StupidiNews!

• Retired NASA astronaut Gene Cernan, the final man to have walked on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission, has died at age 82 after a lengthy illness.
• Trump National Security Council spokesperson Monica Crowley will depart the transition team after multiple instances of apparent plagiarism across her career were revealed.
• Turkish police say they have captured the suspect responsible for killing 39 in the New Year's Day nightclub massacre in Istanbul.
• British PM Theresa May says the UK will pull out of the EU's existing single market as part of "Brexit" and will negotiate a new trade deal with the EU.
• The FBI has reportedly used facial recognition and prediction software to identify a suspect in an Indiana child molestation case from 17 years ago.

Last Call For The Piggy Bank And The Sledgehammer

Trump's picks to fill his cabinet aren't even pretending anymore to be anything other than outright grifters.  Take HHS pick Rep. Tom Price, who has plenty of experience ripping off taxpayers by playing the ol' pick-a-winner game as a member of Congress.

Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, raising new ethics concerns for President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary. 

Price bought between $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer Biomet, according to House records reviewed by CNN. 

Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until 2018 a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulation that industry analysts warned would significantly hurt Zimmer Biomet financially once fully implemented. 

Zimmer Biomet, one of the world's leading manufacturers of knee and hip implants, was one of two companies that would been hit the hardest by the new CMS regulation that directly impacts the payments for such procedures, according to press reports and congressional sources. 

After Price offered his bill to provide Zimmer Biomet and other companies relief from the CMS regulation, the company's political action committee donated to the congressman's reelection campaign, records show. 

If confirmed, Price will be a key player in Trump's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump last week said a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare will be submitted "as soon as" Price is confirmed. He will appear before the Senate health committee this week, but must also appear before the Senate Finance Committee. 

The new revelation is the latest example of Price trading stock in a health care firm at the same time as pursuing legislation that could impact a company's share price. The issue has become a major liability for the congressman after The Wall Street Journal reported last month that he traded roughly $300,000 in shares over the past four years in health companies while pursuing legislation that could impact them.

I mean they're not even pretending anymore.  No wonder Republicans are so eager to get rid of ethics oversight and independent watchdogs.  The Trump era is going to make Republicans stinking rich as they profit directly and indirectly from legislation for corporate lobbyists at the expense of taxpayers.

But really, Hillary something something emails, so we had to elect them, right?

Brazile Nuts

I guess it was a requirement, but here we have Donna Brazile apologizing for the DNC's catastrophic screw-up in 2016 as the party still searches in vain for someone who manages to meet the bar of "not as much of a screw-up as Debbie Wasserman Schultz".

Donna Brazile, the outgoing interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, kicked off a series of “future forums,” which will select her replacement, by apologizing for the party's 2016 defeats.

“I'm not going to sugarcoat it: We failed,” Brazile said. “We made some serious mistakes and some strategic errors. We got cocky about our invincible blue wall, and then we saw it crumble because of just a few thousand votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.”

Brazile was elevated to interim chair after the release of emails stolen from the DNC effectively forced Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) from the role. Wasserman Schultz, who was then facing a stiff primary challenge for her South Florida congressional seat, became a villain for supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who blamed her for a late-skewing and limited schedule of primary debates.

But the well-liked Brazile came under fire from another set of stolen emails, including two she'd sent to Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, informing him that CNN — where she was a political analyst — had shared possible primary debate and forum questions with her. That ended her time at CNN.

In her Phoenix remarks, Brazile defended the DNC employees who had spent the second half of 2016 being exposed by hacks.

“Let me just say how proud I am of the DNC and all the staffers who lived through that,” Brazile said. “They were attacked and harassed every day — often attacked by the people who should know better.”

Brazile also condemned the online conspiracy theory that Seth Rich, a young DNC staffer who was fatally shot last July in Northwest Washington, had been killed in a DNC coverup.

Russian hackers, she said, had ended up enlisting the media in a campaign of sabotage.

“We failed under extraordinary circumstances,” she said. “If you are an American, you are a victim of a hostile attack, a murderous dictator who wanted to affect the election. They hired an army of trolls to spread lies and distract from the real issues.”

