Last Call For A Supreme Disregard Of Precedent

Late Thursday night, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court to block a lower court order that would have effectively closed Louisiana's remaining abortion clinics in what was clearly another "I don't want the Roberts Court to be remembered for that" decision (see saving Obamacare a few years ago).

That wasn't the problem, of course.  The problem was Justice Kavanaugh's first major case opinion as a Surpeme Court Justice, a shocking dissent that makes it very clear he was put on the court to end Roe v Wade and reduce America's women to birthing units.

The Supreme Court gave reproductive justice advocates an unexpected win on Thursday night when it voted 5 to 4 to stay a court of appeals’ decision that could have closed abortion clinics in Louisiana. The chief justice joined the four more liberal justices in voting to prevent the Louisiana law from going into effect. That small achievement underscores how much progressives stand to lose with the new court and how low our standards for victory have become.

At issue in June Medical Services v. Gee is a Louisiana law that requires abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where the providers perform abortions. Just two and a half years ago, the Supreme Court held that very same requirement unconstitutional when Texas enacted it.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit maintained that the burdens imposed by Louisiana’s admitting privileges requirement are less severe than the burdens imposed by the same requirement in Texas. The Texas law would have shuttered some 20 clinics, whereas Louisiana’s law would shutter only one or two of the state’s three clinics. Similarly, the 5th Circuit acknowledged that it did not have any evidence that the Louisiana admitting-privileges requirement would help the health or safety of any women, even though it created a burden on providers and their patients. That is the standard the Supreme Court set in the Texas case for when a law is unconstitutional, but the court of appeals said that it could imagine how it might be plausible to think the requirement might benefit some women.

It is easy to see how this kind of analysis will make safe, accessible abortions a thing of the past in many parts of the United States. If a law does not amount to an unconstitutional burden unless it does something as dramatic as close 20 clinics in a geographic area as large as Texas, almost every law would be constitutional. And if a law does not amount to an unconstitutional burden if courts can invent a justification for it, then laws would be upheld even when there is no evidence that they would help any woman, ever.

That is how Roe v. Wade will die. Not with a bang, but with a million little distinctions that judges will draw to limit the impact of any cases that invalidate restrictions on abortion. By voting to allow the Louisiana law to go into effect, four justices gave the okay to states and lower courts to limit Roe by whatever means necessary.

How long Chief Justice Roberts will stand as the only bulwark between women's reproductive rights and a future where half the states in the country have banned safe abortion procedures, I can't tell you.

And that's the problem.

Meat The Press, Con't

The Trump regime's cover-up of the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi is now in violation of US law as the regime is refusing to comply with the Magnitsky Act.

President Trump refused to provide Congress a report on Friday determining who killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, defying a demand by lawmakers intent on establishing whether the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was behind the grisly assassination.

Mr. Trump effectively bypassed a deadline set by law as his administration argued that Congress could not impose its will on the president. Critics charged that he was seeking to cover up Saudi complicity in the death of Mr. Khashoggi, an American resident and a columnist for The Washington Post.

“Consistent with the previous administration’s position and the constitutional separation of powers, the president maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate,” the Trump administration said in a statement. The statement said the administration had taken action against the killers and would consult with Congress.

But Democrats said Mr. Trump was violating a law known as the Magnitsky Act. It required him to respond 120 days after a request submitted in the fall by committee leaders — including Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — a period that expired Friday.

“The law is clear,” said Juan Pachón, a spokesman for Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “It requires a determination and report in response to the letter we sent with Corker. The president has no discretion here. He’s either complying with the law or breaking it.”

The Trump administration imposed sanctions in November against 17 Saudis accused of being involved in the killing, but has refused to blame Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a key ally and the country’s de facto ruler, despite a C.I.A. conclusion that the crown prince ordered it.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent letters to the committee leaders describing actions taken against individuals without offering the determination of who was responsible as demanded by the lawmakers.

“I anticipate a more detailed briefing from the administration on this issue and look forward to working with them and the members of my committee in our ongoing effort to address the killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” said Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho, who succeeded Mr. Corker as chairman.

Don't hold your breath.

Mitch McConnell of course won't allow the Senate to lift a finger on this. We'll only get Trump regime compliance when they've mutually decided along with the Saudis whose head will roll in place of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan, and not a day before that. 

Of course, it's taken more than four months to decide on "the person or persons responsible for this rogue operation" so far, because evidence keeps popping up that MbS did it, mainly because MbS is the person who ordered Khashoggi's death by bone saw.

Besides, the Saudis almost certainly had US help, and on top of all that, Jared Kushner has deep financial ties to the Crown Prince, and Riyadh is making it very clear that if MbS goes down, the Saudis will take Kushner and Trump down with them.

So, this awful status quo will continue.  Republicans certainly won't allow anything to happen to Trump or Kushner for refusing, and the Saudi ggovernment absolutely won't let anything happen to MbS, so really there's no point in a Magnitsky Act, is there?

I'm sure Putin will be happy to hear that last part.

Blackmail As A Business Model

The National Enquirer picked a blackmail fight with Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos this week, and apparently the Trump-leaning tabloid and its parent company, American Media Inc., are well known for dirty deeds done extremely expensively.

