Meat The Press, Con't

So turns out Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan isn't a very nice person, especially when it comes to dangerously fascist theocratic obliteration of dissent.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia authorized a secret campaign to silence dissenters — which included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens — over a year before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign.

At least some of the clandestine missions were carried out by members of the same team that killed and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi in Istanbul in October, suggesting that his killing was a particularly egregious part of a wider campaign to silence Saudi dissidents, according to the officials and associates of some of the Saudi victims.

Members of the team that killed Mr. Khashoggi, which American officials called the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group, were involved in at least a dozen operations starting in 2017, the officials said.

Some of the operations involved forcibly repatriating Saudis from other Arab countries and detaining and abusing prisoners in palaces belonging to the crown prince and his father, King Salman, the officials and associates said.

One of the Saudis detained by the group, a university lecturer in linguistics who wrote a blog about women in Saudi Arabia, tried to kill herself last year after being subjected to psychological torture, according to American intelligence reports and others briefed on her situation.

The rapid intervention team had been so busy that last June its leader asked a top adviser to Prince Mohammed whether the crown prince would give the team bonuses for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, according to American officials familiar with the intelligence reports.

Details about the operations come from American officials who have read classified intelligence assessments about the Saudi campaign, as well as from Saudis with direct knowledge of some of the operations. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions from disclosing classified information or, in the case of the Saudis, from angering the Saudi government.

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington said the kingdom “takes any allegations of ill treatment of defendants awaiting trial or prisoners serving their sentences very seriously.”

Two observations:

One, I cannot understate how close the Trump regime is to the Crown Prince.  Jared Kushner's vulnerability to blackmail and other leverage to a man like MBS is such a screamingly awful threat to US national security that at this point we have to assume the Saudis have so much compromising info on him that they can do whatever they want and America will be complicit.  Kushner owes the Saudis billions, guys.  This is terrible news.  We know what MBS is willing to do to his own people, imagine what he's got on Trump's family.

Two, somebody should remind the NY Times that its coverage of the Saudi regime and especially MBS hasn't exactly been objective at times, and he's far from the only one.  The Saudi efforts to cover up their operations wouldn't have been as successful as it was without a compliant American press and mindless "pundits" like Tom Friedman at the Times and David Ignatius at the Washington Post, just to name two.

The Trump regime will never actually censure MBS, of course.  We're absolutely complicit in his fascism, hell our White House is taking notes on what they did and salivating at the chance to use those tactics here.

We're probably not far off from that point, either.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

One Missouri lawmaker wants to build an army of AR-15 wielding citizens at government expense because, well, you tell me why a politician would want to arm citizens throughout history?

Two bills introduced by state Rep. Andrew McDaniel would require residents to purchase firearms while providing $1 million in tax credits on a first-come, first-served basis to residents who fall under the law.

The first bill, the McDaniel Second Amendment Act, would require Missouri residents aged 21 or older to purchase a handgun. It also would allot up to $1 million per year in tax credits for residents who purchased weapons to comply with the law. The bill was filed in late February.

The second bill, the McDaniel Militia Act, was filed days after the handgun bill and would require Missouri residents aged 18 to 35 to purchase an AR-15. It also would provide a tax credit of up to $1 million per year to incentivize the purchase of weapons.

While the bills do not specify any penalties for adults who refuse to comply with the provisions, both stipulate that the Missouri Department of Revenue can "promulgate rules to implement the provisions of this section." The bills would sunset in six years if not extended by the state legislature.

They would not apply to felons or residents otherwise prohibited from owning firearms.

Oh I understand the excuse, the "well-maintained militia" part of a document written almost 250 years ago that also thought it was a great idea that black folk counted as 60% of a human being.  Close as I can tell though, Missouri isn't a border state, so unless some really good magic act has a portal in Branson that needs to be protected from the Chitauri, this is just an effort to be an asshole with guns in a country with a lot of assholes and a lot of guns.

That's the best case scenario, of course.  The worst one is raising an army just in time for Donald Trump to call upon it.

Up to you, dear reader, to consider what compelling Missouri's non-felon residents to all have AR-15s would lead to.

StupidiNews!

• Colorado is the latest state to join the National Interstate Popular Vote Compact, states in the compact will pledge their electors to the winner of the national vote if the group reaches 270 electoral votes.
• Donald Trump once again threatened government action against Saturday Night Live for the show's Alec Baldwin parody of him after a rerun episode aired over the weekend.
• New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern will meet with her cabinet on Monday to discuss tightening the country's gun laws in the wake of last Friday's deadly mosque shootings that killed 50.
• Ride-sharing giant Lyft is expected to announce plans for a $2 billion public stock offering as soon as today, the company expects its stock to value the company in the $20-$25 billion range.
• Historians have confirmed a more than 500-year-old astrolabe from a wrecked ship of Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama is the oldest known example of a mariner's astrolabe so far discovered.

Last Call For Fox's Pirro-ette

Anyone who thinks the "lover's quarrel" between FOX News and Donald Trump over the future of host Jeanine Pirro's show is real probably believes that pro wrestling is completely spontaneous, too.  It's 100% kayfabe.

Jeanine Pirro, whose show did not air on Saturday night, was suspended by Fox News after her widely criticized commentary doubting Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's patriotism, according a source familiar with the matter. 

