Impeachment Reached, Con't

I still don't buy this for a second from NY Times

Lora asked:

Do reporters get any sense of whether any Republican senators feel secretly frustrated by McConnell’s strategy? Or, are they all in?

CARL HULSE, chief Washington correspondent: The Republican senators most frustrated with Mr. McConnell have already said so publicly, like Lisa Murkowski. The more moderate Republicans also trust that Mr. McConnell will do whatever he can to protect them during the trial.

All of the Republicans are comfortable starting with what Mr. McConnell referred to as the Clinton trial precedent. But there are several keeping their options open on witnesses. There will be a big test vote on that at some point, and then we’ll know who’s on board. There’s a growing sense among senators I’ve talked to that there will be some witnesses.

There will be no witnesses, especially John Bolton.

John Bolton will be blocked from testifying at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, the president has indicated, despite the former national security adviser insisting he would do so if he received a subpoena.

Trump claimed in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Friday night he would “love everybody to testify”, including Bolton, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

But he went on to say “there are things that you can’t do from the standpoint of executive privilege”.

“Especially a national security adviser,” Trump added. “You can’t have him explaining all of your statements about national security concerning Russia, China and North Korea, everything. You just can’t do that.”

Asked if that meant he would invoke executive privilege to prevent Bolton from testifying, Trump said: “I think you have to for the sake of the office.”

GOP senators will not test Trump on this, especially Collins.  Mitch will make sure that the GOP position is to support the White House on blocking witnesses, and that it would be up to the courts to decide otherwise.  Chief Justice Roberts won't touch it either, saying the issue should be worked out on a case-by-case basis.  Neither will the media help, they'll just bring up the time Eric Holder refused a subpoena on Operation Fast & Furious.

So no, there won't be any witnesses.  Like Clinton's trial the determination will be "There's already enough evidence."

It's Mueller (Report) Time

Jerry Nadler and the House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are finally playing hardball, giving Attorney General Bill Barr a Monday 9 AM deadline to turn over the unredacted Mueller report and evidence or face a contempt charge.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Friday sent his latest offerAttorney General William Barr to try to reach an agreement in his effort to obtain the unredacted special counsel report and the underlying evidence before Nadler moves forward with holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress.

Nadler sent Barr a new letter proposing that the committee could work with the Justice Department to prioritize which investigative materials it turns over to Congress, specifically citing witness interviews and the contemporaneous notes provided by witnesses that were cited in the special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Nadler wrote that he was "willing to prioritize a specific, defined set of underlying investigative and evidentiary materials for immediate production." 

But Nadler's letter does not budge on Democrats' insistence that the Justice Department allow Congress to view grand jury material that's redacted in the report, which Barr has argued he's not allowed by law to provide. 

Nadler set a deadline of 9 a.m. ET Monday for Barr to respond and said he would move to contempt proceedings if the attorney general does not comply. 

"The Committee is prepared to make every realistic effort to reach an accommodation with the Department," Nadler wrote in the letter, which was obtained by CNN. "But if the Department persists in its baseless refusal to comply with a validly issued subpoena, the Committee will move to contempt proceedings and seek further legal recourse." 

So the stage is set for Monday morning, and the result will most likely be an immediate court challenge to the contempt charge that will tie up the proceeding for months, if not years.

This will go nowhere, unfortunately.  And it will be forgotten by the end of next week, most likely.  Trump's minders will find a federal judge to issue an injunction on whatever executive privilege nonsense they can get some Federalist Society clerk to write, and this will get hung up in the courts until after the 2020 election when the Roberts court sides with Trump that cabinet secretaries are immune to contempt of Congress.

People forget that AG Eric Holder was cited for contempt of Congress by House Republicans in 2014 and the judge that tossed that contempt citation was none other than Amy Berman Jackson herself, the judge in the Stone and Manafort trials.

Meanwhile, Barr will continue to do whatever he wants, and the Mueller report will remain buried.

Democrats will need to come up with something better than a contempt citation, or the republic is lost.

Another Hat Does NOT Land In The Ring

Notable this week: the number of people saying they will not enter the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination.  First up not running: former Obama AG Eric Holder.

Holder, who was President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, said he will instead continue his work to end gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing legislative districts for a political advantage.

“Though I will not run for president in 2020, I will continue to fight for the future of our country through the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and its affiliates,” Holder said in an op-ed published Monday in The Washington Post.

“Our fight to end gerrymandering is about electing leaders who actually work for the interests of the people they are supposed to represent. I will do everything I can to ensure that the next Democratic president is not hobbled by a House of Representatives pulled to the extremes by members from gerrymandered districts,” Holder said.

