will be drinkable again?

 

But actually spending infrastructure money on a Black city? That's the last thing that will happen in this state. Jackson remains one of the most obvious examples of American structural environmental racism today, and it will for a long time.

I doubt it'll ever be taught in the state's history books though.

 

Being All Judge Mental, Con't

As I told you after last week's hearing, the failure of Trump-appointed federal Judge Aileen Cannon in not immediately throwing out Team Trump's "special master" argument was a vile portent:

Here's the hysterically obvious problem with this "executive privilege" argument: Trump is not President. Legally, this should be tossed into the nearest chipper/shredder. It's the current president who gets to decide what executive privilege means here, and the Biden administration has the final say. Trump doesn't get to determine what executive privilege is any more than you or I do.

 

But where Trump is winning here is the fact that he's successfully slowing the investigation into his mishandling of the documents. It could take "months" for the special master to complete their work, you see, and surely no indictments can be "legally" issued while this is going on. 

It's a solid stalling tactic that could buy Trump quite some time to both get the search warrant out of the news ahead of campaign season going into full swing next month, and to come up with more tactics to keep the feds off his case.

Nobody should then be surprised that Judge Cannon did exactly what I predicted she would do.

A federal judge on Monday granted a request by former President Donald Trump’s legal team to appoint a special master to review documents seized by the FBI from his Florida home last month and also temporarily halted the Justice Department’s use of the records for investigative purposes.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon came despite the objections of the Justice Department, which said an outside legal expert was not necessary in part because officials had already completed their review of potentially privileged documents. The judge had previously signaled her inclination to approve a special master, asking a department lawyer during arguments this month, “What is the harm?”

The appointment is likely to slow the pace of the department’s investigation into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago given the judge’s directive that the Justice Department may not for the moment use any of the seized materials for investigative purposes. But it is not clear that it will have any significant effect on any investigative decisions or the ultimate outcome of the probe.

Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in 2020, said she would permit the continuation of a risk assessment of the documents being conducted by the U.S. intelligence community.

Trump’s lawyers had argued that a special master — usually an outside lawyer or former judge — was necessary to ensure an independent review of records taken during the Aug. 8 search. Such a review was necessary, they have said, so that any personal information or documents recovered by the FBI could be filtered out and returned to Trump and so that any documents protected by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege could also be segregated from the rest of the investigation.

The Justice Department had argued against the appointment, saying it was unnecessary since it had already reviewed potentially privileged documents and identified a limited subset of materials that could be covered by attorney-client privilege.

 

This assures that Trump won't be indicted until after the midterms, giving him months to get his defenses in place, months for Trump to prepare to announce his 2024 candidacy, and months to rally the MAGA CHUDs to violence if the DoJ dares to indict. What Trump needed most was time, and his judge gave it to him.

And Cannon has pretty much destroyed the notion that Trump can even be held accountable in the first place. Trump has magical powers that prevent him from having to even pay attention to any criminal statue if Cannon's legal theories are correct, stating that even the investigation itself into his criminality threatens "incalculable harm" that supersedes national security itself.

 

Frankly I'm not even 100% sure this gets reversed on appeal. What Trump wants is for the special Master argument to be tied up in the courts and delayed as long as possible, delayed into next year with a Trump-friendly House or Senate, and definitely delayed into 2025 where the Roberts Court will toss the suit as moot and/or Trump hopes to be in the Oval Office again and have the entire investigation shut down.  

 

So, the DoJ either has to accept this terrible precedent of Trump's legal immunity, or risk losing the entire case to this special master idiocy. Yes, Merrick Garland has other evidence, and there are other case open against Trump. While Trump will unleash his terrorists on America if an indictment happens anyway, the cover of the special master argument will be the fig leaf of "legitimacy" that Republicans will use to demand any indictment at all be thrown out, if not directly interfere with the courts to do just that.

 

You only have to go as far as Trump's own social media grievance service, Pravda Truth Social, to see him demand regularly that he be instated now as POTUS and Biden thrown out of office, if you're still somehow confused as to what Trump's endgame is. He continues to expect enough of his people to rise up enough to make that happen. He still expects the rest of the GOP to declare the 2020 election as a mistrial or something in order to protect him from prison.

 

People still think the rule of law means anything when it comes to holding Trump accountable, and while I still think his indictment is inevitable, so is the lethal, nationwide terrorist violence that will follow charges in an attempt to disrupt any attempt to bring this case or any other case against him to trial. The DoJ will be well-versed on such terrorist threats, but making that decision will have consequences either way.

