Last Call For How To Steal An Election, Con't

After several days of testimony in front of the North Carolina Board of Elections, it has become painfully clear that Republican Mark Harris stole the 2018 election for NC's 9th District and at the absolute minimum, a new election must be called...and apparently Mark Harris is now entirely on board with that plan.

After months of insisting he knew of no illegal activity being done on behalf of his campaign, Republican Mark Harris, who leads the race for North Carolina's 9th congressional district, called Thursday for the State Board of Elections to hold a new election.

"Through the testimony I've listened to over the past three days I believe a new election should be called. It's become clear to me that the public's confidence in the 9th District seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted," said Harris.

It was a dramatic and humbling reversal for Harris, a pastor who until now has insisted that the board of elections should certify his 905 vote lead in the unofficial tally so that he can go off to Congress.

Four days of hearings had left that position increasingly untenable as witnesses detailed how an operative hired by Harris illegally handled absentee ballots, a felony in North Carolina. One witness said she filled in unmarked sections of ballots. Harris' own son testified on Wednesday that he had warned his father that the operative's tactics were likely illegal.

An email first released to the public on Thursday shows that Harris requested to the operative, McRae Dowless, in March 2017 after losing a primary election in which one of his opponents had hired Dowless.

The disclosure by the Harris campaign frustrated investigators, who were presented with the evidence only on Wednesday, despite a subpoena from the North Carolina State Board of Elections for the relevant documents months ago.

Although Harris has now called for a new election, the board will have to decide whether to actually call one. After Election Day, Harris held a 905-vote lead over Democrat Dan McCready in the unofficial ballot tally. The board declined to certify those results pending its investigation into an absentee ballot scheme that investigators have been unspooling for months.

The investigation focuses on Dowless, who was hired by Harris to run get-out-the-vote efforts in Bladen and Robeson counties. Dowless was also investigated in 2016 for his tactics, which a number of witnesses have testified included illegally collecting absentee ballots and filling out some of those ballots.

Harris has said publicly since the investigation began in December that he was unaware of any illegal acts that may have been done on behalf of his campaign. He reiterated that in his testimony Thursday.

Harris is now reduced to lamely trying to pretend this all wasn't his idea now that his son, himself a lawyers in the US attorney's office for Eastern NC, threw his own dad under the bus in a glorious effort to keep from being disbarred, but the new election is happening regardless.  The Board voted unanimously that the election was tainted.

Harris believes he can walk away from this trainwreck and still be reelected.  Too bad part of the testimony this week showed Harris's wife Beth texting Harris those illegally-gained previews of the absentee ballot totals.

Oops.

That Little Domestic Terrorism Problem Of Ours, Con't

When Trump spouts dangerous rhetoric about his critics, his political opponents, and the people reporting on him being "enemies of the people" and that we need to "lock them up", the problem is that doesn't happen in a void.  Dangerous rhetoric has dangerous consequences, like directly inspiring his white domestic terrorist followers to kill Trump's "enemies".

A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant and self-identified white nationalist has been arrested after federal investigators uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition in his Maryland home that authorities say he stockpiled to launch a massive domestic terror attack targeting politicians and journalists.
Christopher Paul Hasson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland” and dreamed of ways to “kill almost every last person on earth,” according to court records filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland. Though court documents do not detail a specific planned date for an attack, the government said he had been amassing supplies and weapons since at least 2017, developed a spreadsheet of targets that included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and searched the Internet using phrases such as “best place in dc to see congress people” and “are supreme court justices protected.”

“The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” the government said in court documents filed this week, arguing that Hasson should stay in jail awaiting trial.

Hasson, of Silver Spring, is expected to appear before a judge for a detention hearing in federal court in Greenbelt at 1 p.m. Thursday.

Hasson was arrested on illegal weapons and drug charges on Friday, but the government says those charges are the “proverbial tip of the iceberg.” Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland outlined Hasson’s alleged plans to spark chaos and destruction in court documents, describing a man obsessed with neo-fascist and neo-Nazi views.