Good for Holder.  He knows he'll be far more effective fighting GOP voter suppression in the courts than running for 2020, and I applaud his choice.  We'll never get the Voting Rights Act fixed that the Roberts Court gutted a few years ago without winning the Senate and keeping the House, and that means both fixing gerrymandering and keeping Democratic senators in the Senate, bringing us to our next non-contender, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley.

In his announcement, Merkley said: "Over the last year I've weighed whether I can contribute more to the battle by running for Senate, or by running for president."

"I've reached the conclusion that the biggest impact I can have is here in the Senate."

The Oregon senator, who is considered a progressive, is a main proponent of banking regulation and has been one of the main forces behind the Wall Street reform bill.

Again, this is the right choice for Merkley.  He didn't have a shot at the White House, but he's been a bedrock-solid liberal senator where he's been needed.

We also need to get the 2020 field straightened out as soon as we can and get to work, and that means Hillary Clinton is making it clear that she will not run in 2020.  And yes, Clinton has said no several times before.

The pool of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates keeps expanding. But one name that won’t be in the mix is 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton.

The former secretary of state and US senator ruled out a 2020 White House bid in an interview with the local New York City television station News 12 on Monday.

“I’m not running,” she said, “but I’m going to keep working on and speaking and standing up for what I believe.”

Now watch, Clinton will say anything at all after this and it will be "Could Hillary be preparing a 2020 run?"

But finally, it means we have to put a stop to the dangerous, ego-driven third party nonsense of America's billionaires, and thankfully that now means Michael Bloomberg is out too as he laid out the case for why he won't run on Monday.

I know what it takes to run a winning campaign, and every day when I read the news, I grow more frustrated by the incompetence in the Oval Office. I know we can do better as a country. And I believe I would defeat Donald Trump in a general election. But I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field.
There is another factor that has weighed heavily on my mind: the likelihood that our biggest national problems will worsen over the next two years. With a leader in the White House who refuses to bring the parties together, it will be nearly impossible for Congress to address the major challenges we face, including climate change, gun violence, the opioid crisis, failing public schools, and college affordability. All are likely to grow more severe, and many of the president’s executive actions will only compound matters.

I love our country too much to sit back and hope for the best as national problems get worse. But I also recognize that until 2021, and possibly longer, our only real hope for progress lies outside of Washington. And unlike most who are running or thinking of it, I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to devote the resources needed to bring people together and make a big difference.

That just leaves one big question mark as to entering the race..and his name is Joe Biden.

We need to hear from him ASAP...

Last Call For Deflecting Defection

So a lot is being made of former AG Eric Holder saying that Edward Snowden "performed a service" to the government by taking a treasure trove of NSA documents to leak, but it's more complicated than that.

In an appearance on former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod’s podcast, Holder said Snowden’s 2013 leaks “harmed American interests” but that the light he shone on controversial government practices could mitigate some of the damage done.

"I know there are ways in which certain of our agents were put at risk, relationships with other countries were harmed, our ability to keep the American people safe was compromised,” Holder told Axelrod. “There were all kinds of re-dos that had to be put in place as a result of what he did, and while those things were being done we were blind in certain really critical areas. So what he did was not without consequence."

In other words, Snowden forced the NSA to re-examine methods and manners across the board, which for an intelligence agency is I guess a good thing, being stuck with outdated (or in this case, wholly compromised) resources makes the agency useless.

Which of course was Snowden's entire point, to render the NSA powerless internationally. 

“He's broken the law in my view. He needs to get lawyers, come on back, and decide, see what he wants to do: Go to trial, try to cut a deal. I think there has to be a consequence for what he has done,” Holder continued. "I think in deciding what an appropriate sentence should be, I think a judge could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate."

Appearing from Russia via videoconference at a University of Chicago event earlier this month, Snowden reiterated his willingness to return to the U.S., but only if he could be guaranteed a “fair trial.”

“If I had access to public interest defenses and other things like that, I would want to come home and make my case to the jury," Snowden said. "But, as I think you're quite familiar, the Espionage Act does not permit a public interest defense. You're not allowed to speak the word 'whistleblower' at trial."

Since Snowden's definition of a fair trial is "one where he walks free and is treated like a hero after delivering reams of classified NSA information to Russia and China" no, he's not going to get a fair trial and should stay in Moscow.

Besides Putin is having too much fun laughing at us. In a lot of ways, Edward Snowden is one of the Obama administration's biggest failures with repercussions affecting American intelligence services for years, if not decades to come.