Fox did not announce the suspension publicly. The network declined to confirm or deny that Pirro has been suspended. There is no word on whether Pirro's show will return next week. 

At the same time, there is no indication that she has been fired from Fox. The source said she has not been fired. 

Pirro is one of the network's highest-rated weekend hosts, well known for her vehement defenses of President Donald Trump and attacks against his perceived enemies. 

On Sunday morning the president returned the favor, tweeting, "Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro. The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country. They have all out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well." 

Last Saturday night Pirro questioned whether Omar's Islamic religious beliefs stand in opposition to the US Constitution, prompting Fox to say "we strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro's comments." 

The network said at the time that the views Pirro expressed "do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly" — but declined to say if she was being sanctioned in any way. 

Several advertisers subsequently distanced themselves from Pirro's weekly show, called "Justice." 

The show did not appear on this weekend's cable schedule guide. In its place was an unusual repeat of a documentary series. 

Pirro has not said anything about taking a vacation. She hasn't tweeted since last weekend.

All this is scripted, Trump is happy to play his part, FOX News will most likely have her back next weekend, and her ratings will be way up...allowing the network to charge more for advertisers who will quietly come back.  This is such an obvious rope-a-dope that it should be sickening, and the real reason is to make sure Tucker Carlson keeps his White Power Hour.

Trump needs FOX, and FOX needs Trump. It's an incestuous relationship that is destroying the country.  When Trump really gets into trouble after the Mueller report lands and the NY state and SDNY cases close in on him and his family, it's FOX that be the loudest voice to broadcast armed insurrection to "protect" the Trumps.

And then it stops being kayfabe, and starts being bloody.

Climate Of Destruction, Con't

Meanwhile record spring flooding in the Midwest from Nebraska to Wisconsin will only get this worse this week as rivers rise from snowpack melt courtesy of last week's epic "bomb cyclone" March blizzard.

Several areas in the Midwest experienced record flooding this past week, with high water on Saturday causing more levee breaches on the Missouri River, prompting widespread evacuations and isolating neighborhoods and towns.

Record-high river levels were reported in at least 38 locations in the Midwest, particularly in Nebraska and Iowa, said Jonathan Erdman, a senior meteorologist with weather.com. Heavy flooding was also reported in Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota, and the National Weather Service said it would continue past the weekend.

At least one man was confirmed dead in Columbus, Neb. The Omaha World-Herald reported that the man had been trying to help someone stranded by floodwaters on Thursday when a bridge collapsed as he was crossing it. Officials in Fremont County, Iowa, confirmed another flood-related death on Saturday.

The devastation was captured in dramatic photographs circulated on social media by those who surveyed the damage. Senator Ben Sasse and Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska showed how floodwaters from the Niobrara River in the northern part of the state had ripped through a dam on Thursday, releasing a torrent of water and depositing huge chunks of ice onto fields and roadways.

They shared photos of water rushing over riverbanks and encircling homes and neighborhoods.

Floodwaters had surrounded the town of Fremont, Neb., about 40 miles northwest of Omaha, said Councilwoman Linda McClain. The town sits between the Platte River to the south and the Elkhorn River to the north. Both rivers had overflowed their banks, Ms. McClain said

“We’re like an island,” she said. “You cannot get in or out.”

Ms. McClain said she spent Saturday visiting shelters where people who had been displaced were congregating. About 75 people had been reluctant to leave their homes, but as the buildings took on water, they were rescued by airboats and taken to the shelters, she said. Many homes were flooded by as much as three or four feet of water.

Parts of the city had been under a mandatory evacuation.

“Right now, we’re in crisis mode,” she said.

It will only get worse this week as more snow melts and rivers crest across the plains states, and climate change will continue to play a major part in why this is happening.  Now and in the future, what would have been historic 50- and 100-year flooding events are now happening every five or ten years instead.

We don't have the infrastructure in place to deal with it, and we won't build it as long as Republicans control our government that simply refuse to believe this is happening.

Thoughts and prayers should be enough to fix those levees, right?

Sunday Long Read: The Dark History Of White Supremacy

Adam Serwer explores how The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave has also been a beacon for white supremacy in other countries, and much of the history of white supremacy and "racial purity" comes from an American author from 100 years ago named Madison Grant.

Robert Bowers wanted everyone to know why he did it.

“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he posted on the social-media network Gab shortly before allegedly entering the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27 and gunning down 11 worshippers. He “wanted all Jews to die,” he declared while he was being treated for his wounds. Invoking the specter of white Americans facing “genocide,” he singled out HIAS, a Jewish American refugee-support group, and accused it of bringing “invaders in that kill our people.” Then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions, announcing that Bowers would face federal charges, was unequivocal in his condemnation: “These alleged crimes are incomprehensibly evil and utterly repugnant to the values of this nation.”

The pogrom in Pittsburgh, occurring just days before the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, seemed fundamentally un-American to many. Sessions’s denunciation spoke to the reality that most Jews have found a welcome home in the United States. His message also echoed what has become an insistent refrain in the Donald Trump era. Americans want to believe that the surge in white-supremacist violence and recruitment—the march in Charlottesville, Virginia, where neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us”; the hate crimes whose perpetrators invoke the president’s name as a battle cry—has no roots in U.S. soil, that it is racist zealotry with a foreign pedigree and marginal allure.