“Please send me your violence that I may unleash it onto their heads,” Hasson wrote in a letter that prosecutors say was found in his email drafts. “Guide my hate to make a lasting impression on this world.”

And yes, he was targeting everyone Donald Trump said was "an enemy of the people".  Just a coincidence his targets were Democrats and journalists, I'm sure.

In an email he drafted in June 2017, he contemplated biological attacks and targeting food supplies. He considered the merits of a “bombing/sniper campaign.” And included a “Things to do” list that included purchasing land “out west or possibly NC mtns” for family and researching tactics used during the civil war in Ukraine.

“During unrest target both sides to increase tension,” Hasson wrote in the email, according to the court filings. “In other words provoke gov/police to over react which should help to escalate violence. BLM protests or other left crap would be ideal to incite to violence.”

In another letter drafted months later to an American neo-Nazi leader, Hasson called for a “white homeland.” He sent the letter to himself nearly two months after the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., where torch carrying white-supremacists clashed with anti-racist protesters.

“I never saw a reason for mass protest or wearing uniforms marching around provoking people with swastikas etc.,” Hasson said. “I was and am a man of action you cannot change minds protesting like that. However you can make change with a little focused violence.”

It's a good thing this asshole was stopped before he could kill, because he clearly intended to leave behind dozens of corpses.  The problem is the number of Trump supporters out there with similar stockpiles and plans and who haven't been caught yet.

It's Libel To Get Destroyed

Justice Clarence Thomas is all but begging for a Supreme Court case in order to dismantle First Amendment protections for the press, so that Donald Trump and the GOP can sue everyone but FOX out of existence.

Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday called for the Supreme Court to reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 ruling interpreting the First Amendment to make it hard for public officials to prevail in libel suits.

He said the decision had no basis in the Constitution as it was understood by the people who drafted and ratified it.

“New York Times and the court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law,” Justice Thomas wrote.

Justice Thomas, writing only for himself, made his statement in a concurring opinion agreeing that the court had correctly turned down an appeal from Kathrine McKee, who has accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. She sued Mr. Cosby for libel after his lawyer said she had been dishonest.

An appeals court ruled against Ms. McKee, saying that her activities had made her a public figure and that she could not prove, as required by the Sullivan decision, that the lawyer had knowingly or recklessly said something false. Ms. McKee asked the Supreme Court to review the appeals court’s determination that she was a public figure.

Justice Thomas wrote that he agreed with the court’s decision not to take up that question. “I write to explain why, in an appropriate case, we should reconsider the precedents that require courts to ask it in the first place,” he wrote.

In Justice Thomas’s view, the First Amendment did nothing to limit the authority of states to protect the reputations of their citizens and leaders as they saw fit. When the First Amendment was ratified, he wrote, many states made it quite easy to sue for libel in civil actions and to prosecute libel as a crime. That was, he wrote, as it should be.

“We did not begin meddling in this area until 1964, nearly 175 years after the First Amendment was ratified,” Justice Thomas wrote of the Sullivan decision. “The states are perfectly capable of striking an acceptable balance between encouraging robust public discourse and providing a meaningful remedy for reputational harm.”

The events leading to the Sullivan decision test that assertion. The case arose from an advertisement in The Times seeking support for the civil rights movement. The ad contained minor errors.

L.B. Sullivan, a city commissioner in Montgomery, Ala., who was not mentioned in the ad, sued for libel. He won $500,000, which was at the time an enormous sum. It was one of many suits filed by Southern politicians eager to starve the civil rights movement of the oxygen of national attention. They used libel suits as a way to discourage coverage of the movement by national news organizations.

Against this background, and animated by an urge to protect the American public’s ability to assess the situation in the South for itself, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled for The Times and revolutionized American libel law.

Justice Thomas’s statement came in the wake of complaints from President Trump that libel laws make it too hard for public officials to win libel suits.