Whether or not you agree that Snowden jump-started the debate over civil liberties in America is one thing, but the fact that Snowden broke the law doing it doesn't absolve him of the crime, either.  Both can be true, that Snowden started a needed debate, and that Snowden needs to face trial, and that continues to be my position.

An Offer You Can't Refuse

To recap, law enforcement is not your friend if you are a person of color.  This goes doubly so if you are in immigrant, exponentially more so if you are a Muslim, and infinitely more so if you are an immigrant Muslim.

Pressuring people to become informants by dangling the promise of citizenship — or, if they do not comply, deportation — is expressly against the rules that govern FBI agents’ activities.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales forbade the practice nine years ago: “No promises or commitments can be made, except by the United States Department of Homeland Security, regarding the alien status of any person or the right of any person to enter or remain in the United States,” according to the Attorney General’s Guidelines Regarding the Use of FBI Confidential Human Sources.

In fact, Gonzales’s guidelines, which are still in force today, require agents to go further: They must explicitly warn potential informants that the FBI cannot help with their immigration status in any way.

But a BuzzFeed News investigation — based on government and court documents, official complaints, and interviews with immigrants, immigration and civil rights lawyers, and former special agents — shows that the FBI violates these rules. Mandated to enforce the law, the bureau has assumed a powerful but unacknowledged role in a very different realm: decisions about the legal status of immigrants — in particular, Muslim immigrants. First the immigration agency ties up their green card applications for years, even a decade, without explanation, then FBI agents approach the applicants with a loaded offer: Want to get your papers? Start reporting to us about people you know.

Alexandra Natapoff, an associate dean at Loyola Law School who studies the use of informants, said people who are pressured into informing for the government face considerable danger, from ostracism or retribution within their own community to betrayal from law enforcement officers, whose promises the informants are powerless to enforce. BuzzFeed News spoke with six people who had been approached by the FBI, as well as immigration attorneys who said they had represented far more. Some allowed their stories to be published, even with details that could make them identifiable to federal authorities. But they all drew the line at publishing their names, lest they or their families suffer repercussions from their communities.

Beyond the danger that coercive recruitment poses for its targets, it may also mean danger on a broad scale, by hampering America’s ability to detect, derail, and prosecute real threats to national security.

Like 9/11 before it, the mass shooting in San Bernardino cast into stark relief the urgency of guarding against terrorism at home. Over the years, law enforcement authorities have used informants’ tips to foil numerous plots on American soil and to help other countries foil plots of their own. But many critics of America’s counterterrorism operations say the FBI’s heavy-handed recruitment methods actually make it harder to thwart dangerous attacks, by alienating the very communities on whom the government is most reliant for information.

Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, says wide-scale coercive recruitment produces a surfeit of false leads. “All of this investigative effort is against people who are not suspected,” he said, of “terrorism or any other criminal activity.” The result is so much useless information that agents cannot focus on the most important leads. “This becomes an obstacle to real security.”

It's like the worst seasons of Homeland come to life, and yeah, if Eric Holder looked the other way on this (and Loretta Lynch and President Obama are still looking the other way on this) then it needs to be stopped.

I think it's much more likely that FBI Director James Comey has some very ugly questions to answer, however.

Executive Indecision On Gitmo

In the past, President Obama has proposed closing Gitmo only to run into the long knives of Democrats who refuse to let him actually do the job.  This time, Lame Duck Outta F*cks Obama(tm) is trying to use the executive branch to get the job done, and wouldn't you know it, the Justice Department is now saying "Wait a minute here..."

A renewed push by the White House to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been bogged down by an internal disagreement over its most controversial provision — where to house detainees who will be brought to the United States for trial or indefinite detention, according to U.S. officials. 

The White House had intended to provide lawmakers with a new road map for shuttering the facility — a top priority for President Obama’s remaining time in office — before lawmakers went on their August recess. 

As part of the plan, the administration had considered sending some of the 116 detainees remaining at the prison to either a top-security prison in Illinois or a naval facility in Charleston, S.C. 

But during a recent video teleconference among top administration officials, Scott Ferber, senior counsel to the deputy attorney general, said the Justice Department could not support the use of the federal prison in Thomson, Ill., according to the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. 

Ferber said the Justice Department had made a public commitment in 2012 when it purchased the facility from the state of Illinois that it would not relocate detainees to Thomson. Then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee: “We will not move people from Guantanamo, regardless of the state of the law, to Thomson. That is my pledge as attorney general.” 

Holder’s commitment, made during sworn testimony, was apparently overlooked by officials when the most recent plan was drawn up. 