Warnings from conservative pundits on Fox News about the existential threat facing a country overrun by immigrants meet with a similar response. “Massive demographic changes,” Laura Ingraham has proclaimed, mean that “the America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore” in much of the country: Surely this kind of rhetoric reflects mere ignorance. Or it’s just a symptom of partisan anxiety about what those changes may portend for Republicans’ electoral prospects. As for the views and utterances of someone like Congressman Steve King (“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies”), such sentiments are treated as outlandish extremism, best ignored as much as possible.

The concept of “white genocide”—extinction under an onslaught of genetically or culturally inferior nonwhite interlopers—may indeed seem like a fringe conspiracy theory with an alien lineage, the province of neo-Nazis and their fellow travelers. In popular memory, it’s a vestige of a racist ideology that the Greatest Generation did its best to scour from the Earth. History, though, tells a different story. King’s recent question, posed in a New York Times interview, may be appalling: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?” But it is apt. “That language” has an American past in need of excavation. Without such an effort, we may fail to appreciate the tenacity of the dogma it expresses, and the difficulty of eradicating it. The president’s rhetoric about “shithole countries” and “invasion” by immigrants invites dismissal as crude talk, but behind it lie ideas whose power should not be underestimated.

The seed of Nazism’s ultimate objective—the preservation of a pure white race, uncontaminated by foreign blood—was in fact sown with striking success in the United States. What is judged extremist today was once the consensus of a powerful cadre of the American elite, well-connected men who eagerly seized on a false doctrine of “race suicide” during the immigration scare of the early 20th century. They included wealthy patricians, intellectuals, lawmakers, even several presidents. Perhaps the most important among them was a blue blood with a very impressive mustache, Madison Grant. He was the author of a 1916 book called The Passing of the Great Race, which spread the doctrine of race purity all over the globe.

Grant’s purportedly scientific argument that the exalted “Nordic” race that had founded America was in peril, and all of modern society’s accomplishments along with it, helped catalyze nativist legislators in Congress to pass comprehensive restrictionist immigration policies in the early 1920s. His book went on to become Adolf Hitler’s “bible,” as the führer wrote to tell him. Grant’s doctrine has since been rejuvenated and rebranded by his ideological descendants as “white genocide” (the term genocide hadn’t yet been coined in Grant’s day). In an introduction to the 2013 edition of another of Grant’s works, the white nationalist Richard Spencer warns that “one possible outcome of the ongoing demographic transformation is a thoroughly miscegenated, and thus homogeneous and ‘assimilated,’ nation, which would have little resemblance to the White America that came before it.” This language is vintage Grant.

Most Americans, however, quickly forgot who Grant was—but not because the country had grappled with his vision’s dangerous appeal and implications. Reflexive recoil was more like it: When Nazism reflected back that vision in grotesque form, wartime denial set in. Jonathan Peter Spiro, a historian and the author of Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (2009), described the backlash to me this way: “Even though the Germans had been directly influenced by Madison Grant and the American eugenics movement, when we fought Germany, because Germany was racist, racism became unacceptable in America. Our enemy was racist; therefore we adopted antiracism as our creed.” Ever since, a strange kind of historical amnesia has obscured the American lineage of this white-nationalist ideology.

Madison grant came from old money. Born in Manhattan seven months after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, he attended Yale and then Columbia Law School. He was an outdoorsman and a conservationist, knowledgeable about wildlife and interested in the dangers of extinction, expertise that he soon became intent on applying to humanity. When he opened a law practice on Wall Street in the early 1890s, the wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe was nearing its height. “As he was jostled by Greek ragpickers, Armenian bootblacks, and Jewish carp vendors, it was distressingly obvious to him that the new arrivals did not know this nation’s history or understand its republican form of government,” Spiro writes in his biography.

We've been here before.

A century ago, we had leaders and wealthy elite and even presidents who said "there are many fine people on both sides" of the debate over racial purity.   It took a German politician of Austrian nationality putting Madison Grant's ideas into practice before we fought against it.

But here we are again.

 

Berlusconi's Bunga-Bunga Becomes Bloody Brutal

Italian police are now treating the hospital death of one of the main witnesses against former Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi in his corruption and bribery trial as a deliberate radioactive material poisoning homicide investigation.

Italy prosecutors have opened an investigation into the possible poisoning death of a Moroccan model who was a key witness in the trial against ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi over his infamous “bunga bunga” parties. 

Imane Fadil, 34, died March 1 at a Milan-area hospital, where she had been treated since Jan. 29 for exhibiting “symptoms of poisoning,” Milan prosecutor Francesco Greco said, according to the Italian news agency ANSA. 

In 2012, Fadil had told reporters that she feared for her safety after telling prosecutors investigating possible witness tampering in the case that she was offered money in exchange for her silence about what went on at Berlusconi’s parties. 

Berlusconi was initially convicted of charges that he paid for sex with an underage woman at the sex-fueled “bunga bunga” parties, and used his influence to cover it up. He was ultimately acquitted by Italy’s highest court in 2015. 

Asked Saturday to comment, Berlusconi said he was always sorry when a young person dies. 

But he added: “I’ve never known this person and never spoke to her. What I read were her declarations that made me always think these were always invented and absurd things.” 