Which is true, and as I've said before the notion that the DNC screwed up and the Russians helped the GOP can both be simultaneous factors in Clinton's loss.  But my benefit of the doubt for whoever replaces Brazile will at this point be zero.  Whoever does get her job will need to start delivering immediately on getting the Senate back in 2018, or we're not going to have a country much longer.

Schumer Makes The GOP An Offer

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer apparently has made his offer to the GOP over Obamacare repeal.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has made it crystal clear: If Republicans repeal ObamaCare without immediately implementing a plan to replace it, Democrats will not help them out of a pickle down the road.

Senate Democratic sources familiar with Schumer’s thinking say he will not engage in any negotiations to pass a watered-down version of the landmark healthcare reform law if Republicans unilaterally force its repeal first under special budgetary rules.

“That’s not a close call. They’re doing something so extraordinary reckless. You cannot reward hostage taking,” a Democratic senator said. The Democratic senator said.

Republicans have refused to work with President Obama for six years to come up with fixes to improve the law because they wanted to heighten its unpopularity and score political points.

Now, even if the GOP can secure a repeal through the budget reconciliation process – which requires only a majority – they’ll need support from at least eight Democrats to hit the 60 votes needed to pass repeal legislation.

The senator said Schumer’s view and the prevailing view in the Democratic Caucus is that they should not lift a finger to help Republicans out of a political mess if they repeal the healthcare reform law without having a replacement ready to avert severe market disruptions.

The spoiler is that the GOP has nothing of the sort.  In fact, they don't have a replacement at all, and haven't had a replacement for the six years that they've been trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.  Schumer is making the right call here: let the Republicans completely own getting rid of health coverage for tens of millions of Americans, and let them completely own trying to replace it.

Of course Republicans will never replace Obamacare, no matter what magical unicorn bullshit Donald Trump is pushing, so it's up to Schumer to make sure that they know up front whatever to try will need Democratic help, which means Chuck is in the driver's seat. We'll see. 

StupidiNews!

• A new Oxfam International report finds the world's eight wealthiest men control $426 billion, the same net worth as the planet's poorest half, some 3.6 billion people.
• Black megachurch pastor Bishop Eddie Long has died from cancer at age 63, Long settled allegations of child molestation after being accused in 2011 of sexual assault.
• The special prosecutor in South Korea's growing impeachment scandal over President Park Geun-hye has issued an arrest warrant for Samsung Group chief Jay Lee on bribery charges.
• In his final interview as president with CBS's 60 Minutes, Barack Obama says he was "surprised" at the level of partisanship in DC and how he became a "lightning rod" for politics.
• Virginia is the latest state to consider legislation banning cities from offering municipal internet service to residents.

Last Call For The Ugly American

If there were somehow still any lingering doubts over the Trump regime being totally beholden to Russian interests in Europe, Trump put those doubts to rest in his weekend interview with German tabloid Bild.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump called NATO obsolete, predicted that other European Union members would follow the U.K. in leaving the bloc and threatened BMW with import duties over a planned plant in Mexico, according to an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper that will raise concerns in Berlin over trans-Atlantic relations.

Quoted in German from a conversation held in English, Trump predicted Britain’s exit from the EU will be a success and portrayed the EU as an instrument of German domination with the purpose of beating the U.S. in international trade. For that reason, Trump said, he’s fairly indifferent whether the EU breaks up or stays together, according to Bild.

Trump’s reported comments leave little doubt that he will stick to campaign positions and may in some cases upend decades of U.S. foreign policy, putting him fundamentally at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on issues from free trade and refugees to security and the EU’s role in the world. On Russia, he suggested he might use economic sanctions imposed for Vladimir Putin’s encroachment on Ukraine as leverage in nuclear-arms reduction talks, while NATO, he said, “has problems.”

“It’s obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago,” Trump was quoted as saying about the trans-Atlantic military alliance. “Secondly, countries aren’t paying what they should” and NATO “didn’t deal with terrorism.”

While those comments expanded on doubts Trump raised about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during his campaign, he reserved some of his most dismissive remarks for the EU and Merkel, whose open-border refugee policy he called a “catastrophic mistake.” 

In contrast, Trump praised Britons for voting last year to leave the EU. People and countries want their own identity and don’t want outsiders to come in and “destroy it.” The U.K. is smart to leave the bloc because the EU “is basically a means to an end for Germany,” Bild cited Trump as saying.