Thomson is no longer being considered, and the White House is again looking at other federal facilities, officials said. 

“Funding for Thomson prison was approved based on the understanding that no detainees from Guantanamo would be held there, and therefore, Thomson is not part of those discussions,” a senior administration official said. 

The last-minute dispute is another sign of the many difficulties plaguing the White House’s attempt to make good on Obama’s promise to close the military detention facility before he leaves office in 2017.

So the first and obvious choice for relocation of Gitmo detainees is 100% out of the picture.  That leaves the Naval Brig at Charleston, something that I don't think Gov. Nikki Haley, Charleston area Representative Mark "Appalachian Trail" Sanford, or Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott are going to actually support this in any way.

Gitmo detainees are the ultimate NIMBY problem, and putting them in a red state will probably cause packs of crazed Islamophobes to show up with rocket launchers and storm the place anyway, not to mention the endless screaming about "OBAMA'S TERROR ATTACK ON AMERICA" headlines during the 2016 election.

So unless another blue state steps up and does the job, this still isn't happening, no matter how much Gitmo needs to be closed.

Breaking StupidiNews Roundup

Wow, busy afternoon.

Loretta Lynch has been confirmed by the US Senate to succeed Eric Holder as Attorney General.

The highly politicized five-month battle to choose President Barack Obama's next attorney general came to a close Thursday when the Senate finally voted to confirm Loretta Lynch. The 56-43 vote makes Lynch the first African-American female attorney general in U.S. history. 

But the delay of her nomination neared record-breaking proportions. Republicans leading the Senate refused to bring her nomination up for a vote until Democrats cut a deal on abortion language in an unrelated bill. That legislation passed Wednesday, setting up Thursday's vote and ending the latest partisan Washington standoff. 

Ten Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined Democrats. Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz was the only senator not to vote.

The Comcast-Time Warner merger deal looks to be dead in the water.

Comcast Corp. is planning to walk away from its proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc., people with knowledge of the matter said, after regulators decided that the deal wouldn’t help consumers, making approval unlikely. 

A formal annoucement on the deal’s fate may come as soon as Friday, said one of the people, who asked not to be named discussing private information. 

This week, U.S. Federal Communications Commission staff joined lawyers at the Justice Department in opposing the planned $45.2 billion transaction.

And finally, former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus has been sentenced to probation and a $100,000 fine for disclosing classified information to his mistress.

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced David H. Petraeus, the highest-profile general from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to probation for disclosing classified information. He was also fined $100,000, which was $60,000 more than the government had recommended. 

The sentencing was the end of a leak investigation that embarrassed Mr. Petraeus and created bitter disputes inside the Justice Department about whether he was receiving too much leniency from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr..

I'll have more on these stories this weekend, I'm sure.

Last Call For Operation Lynch Pinned

Why no, Senate Republicans are not going to allow a vote on Loretta Lynch as Attorney General, nor will they suffer any consequences for continuing to refuse to allow it. Why do you think they keep moving the goalposts?

Republican leaders have tied a vote on Lynch to the passage of an unrelated bill targeting sex trafficking. That bill, which normally would be bipartisan, has stalled for weeks because Republicans tucked an anti-abortion provision into it that Democrats won’t support. As long as the bill doesn’t move, neither does Lynch. 

“The Senate should pass this bipartisan bill right away,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said Tuesday. “And as soon as that happens, we’ll turn to the Loretta Lynch nomination.” 

But it’s not that simple, and there’s no end in sight to the abortion fight. The Senate is voting Thursday to take up an amendment that Republicans say is a way forward on the impasse, but Democrats call it a gimmick and vow to oppose it. 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the bill’s author, will offer to tweak the bill’s language relating to the Hyde Amendment, the federal provision that bans the use of public funds for abortions except in cases of rape or incest. But the tweak doesn’t address Democrats’ core concern that the bill, for the first time, would expand the Hyde Amendment to apply to non-taxpayer funds. The bill would allow fees collected from human traffickers to be funneled into a new public fund for victims, to which the Hyde Amendment would be applied. 

Democrats say any expansion of the Hyde Amendment is a non-starter for them.
“Senate Republicans are trying to restrict the health choices of women and girls who have been sold into sex slavery,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). “The latest proposal from Senator Cornyn does nothing to change that fact. He is still attaching Hyde to non-taxpayer, offender dollars.”

So no, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have made it clear that until the Democrats fold on expanding Hyde to victims of human trafficking, Lynch will never get a vote. For now anyway the Dems are hanging in there, but Loretta Lynch is the one paying the price, and nobody seems to give a damn (certainly not the Villagers.)