It may have shocked the world when the publisher of the National Enquirer allegedly tried to use nude pictures to coerce Jeff Bezos. But it came as no surprise to three veterans of the Enquirer’sparent company, American Media Inc. 

“The threats, the blackmail, that’s their business model,” one former National Enquirer staffer told The Daily Beast. 

That model burst out into public view on Thursday night when Bezos—the world’s richest man, the founder of Amazon, and the owner of the Washington Post—published emails from AMI chief content officer Dylan Howard that threatened the release of a “dick p*ck” if the Post didn’t relent in its investigation of AMI. 

It was a familiar moment to Paul Barresi, a private investigator who spent years working on jobs for AMI and other tabloids. “The National Enquirer had some people who would go to a celebrity and say, ‘unless you give in to a one-on-one interview that would amount to a fluff piece with us, we’re going to report XYZ,” he said. “The celebrity would then acquiesce to their demand.” 

“The nice way of calling it was quid pro quo, but really it was blackmail,” Barresi said. “I know that the same methodology is practiced today,” he added. “Obviously it's practiced, because they did it” to Bezos. 

And Daniel “Danno” Hanks, who said he worked as an on-contract investigator for the Enquirer “off and on” for 40 years, used the phrase “war of blackmail” to describe the AMI empire’s ethos. 

“I’ve known this newspaper’s tactics for years, and I’d rather the truth be told,” Hanks stressed. 

“The Enquirer had a list of which attorneys worked for which celebrities, and if someone approached [the tabloid] for a story, they would approach the attorneys and say, ‘Make us a better offer,’” Hanks said. 

Hanks, who was recently released from prison for involvement in a gambling and drug organization (Hanks claims he was duped into it), added that those Hollywood or celebrity lawyers often asked Enquirer investigators to do investigative work and “trash runs” for them. 

“They would have a particular name, and we would track that person down, and once we did that information would be turned over to [the celebrity’s] lawyer,” he said. 

AMI did not respond to a request to comment for this story, but the company said in a statement on Friday that it “believes fervently that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr. Bezos.” The company has not been prosecuted for any crimes related to the blackmail claims made by its former investigators. 

However, the supermarket tabloid company’s bag of dirty tricks also is well-chronicled and includes catch-and-kill operation: paying for an exclusive interview only to bury it, as a favor to an ally or after using the dirt to convince a celebrity to play ball with them.

There's a very good chance that David Pecker and friends are going to get a visit from the Feds over this as AMI is not in full panic mode.

The National Enquirer’s alleged attempt to blackmail Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with intimate photos could get the tabloid’s parent company and top editors in deep legal trouble and reopen them to prosecution for paying hush money to a Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Donald Trump. 

Federal prosecutors are looking at whether the Enquirer’s feud with Bezos violated a cooperation and non-prosecution agreement that recently spared the gossip sheet from charges in the hush-money case, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday. 

The clash between the world’s richest man and America’s most aggressive supermarket tabloid spilled into public view late Thursday when Bezos accused it of threatening to print photos of him and the woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. 

He said the Enquirer made two demands: Stop investigating how the publication recently obtained private messages that Bezos and his girlfriend had exchanged. And publicly declare that the Enquirer’s coverage of Bezos was not politically motivated. 

Enquirer owner American Media Inc. said Friday that its board of directors ordered a prompt and thorough investigation and will take “whatever appropriate action is necessary.” Earlier in the day, the company said it “acted lawfully” while reporting the story and engaged in “good-faith negotiations” with Bezos.

Stay tuned.

Vaccination Nation

I swear, the anti-vax movement is as awful and as selfish as it comes, exposing kids to measles and rubella and mumps and whooping cough because you read something on Facebook that one time. Amid a major measles outbreak in Washington State this month, people are actually rallying at the capitol in order to keep on hurting their kids.

With more than 50 cases of measles in Washington state, there's been a new push to change the law. Washington is one of 17 states that allow parents to refuse vaccines for philosophical reasons.

But on Friday, hundreds rallied to preserve their right not to vaccinate their children. Lawmakers heard arguments on a proposed bill that would ban the measles vaccine exemption for philosophical reasons. Thirty-two other states have similar laws.

Measles is so contagious that an unvaccinated person has a 90 percent chance of catching the disease if they're near someone who has it. The virus can survive for up to two hours in a room where an infected person sneezed.

Measles vaccination rates here, at the epicenter of the outbreak, are now up by 500 percent.

"I think we're seeing people rush to the doctor now because it's real and it's been growing every week. And so folks actually see a real threat," said Washington Secretary of Health John Wiesman.

But opponents of the bill still think the measles vaccine is a bigger threat than the disease itself.

"I don't feel I'm putting my child at risk. There's nothing that's going to change my mind on this on that specific vaccination," said mother Monique Murray.

If you don't vaccinate your kids, I feel child services should get involved, but that's just me.

Last Call For You Wrecked It, Ralph

Embattled Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam now say he will not resign over recently uncovered pictures in blackface in his medical school yearbook, despite calls from national Democrats for Northam to step down.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam told his top staff Friday that he is not going to resign over the racist photo that has roiled state politics, despite intense pressure to step down, according to a top administration official.

Northam called a Cabinet meeting Friday afternoon to announce his intention to stay, the official said. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity

The announcement comes at the end of an unprecedented week in Virginia history that has seen the state’s three top Democrats embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals.