“I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money,” Mr. Trump said on the campaign trail. “We’re going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”

Again, Trump wants the free press in this country gone.  Justice Thomas agrees with him.  This is a signal that the Roberts Court wants this case and most likely has four, if not five votes for it.  Again, should anything happen to Justices Ginsburg or Breyer with Trump in the Oval Office, you can kiss America goodbye.

So what case does Justice Thomas want?  There's a method to this madness, after all.

The family of the Kentucky teen who was involved in an encounter with a Native American advocate at the Lincoln Memorial last month filed a defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post on Tuesday, seeking $250 million in damages for its coverage of the incident.

The suit alleges that The Post “targeted and bullied” 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann in order to embarrass President Trump. Sandmann was one of a number of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky who were wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats during a trip to the Mall when they encountered Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist.

News accounts, including in The Post, and videos of their encounter sparked a heated national debate over the behavior of the participants.

“In a span of three days in January of this year commencing on January 19, the Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann, an innocent secondary school child,” reads the complaint.

There's no coincidence that Justice Thomas all but asked for this case to be handed to SCOTUS.  A major ruling in favor of a $250 million lawsuit against the Post would essentially put every news outlet in the country out of business.  The argument will be that it was the the Evil Fake News Media that destroyed Nicholas Sandmann's private life by defaming him, and that the Post has to pay up.  Thousands of lawsuits will follow.

Say goodbye to social media and this blog, too.

No wonder then that media outlets like CNN are scrambling to hand over their 2020 political coverage to Trump staffers in order to stay alive.  They see the writing on the wall.

CNN announced on Tuesday it has hired longtime Republican operative Sarah Isgur as political editor, charged with shaping its 2020 campaign coverage.

According to a CNN spokesperson, Isgur, who most recently worked as the Department of Justice’s main spokesperson under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, will coordinate the network’s political coverage for the 2020 election cycle on TV and on CNN’s website. Isgur starts work next month, and will not be involved in coverage of DOJ. She will occasionally appear on TV.

Isgur’s LinkedIn page indicates she has no journalism experience. She has, however, worked for a variety of right-wing organizations and campaigns, including the Carly Fiorina and Mitt Romney presidential bids, the Republican National Committee, and a Ted Cruz US Senate campaign.

Coming as it does in the wake of a presidential cycle in which the mainstream media’s fixation on Hillary Clinton’s emails (among other issues) was widely criticized, news of Isgur’s hiring sparked concerns about the direction CNN is taking heading into 2020.

The Washington Post reported that during an early 2017 Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, Isgur — who was critical of Trump during the 2016 campaign — “kowtowed to Trump” and pledged loyalty to his agenda as a condition of getting the job as Sessions’ spokesperson.

Isgur’s hire was first reported by Politico, which noted that “while it is common for departing administration officials to join cable news networks as analysts or contributors, it is less common for them to oversee news coverage.”

On Tuesday evening, a CNN spokesperson emailed Vox and said they “just wanted to be super clear – Sarah is not leading, overseeing, or running political coverage.”

“She is helping to coordinate coverage across TV and Digital – she is one of several editors,” the spokesperson added, going on to characterize Isgur’s role as making sure that stories are featured on the right shows and articles get posted online at the right time.

Except of course it means Isgur gets to decide what stories end up on CNN's website and where, which is pretty much exactly what "shaping CNN's 2020 political coverage" means.

We warned y'all about this, but hey.

StupidiNews!

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is gathering bipartisan support for a measure to end Donald Trump's emergency declaration over a border wall, but no House Republicans have expressed support.
• French President Emmanuel Macron says anti-Semitism has reached its worst levels since WWII in a speech to French Jewish leaders on Wednesday.
• US and Chinese trade negotiators are coming closer to a deal to end the seven-month trade war between Washington and Beijing, but there are still several hurdles before any deal can be finalized.
• European Union members say they will retaliate in kind for any US tariffs on imported cars, something experts warn could add thousands of dollars to the price of a new car.
• Montana Republicans are looking to introduce a bill that will force the state to refuse to participate in any climate change mitigation efforts mandated by a future administration.