But this is the extent that our “smaller government” friends on the other side of the aisle will go to in order to control women’s bodies. Not only do we have to further shame victims of modern slavery, we have to bring them in for judgment from a bunch of wrinkled old white guys too just to try to flip off President Mandingo Reallyfromkenya from even appointing people to his own cabinet.

Compassion, thy name is the Republican Party.

The Real Racists Are Always Everyone But You

Despite the scathing Justice Department detailing the massive corruption and racism in Ferguson, Missouri's Police Department and municipal courts, Missouri GOP Lt.Gov. Peter Kinder knows who the real racists are: Eric Holder and President Obama.

“The whole blow up of this protest movement was based on the lie that never happened of ‘hands up don’t shoot,’” Peter Kinder, the Lt. governor told NewsMaxTV’s Steve Malzberg Show Monday. “But it’s bad enough the protestors were behaving that way but we have a right to expect more from the attorney general, the head of the Justice Department of the United States, and the president of the United States. And instead what we got too often from them was incitement of the mob, and, uh, encouraging disorder in Ferguson and distributing the peaceable going-about of our lives in the greater St. Louis region.”

Kinder added President Obama and Eric Holder “took one side” following the death of Michael Brown. Asked why, he said the Justice Department was “staffed with radical, hard-left radical, leftists lawyers.”

He called the Justice Department under Holder, “not like any Justice Department in American history” and “Eric Holder is unlike any previous attorney general.”

“Many of them have spent most of their careers defending Black Panthers and other violent radicals,” he added. ”

Kinder said “where reforms are needed they’re being made,” citing resignations of police officers and the Ferguson city manger.

Responding to a question he said, “there is more racism in the Justice Department than there is any, uh, yes, anywhere that I see in the St. Louis area.”

Because the black President and that black Attorney General have to know their goddamn place, you see.

Because racism didn't exist before January 20, 2009.  Neither did police brutality.

Because why can't you people just get over this whole being black thing, anyway? It's been 400 years already.

Because you know you're always starting trouble with the good white people of Missouri.

Because you people are always shooting cops, you savages.

Because you don't work hard and you make yourselves poor.

Because if you really wanted out of poverty, you'd get yourself out.

Because anyone who points out racism is the reeeeeeeeal racist.

Because I'm goddamn tired of the "because".

Last Call For Losing By Forfeit

Civil forfeiture seizures by greedy cops and cash-strapped municipalities was a win-win situation for the both of them. Cities and counties, beaten into submission where ever raising taxes on taxpayers meant being crushed by the national Tea Party machine, needed the money from the poor and those without political power to defend themselves.  Police, corrupt and increasingly in want of new military gear to terrorize civilians, needed the excuse to treat citizens as the enemy in order to justify using weapons of war on domestic soil.  They were both very happy.

Until Eric Holder came along and pulled the rug out from under them.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without proving that a crime occurred.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. The program allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of the adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.

“With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” Holder said in a statement.

Of course cash and property seizures are by no means over with.  It just means more states will turn to state laws in order to conduct pillaging and piracy from citizens...but those may run afoul of the courts.  The federal setup made it simple and easy to take property from people for any reason.

But that's over with.

Hey cops?  Treat us like the enemy, and guess what?  We take away your toys.

 

Last Call For General "Betrayed By His Little Soldier", You Mean

Remember Gen. David Petraeus and his career-ending affair with a mistress while CIA chief back in 2012?  The DoJ and FBI sure as hell remember, and he's about to get fried up like catfish.

The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against retired Gen. David H. Petraeus for providing classified information to his former mistress while he was director of theC.I.A., officials said, leaving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to decide whether to seek an indictment that could send the pre-eminent military officer of his generation to prison.

The Justice Department investigation stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, and focuses on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and other highly classified information. F.B.I. agents discovered classified documents on her computer after Mr. Petraeus resigned from the C.I.A. in 2012 when the affair became public.

Mr. Petraeus, a retired four star-general who served as commander of American forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has said he never provided classified information to Ms. Broadwell, and has indicated to the Justice Department that he has no interest in a plea deal that would spare him an embarrassing trial. A lawyer for Mr. Petraeus, Robert B. Barnett, said Friday he had no comment.

Mr. Holder was expected to decide by the end of last year whether to bring charges against Mr. Petraeus, but he has not indicated how he plans to proceed. The delay has frustrated some Justice Department and F.B.I officials and investigators who have questioned whether Mr. Petraeus has received special treatment at a time Mr. Holder has led an unprecedented crackdown on government officials who reveal secrets to journalists.

