Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

There's very little doubt now that both Republican US senators in my state are deeply involved in the Trump regime's Russia malfeasance, Mitch McConnell because of his role of protecting Trump as GOP Senate majority leader, and Rand Paul as proxy for Russia's powerful oligrarchs in the Senate.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he will ask President Trump this weekend to lift sanctions against top Russian officials so they can visit the United States later this year.

Paul said members of both bodies of Russia's legislature had agreed to come to the United States to continue talks after the GOP senator visited Moscow earlier this month.

"They have both agreed to come to Washington in the fall for further meetings. That's a good thing. The downside is the chairman of each of the committees is banned from coming to the United States because of sanctions," Paul told Fox News's Laura Ingraham. 

He added that to overcome the blockade he will ask the president, when they talk this weekend, to "take people off the list who are in the legislature."

Paul didn't specify who specifically he would ask be removed from U.S. sanctions lists.

But Paul met with Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, during his trip to Moscow. Kosachev was targeted during a new wave of sanctions announced earlier this year.

Paul's trip to Moscow raised eyebrows in Washington, where many of his colleagues have been skeptical of Trump's warmer stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Spokesmen for both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told The Hill last week that they had not invited, and we're not discussing inviting, their Russian counterparts to visit the Capitol.

Kosachev indicated earlier this month that Moscow would be interested in organizing a meeting between members of the Russian legislature and their U.S. counterparts.

Paul and his Ron father have been deep into Russian "useful idiot" damage to the US for years, unlike Trump's overweening greed, for Paul it's ideology.  Even McConnell thinks this is a bad idea, removing sanctions on Russia's legislative leaders, all installed by or members of Putin's circle of oligarchs, is foiling exactly the "hit them in the wallet" damage that Congress insisted on Trump doing.

Rand Paul doing this under the cover of "diplomacy" is atrocious.  Both of my Senators need to go, but neither one is up for reelection this year unfortunately, and KY Dems have all kinds of problems putting together any sort of real challenge anyway (see Conway, Jack, and Grimes, Alison).

Russia has both my senators in their grip.  That terrifies me as an American and as a Kentuckian.