“If you ask me, more countries will leave,” he was quoted as saying.

While Trump blamed Brexit on an influx of refugees he said that Britain was forced to accept, the U.K.’s number of asylum applications in 2015 was a fraction of the 890,000 refugees who arrived in Germany that year at the peak of Europe’s migrant crisis.

With Merkel facing an unprecedented challenge from the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany as she seeks a fourth term this fall, Trump was asked whether he’d like to see her re-elected. He said he couldn’t say, adding that while he respects Merkel, who’s been in office for 11 years, he doesn’t know her and she has hurt Germany by letting “all these illegals” into the country.

Please note we have Trump railing against the three things left keeping Putin's dream of a new Soviet era in check: Germany, the last real holdout against European ultra-nationalism, the EU itself, still a economic behemoth compared to Russia, and NATO, the military alliance keeping Moscow awake at night.

Trump is basically saying he doesn't care about any or all of the three.  I'll tell you what, Putin really got his money's worth turning Trump, didn't he?

It's the gift that will keep on giving for decades to come.

Enemies Of The State

The Trump regime (let's get rid of the term "administration" right now, this is an authoritarian regime, plain and simple) is now openly threatening the Office of Government Ethics. Because who's going to stop them?

Reince Priebus, chief of staff to President-elect Donald Trump, issued a stern warning to the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on Sunday.

Walter Shaub Jr., who heads the ethics office, has been sounding the alarm about Trump’s decision to turn the management of his business over to his sons instead of setting up a blind trust.

“I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be president of the United States of America,” Shaub said in a speech last week.

On Sunday, Priebus suggested that Shaub should “be careful” about criticizing Trump.

“The head of the government ethics ought to be careful because that person is becoming extremely political,” Priebus said, adding that Shaub “may have publicly supported Hillary Clinton.”

“And [Shaub] is calling out the president (sic) with information on Twitter about our detangling of the business over a month ago,” he continued. “So I’m not so sure what kind of standing he has anymore in giving these opinions.”

How long before the Trump regime tries to get rid of Shaub for being "partisan"?  How long before Republicans in Congress legislate themselves the power to remove Shaub or dissolve the office completely?  Trump will sign something like that, for sure.  How long do you think Senate Democrats will be able to hold out?

Fascism comes in a thousand small steps towards consolidating power.

Sunday Long Read: The Music-less Man

This week's Sunday Long Read sees the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik argue that Hollywood and pop culture's refusal to play Trump inauguration is a deeply disturbing sign that our next president's heart and soul is deaf to anyone but himself.

One of the pleasures of music-streaming services is that, day after day, they remind you effortlessly of the almost incredible wealth and beauty of American popular music—from the blues and Tin Pan Alley to jazz, R. & B., country, rock and roll, and on to hip hop—and of its strange, snaking unity. The great critic Kenneth Tynan once wrote that, sometime in the nineteen-thirties, the “ ‘serious’ music tradition finally withered, curled up and died,” and what took its place was American song. It became the century’s sublime, achieved sound, and the beat, as the song says, goes on. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee’s duos bring one back to the jazz duets of Bobby Hackett and Jack Teagarden, whose choice of familiar tunes then leads one to the great singers of the first songbook of standards, Ella singing Gershwin, and on and on. In this context, Bob Dylan’s award for the Nobel Prize in Literature must seem, even to doubters, earned, especially if it’s seen, so to speak, as an award to Frank Loesser and Duke Ellington, as well—as a tribute to the entirety of those American words and music.

This music was often made in protest, and frequently made best by the most oppressed among us. And so politics and our political life have always wrapped and unwrapped around that music, left and right and in between. Back in the sixties, Dylan seemed to state the times they were a-changin’, and Merle Haggard sang out for the Okies from Muskogee—and then Dylan ended up learning more from Merle than Merle did from him. The intertwining of country music with the George W. Bush years—“Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?” for example—was as credible and deeply felt as any of the enwrappings by, say, Springsteen of Obama.