The tumult began last Friday afternoon, when Northam’s medical school yearbook page surfaced with a picture of one person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.

Northam immediately apologized for appearing in the photograph, saying he could not “undo the harm my behavior caused then and today.” Most of the Democratic establishment called for his resignation by the end of the day.

On Saturday, though, the governor reversed course and said he wasn’t in the picture. He said he wasn’t going to resign immediately because he owed it to the people of Virginia to start a discussion about race and discrimination and listen to the pain he had caused.

“I believe this moment can be the first small step to open a discussion about these difficult issues,” Northam said. But the governor left his long-term plans open, saying he would reassess his decision not to resign if it became clear he had no viable path forward.

The pressure on Northam reached a crescendo Saturday when almost the entire Virginia Democratic establishment, as well as nearly every Democratic presidential hopeful, called on him to resign. That pressure has tapered off as a cascade of scandals involving top politicians has rocked the state.

Meanwhile, Virginia's Lt. Governor, Justin Fairfax, is now being accused by a second woman of sexual assault.

A Maryland woman said Friday she was raped by Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) in a “premeditated and aggressive” assault in 2000, while they both were undergraduate students at Duke University. She is the second woman this week to make an accusation of sexual assault.

The woman, Meredith Watson, said Friday in a written statement through her attorney that she shared her account immediately after it happened with several classmates and friends. Watson did not speak publicly Friday and her lawyer did not make her available for an interview.

Watson was friends with Fairfax at Duke but they never dated or had any romantic relationship, the lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said.

“At this time, Ms. Watson is reluctantly coming forward out of a strong sense of civic duty and her belief that those seeking or serving in public office should be of the highest character,” Smith said in the statement . “She has no interest in becoming a media personality or reliving the trauma that has greatly affected her life. Similarly, she is not seeking any financial damages.”

Sadly, Northam has decided that if Donald Trump can survive worse allegations, he shouldn't have to go anywhere.  Fairfax too denies the second allegation and says he too will not resign. 

If Democrats go down that road, there's no coming back.

And the voters will remember.

Adelson's Gamble Pays Off Big Time

GOP casino magnate Sheldon Adelson bought and paid for Donald Trump's 2016 campaign to the tune of more than $20 million, and now Adelson is getting his reward as the Trump Justice Department has quietly issued new guidelines all but putting an end to online gambling and interstate lotteries like Powerball and Mega Millions, leaving brick-and-mortar casinos like Adelson's empire as the only game in town.

The Justice Department’s decision last month to release a legal opinion that could further restrict Internet gambling is drawing fire from state attorneys general and former department officials amid questions about casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s long-standing push for the move.

The legal opinion, which was posted online during the partial government shutdown, reversed a 2011 Justice Department interpretation of the Wire Act that effectively gave the states a green light to authorize lotteries and other forms of online gambling.

The change was long sought by Adelson, a major Republican donor who spent more than $20 million to back Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016.

“We can see no good reason for the Justice Department’s sudden reversal,” Josh Shapiro, attorney general of Pennsylvania, and Gurbir S. Grewal, attorney general of New Jersey, wrote this week in a joint letter to acting U.S. attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

In their letter, the Democratic attorneys general said they were concerned by reports that the drafting of the new opinion “followed substantial lobbying by outside groups.”

The opinion released Jan. 14 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) echoed arguments outlined in a memo written by the law firm of Washington attorney Charles Cooper, who was working as part of an Adelson-backed lobbying team. Cooper’s memo reached the OLC in 2017, officials confirmed.
Cooper himself is a former head of the OLC and has worked as a personal lawyer for former attorney general Jeff Sessions.

In an interview, Cooper confirmed that he lobbied Justice Department officials to reconsider its previous opinion on the Wire Act and expressed satisfaction that his memo resonated with his successor.

The opinion “accords entirely with the analysis my firm undertook and I shared with the DOJ,” said Cooper, who compared his memo to law review articles and opinion pieces that serve as research material for department lawyers.

Justice Department officials said the process that led to the new opinion was independent and in keeping with department norms and guidelines.

“The 23-page opinion reflects the Office of Legal Counsel’s best judgment of the law, and the accusation that the opinion was shaped by any outside interest is baseless and offensive,” said Nicole Navas Oxman, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

[Justice Department issues opinion that could further restrict online gambling]

The opinion centers on an interpretation of the Wire Act, a 1961 statute that makes it a criminal offense to transmit information to promote interstate or foreign wagering.

In September 2011, the Obama Justice Department issued an opinion that only sports betting fell within the purview of the act.

The reversal of that decision could have an impact on interstate lotteries and has upset state officials, who have come to rely on lottery revenue to fund key programs.

We'll see how this shakes out, but it could be a major disaster for states, infrastructure, and anyone who isn't a casino owner.

Pissed Pecker Procured Perilous Prime Patriarch's Package Pics, Promises Production Per Portentous Programmed Paper

Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is apparently tired of being blackmailed by the National Enquirer, who has already ruined his marriage with evidence of his cheating on his wife MacKenzie, and has decided that if Donald Trump wants to treat Bezos and his newspaper as enemies of the state, Bezos might as well fulfill the role completely.

Something unusual happened to me yesterday. Actually, for me it wasn’t just unusual — it was a first. I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Or at least that’s what the top people at the National Enquirer thought. I’m glad they thought that, because it emboldened them to put it all in writing. Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten.