 

As I've said on numerous occasions, we're not even close to being ready to even start the conversation involving prosecuting Trump and the risks involved. The one thing you can absolutely count on though is that most marginalized among us will pay the highest price.

Last Call For A Trussed-Up Turkey

 Meet the UK's new boss, who will almost certainly be worse than the old boss.

 

Liz Truss got 57.4% of the vote, and Rishi Sunak received 42.6%. That means, of the four Conservative party leaders elected after a ballot of the whole membership, she is the only one to have secured less than 60% of the vote.

At 82.6%, the turnout was lower than it was in the ballot that saw Boris Johnson elected in 2019. But it was higher than in 2001 and in 2005 (when the party was in opposition, and the result counted for less.)

In 2001 Iain Duncan Smith beat Ken Clarke in the final ballot with 60.7% of the vote over Clarke’s 39.3%. Turnout was 78.3%.

In 2005 David Cameron beat David Davis in the final ballot with 67.6% of the vote over Davis’s 32.3%. Turnout was 78.4%.

And in 2019 Boris Johnson beat Jeremy Hunt in the final ballot with 66.4% of the vote over Hunt’s 33.6%. Turnout was 87.4%.

 

I don't expect Truss to last long. The disastrous Brexit mistake under Boris Johnson has led to the UK economy facing the brink of recession.

Liz Truss will become the UK’s next prime minister with the economy on the brink of recession, according to figures that show private sector activity fell last month as businesses struggle with soaring costs.

The latest snapshot from S&P Global and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (Cips) revealed a “severe and accelerated” decline in manufacturing output in August, alongside weaker activity in the UK’s dominant service sector.

The monthly business survey, which is closely watched by the government and the Bank of England for early warning signs from the economy, found growing worries over soaring inflation and a marked reduction in confidence among firms.

Cost pressures remained extremely elevated, linked to rising prices for energy and fuel as Russia’s war in Ukraine further drives up costs on the wholesale market. Unlike households, businesses do not benefit from an energy price cap.

“The incoming prime minister will be dealing with an economy that is facing a heightened risk of recession,” said Chris Williamson, the chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, with the British economy facing a “deteriorating labour market and persistent elevated price pressures linked to the soaring cost of energy”.

The monthly purchasing managers’ index from S&P/Cips fell to 49.6 in August, down from 52.1 in July. Any reading above 50 suggests growth in private sector activity.

The figures come as some economists suggested Britain’s economy slipped into recession this summer as households tightened their belts amid the cost of living crisis. The Bank of England has forecast inflation will peak above 13%, the highest level since the early 1980s, and projects a lengthy recession starting in the final quarter of the year.

Economists at Goldman Sachs said last week that inflation could peak above 22%, close to matching the postwar record set in 1975, if current high wholesale energy prices are sustained into the new year.

In her acceptance speech after beating Rishi Sunak in the Conservative leadership race, Truss pledged to “deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow the economy”, and also “deal with people’s energy bills” ahead of a tough winter for households and businesses.

 

The return of Thatcherite hell for the UK seems assured at this point. It's going to be a very long winter...or if things get as bad as they seem to be headed towards, a very short winter for Truss's government.

 

Laboring Daily

This Labor Day, Gallup finds support for labor unions to not only be the highest in my lifetime, but the highest dating back to 1965.

Seventy-one percent of Americans now approve of labor unions. Although statistically similar to last year's 68%, it is up from 64% before the pandemic and is the highest Gallup has recorded on this measure since 1965.

These data are from Gallup's annual Work and Education survey, collected Aug. 1-23.

The latest approval figure comes amid a burst of 2022 union victories across the country, with high-profile successes at major American corporations such as Amazon and Starbucks. The National Labor Relations Board reported a 57% increase in union election petitions filed during the first six months of fiscal year 2021.

Support for labor unions was highest in the 1950s, when three in four Americans said they approved. Support only dipped below the 50% mark once, in 2009, but has improved in the 13 years since and now sits at a level last seen nearly 60 years ago.

Sixteen percent of Americans live in a household where at least one resident is a union member. This includes U.S. adults who report that they themselves are a union member (6%), those who say someone else in their home is a member (7%), and those who say they and someone else in their household belong to unions (3%).

The net 16% union household figure is within the 14% to 21% range Gallup has recorded since 2001.

Gallup also polled union members and nonunion members June 13-23 in a separate online Gallup Panel survey about union membership.