And so the inability, so far, of Donald Trump to get any significant musicians from any of those traditions, rock or country or blues or Broadway, to sing at his Inauguration is not a small comic detail but a significant reflection of this moment in history. It reminds us of just how aberrant Trump and Trumpism is. When the Rockettes have to be coerced to appear at your show—or you’re left to boast of the military bands, directly under your orders, who are playing—one is witnessing not just some snobbish hostility on the part of “Hollywood” entertainers but a deeper abyss between the man about to assume power and the shared traditions of the country he represents. There is no music in this man.

I'd argue the opposite: he has music in his soul, but it's basically John Williams' Imperial March.




Seriously, I don't think we've ever witnessed anyone so blatantly authoritarian, elected by a minority vote of a minority vote. We will come to regret his election, some of us more than others.

Trump Declares War On The Free Press

It appears that if Trump's handlers have their way, one of the first acts of the new administration next week will be to have the press thrown out of the White House completely.

The upset to the existing order caused by the presidential election has been acutely felt by no one, perhaps, so much it has by the national press. At Donald Trump's press conference on Wednesday, reporters found themselves not only subject to a scolding ("Fake news!" "Disgraceful!") but also awakened to the strong suggestion that, at least in tactical terms, the showdown had been won by the president-elect.

The media's sense of dislocation may soon become literal.

According to three senior officials on the transition team, a plan to evict the press corps from the White House is under serious consideration by the incoming Trump Administration. If the plan goes through, one of the officials said, the media will be removed from the cozy confines of the White House press room, where it has worked for several decades. Members of the press will be relocated to the White House Conference Center—near Lafayette Square—or to a space in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.

"There has been no decision," Sean Spicer, Trump's press secretary, said about the plan today. But Spicer acknowledged that "there has been some discussion about how to do it."

Spicer cast the possible relocation of the press corps as a matter, in part, of logistics. "There's been so much interest in covering a President Donald Trump," he said. "A question is: Is a room that has forty-nine seats adequate? When we had that press conference the other day, we had thousands of requests, and we capped it at four hundred. Is there an opportunity to potentially allow more members of the media to be part of this? That's something we're discussing."

Another senior official, however, suggested a more pointed motivation for the move. According to the official, the potential relocation reflected a view within the transition team that coverage of Trump has been so hostile as to indicate that the press has abandoned its role as neutral observer.

"They are the opposition party," a senior official says. "I want 'em out of the building. We are taking back the press room."

Trump isn't going to even bother with the press, I'm thinking.  He has Twitter and press releases and that's all America needs or deserves, according to him. Considering his disastrous press conference where he screamed and threatened CNN like a five-year-old denied ice cream for breakfast, what did you expect?

So yes, we have an incoming administration that literally considers the free press to be the opposition party, and wants them gone.  I have little sympathy for them, after spending my entire lifetime being gossiping courtesans more than actual journalists, but Trump's goons kicking them out of the White House is yet another in a long string of authoritarian moves that Trump will continue to make.

Expect a lot more such moves, backed up by the considerable power of the US government that the Republicans will completely control starting next weekend.

The Story Of Lewis And Bark

Donald Trump is a walking orange chancre and I dislike him immensely.  

That was my opinion of the man before he made the mistake of going after Rep. John Lewis on Twitter this morning.

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday morning returned fire on a top Democrat who said he was not a “legitimate president.”

A day after Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Trump was not legitimate, the president-elect told him to worry about his own district instead.

“Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!” Trump wrote in a series of tweets.

What set off the Tantrum Of The United States this time?  The fact that Rep. Lewis came out of the Comey briefing Friday with a very dim view of the President-elect.

Lewis on Friday told NBC News he wouldn’t attend next week’s inauguration, saying he doesn’t believe Trump is a "legitimate president."

"I believe in forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It will be hard. It's going to be very difficult. I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” Lewis said.

“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton,” he added.

“I don't plan to attend the inauguration. It will be the first one that I miss since I’ve been in Congress. You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.”

Trump's assumption that Georgia's 5th Congressional district is "in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)" because all black Congressmen from urban districts are from the goddamn ghetto to this piece of human excrement is classic racism, and this man is going to be President in a week.

Let that sink in.  By the way, GA-5, which includes Atlanta and some surrounding areas?  According to the US Census Bureau, it's a majority black district with a median income of $48,000 and a mean income of $73,200 or so, with 40% of the district having a bachelor's or higher and 88% having a high school diploma.  That actually makes it one of the highest-educated districts in the nation, and it should, with multiple colleges and universities like Georgia Tech, Emory, Georgia State, Morehouse and Spelman.