Needless to say, Eric Holder's going to be under a lot of pressure to prosecute, but it may not be his decision at all as Loretta Lynch, his replacement, has her confirmation hearings staring as early as the end of the month.

Things just got real interesting.

Last Call For The Fold On Lynch

Who would have predicted that after running away from President Obama and losing the Senate that Senate Democrats would no longer have President Obama's interests at heart in the lame duck session?

President Obama will have to get his nominee for attorney general past a Republican-controlled Senate, Democratic and Republican aides say. 

A packed schedule after the election is almost certain to push the vetting process for Loretta Lynch into January, when Republicans are set to take power in the upper chamber. 

“It seems likely [the Lynch vote] would be in the next Congress. It’s difficult to process an [attorney general] that quickly,” said a Democratic aide. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has not yet made a decision on whether to move Lynch’s nomination in the lame-duck session, according to spokesman Adam Jentleson.

But aides say the time crunch and growing GOP opposition to Lynch make it exceedingly unlikely that the replacement for Eric Holder will be confirmed in December. 

That means the task of approving a new attorney general — a position that is a lightning rod for controversy — will fall to the new Republican majority of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). 

“Ms. Lynch will receive fair consideration by the Senate. And her nomination should be considered in the new Congress through regular order,” McConnell said in a statement.

So yeah.  Outgoing Senators have their own agendas, and helping the President is absolutely not one of them.  But sure, the problem is Obama hasn't reached out enough to the people in his own party who told him to go to hell, right?

Meet Loretta Lynch

President Obama's pick for Attorney General, replacing outgoing Eric Holder, is widely expected to be US Attorney Loretta Lynch, currently Brooklyn's federal prosecutor.

Ms. Lynch, a low-profile prosecutor, has risen to the top of the president’s short list in recent days, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the nomination publicly. Officials said that a formal White House announcement could come soon, although it is unlikely to happen before Mr. Obama returns to Washington on Nov. 16 after a trip to Asia.

A Lynch nomination might carry substantial political benefits for a White House recalibrating its strategy after Republicans took over the Senate. Indeed, Ms. Lynch is a two-time United States attorney who has twice been confirmed by the Senate by acclamation – in 2000 and again in 2010. She has no personal ties to Mr. Obama or his policies, freeing her of the political baggage that has weighed down other candidates once thought to have an edge in the process.

That means that the White House would not be nominating current Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who had a brutal fight against the GOP just to get there.  On the other hand, a lame duck nomination like this will almost certainly be held up until January and a new GOP Senate if the Republicans can find a way to do it.  My guess would be intense pressure on Democrats to delay the confirmation vote, citing "the will of the people" and whatnot, as if anything done in the lame duck session is somehow illegal.

If that happens of course, Eric Holder sticks around.  We'll see how much the GOP enjoys that.

Name Dropping 101

The talk of Eric Holder's replacement is already stoking the fires of the Village,and at least one Obama adviser is saying the President will choose a woman for the spot.

A longtime friend to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Saturday afternoon that the next person to step into the cabinet role would be a woman.

Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law School professor who taught and is said to have mentored President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, made the comments on MSNBC during a segment about Holder, who announced on Thursday that he planned to step down from the Justice Department after six years at its helm.

“I’m not gonna put her name out,” Ogletree said. “We’ll just see what happens, because I don’t want her to not be able to be confirmed by the Senate.”

The obvious hint there is California's Attorney General, Kamala Harris, but she has said that she's not interested in the position.  Also mentioned, Seattle-based US Attorney Jenny Durkan, who would be the first openly gay person ever named to a cabinet position.

This week, Harris tried to stamp out the speculation. In a statement on Thursday, she said, “I am honored to even be mentioned, but intend to continue my work for the people of California as Attorney General.” A spokesperson for Durkan, whose selection the LGBT advocacy community has encouraged, told BuzzFeed News on Thursday that it “would not be appropriate” to comment on the issue.

Either would be a solid choice.

Last Call For No Holders Barred

While I agree with everything Steve M. wrote today about the GOP complaining that appointing Eric Holder's successor during the lame duck session after the elections would somehow be "unconstitutional" I think the bigger picture here is that the massive, massive disrespect shown by Sen. Chuck Grassley and others is truly awful.

“Rather than rush a nominee through the Senate in a lame-duck session, I hope the president will now take his time to nominate a qualified individual who can start fresh relationships with Congress so that we can solve the problems facing our country,” said Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Grassley, who voted to confirm Holder in 2009, lamented that his tenure “was strained by his lack of respect for Congress, the American taxpayer and the laws on the books. “

He noted, however, that Holder has committed to remaining on he job until a successor is named, allowing for the confirmation process to run its course.