Membership is highest among front-line and production workers, of whom one in five (20%) are union members.

About one in 10 workers in healthcare and social assistance (13%), white-collar positions (11%), and administrative and clerical roles (10%) are union members.

Workers in managerial roles (6%) are the least likely to be members of unions.

 

That sharp drop for union support in 2009 was from the auto bailout battle, when Republicans like Mitt Romney demonized the $17.4 billion bailout of the industry that saved a million jobs, and blamed the UAW.

Some 13 years later, unions have more than recovered their reputation, and today they are more important than ever.

Support for unions needs to be matched by union participation, though. The problem remains that the majority of non-unionized workers say they have no interest whatsoever in joining a union.

That needs to change.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

While we've seen years worth of white supremacist secession movements in western states like Idaho, rural California, Oregon, Utah and Montana, we also have to pay attention to the growing secessionist movement in New Hampshire, where the Free State movement is trying to take over local governments so that they can reach the goal of dismantling things like public schools and eventually seceding from the US.

The doormat outside Carla Gericke’s house carries the warning “Come back with a warrant.” It’s a stark reflection of her broad distrust of government bureaucracy, an attitude that is the driving force behind the Free State movement, which has led thousands of like-minded people to move to New Hampshire on a quixotic quest — to build a libertarian utopia.

Gericke helps lead that movement, and her agenda is broad and unapologetically radical. More than 6,000 people have relocated to New Hampshire since the effort was launched 21 years ago, according to its organizers. And while some dispute that claim, legislators on both sides of the aisle in Concord agree that Free Staters have come to wield outsize political influence.

Inside her home, Gericke explained why an independent New Hampshire is a good idea, why its public schools are hopelessly broken, why Washington, D.C., is pervasively corrupt, and why Free Staters who believe big government is the enemy of personal freedom are determined to turn society upside down.

“I’m a problem-solver, I’m a solutionist, I am an innovator, I’m a visionary,” said Gericke, a former corporate attorney who moved to New Hampshire from New York in 2008 as part of the Free State movement. “I want to take a swing at making one place better, and this is the place I picked.”

But where Gericke and other “porcupines” — a nickname Free Staters have adopted — see a blueprint for shrinking government and protecting the rights to privacy and private property, critics see a back-door assault on democracy itself.

Their end game, detractors say, is to infiltrate New Hampshire government at all levels — from select boards to the State House — with the aim of dismantling it. State support for public schools is a priority target.

“Their whole mission is to take over state government and to use the threat of secession as leverage” against the federal government, said Zandra Rice Hawkins, executive director of Granite State Progress, a progressive advocacy group.

Jeremy Kauffman, a Free State Project board member, describes democracy itself as a threat.

“Democracy is a soft form of communism that basically assures bad and dangerous people will be in power,” Kauffman said by e-mail. The Manchester resident, a tech entrepreneur, is running for US Senate as a Libertarian.

The movement began with a 2001 essay by Jason Sorens, then a Yale graduate student and now director of the Center for Ethics in Society at St. Anselm College in Manchester. The goal was at once simple and sweeping: attract 20,000 libertarians to a single state with a small population, get elected to public office, concentrate power, and enact change from the inside out.

In 2003, Free Staters chose New Hampshire, with its deep vein of conservatism and “Live Free or Die” motto, as their prospective homeland, and more than 19,000 people have since signed a pledge to move to the state, organizers said. Only a third of that number are estimated to have relocated so far, but Sorens said they have made a major impact.

“There’s been the emergence of a significant group of libertarian legislators, and some of them are in leadership” in Concord, the state capital, Sorens said. “I’ve been pleased overall with what we’ve achieved. I may have hoped that we would reach 20,000, but I’m not sure I ever expected we would.”

House majority leader Jason Osborne, for example, moved to New Hampshire from Ohio in 2010 as part of the Free State Project. Like many Free Staters, Osborne belongs to the Republican Party, something critics say masks the true intentions of many in the movement — using a major party as a Trojan horse to gain election.

Sorens estimated that as many as 40 percent of Free Staters favor secession.

The porcupines, so called because they portray themselves as harmless until provoked, have built a statewide support network for newcomers and member families already here.

Porcupine real-estate agents help find housing for the arrivals, others steer them to jobs, and weekly meetups, from pub gatherings to knitting circles, have sprung up across the state. The Free State Project also organizes PorcFest each summer, a weeklong celebration featuring a plethora of lectures and family activities.