It's not falling apart, unless by that Trump means "The Atlanta Falcons".  They're having a bad year.

You know, like Trump is about to.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Looks like whatever intelligence briefings members of Congress have gotten late this week have been enough to finally get Senate Republicans to agree to open an investigation of the incoming President.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said late Friday that his committee will investigate possible contacts between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, reversing himself one day after telling reporters that the issue would be outside of his panel’s ongoing probe into Moscow’s election-disruption efforts.

Burr and the intelligence panel’s top Democrat, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, said in a joint statement that the committee's probe would touch on "intelligence regarding links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns" as well as Russian cyberattacks and other election meddling outlined in an intelligence report released last week.

The committee will use “subpoenas if necessary” to secure testimony from Obama administration officials as well as Trump’s team, Burr and Warner said.

The bipartisan Senate announcement came hours after several House Democrats aired their frustrations with FBI Director James Comey following a classified briefing on Russian election disruption. The Democrats were livid that Comey refused to confirm whether he is conducting an inquiry into potential Trump ties to Russia — a question that he publicly declined to answer earlier this week.

Note that Burr was going to ignore Trump's Russia connections completely until the concerns about incoming National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and FBI Director James Comey became too much to take.

Burr said late Thursday that he did not plan to touch on possible contacts between Trump emissaries and Russia, asserting that the issue likely falls under the FBI's purview. "We don't have anything to do with political campaigns," the Republican said.

But Warner had said during a Tuesday committee hearing that he wanted the probe to touch on possible contacts between Moscow or its emissaries and political campaigns, putting the two senators potentially at odds. Warner told reporters late Thursday that his view hadn't changed, meaning that the Friday joint announcement effectively brought Burr around to the Democrat's perspective.

Also note that the House side still won't budge on hearings, as the chair of the House Intelligence Committee is on the Trump transition team.

The Senate move also creates a split with the House, where intelligence panel chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told POLITICO earlier on Friday that Congress should not be investigating any possible contacts between Russia and the Trump camp.

"House committees don't go operational like that, that I know of," said Nunes, who is a member of Trump's transition team. "It's a law enforcement issue."

A Nunes spokesman said late Friday that the Senate's decision had not changed the House chairman's view.

The joint announcement from Burr and Warner commits the Senate intelligence panel not only to probing possible Trump-Russia ties, but also to releasing "both classified and unclassified reports" that will include its conclusions and holding some open hearings. However, "the bulk of the committee's business" during the investigation will be tackled in private, the senators said.

Again, I have abysmally low expectations of this investigation, but there's always the chance that Mark Warner may actually find something.

Last Call For Heartbeat (Bill) Of America, Con't

Folks, you knew this was coming, and I've been warning you about it for months. Republicans are making their move early to eliminate legal abortion in America, and of course the man behind it is Steve King.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Thursday introduced the first federal “heartbeat bill” modeled on a failed Ohio attempt to end legal abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy—before many people know they’re pregnant.

“Heartbeat bills” amount to total abortion bans. They have been declared unconstitutional in federal court.

King’s office confirmed that HR 490 marked the first introduction of a so-called heartbeat bill in the U.S. Congress. Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) introduced a forced ultrasound bill in 2011, but her measure did not ban abortion—King’s stated goal.

A King press release called Roe v. Wade unconstitutional, adding that under HR 490, “if a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected.”

His spokesperson provided Rewire with legislative text specifying that an abortion provider “who knowingly performs an abortion and thereby kills a human fetus” without determining a heartbeat, informing the patient of a heartbeat, or proceeding regardless of a heartbeat would face fines and up to five years in prison. The bill includes limited exceptions for the physical health of the pregnant person but not for “psychological or emotional conditions.”

King worked on the bill with anti-choice activist Janet Porter, the Faith2Action leader deemed too extreme for Christian talk radio, the congressman’s spokesperson said. Porter was behind Ohio Republicans’ recent failed attempt to push through a total abortion ban. Anti-choice Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) vetoed the measure the same day he signed a 20-week ban into law, reasoning that the 20-week ban would be more constitutionally prudent. It’s not.