Fadil had testified against Berlusconi during the initial trial, and then with two other women had sought civil damages in a spinoff investigation over allegations that Berlusconi paid witnesses for their silence. That trial is ongoing. 

Fadil, who had reportedly wanted to be a television sportscaster, argued that she had suffered from lost opportunities because of her involvement in the cases. 

Late last year, lawyers for one of Berlusconi’s co-defendants in the witness tampering trial began negotiations to settle the women’s claims, ANSA reported at the time. But by January, the Milan court had thrown out their claims altogether. Two weeks later, Fadil was hospitalized. 

News reports said before Fadil slipped out of consciousness she told her lawyer and family that she feared she had been poisoned. 

ANSA quoted Greco as lamenting that the Humanitas hospital in Rozzano didn’t report Fadil’s complaints or symptoms, which he said were consistent with poisoning while she was being treated. He said prosecutors were only informed of the death when Fadil’s lawyer reported it. 

In a statement reported by ANSA, Humanitas disputed that, saying that Fadil’s medical charts were seized by law enforcement as soon as she died. It said it provided the results of her toxicological exams to prosecutors when they were completed on March 6.

Regardless of the poisoning charge, a major witness against an extremely corrupt former PM is now dead, that's not in dispute.  If Italian prosecutors were supposed to protect her, they failed. In a kinder timeline, I'd think that US intelligence may have some clue as to what really happened, and a President Hillary Clinton would be making more than a few phone calls to make it clear what the international community expected here.

Sadly, in this timeline I believe our intelligence services might be the ones giving Bunga Bunga Berlusconi tips on how to get away with poisoning your foes, since our good friend Vladimir Putin runs them anyway.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead, Con't

On Thursday Kentucky lawmakers passed a "heartbeat bill" banning any abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, and the ACLU was ready for them on Friday before Gov. Matt Bevin could sign the bill.

A federal judge in Louisville has issued a temporary order barring the state from enforcing a new abortion law, less than 24 hours after it was passed by the Kentucky General Assembly.

U.S. District Judge David Hale issued the order at 7:40 p.m. Friday, blocking the state from enforcing Senate Bill 9, the "fetal heartbeat" bill which bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around the sixth week of pregnancy.

Hale's order comes the same day the America Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the new law, arguing the law would effectively ban abortion in Kentucky because most women don't realize they are pregnant until at least six weeks into a pregnancy.

Hale's order, citing the the "strong likelihood of success" of the ACLU's claim that the law is unconstitutional, ordered that enactment of the law be delayed for 14 days until he is able to hold a hearing on the matter.

"The Supreme Court has stated in no uncertain terms that regardless of whether exceptions are made for particular circumstances, a state may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability." Hale's order said, citing a previous ruling on the matter.

Hale's order said that if the law is enforced before a hearing, patients "would be immediately and irreparably harmed absent a temporary restraining order from this court."

It noted the law has an emergency clause that allows it to take effect as soon as it is signed into law by Gov. Matt Bevin. Bevin, an anti-abortion Republican, has pledged to sign it.

The lawsuit was filed Friday by the ACLU on behalf of EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville, the state's only abortion clinic.

SB 9 was enacted late Thursday as one of four bills meant to restrict or ban abortion in Kentucky by the Republican-controlled General Assembly.

Even as House members voted final passage of the law Thursday, some members warned it is unconstitutional including Rep. Chris Harris, a Pikeville Democrat.

"I consider myself pro-life," Harris said. "But the constitutionality of this legislation has already been decided."

Harris noted the state already is "embroiled" in three other lawsuits defending other abortion laws passed by the legislature. Federal judges have struck down two and a decision on a third is pending.

"We have a responsibility to the people not to waste their money and this is a waste of money," Harris said of SB 9.

You'd think lawmakers would get that, but they all want to be the "heroes" who go down in the history books of American theocracy, with their names attached to the chains around the necks of women.  That's the glory they want.

The best part is they couldn't care less about the babies born, because this same Bevin administration and GOP-controlled General Assembly has done everything it could to remove Medicaid, school funding, environmental protections, and just about everything else from kids born and living in this state.

They just want to loot the treasury before the place burns down.

Finally, the wort part is how many Kentucky Democrats voted for the House and Senate bills, ten of the 39 House Democrats voted for it (and another ten voted absent) including Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Rocky Adkins, and four of the nine Senate Democrats voted for it, meaning barely half of Kentucky Democrats had to courage to vote against an obviously unconstitutional anti-choice bill.

But that's Bevinstan for you.

This Week In Trump Cards

America's slow but steady shift towards authoritarian pariah status continued this week as the Trump regime took more steps down a dark path.  First, Donald Trump's sprawling interview with hate site Breitbart featured open threats against Democrats and those investigating him.

President Donald Trump appeared to insinuate in a recent interview that his supporters -- the police, military and "Bikers for Trump," he claims -- could turn violent against Democrats.

"You know, the left plays a tougher game, it's very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don't play it tougher. OK?" Trump said in an interview with Breitbart News published Wednesday. "I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump -- I have the tough people, but they don't play it tough -- until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad." 

He added that "the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress." 

Several Democrats interpreted the comments as a threat. 

"I interpret that kind of comment as a danger to peaceful transition of power in our democracy," Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CNN's "New Day" on Friday. 