AMI, the owner of the National Enquirer, led by David Pecker, recently entered into an immunity deal with the Department of Justice related to their role in the so-called “Catch and Kill” process on behalf of President Trump and his election campaign. Mr. Pecker and his company have also been investigated for various actions they’ve taken on behalf of the Saudi Government.

And sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together:

“After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker’s loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia. At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions…”

Federal investigators and legitimate media have of course suspected and proved that Mr. Pecker has used the Enquirer and AMI for political reasons. And yet AMI keeps claiming otherwise:

“American Media emphatically rejects any assertion that its reporting was instigated, dictated or influenced in any manner by external forces, political or otherwise.”

Of course, legitimate media have been challenging that assertion for a long time:

Mystery Grows Over Pro-Saudi Tabloid: Embassy Got Sneak Peek

I didn’t know much about most of that a few weeks ago when intimate texts messages from me were published in the National Enquirer. I engaged investigators to learn how those texts were obtained, and to determine the motives for the many unusual actions taken by the Enquirer. As it turns out, there are now several independent investigations looking into this matter.

To lead my investigation, I retained Gavin de Becker. I’ve known Mr. de Becker for twenty years, his expertise in this arena is excellent, and he’s one of the smartest and most capable leaders I know. I asked him to prioritize protecting my time since I have other things I prefer to work on and to proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter.

Here’s a piece of context: My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me. It’s unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy.

President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.

Bezos goes on to publish the apparent emails he received from American Media promising that the National Enquirer would basically publish his dick pics online, and basically says "bring it, you've already wrecked my marriage, but I own the goddamn Washington Post."

Popcorn time!

StupidiNews!

• Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker is expected to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Friday to answer questions about possible undue influence over the Mueller probe.
• Iran's Revolutionary Guard showed off a new medium-range ballistic missile that it warns will put Israel and US military bases in the Middle East within striking distance.
• Democrats in Congress say a deal to keep the government open could be reached by this weekend ahead of another possible shutdown on February 15.
• A new housing survey finds nearly ten percent of US mortgages are still underwater, a decade after the housing market crash triggered the Great Recession of 2008.
• A cable TV lobbyist group is petitioning Congress and the FCC for "paid prioritization" laws to allow internet providers to charge content providers for faster network traffic.

Last Call For It's About Suppression, Con't

I'm enormously gratified to see Democrats taking the threat of Republican suppression of millions, perhaps tens of millions of voters nationally as a serious and existential threat to American democracy in an effort to win in 2020.

With the 2020 presidential election on the horizon, one of the largest outside Democratic groups announced on Thursday a $30 million effort to register voters, push ballot measures that expand voter rights and fight Republican-backed laws in court that restrict ballot access.

“At every stage of the game, Republican and conservative state legislatures around the country, when they are given the opportunity, make it more difficult for people to vote,” Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, told The Associated Press. “Essentially what you have are the descendants of Jim Crow who are trying to make it difficult for people to reach the ballot box.”

Democrats have historically supported expanded voting rights, which helps turn out their base, while Republicans have enacted ballot restrictions, citing concern about widespread voter fraud without offering proof. But the new two-year effort, which will spend roughly triple what Priorities had devoted to a similar initiative during the last election cycle, comes as an increasingly diverse Democratic Party has upped the intensity of its focus on ballot access.

Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost a recent bid to become the nation’s first black female governor, delivered a rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday that singled out Republican efforts to limit voter participation.

“Let’s be clear: Voter suppression is real,” she said.

The launch of Priorities’ effort also coincides with debate in Congress over a sweeping reform of campaign finance and voting rights laws. The legislation, called H.R. 1, is widely supported by the new Democratic House majority but was criticized by GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a “power grab” because it would make Election Day a holiday.

Much of the money Priorities plans to spend will be directed toward litigation, Cecil said. It’s an area where they had considerable success in the run-up to last fall’s midterms, blunting the impact of election laws in Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Florida and New Hampshire.

For example, a Missouri judge last year blocked portions of a law from taking effect that would have required voters to present a valid photo ID or sign a sworn statement and present some other form of identification to cast a regular ballot.

In Iowa, a Priorities lawsuit resulted in a court order that said the state cannot throw out an absentee ballot based on a judgment by local election officials that the voter’s signature doesn’t match one on file.

And in Indiana, the threat of legal action stymied local officials from acting on a Republican-approved state law reducing the number of polling locations during the 2018 election in one of the state’s largest minority-population counties, the group said.

Now Priorities is turning its attention to Georgia and Texas, states that have both drawn recent scrutiny over claims of voter fraud.

Fighting red state voter suppression at the state level with groups like Priorities USA and nationally with House Democrats pushing legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act is exactly what Democrats need to be doing in 2020, and for once I'm actually impressed that the Democrats are already moving ahead with these efforts now, rather than waiting until it is too late.

You Wrecked It, Ralph, Con't

"Absolute failure of leadership descending to Trumpian levels of disaster" doesn't begin to describe how badly Virginia Democrats have screwed up in the last week.  The Washington Post editorial board today officially joined the national party apparatus in calling for Gov. Ralph Northam's resignation.