Oh well.  Guess you lose on this one, Chuck.

“There’s no doubt the president will try to ram through a lame-duck Senate another partisan hack for attorney general,” said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. “We cannot allow that to happen."

We cannot allow.  Exactly who are you to tell the President what he can and cannot do?  Sit the hell down and shut the hell up.  I am so bloody tired of this nonsense.  You get zero say, madam.  Zip.  Stuff it where the sun don't shine.

Republicans have repeatedly urged Democrats to refrain from pushing through any non-emergency legislation in a lame-duck session, arguing that lawmakers who have lost their seats would have no accountability.

That holds true for selecting Holder’s replacement, said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee, which will consider the eventual nomination.

“Allowing Democratic senators, many of whom will likely have just been defeated at the polls, to confirm Holder’s successor would be an abuse of power that should not be countenanced,” Cruz said.

Nope.  100% Constitutional.  Nothing you can do about it.  You lose, sir.  Good day.  Enjoy your replacement.

Of course, the point is to raise so much outrage that our "liberal media" starts actively questioning whether or not President Obama should just resign because, well, you know that anyone that one appoints won't have credibility.

Optics, you know.

BREAKING: AG Eric Holder Resigning, Sort Of

Eric Holder apparently stepping down, but will wait to resign until a successor is named.

Which, thanks to SCOTUS, cannot be done until after the elections when the Senate is back in session.  Expect the GOP to stall until January, when they'll have more seats in the Senate.  If they have 51 and control of the Senate, I can't see anyone Obama would appoint as getting confirmed.

Effectively, Holder may remain until the end of President Obama's term if that happens  I  mean, do you expect anyone Obama would pick would get through a confirmation hearing if the GOP's in charge?

Senate control always was important, but is even more so now.

Point Of View In Ferguson

A new survey out by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shows a pretty stark divide in the way people in the community view last month's deadly shooting of Michael Brown by police office Darren Wilson.

The survey, released Monday morning by the Kansas City-based Remington Research Group, found that 65 percent of African-American county residents believe that Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson acted unjustly when he ended Brown's life Aug. 9 on a Ferguson street. 

Conversely, 62 percent of the white residents surveyed by Remington believe the shooting death of Brown was justified.

The fissure broke even wider when surveyors asked if Wilson should be "arrested and charged with a crime" with 71 percent of African American residents responding "yes" opposed to the 71 percent of white survey-takers who believe the police officer should not be held liable. 

An equally stark divide emerged on the question of whether Brown was "targeted because of his race." 

Over three-quarters of the white respondents - 77 percent - responded "no" while 64 percent of the African-Americans answered in the affirmative.

I can't say that I'm surprised.  Black respondents overwhelmingly believed Wilson took Brown's life without justification, that as a result he should be arrested and charged, and that Brown was a victim because of his race.  White respondents overwhelmingly saw the opposite.  Whether or not you believe race had anything to do with Michael Brown's death, there's no question race is driving St Louis County's response to that death.

Seven in 10 whites think Wilson should walk.  Seven in ten blacks think he should be arrested.  If there's any silver lining, it's that the Justice Department and Eric Holder are all over this one, because I seriously doubt anyone who lives in Ferguson believes Wilson will ever spend a single minute in jail if it were up to the county prosecutor.

Frankly, I only have any hope at all for a federal case, but that will take years and if a Republican president gets in power in 2016, well, remember the DoJ's civil rights division under Dubya?

It's going to take a very long time to see justice for this, regardless.

Last Call For Holder The Line

I know it seems like this place is rapidly turning into the 24-hour Ferguson protest blog, but frankly it's news and I feel like running stories on it, and things need to be said.  Attorney General Eric Holder had some things to say today too in an op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch entitled "A message to the people of Ferguson".

The full resources of the Department of Justice have been committed to the investigation into Michael Brown’s death. This inquiry will take time to complete, but we have already taken significant steps. Approximately 40 FBI agents and some of the Civil Rights Division’s most experienced prosecutors have been deployed to lead this process, with the assistance of the United States Attorney in St. Louis. Hundreds of people have already been interviewed in connection with this matter. On Monday, at my direction, a team of federal medical examiners conducted an independent autopsy.

We understand the need for an independent investigation, and we hope that the independence and thoroughness of our investigation will bring some measure of calm to the tensions in Ferguson. In order to begin the healing process, however, we must first see an end to the acts of violence in the streets of Ferguson. Although these acts have been committed by a very small minority — and, in many cases, by individuals from outside Ferguson — they seriously undermine, rather than advance, the cause of justice. And they interrupt the deeper conversation that the legitimate demonstrators are trying to advance.