In a CNN op-ed, former White House press secretary for President Bill Clinton Joe Lockhart called Trump's remark a "thuggish threat of violence against his critics" and a continuation of Trump's "all-out assault on the basis of our democracy." 

Asked about Trump's comment, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told CNN's Chris Cuomo Thursday night that the President "didn't threaten any kind of violence." 

"You're just reading into it like you usually do. You have to read the entire interview," she said. "He was talking about how peaceful and gentle many people are who are otherwise tough."

In the same interview, Trump blames then House Speaker Paul Ryan for not allowing House Republicans to subpoena Hillary Clinton and other Obama administration officials. 

Trump told Breitbart News in an exclusive lengthy Oval Office interview that Ryan blocked issuance of subpoenas to people he thinks should have been investigated on the political left, and now that the Republicans no longer have the majority in the House, people Trump says Ryan protected may have gotten away with whatever they did that warranted investigation.

Trump said that House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and his predecessor and fellow conservative Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) wanted to be tougher with the left, but that Ryan would not let them.

“Paul Ryan wouldn’t give the right to have any subpoenas,” Trump told Breitbart News. “Okay? Now in all fairness, Meadows and Jordan and all these guys, they wanted to go tougher, but they weren’t allowed to by leadership.”

Finally, State Department head Mike Pompeo says the US is ready to make good on National Security Adviser John Bolton's Mustache's threat to bar US entry to and expel from the country any International Criminal Court personnel if The Hague investigates any US or Israeli military action in Afghanistan as war crimes.

The United States will revoke or deny visas to International Criminal Court personnel who attempt to investigate or prosecute alleged abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere and may do the same with those who try to take action against Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday.

Pompeo, making good on a threat delivered last September by national security adviser John Bolton, said the U.S. had already moved against some employees of The Hague-based court, but declined to say how many or what cases they may have been investigating.

“We are determined to protect the American and allied military and civilian personnel from living in fear of unjust prosecution for actions taken to defend our great nation,” Pompeo said.

He said any wrongdoing committed by American personnel would be dealt with in U.S. military and criminal courts.

The visa restrictions would apply to any court employee who takes or has taken action “to request or further such an investigation,” Pompeo said.

“These visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel, including Israelis, without allies’ consent,” he said.

The ICC prosecutor has a pending request to look into possible war crimes in Afghanistan that may involve Americans. The Palestinians have also asked the court to bring cases against Israel.

Speaking directly to ICC employees, Pompeo said: “If you are responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of U.S. personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan, you should not assume that you still have or will get a visa or will be permitted to enter the United States.”

That comment suggested that action may have already been taken against the ICC prosecutor who asked last year to formally open an investigation into allegations of war crimes committed by Afghan national security forces, Taliban and Haqqani network militants, as well as U.S. forces and intelligence officials in Afghanistan since May 2003.

The US never joined the ICC, but Afghanistan did, meaning if the ICC does investigate US war crimes there, things are going to get very ugly and fast.

Finally, Trump outright said Friday that there should be no Mueller report at all, because the investigation should be scrapped as "illegal".

President Donald Trump on Friday insisted there should be no report from special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, denouncing the investigation as "illegal."

"So, if there was knowingly & acknowledged to be 'zero' crime when the Special Counsel was appointed, and if the appointment was made based on the Fake Dossier (paid for by Crooked Hillary) and now disgraced Andrew McCabe (he & all stated no crime), then the Special Counsel...should never have been appointed and there should be no Mueller Report," the president tweeted Friday.

Trump has repeatedly called Mueller's probe into whether Russia colluded with the president's 2016 campaign a "witch hunt." Despite his criticisms, the president has maintained that he has cooperated fully with the investigation, which also includes whether Trump tried to obstruct justice.

A small thread now lies between insistence and an Oval Office order, and the Mueller report goes away.

And so does America as a free country.

A Light Of Hope In Gunmerica

Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a lawsuit filed by Sandy Hook families suing AR-15 Bushmaster manufacturer Remington can go forward after all, reversing a lower court decision.

The ruling comes as yet another twist in the lawsuit’s circuitous path through the court system, one that continued far longer than many, including legal experts and the families, had initially expected.

The ruling had been delayed after Remington, the manufacturer and one of the nation’s oldest gun makers, filed for bankruptcy last year as its sales declined and debts mounted.

The lawsuit, brought by family members of nine people who were killed and a teacher who was shot and survived, was originally filed in 2014, then moved to federal court, where a judge ordered that it be returned to the state level.

The families were given a glimmer of hope when a State Superior Court judge, Barbara N. Bellis, permitted the case to approach a trial before she ultimately dismissed it. She found that the claims fell “squarely within the broad immunity” provided by federal law.

In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which restricts lawsuits against gun sellers and makers by granting industrywide immunity from blame when one of their products is used in a crime. Lawmakers behind the measure cited a need to foil what they described as predatory and politically driven litigation.

The law does allow exceptions for sale and marketing practices that violate state or federal laws and instances of so-called negligent entrustment, in which a gun is carelessly given or sold to a person posing a high risk of misusing it.

In the lawsuit, the families pushed to broaden the scope to include the manufacturer, Remington, which was named along with a wholesaler and a local retailer in the suit.

The lawsuit said that the companies were wrong to entrust an untrained civilian public with a weapon designed for maximizing fatalities on the battlefield.