GOV. RALPH NORTHAM (D) can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia who elected him. His shifting and credulity-shredding explanations for the racist photograph on his medical school yearbook page, and the silence into which he then succumbed for days — after initially promising to do “the hard work” of atonement and apology to restore his standing with Virginians — is simply too much. His decade-long record in public office is admirable; it is equally true that his governorship has been irredeemably wrecked by the self-inflicted, racially callous and clueless mess he has made in recent days.

Having initially admitted and apologized for appearing in the offensive photo, which showed one person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan garb — Mr. Northam performed a head-spinning pivot a day later and denied being either personin that image. His about-face was undercut by simultaneous revelations and acknowledgments — that he wore shoe polish on his face for a dance contest after medical school; that “Coonman” was among his nicknames in college.

He put out word that he was determined to stay in office and clear his name and that he would seek a private investigator to unearth the truth about the yearbook photo, which he said is “not me.” It struck us as reasonable that he should have that chance. But since his artless, tone-deaf news conference Saturday, the governor has gone to ground and been heard from no more. No more light has been shed, no exculpatory information has emerged.

Facts do matter, and the ones surrounding the Northam fiasco remain unsettled and unanswered. First and foremost among the questions they raise: How could he possibly have admitted to something as damning as appearing in the photo if he was certain he wasn’t one of the people in it? How did that photo wind up on his page if he didn’t furnish it to the yearbook editors? What do the governor’s now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t statements say about his judgment? The explanations Mr. Northam has proffered are vague and unconvincing. Virginians deserve better. Mr. Northam’s time is up. 

Unfortunately, it's becoming more and more clear that Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax cannot serve as the state's chief executive either.

Virginia Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott was made aware of allegations of sexual assault against now-Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax over a year ago by the alleged victim herself, ABC News has learned.

Scott learned of the allegations directly from Dr. Vanessa Tyson, who on Wednesday released a statement detailing the alleged 2004 assault, which took place at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Fairfax vehemently denies the assault claim.

In a statement given to ABC News on Wednesday, Scott wrote, "Allegations of sexual assault need to be taken seriously. I have known Professor Tyson for approximately a decade and she is a friend. She deserves the opportunity to have her story heard.”

The accusations against Fairfax did not come out of the blue.  Karen Tumulty at the Post has every right to ask if Democrats will back Dr. Tyson in the same manner that they did Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's accusations against Brett Kavanaugh.  The answer must be yes, or we are the party of Trump's misogyny and racism too.

As Peter Hamby at Vanity Fair writes, there's no fixing this.  The best Dems can hope for is that Northam appoints someone other than Fairfax, and ideally a black woman, to become Virginia's first female Governor of color to start learning from this utter debacle.

By the standards set forth by Democrats over the last two years, all three of these men should have resigned by now. In the cases of Northam and Herring, it’s clear cut: racism has no home in the Democratic Party, full stop. It is a party committed to racial justice and empowerment, and even the most modest of racial transgressions have to be reckoned with. A white man with a racist blemish on his record must face public consequences, because for every tarnished white man, there is an equally capable woman or person of color ready to step into the political breach. Every Democrat in the country made this loud and clear after Northam’s yearbook photo surfaced, fueled in part by the comfort that his replacement would be Fairfax, a next-generation leader who would be only the second African-American governor in the South. Herring, too, called on Northam to resign, a four-day-old statement that Herring now must reckon with given his own stupid behavior. All of it has provided us with a new definition for white supremacy: when you’re a white person who does dumb, racist shit—and you don’t know even know it.

The Fairfax situation, as with many cases of sexual assault, is more complicated. Fairfax’s callous dismissal of his accuser’s claim as “uncorroborated” reminded us of the uncomfortable truth around these stories, which is that the facts surrounding them are usually of the he-said-she-said variety. (Our nation’s long, disgraceful history of harshly punishing African-American men based on false accusations of sexual assault complicates the equation further.) But the #MeToo revolution has affirmed for the world that accusers deserve the benefit of the doubt and an honest airing of their charges, in order to hold powerful men to account. This, too, is a standard that has been adopted by the Democratic Party, first with the Al Franken controversies and then with the Kavanaugh hearings. Franken was accused of groping many women, and several of those accusers were anonymous. And yes, some of their stories were “uncorroborated.” But led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a brave group of female senators stood up and spoke out against Franken, demanding that he resign. “We should demand the highest standards, not the lowest, from our leaders, and we should fundamentally value and respect women,” Gillibrand wrote on Facebook at the time. Democrats must hold themselves to a standard higher than partisanship, the argument went. If members of our party behave badly, we must treat them the same as Republicans who do. “You have to stand up for what’s right, especially when it’s hard,” Gillibrand said in another interview during the Franken drama. “And if you create a pass because you love someone, or you like someone, or admire someone, or they’re part of your team, it’s not O.K., it’s just not.”

The Kavanaugh parallels might be more direct. An accuser from another time comes forward with a credible charge, just as the accused is preparing to assume a position of considerable power. At the first hint of Ford’s accusation, Democrats spoke up, demanding that the confirmation process be paused and that Kavanaugh confront the charges. But at the first hint of Fairfax accusations, Democrats were uncomfortably silent, and they continue to be, in some cases embarrassingly so. At the State of the Union address on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders and D.N.C. Chairman Tom Perez were chased down by pesky conservative reporters asking for comment on Fairfax. Both hilariously pretended to be taking calls on their iPhones to avoid them, even though video plainly showed that their screens were not in call mode. At another time, would they have stopped to deliver a comment about Kavanaugh? You bet.