The Justice Department will defend the right of protesters to peacefully demonstrate and for the media to cover a story that must be told. But violence cannot be condoned. I urge the citizens of Ferguson who have been peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights to join with law enforcement in condemning the actions of looters, vandals and others seeking to inflame tensions and sow discord.

Law enforcement has a role to play in reducing tensions, as well. As the brother of a retired law enforcement officer, I know firsthand that our men and women in uniform perform their duties in the face of tremendous threats and significant personal risk. They put their lives on the line every day, and they often have to make split-second decisions.

At the same time, good law enforcement requires forging bonds of trust between the police and the public. This trust is all-important, but it is also fragile. It requires that force be used in appropriate ways. Enforcement priorities and arrest patterns must not lead to disparate treatment under the law, even if such treatment is unintended. And police forces should reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

I'm glad to see Eric Holder openly say that he's backing the people of Ferguson here, and that regardless of the outcome of the shooting of Michael Brown, the Ferguson PD and St. Louis County PD have a lot of work to do to earn back the trust of the people.

For some that will never happen.  There just isn't anything that can make this 100% right again.  But they have to go ahead and do it regardless because it's the right thing to do.

And yes, I wouldn't mind seeing both departments taken over by the feds.  They've lost the trust of whom they serve, and that's enough to pull the plug and reform them wholesale.

Saying What The President Cannot

Attorney General Eric Holder is a good man in general, but his ability to say what President Obama cannot say about race and the brutally racist attacks this administration has suffered through in the last six years is one of his most powerful traits.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday he and President Obama have been targets of “a racial animus” by some of the administration’s political opponents.

“There's a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that's directed at me [and] directed at the president,” Holder told ABC. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. … There's a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there's a racial animus."

Holder said the nation is in “a fundamentally better place than we were 50 years ago.” 

“We've made lots of progress,” he said. “I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American president of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress. 

“But there's still more we have to travel along this road so we get to the place that is consistent with our founding ideals,” he said.

He also is one of the few people willing to call Republican voter suppression of black and Latino voters what it is.

The attorney general also pointed to Republican efforts to enact stricter voter ID laws in southern States as evidence that more needed to be done to protect minority rights. Republicans have maintained the efforts are designed to prevent voter fraud, while Democrats say instances of fraud are exceedingly rare, and far outpaced by the minority population that does not have identification that would be unable to vote. 

Holder called the laws “political efforts” designed to make it “more difficult” for “groups that are not supportive of those in power” to “have access to the ballot.” 

“Who is disproportionately impacted by them? Young people, African Americans, Hispanics, older people, people who, for whatever reason, aren't necessarily supportive of the Republican Party,” Holder said, adding that “this notion that there is widespread in-person voter fraud is simply belied by the facts.”

I am grateful for President Obama, but Eric Holder's contribution to civil rights and fighting for them cannot and will not be overlooked by history either.

Ted Cruz's Latest Windmill Tilt-A-Whirl

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is back to threatening to impeach Attorney General Eric Holder if he doesn't appoint a special prosecutor over the IRS's missing emails.

Attorney General Eric Holder must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate IRS targeting of conservative groups or expect to face impeachment proceedings, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on the chamber floor Thursday.

“When an Attorney General mocks the rule of law, when an Attorney General corrupts the Department of Justice by conducting a nakedly partisan investigation to cover up political wrongdoing that conduct by any reasonable measure constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Cruz. “Attorney General Eric Holder has the opportunity to do the right thing. He could appoint a special prosecutor with meaningful independence who is not a major Obama donor.”

The donor Cruz is referring to is Justice Department prosecutor Barbara Bosserman, who has given $6,750 to the Democratic Party and President Obama over the past ten years, according to the Washington Post. Bosserman has been chosen to lead the Justice Department probe into the IRS.

Cruz and other conservatives are dismayed that the Justice Department has yet to indict anyone 13 months after the IRS admitted that it targeted nonprofit political advocacy groups with the terms “tea party” or “patriot” in their names from 2010 to 2012.

That's actually not true, as more liberal groups were targeted than conservative ones, because the IRS was going after a number of "advocacy groups" on both sides basically using unlimited anonymous funds to run unlimited political ads. 

"Republicans have yet to prove any laws were broken after 13 months" is the problem, after wasting taxpayer money with piles of investigations in the House.  Impeachment will fail of course, but the longer Ted Cruz is in the news reminding people about his nonsense with the shutdown, the better.