Lawyers pointed out advertising — with messages of combat dominance and hyper-masculinity — that resonated with disturbed young men who could be induced to use the weapon to commit violence.

“Remington may never have known Adam Lanza, but they had been courting him for years,” Joshua D. Koskoff, one of the lawyers representing the families, told the panel of judges during oral arguments in the case in 2017. The weapon used by Mr. Lanza had been legally purchased by his mother, Nancy Lanza, whom he also killed.

Lawyers representing the gun companies argued that the claims raised in the lawsuit were specifically the kind that law inoculated them against. They said that agreeing with the families’ arguments would require amending the law or ignoring how it had been applied in the past.

James B. Vogts, a lawyer for Remington, said during oral arguments that the shooting “was a tragedy that cannot be forgotten.”

“But no matter how tragic,” he added, “no matter how much we wish those children and their teachers were not lost and those damages not suffered, the law needs to be applied dispassionately.”

It's a long shot, but it has the gun lobby running scared.  They know the discovery process on this alone may sink Remington, the NRA, and possibly the entire industry.  I expect swift federal action on this by Republicans, either to add closing the negligent entrustment loophole to must-pass legislation, tying this up until the Supreme Court's five conservatives can end it, or most likely both. Unfortunately, I don't see this case ever reaching the trial phase because the damage would be catastrophic to the gun lobby, and they damn well know it.

We'll see how this shakes out.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

There's no longer any doubt now after a massive new Stanford University multi-year study of nearly 100 million traffic stops that black drivers are much more likely to be pulled over by police and searched for no reason whatsoever, while white drivers are far more likely to have illegal items in their vehicles.

Using information obtained through public record requests, the Stanford Open Policing Project examined almost 100 million traffic stops conducted from 2011 to 2017 across 21 state patrol agencies, including California, Illinois, New York and Texas, and 29 municipal police departments, including New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco and St. Paul, Minnesota.

The results show that police stopped and searched black and Latino drivers on the basis of less evidence than used in stopping white drivers, who are searched less often but are more likely to be found with illegal items. The study does not set out to conclude whether officers knowingly engaged in racial discrimination, but uses a more nuanced analysis of traffic stop data to infer that race is a factor when people are pulled over — and that it's occuring across the country.

"Because of this analysis, we're able to get to that anecdotal story to say this is really happening," said Sharad Goel, an assistant professor in management science and engineering at Stanford and a co-author of the study.

Police pull over about 20 million drivers across the United States each year, according to researchers. And while the extreme cases grab the spotlight, such as the fatal police shootings after traffic stops of Walter Scott in South Carolina, Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati and Philando Castile in suburban Minneapolis — all black men — most end without anyone getting hurt. Still, for drivers of color who are stopped by police, the suspicion that racial bias played a role can linger.

"There's no longer the idea of Officer Friendly, who might help you understand why they pulled you over. Now, it's about using racial profiling to control people and place fear in them," said David Lowery, founder of the Living & Driving While Black Foundation in Chicago, an advocacy group calling for an end to racial profiling.

"Then, you've got money tied up into this," he added. "Who can write the most tickets? Who can put the most people in jail and into the court system? It’s no longer about a simple traffic stop for safety."

The Stanford study sliced the data in three distinct ways to search for evidence of racial bias:

• Police stops: A "veil of darkness" test was done to analyze whether black drivers are being pulled over at a higher rate during the day than at night, when officers would have a harder time distinguishing race from a distance. After adjusting for the variation in sunset times across the year, researchers found a 5 to 10 percent drop in the share of stopped drivers after sunset who are black, suggesting black drivers are being racially profiled during the day. 

• Police searches: Researchers reviewed the rate at which drivers were searched and the likelihood that those searches turned up illegal drugs and guns. There was evidence that the bar for searching black and Latino drivers is lower than that for white drivers, even though white drivers were more likely to have contraband. Across states, contraband was found in 36 percent of searches of white drivers, compared to 32 percent for black drivers and 26 percent for Latinos. 

• Impact of marijuana legalization: After the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington state, there has been a reduction in searches of both white and minority drivers. But the search rate remains twice as high for minorities, a trend also noted in a 2017 Stanford study.

Stanford's research is based on numbers provided by state and city agencies, but not all police departments track that data or are willing to release it. While the majority of states responded to the Stanford group's public records requests and offered at least some traffic stop data, four states said they didn't have information on drivers' race and 15 failed to say whether they collect any data at all.

Ohio provided data for this study as well as Cincinnati and Columbus police departments.  There's no doubt that this is happening right now, as we speak, where I live and work.  Race is the major basis of policing in America today.

It must end.

Another Hat Lands In The Ring, Con't

The Democratic field for 2020 is only getting more crowded, not less, as March soldiers on, and as he's been hinting at for weeks now, Texas Congressman Beto O' Rourke is running for the White House.

Beto O'Rourke announced Thursday he is running for president, entering the 2020 race with a call for Americans to look past their differences in order to confront the challenges facing the country. 

"This is a defining moment of truth for this country and for every single one of us," the 46-year-old Democratic former congressman from Texas said in a video announcing his candidacy. "The challenges that we face right now, the interconnected crises in our economy, our democracy and our climate have never been greater." 

"They will either consume us, or they will afford us the greatest opportunity to unleash the genius of the United States of America," he added. 