In the recent past, “those not so misguided by the winning government’s indoctrination camps” have heard about the War for Southern Independence, according to a PorcFest schedule. That’s the epic, bloody conflict better known as the Civil War. Parents also have been invited to a discussion on the “Battle Over Raising Your Child.”

“Your rulers would like to do you the ‘favor’ of taking your children off your hands to ‘educate’ them (with a heavy dose of learning to revere their authority),” its summary read.

While the group often avoids the spotlight, it gained notoriety this year when a Free State legislator sponsored a bill seeking a constitutional amendment to allow New Hampshire to secede. The effort was resoundingly defeated.

Free Stater influence also played a role in the controversial two-week shutdown of the Gunstock ski resort, a popular recreational area in conservative Belknap County. Antigovernment activists briefly took control of the commission that runs the county-owned attraction; chaos ensued.

And a Free Stater who served as select board chair in rural Croydon succeeded in cutting that town’s school budget in half with a startling motion at a sparsely attended town meeting. When they learned what had happened, hundreds of voters rallied to restore the funding.

 

So far there's enough sane people to stop these local government takeovers.  But in the MAGA era, these groups are gaining more and more disaffected members, and Trump keeps calling for stochastic violence against America again and again.

Eventually these groups are going to answer that call.

Press The Meat, Con't

Missouri GOP Attorney General and US Senate candidate Eric Schmitt is going after the University of Missouri's college newspaper for printing fact checking articles, to see if the paper and its faculty advisers are in violation of the state's law banning "critical race theory" in public education.

 

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has filed an open records request seeking correspondence between two journalism professors connected to the University of Missouri and the executive director of a fact-checking group.

In a move that appears to be unprecedented in Missouri, Schmitt, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, filed a request in June asking for three years of emails sent and received by the professors while they worked at the Columbia Missourian.

Most correspondence generated at private media firms is not subject to the state’s open records law, but the Missourian could be because it is attached to the University of Missouri, which is a public entity.

The Missourian is not overseen by university officials, but most of its staff are students who are working for credits toward a journalism degree. The professional editors work as university faculty members.

David Kurpius, dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, said the school has hired outside legal counsel to determine which emails could be released to the attorney general. Some records, such as those that identify students’ personal information, are protected by federal law.

Jean Maneke, an attorney with the Missouri Press Association, said the request puts the university in “unchartered territory” because most public institutions do not have journalists attached. She was unaware of any similar requests in the past.

“There’s no clear instructions for what they should do when faced with these kind of parameters,” Maneke said.

The request was first reported by the Missourian, which discovered it after filing an unrelated open records request.

Schmitt’s spokesman, Chris Nuelle, said in a statement that the attorney general is “simply trying to get to the bottom of the fact checking process.” He declined to answer further questions.

Schmitt previously used open-records laws to seek copies of handouts, emails and other resources that address race from school districts as part of a push targeting “critical race theory.” He also opened a “transparency portal” to allow parents to see his efforts.

In the latest request, Schmitt is seeking any email correspondence starting June 15, 2018, sent to or from Mike Jenner, Tom Warhover, who previously worked with the Missourian, and Aaron Sharockman, the executive director of PolitiFact.

 

Schmitt wants to destroy the paper and almost certainly imprison the former faculty advisers.

I repeat, Schmitt wants to throw people in jail for fact-checking the GOP.

He will not be the last to start imprisioning journalists, and journalism school faculty.

This is what fascists do, of course. President Biden was correct in his assessment.

And even worse, here in America, journalists are being murdered.

Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German, one of Nevada’s most accomplished and trusted journalists, was found dead with stab wounds outside his home Saturday morning.

German, whose work in Las Vegas spanned more than three decades, made a career of breaking big stories about everything from organized crime and government malfeasance to political scandals and the Oct. 1 mass shooting.

“The Review-Journal family is devastated to lose Jeff,” Executive Editor Glenn Cook said. “He was the gold standard of the news business. It’s hard to imagine what Las Vegas would be like today without his many years of shining a bright light on dark places.”

Las Vegas police responded to the 7200 block of Bronze Circle, near North Tenaya Way, around 10:30 a.m. Saturday after a person called 911 saying a neighbor was dead on the side of the victim’s house, according to Metropolitan Police Department Capt. Dori Koren.

Police found German, 69, with stab wounds outside of his home. Police believe he was in an altercation with another person on Friday in the late morning that led to him being stabbed.

“We believe the altercation took place outside of the home,” Koren said.

“We do have some leads. We are pursuing a suspect but the suspect is outstanding,” Koren said.