Porter persuaded King to act while both attended the funeral of Phyllis Schlafly, the notorious Equal Rights Amendment opponent, as People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch first reported in October.

“I gave him a packet and he has agreed to introduce a federal Heartbeat Bill, which would protect every baby whose heartbeat can be detected,” Porter said on a conference call at the time. “That will actually end abortion in nearly every case. Ninety to 95 percent of the abortions will be ended with that bill.”

It's bad enough that this will probably pass the House (and hopefully dies screaming in the Senate) but King outright calling Roe unconstitutional is nonsense.  It's pretty clear what King expects, that this will be the vehicle to destroy Roe and end legal, safe abortion in America and move it to back alleys and illegal clinics.

How far it will go, we'll see.  But expect many more attempts to end Roe over the next two years, minimum.

Comey Chameleon, Con't

Meanwhile over on the domestic side of things, it's not turning out to be a good day for FBI Director James Comey as intelligence officials briefed the House on Russian interference in November's election, and suddenly quite a lot of House Democrats want his head on a pike.

A number of House Democrats left Friday's confidential briefing on Russian hacking fuming over the actions of FBI Director James Comey and convinced he's unfit to lead the agency. 

"I was nonjudgmental until the last 15 minutes. I no longer have that confidence in him," Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), ranking member of the Veterans Affairs Committee, said as he left the meeting in the Capitol. 

"Some of the things that were revealed in this classified briefing — my confidence has been shook." 

Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), senior Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, delivered a similar condemnation.

"I'm extremely concerned — extremely," he said. 

"I'll just — I'm very angry," echoed Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.).

Ahh, but it gets worse for Comey as now he's being investigated by the Justice Department.

The Justice Department inspector general on Thursday announced that it will launch an investigation into the FBI’s conduct leading up to the 2016 elections. 

The probe, which comes in response to requests from numerous chairmen and ranking members of congressional oversight committees, will look into allegations that Director James Comey broke bureau policy with his various public disclosures regarding the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

The FBI’s role in Clinton’s unexpected defeat in November has remained a subject of fierce debate — with Comey himself in the middle of the controversy. Clinton's campaign has blamed Comey and the FBI for her loss to President-elect Donald Trump.
Eleven days before Election Day, Comey sent a letter to lawmakers telling them investigators had uncovered emails that appeared to be pertinent to the bureau’s probe, considered completed at the time, of Clinton's private email server and her handling of classified material while secretary of State. 

The announcement exploded in the final days of the campaign. And with a subsequent missive from Comey, a Republican nominated by Obama to his position, saying the emails had turned up no new evidence did little to quell the storm. 

“In the matter of the email investigation, it was our my judgment — my judgment, the rest of the FBI’s judgment — that those were exceptional circumstances where the public needed information,” Comey told the House Judiciary Committee in September.
But critics have called the disclosure an unprecedented break with bureau policy. The FBI typically does not comment publicly on ongoing investigations. 

The internal review will not change the outcome of the FBI’s findings in the probe against Clinton, Justice Department Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz told lawmakers in his announcement of the probe.

Further details of todays briefing meant things just kept getting worse for him.

One source in the meeting said Comey would not answer “basic questions” about the FBI’s current investigative activities. The FBI chief was grilled “over and over again,” according to the source, about his standards for acknowledging FBI investigations, with legislators repeatedly bringing up Comey’s dramatic public confirmation that the bureau was revisiting classification issues with Hillary Clinton’s private email server days before the election, as well as his summer press conference announcing that he would not seek indictment. 

Clinton is said to blame Comey’s intervention, which contravened longstanding justice department rules, for her electoral defeat. 

Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who had pressed Comey during a September hearing about his criteria for acknowledging an investigation, sharply asked Comey if the director was applying a double standard to Trump. 

Comey had said in September testimony that his standard was a “a need for public to be reassured, [and] when it’s obvious, it’s apparent, given our activities, public activities that the investigation is ongoing”. 

Nadler, according to a different source, then asked Comey in the Friday meeting: “Do you believe that standard has been met with reference to the possible investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible connections to the Russian government? And if not, why not?” 

Comey dodged the question, sparking anger amongst attendees. 

A spokesman for Nadler confirmed the congressman pressed Comey on the issue.