O'Rourke, who is starting a three-day swing through eastern Iowa on Thursday, said he will hold a kick-off rally for his campaign in El Paso, Texas, on March 30. 

His entrance into the race is the culmination of his two-year, out-of-nowhere rise from a back-bench congressman largely unknown outside El Paso to Democratic stardom as a record-breaking fundraiser, the subject of an HBO documentary and the target of two separate efforts to draft him into the presidential campaign. He joins a crowded field of more than a dozen Democrats vying for the party's nomination. 

In his announcement video, O'Rourke said he would run a "positive campaign that seeks to bring out the very best from every single one of us, that seeks to unite a very divided country." 

"We saw the power of this in Texas, where people allowed no difference, however great or however small, to stand between them and divide us," O'Rourke said. 

O'Rourke last year lost that race in Texas, a bid to oust Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Still, the Senate race thrust O'Rourke, who served three terms in the House, into the national spotlight. He shattered fundraising records, ending with an $80 million haul, and finished less than 3 percentage points behind Cruz -- much closer than other Democrats had come in recent years against Republicans in a state that's long been a GOP stronghold. But a presidential bid will be a much different test for O'Rourke, who will face serious pressure from the left for the first time in his political career. 

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, O'Rourke said the 2020 campaign has "got to be about the big things that we hope to achieve and enact and do for one another." 

He said that "the most pressing, the most urgent, the most existential challenge of them all is climate. And the scientists, beyond a shadow of a doubt, know that we have at a maximum 12 years in order to enact significant change to meet that threat and reduce the consequences of the decisions that we made in the past -- the consequences that our kids and the generations that follow will bear."

"But he couldn't beat Ted Cruz in his home state" is a fair criticism of his campaign.  "He should be running against John Cornyn, but he'd almost certainly lose anyway" is less so, but still somewhat valid.

I just don't think there's a good reason for Beto to be in the race, given who's already there.  I don't honestly know what he brings to the table.  If he does win the primaries, then he'll prove me wrong and I'll support him 100%.

But that's what primaries are for, for candidates to make that case.  Initially, I'm not buying it.  The strongest case for Beto is that he could accelerate a Blue Texas scenario. Nate Cohn explains:

Mr. O’Rourke’s close result wasn’t because of an exceptional turnout that will be hard for other Democrats to repeat in 2020. Republican voters, defined as those who have participated in a recent Republican primary, turned out at a higher rate than Democratic ones. Neither the Hispanic nor youth voter share of the electorate was higher than it was in 2016, when President Trump won the state by nine points.

On the contrary, Democrats in 2020 can be expected to enjoy a more favorable turnout because presidential races tend to draw in more young and Hispanic voters. Mr. O’Rourke might have won Texas last November if turnout had been at the level of a contested presidential race, based on an Upshot analysis of Times/Siena poll responses, actual results and voter file data from L2, a nonpartisan voter file vendor.

The data yields an estimate of how every registered voter in Texas would have voted, based on a long list of geographic and demographic factors that predicted vote choice in the Times/Siena polling. Importantly, turnout in 2018 is among those factors, which allows us to fully untangle how much of Mr. O’Rourke’s strength was because of strong turnout among his supporters.

The data indicates that two opposing turnout trends influenced the results. The electorate was older, whiter and more Republican than the state as a whole — or than the 2016 electorate. But an O’Rourke supporter was generally likelier to vote than a demographically and politically similar supporter of Mr. Cruz. This was the pattern nationwide, so it is not obvious that this can be attributed to Mr. O’Rourke specifically; it could have been the favorable Democratic environment more generally.

Either way, the extra turnout boost probably cut Mr. Cruz’s margin of victory by two points.

Mr. O’Rourke might have won with a turnout of around 10 million voters. (The actual turnout was around 8.4 million.) Without the extra edge of a Democratic wave year, it might have taken 11 million votes, a number that is not out of the question in 2020 if Texas is contested as a battleground state.

In other words, Beto did well enough with white Texas midterm voters that if he got presidential year level turnout, he could win the state.  That could happen for a number of Democratic candidates, but if Beto can show he has a clear shot to beat Trump (which has to be an easier prospect than beating John Cornyn) then he can make a major tactical case as to why he should be the nominee.

Of course, he has to win primaries to do that.  And Josh Marshall makes the case that Beto is already done.

The problem I see for O’Rourke is that these endorsements and the tendency behind them makes him look – maybe accurately – like the presidential candidate of Democratic ‘centrists” – a very thin constituency in Democratic politics at the moment. This may sound like I’m saying the energy of the party is on the left and you’re out of luck if you’re playing to a constituency on the right-center. Not exactly. I think the power and pull of high profile left-wing members of Congress like Ocasio-Cortez and others are greatly exaggerated by their media profiles. As is usually the case, I suspect a successful candidacy will be one who has appeal and acceptability on the left of the party without being owned by it or being perceived as a factional candidate of the left. You may or may not agree with me on that point. But let’s leave that argument for another day. What I’m really quite certain about is that the Democratic nominee is not going to be the factional candidate of Democratic centrists. And the way the roll out played O’Rourke made a good start toward becoming that guy.