With apologies to Gillibrand, who is now running for president under the banner of female empowerment, there are no Democrats standing up for what’s right at a moment when it’s really, really hard. National Democrats can claim that this Fairfax story is none of their business, because they aren’t immersed in the details of Virginia politics. Unfortunately, since every Democrat in America felt comfortable weighing in on Virginia politics after the Northam scandal broke, that is no longer an argument they can make. Democrats, too, are urging caution and waiting for the facts to come out, which would have been reasonable in an earlier time. But as with most matters of race and sex in the age of Twitter, the public standard on the left is no longer wait and see. It’s rush to judge. That there are zero Democrats willing to speak up on the Fairfax matter is an intellectual and moral headache for the party. What’s more, it’s a dynamic easily weaponized by bad-faith actors on the right who are more than happy to paint Democrats as sanctimonious hypocrites on cultural issues.

We will not beat Trump in 2020 if we can't be better than him.  Right now we are not.  The longer this Northam/Fairfax/Herring mess goes on, the more clear that becomes.  It's no longer a question of dirty tricks and oppo research bombshells, it's now "do the right thing or perish as a party."

And the state's Republican leaders?  Same problem. 

A Virginia Military Institute yearbook overseen by future state Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment in 1968 features a host of racist photos and slurs, including blackface.

The revelation about one of Virginia's most powerful Republicans comes as the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general are facing calls to resign over their own admissions they wore blackface as young men.

Norment, R-James City County, was managing editor of The Bomb publication that year. He went to VMI after graduating from James Blair High School in Williamsburg and has been a state senator since 1992.

Do better, entire state of Virginia.  That needs to start today.

The Boys' Club, Con't

Last December I told you all about the Miami Herald's investigation into the sweetheart plea deal that Florida hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein received in the trafficking case of underage girls he faced.  Now the Herald's story has resulted in the Justice Department is finally investigating Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta's role in that plea deal when Acosta was a US Attorney in Miami.

The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta’s role in negotiating a controversial plea deal with a wealthy New York investor accused of molesting more than 100 underage girls in Palm Beach.

The probe is in response to a request by Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who was critical of the case following a series of stories in the Miami Herald. The Herald articles detailed how Acosta, then the U.S. attorney for Southern Florida, and other DOJ attorneys worked hand-in-hand with defense lawyers to cut a lenient plea deal with multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2008.

The Herald’s three-part series, Perversion of Justice, was cited by Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd in his letter to Sasse. DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility will head the investigation, he said.

“OPR has now opened an investigation into allegations that department attorneys may have committed professional misconduct in the manner in which the Epstein criminal matter was resolved,’’ wrote Boyd in the letter dated Wednesday. 

Acosta, 50, had been considered a rising star in the Republican Party and was once mentioned as a possible candidate to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He did not respond to a request for comment emailed to his office on Wednesday.

Sasse and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Sunrise Democrat, have pushed for a DOJ investigation into whether there was any undue influence that tainted the case. 

“Jeffrey Epstein is a child rapist and there’s not a single mom or dad in America who shouldn’t be horrified by the fact that he received a pathetically soft sentence,’’ Sasse said on Wednesday. “The victims of Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring deserve this investigation — and so do the American people and the members of law enforcement who work to put these kinds of monsters behind bars.’’

Former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter — who pressured Acosta and former Palm Beach state prosecutor Barry Krischer to more aggressively prosecute Epstein — said he would like to see Epstein’s victims finally receive some form of justice.

“I hope that the Department of Justice investigation answers the questions of why this case was handled by the U.S. attorney’s office in the way that it was, and may it somehow result in justice and an apology by the government for the victims and their families,’’ Reiter said.

Again, Epstein was facing more than 100 counts of sexual molestation of underage girls.  This is a vile scumbag who should be rotting in a windowless hot box in the Florida sun for the next eternity or two, but Epstein had powerful friends in both parties, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. 

Acosta too should be disbarred and chucked out of the Labor Department.  There's no way he should ever have been confirmed, but Republicans are perfectly fine letting a guy who let a super-rich child molester get away with it, because that's what powerful Republicans do.

We'll see if anything comes from this.

StupidiNews!

• The Pentagon wants to buy several Israeli-made Iron Dome missile defense weapons systems, the IDF has been using the portable anti-air system since 2011.
• Dutch environmental scientists are investigating a massive bird kill of nearly 20,000 guillemots that have washed up on North Sea beaches over the last week.
• House Judiciary Democrats will hold hearings on gun control legislation, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act has 230 sponsors, including five Republicans.
• Donald Trump is standing behind his State of the Union call for more legal immigration, a sharp departure from the regime's current policy of significant cuts to refugee and visa programs.
• Charter Spectrum is the latest cable company to raise broadcast TV rates, customers will pay nearly 35% more for networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC in March compared to October of last year.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Rep. Adam Schiff and the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are now ready to rock Donald Trump's world. Spencer Ackerman:

The House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into President Trump’s ties to Russia is officially back. And under the panel’s new Democratic management, it’s beyond supersized.