Koren said the stabbing is believed to be an isolated incident and that there is no threat to the public.

Cook said German had not communicated any concerns about his personal safety or any threats made against him to anyone in the Review-Journal’s leadership.

 

MAGA fascists have spent years calling journalists "Enemies of the State".

 

Now journalists are being murdered.

 

Again, this is what fascists do.

Sunday Long Read: Mauled Of America

This week's Sunday Long Read is Jillian Steinhauer's exploration at TNR of the American Mall, symbol of capitalism and local meeting place for teens, and whether it can -- or should -- survive the pandemic era at all.

 

In the days before the pandemic, when I visited the Museum of Modern Art, I would stop at Mrs. Fields. Mrs. Fields does not have the best cookies, especially in a city teeming with boutique bakeries. But getting a snack there was never about the quality of the food itself. A Mrs. Fields cookie summons up a weekend in the early 1990s when my parents would pack me and my siblings into our Volvo station wagon and drive us half an hour over state lines to the mall in Stamford, Connecticut. There, my mom would peruse high-end stores that didn’t have locations in our hometown, while my dad would take us kids to buy cookies and eat them on the steps that formed the mall’s gathering spot.

You could tell the story of many suburban childhoods through a progression of visits to such anodyne shopping centers. Once I was old enough to go to malls on my own, I met up with friends at the two main ones in White Plains, the New York City suburb where I grew up: the Galleria, where I got my ears pierced at Claire’s, and the Westchester, a shiny new beacon whose upscale nature was reflected in the fact that it had carpeting. By the time I moved away for college, I was over the world I left behind. When people asked where I was from, I’d answer, “a soulless suburb of New York City with no culture but lots of malls.”

I haven’t spent much time in shopping centers since—partly by choice, partly through circumstance. Malls have been struggling in one way or another since the 1990s, thanks to a slew of factors: a glut of such shopping centers, the replacement of department stores with big-box ones, recessions, the rise of the internet, and a new generation of mega-developer owners who are more cutthroat about their bottom lines. Even before the pandemic, which made gathering indoors dangerous, fewer Americans were whiling away their weekends and after-school hours at the mall. Yet for so many of us, the image of a sunlit atrium crossed by steadily gliding escalators, with a Bath & Body Works looming in the background, evokes a deep nostalgia. Like how, the minute I walk by a Mrs. Fields and smell that intoxicating scent of butter, sugar, and chocolate, my defenses drop.

The mall is “ubiquitous and underexamined and potentially a little bit embarrassing,” the design critic Alexandra Lange notes in the introduction to her new book, Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall. Shopping is part of our daily lives, as are the spaces where we do it. Malls are fixtures of our physical and psychic landscapes, embedded with social and personal histories. They’re loaded symbols within our culture, inspiring feelings of allegiance or contempt. In George Romero’s famous 1978 movie, Dawn of the Dead, the mall is a home for humans and zombies alike. In the third season of the ’80s-nostalgic TV show Stranger Things, it’s simultaneously a place of teenage possibility and a Russian front for a sci-fi lab. In contemporary “ruin porn” photography, the empty shells of malls represent the just deserts of late-stage capitalism.

What makes malls the object of both longing and disdain? The civic purpose of the mall—unlike libraries, schools, and museums—has never been entirely clear. “In contrast to many other forms of public architecture, which embody fear, power, and knowledge, the mall is personal,” Lange writes. It’s not an institution, officially speaking, but it is social, a rare type of place intended to encourage hanging out. “At their best, malls create community through shared experience,” Lange says; at their worst, they’re temples to consumerism. They offer freedom—from parents, strict rules, the weather—even as they’re policed. They’re public, sort of, but also private, providing convenience at a price. Malls are not necessarily the communal spaces we would design for ourselves, but in a country short on alternatives, they’re the ones we’ve been given. Is it any surprise that we want them to be so much more?

 

Even in the small North Carolina city I grew up in, we had malls, as did the surrounding small cities.  I remember the smaller, older mall from the 70s with an Orange Julius and a Big Lots, presently a large furniture showcase, and the "newer" 80's mall, renovated in the early 2000s and now with a carousel, the mall was the place where I spent many a weekend with my dad and brothers, from the arcade to the Radio Shack to the food court to the WaldenBooks.

And yet living across the road from where the major mall is now, I don't think I've been in there since well before the pandemic, it's been years.

Cincinnati is turning a bunch of closed malls into mixed user properties, which is good.

More of this needs to happen as malls vanish from the landscape.