This isn’t the first time this has come out. During the Beto-mania that followed the November election a number of high-profile Sanders supporters scalded O’Rourke in a series of much-discussed opinion pieces. The aim was pretty clear: knock the new guy down several pegs to leave the road open for the Bernie millennium. Some of these attacks were downright dishonest or tendentious. Others more reasonably pointed out that for all the excitement about O’Rourke’s campaign against the odious and oleaginous Ted Cruz he actually has a pretty middle of the road voting record and even more than a few votes with Republicans. That spectacle showed the unloveliest parts of the sectarian left around Sanders. But Beto himself did a decent job today validating that critique and positioning himself in the contest in a way that will make winning the nomination a steep challenge.

This is also a fair point, and one that's probably far more applicable.  The "incrementalist centrist"is not going to be the nominee, and if Beto is headed for that slot, he's toast.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

The House has unanimously passed a resolution urging the release of the Mueller report to the public, in a move that I'm even surprised by.  It's very telling that no Republican in the House would go on record to say they were against it, not even the regular slate of loonies, racists, and assholes like Gohmert, Steve King, or my district's own Thomas Massie (he had the shame to be a coward and vote "present".)

The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on the Justice Department to make special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings and full report public and available to Congress.

The 420-0 vote came after a fiery debate on the House floor, during which some Democratic lawmakers were admonished for their criticisms of President Donald Trump.

Republicans said the resolution was unnecessary and a waste of time, but ultimately joined Democrats to approve it. Four Republicans — Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — voted “present.”

Democrats used the resolution to put pressure on Attorney General William Barr, who during his Senate confirmation hearings did not commit to making Mueller’s highly anticipated findings public.

“A vote for this resolution will send a clear signal to both the American people and to the Department of Justice that Congress believes transparency is a fundamental principle necessary to ensure that government remains accountable to the public,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the lead sponsor of the effort.

It's still a pro move by Pelosi.  Mitch McConnell will be under a lot of pressure for a similar Senate resolution, especially after the vote against Trump's emergency declaration nonsense, but Lindsay Graham blocked it by objecting to the vote, calling for a second special counsel to investigate the FBI and Democrats.

Still, yes, this puts scores of House Republicans on record saying they want the Mueller report released to the public, and they won't be able to dodge it.

The question is why.  After more than a year of refusing to protect the Mueller report, suddenly 420 of 435 Representatives signed on to this bill with no real warning it was coming.

Either the Mueller report is so mild that Republicans are more than happy to approve its release, or the table is being set for Mike Pence.  This resolution coming a day after Pelosi said that there would have to be overwhelming evidence to impeach still means both of those possibilities are in play.

The "not worth it" caveat makes me unfortunately think that it's the first scenario, especially when combined with Thursday's news that Mueller's top prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, is planning to leave the Mueller team.

I want to be wrong here. We'll see if I am.

StupidiNews!

• Twelve GOP senators and all Democratic senators voted to end Donald Trump's emergency wall declaration in a 59-41 vote, Trump is expected to issue his first veto to strike the bill down.
• In an 85-334 vote, the UK Parliament rejected the notion of a second Brexit referendum, meaning the UK still has no path forward on Brexit with just two weeks to go before the EU deadline.
• New Zealand police say gunmen opened fire in two Christchurch mosques during Friday prayers, killing several and injuring dozens, police have captured four suspects.
• US lawmakers say the company's 737 MAX jets could be grounded through April as the aerospace giant needs to apply software fixes to hundreds of planes worldwide.
• More than 800,000 Dodge and Jeep vehicles are being recalled by Fiat-Chrysler for emissions issues, the recall is voluntary but California law is compelling owners to fix vehicles in its state.

Last Call For Critical Massie

When I say that my Congressman, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, is a national embarrassment, idiocy like this is what I mean.

The House passed a series of bills on Tuesday meant to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable for his country's actions, including a measure condemning the Russian leader and his government for their alleged roles in covering up the 2015 assassination of Putin political opponent Boris Nemtsov.

The package of legislation, all aimed at adding scrutiny on the Russian government, largely passed by voice vote.

The bill concerning Nemtsov's assassination overwhelmingly passed the House, with only one lawmaker — Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — dissenting.

“It's been four years since his death, but there's been no proper investigation of his assassination and the cover-up and zero accountability for those responsible — that's certainly an outrage," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said in a floor speech ahead of the vote. "This resolution condemns the Kremlin's systematic targeting of its political opponents and calls on the administration to impose sanctions on those responsible for Nemtsov's murder and cover-up.”

Nemtsov, a member of the opposition party who had eyed challenging Putin for the presidency in 2018, was shot and killed in 2015.

Five Chechen men have been charged in his death, but Tuesday’s resolution — introduced by Engel and Foreign Affairs ranking member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) — claims that Russian officials have prevented others responsible for his murder to be charged.

A bill condemning the Russian annexation of Crimea also easily passed the House, with 427 lawmakers supporting the act. Again only Massie voted against it.

Under the legislation, led by Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Steve Chabot(R-Ohio), federal departments and agencies are barred from recognizing Russia's annexation of Crimea, which sparked international outrage in 2014.

Out of the entire House of Representatives, apparently this jackass believes that the people of Northern Kentucky want to side with Putin's assassination of Nemtsov and his invasion of Crimea.   Could have voted present or skipped the vote, fine.

But to vote no on these?

To openly side with Putin against his country?

What an arrogant asshole.