In its first official business meeting of the new Congress on Wednesday—facilitated by the House Republican leadership’s somewhat belated announcement of GOP membership on the committee—the much-watched House panel voted to re-establish an inquiry into what now might be called Collusion-Plus.

It’s about as different as possible from the committee’s previous investigative incarnation under Republican management, which last year released a report absolving the president and his campaign of any culpability in Russian manipulation of the 2016 election and turned its ire on those within the Justice Department and FBI investigating Trump.

Democratic committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) has made no secret of his emphasis on going after financial ties between Trump and Russia and subpoenaing documents thus far untouched by the panel. And on Wednesday, the committee voted to execute another long-standing priority of Schiff’s: giving Special Counsel Robert Mueller the transcripts of all witnesses before the House probe. Misleading the committee and its Senate counterpart has already led to indictments of former Trump advisers Michael Cohen and Roger Stone—and they may not have been the only ones to give false or incomplete testimony.

But an announcement from Schiff shortly after the Wednesday morning vote underscored the ginormous reach of the 2.0 version of the investigation.

The investigation will examine the “scope” of the Kremlin’s influence campaigns on American politics, both in 2016 and afterwards, and “any links/and or coordination” between anyone in the Trump orbit—the campaign, transition, administration, or, critically, the president’s businesses—and “furtherance of the Russian government’s interests.” It will also look at whether “any foreign actor,” not only Russians, has any “leverage, financial or otherwise” over Trump, “his family, his business, or his associates”—and whether such actors actively “sought to compromise” any of those many, many people.

A related line of inquiry will examine whether Trump, his family, and his advisers “are or were at any time at heightened risk of” being suborned by foreign interests in any way. That includes a vulnerability to foreign “exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure or coercion.” All that makes it very likely that the committee examines Trump administration policy—think the Syria pullout, or ex-national security adviser and admitted felon Mike Flynn’s attempts to work with Russia’s military in Syria, or Trump’s infamous Helsinki meeting with Vladimir Putin—through that lens.

For nearly two years, we had Devin Nunes do everything he could to sink a real investigation into Trump's collusion.  Those days are now over, and a new sheriff is in town.  Trump and especially his sons, Don Jr. and Eric, his daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are going to be in real trouble and soon.

Stay tuned.

You Wrecked It, Ralph, Con't

At this point the Virginia Democratic Party is descending into self-parody.

The political crisis in Virginia escalated dramatically Wednesday when another top Democrat — Attorney General Mark Herring — admitted putting on blackface in the 1980s, when he was in college.

With Gov. Ralph Northam’s career already hanging by a thread over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook, Herring issued a statement saying he wore brown makeup and a wig in 1980 to look like a rapper during a party as a 19-year-old at the University of Virginia.

Herring — who has been among those calling on Northam to resign — said he was “deeply, deeply sorry for the pain that I cause with this revelation.” He said that in the days ahead, “honest conversations and discussions will make it clear whether I can or should continue to serve as attorney general.”

The 57-year-old attorney general issued the statement after rumors of a blackface photo of him had circulated at the Capitol for a day or more. But in his statement, he said nothing about the existence of a photo.

The disclosure further roils the top levels of Virginia government, which has been hit with one crisis after another since the yearbook picture came to light last Friday.

On Monday, Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who would become governor if Northam resigned, was confronted with uncorroborated allegations of sexual misconduct dating to 2004. He denied the accusations, calling them a political smear.

Herring would be next in line to be governor after Fairfax. After Herring comes the speaker of the state House, Kirk Cox, a Republican.

I can't believe that Democrats would let the line of succession crumble like this all the way to letting a Republican run the state, but at this point they haven't exactly shown good judgment in the first place.  Virginia Republicans should have a field day with their "See, Democrats are racist and misogynist too, just like Trump!" commercials heading into 2020.

And yes, it gets worse for Justin Fairfax today too.

The woman at the center of a sexual assault scandal involving Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is a Stanford University fellow scheduled to appear at a symposium next week on sexual violence and the #MeToo movement.

Professor Vanessa Tyson’s allegations, stemming from an interaction at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, and the explosive political fallout echo those of Christine Blasey Ford, another university professor living in Palo Alto, who last year accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers.

Tyson’s Stanford colleague Jennifer Freyd told the Bay Area News Group on Tuesday that sometime last fall, at the start of their fellowship program, Tyson told Freyd and a couple of other colleagues about the 2004 encounter at the Boston convention. Freyd doesn’t remember whether Tyson named Fairfax, but said that she spoke about it while “illustrating a concept” they were discussing about sexual violence.

“It was not that remarkable in that many times I’ve sat with colleagues and they talked about being victimized and how it fits in with what we are talking about,” said Freyd, a University of Oregon psychology professor who is part of the same Stanford behavioral sciences fellowship program with Tyson.

No, it doesn't make Trump's Racism or misogyny any better.  Fairfax's accuser should not be attacked for trying to bring him down, if she says it wasn't consensual, then it wasn't consensual. But we know Republicans will never hold their politicians accountable for stuff like this, and I'm hoping this isn't the end of the Democrats holding their side accountable either, or the party's in dire trouble.