So we'll see where things end up.  But between this and Mike Flynn, things just got brutal a week before Trump takes office.  We've got a FBI chief who and an incoming National Security Adviser who are both looking more and more like co-conspirators with our president-elect.

Again, I expect things will move very quickly now.

Skinned Like Flynn

My political scandal radar is screaming at David Ignatius's op-ed this morning in the Washington Post involving the unanswered questions about Trump and Russia.  Ignatius has four big questions, including "Why didn't Obama make this public before the election?" to "What do the Russians truly have on Trump?" but the ones that immediately set off the alarm bells are the last two:

Question 3: What discussions has the Trump team had with Russian officials about future relations? Trump said Wednesday that his relationship with President Vladimir Putin is “an asset, not a liability.” Fair enough, but until he’s president, Trump needs to let Obama manage U.S.-Russia policy.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s choice for national security adviser, cultivates close Russian contacts. He has appeared on Russia Today and received a speaking fee from the cable network, which was described in last week’s unclassified intelligence briefing on Russian hacking as “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.”

According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about “disputes” with the United States. Was its spirit violated? The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

If the Trump team’s contacts helped discourage the Russians from a counter-retaliation, maybe that’s a good thing. But we ought to know the facts.

Question 4: Finally, what’s the chance that Russian intelligence has gamed its covert action more subtly than we realize? Applying a counter-intelligence lens, it’s worth asking whether the Russians hoped to be discovered, and whether Russian operatives fed the former MI6 officer’s controversial dossier deliberately, to sow further chaos.

These questions need to be answered — not to undermine Trump, but to provide a factual base to help the country recover from an attack on its political system. As Trump rightly says, “fake news” threatens our democracy. Truth will protect it.

The big thing here is Mike Flynn, incoming National Security Adviser, contacting the Russian ambassador multiple times on the day President Obama announced that nearly three dozen Russian spies were being booted from the country.  That right there is enough to absolutely deny Flynn the position, but the evidence against Flynn of his Russian involvement is already pretty substantial even if he wasn't already a crackpot tinfoil hat lunatic who's likely to get us into a shooting war.

Also, this is a warning shot that the IC knows full damn well every word Flynn said to Ambassador Kislyak, as the notion that the NSA sure as hell wouldn't have those lines tapped is silly to the point of institutional gross negligence on the part of the Puzzle Palace.  Not only does the piece confirm that, but it almost certainly means that either A) there's a FISA warrant out on those conversations or B) the NSA is happily leaking this to the press to make a point. If Flynn was making side deals on behalf of the Trump administration, what Ignatius above calls "discouraging the Russians from counter-retaliation" that's pretty much the definition of treason, guys.

Again, it's only a matter of time before the contents of Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador is leaked.  The story is giving Flynn notice that he's basically a dead man walking, and that maybe he wants to cooperate.  The larger issue is whether or not Flynn was making deals with the knowledge of Trump. Flynn only has so much protection, you see.  Should his armor be stripped, either by leaks, by an angry GOP Congress, or by Trump serving him up as a blood sacrifice, this cannot end well for him. He knows this. So what does he do?

Believe me, a lot of people are asking these exact questions right now around Washington, and I'm betting more than a few folks are going to be advising The Donald to fall on his sword over this. Whether or not Trump decides to do the right thing, well I wouldn't put good money on that.  I'm betting he figures once he takes office, all this goes away.

He's probably right.  This time.  And that will remain true until the base turns on both Trump and Republicans in Congress.  But if enough Republicans join with the Dems, Trump's support on Capitol Hill could collapse quickly.

After that, all bets are off.

New tags, long overdue: Michael Flynn, and The Big T.

StupidiNews!

• GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan is promising that Republicans will "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act "as quickly as they can", the House takes a procedural repeal vote today.
• President Obama is immediately ending the long-time "wet foot, dry foot" Cuba policy that allowed Cuban immigrants that reached US shores to stay indefinitely as asylum seekers.
• New North Dakota GOP Gov. Doug Burgum says he expects the controversial Dakota Access pipeline to be built through Sioux lands once the Trump administration takes office.
• The scandal that saw South Korean President Park Geun-hye impeached has now reached the country's National Pension Service and global corporate giant Samsung.
• Nintendo's newest hardware platform, the combination handheld/console Nintendo Switch, will launch worldwide on March 3 for $299.