The Misstatement Of The Union Address

Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post's fact-checking team tackled the Wall of lies in Donald Trump's SOTU speech last night, and it's pretty brutal stuff.  Some low-lights:

“Unemployment has reached the lowest rate in half a century. African American, Hispanic American and Asian American unemployment have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded.”

This is all in the past. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the unemployment rate had increased to 4 percent in January. The unemployment rate in December had no longer been at a 49-year low, but an 18-year low. Now it was merely the best since the beginning of 2018.

The African American unemployment statistic has been in existence for less than 50 years. It reached a low of 5.9 percent in May 2018, but had risen to 6.8 percent in January. The Hispanic American unemployment statistic has been in existence for less than 50 years. It reached a low of 4.4 percent in 2018, but had risen to 4.9 percent in January. The Asian American statistic has been around for less than 20 years. And while it reached a low of 2.1 percent in May 2018, it rose to 3.2 percent rate in January.

“And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy.”

The United States has exported more energy than it has imported since 2015. Trump overstates the impact of his energy policy. 

“The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.”

Trump appears to be echoing comments he heard from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Jan. 10, but this claim is wrong.

The El Paso Times, in a fact check, said some form of barrier has existed between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez for decades, though Trump appeared to be referring to fencing that was completed in mid-2009: “Looking broadly at the last 30 years, the rate of violent crime reached its peak in 1993, when more than 6,500 violent crimes were recorded. Between 1993 and 2006, the number of violent crimes fell by more than 34 percent and less than 2,700 violent crimes were reported. The border fence was authorized by [President George W.] Bush in 2006, but construction did not start until 2008. From 2006 to 2011 — two years before the fence was built to two years after — the violent crime rate in El Paso increased by 17 percent.”

The city had the third-lowest violent crime rate among 35 U.S. cities with a population over 500,000 in 2005, 2006 and 2007 — before construction of a 57-mile-long fence started in mid-2008. 

"We have spent more than $7 trillion dollars in the Middle East.”

Trump started making a version of this claim shortly after taking office, first saying $6 trillion but then quickly elevating it to $7 trillion. Trump acts as if the money has been spent, but he is referring to a Brown University study that included estimates of future obligations through 2056 for veterans’ care. The study combines data for both George W. Bush’s war in Iraq (2003) and the war in Afghanistan (2001), which is in Central/South Asia, not the Middle East. The cost of the combined wars will probably surpass $7 trillion by 2056, when interest on the debt is considered, almost four decades from now.

The guy actually managed to lie more this year than last.

Hopefully we won't have to hear from him again in January 2020, but there was never any chance of Trump actually practicing the "unity" he screamed about in his address when he spent the entire day attacking the Democrats before his televised rant.

For public consumption, President Trump planned to use his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to appeal for bipartisan unity. But at a private lunch for television anchors earlier in the day, he offered searing assessments of a host of Democrats.

Mr. Trump dismissed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as “dumb,” called Senator Chuck Schumer of New York a “nasty son of a bitch” and mocked Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, who he said “choked like a dog” at a news conference where he tried to explain a racist yearbook photo, according to multiple people in the room.

I'm so tired of this racist, misogynist buffoon. I'm even more tired of the people who voted for and enable him.

The Democratic party response from Stacey Abrams was much better.

In a brief speech lauded by Democrats, Abrams succeeded in elevating an event that is often awkward and anticlimactic by nature. With a measured tone and her trademark working-class anecdotes, Abrams outlined a raft of policy measures, from the potential of Medicaid expansion in combating infant mortality to the importance of gun control and immigration reform. But the high point of the speech was her strong and vocal stance on protecting voting rights. As the national face of the party for a few minutes on Tuesday, Abrams pushed the issue of the franchise closer to the heart of Democratic politics, and gave Democrats another rhetorical weapon against the Republican Party.

Abrams appeared on air shortly after President Donald Trump, who during his address to Congress appeared at times to seek bipartisan praise, while also sticking to his familiar stances on law enforcement, immigration, abortion, and foreign policy. During key moments when Trump talked about women’s suffrage, criminal justice reform, and cancer research, members of both parties cheered. But for much of his speech, he sounded like the president who staged countless political rallies last summer and fall. “Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards,” he said, admonishing Democrats for not agreeing to his demands for a border wall that led to the longest government shutdown in history. “Meanwhile, working-class Americans are left to pay the price for mass illegal immigration.”

While the president defended his border wall and recited stories of kidnapping and rape along the border, he made no reference to the financial pain suffered by federal employees during the government shutdown. In the moment, he seemed eager for applause and conciliation.

Abrams, by contrast, zeroed in on the workers’ pain. She recalled the time she spent distributing meals from food pantries to furloughed federal workers. Abrams called the impasse “a stunt engineered by the President of the United States, one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people—but our values.”

She also called the White House’s response to rampant gun violence “timid,” a barb that seemed designed to irritate Trump. Abrams lamented the lack of any new immigration reform, and promoted Medicaid expansion as a way to reduce overall mortality among vulnerable groups. She called for action on climate change, criticized the 2017 Republican tax cuts, and hoped for the appointment of “fair-minded judges.”

Still, it was Abrams’s call for a renewed focus on voting rights that seemed to distinguish her rebuttal. “None of these ambitions are possible without the bedrock guarantee of our right to vote,” she said.

And it is this right that Trump threatens the most.  Never forget that.