Coming For Comey

The Barr Justice Department, unable to find a crime to charge former FBI Director James Comey with in either their investigation into the Mueller probe or Operation Crossfire Hurricane into candidate Trump's Russia connections, has now decided that Comey has to hang for leaking classified info to the press in 2017.

Federal prosecutors in Washington are investigating a years-old leak of classified information about a Russian intelligence document, and they appear to be focusing on whether the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey illegally provided details to reporters, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

The case is the second time the Justice Department has investigated leaks potentially involving Mr. Comey, a frequent target of President Trump, who has repeatedly called him a “leaker.” Mr. Trump recently suggested without evidence that Mr. Comey should be prosecuted for “unlawful conduct” and spend years in prison.

The timing of the investigation could raise questions about whether it was motivated at least in part by politics. Prosecutors and F.B.I. agents typically investigate leaks of classified information around the time they appear in the news media, not years later. And the inquiry is the latest politically sensitive matter undertaken by the United States attorney’s office in Washington, which is also conducting an investigation of Mr. Comey’s former deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, that has been plagued by problems.

Law enforcement officials are scrutinizing at least two news articles about the F.B.I. and Mr. Comey, published in The New York Times and The Washington Post in 2017, that mentioned the Russian government document, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Hackers working for Dutch intelligence officials obtained the document and provided it to the F.B.I., and both its existence and the collection of it were highly classified secrets, the people said.

The document played a key role in Mr. Comey’s decision to sideline the Justice Department and announce in July 2016 that the F.B.I. would not recommend that Hillary Clinton face charges in her use of a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state.

The investigation into the leaks began in recent months, the people said, but it is not clear whether prosecutors have impaneled a grand jury or how many witnesses they have interviewed. What prompted the inquiry is also unclear, but the Russian document was mentioned in a book published last fall, “Deep State: Trump, the F.B.I., and the Rule of Law” by James B. Stewart, a Times reporter.

A lawyer for Mr. Comey declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office in Washington.

So we know what the Justice Department will be doing for 2020, which is harassing Comey and using these "old leaks" as justification to go through 2016 Obama-era FBI and DoJ files.  Of course our shiny object chasing press will go with it, and Trump will have a ready made smokescreen of "new allegations in the Comey investigation" to roll out whenever he needs to.

And of course, the questions will lead to "What did Joe Biden know?"

As Jon Chait writes, "Enough cases fit the pattern for it to have become unmistakable."

The Department of Justice has conducted several reviews of the Mueller investigation. The last one, conducted by Inspector General Michael Horowitz subjected its FISA warrants of Trump’s staffers to strict oversight, finding several errors. The problem is that the public had little basis of comparison to measure the errors — were they egregious, as Trump suggests, or ordinary sloppiness? Nobody knows what the ordinary level of sloppiness is, because FISA warrants don’t normally come under intense public scrutiny.

Meanwhile, Barr has appointed John Durham to undertake another even broader investigation into the FBI and the intelligence community’s Russia investigation. The probe appears to be aimed at other Trump antagonists, such as former CIA Director John Brennan. Barr has thrown his weight behind the probe, visiting foreign countries and asking their cooperation.

The Department has also pursued a case against former director Andrew McCabe for misleading the Department about media leaks. McCabe is another Trump target, who stood behind Comey after Trump fired him, has since then been the target of public and private abuse by the president. The potential charges have been hanging over McCabe’s head for so long that last month a court ordered the Department either to bring a case or drop it.

In theory, there would be nothing wrong with the Department of Justice tightening up its standards of conduct. But all the evidence points to the conclusion those standards are being raised only for Trump’s political enemies. The Department released batches of private texts by Lisa Page, including texts that had no political relevance, exposing her to personal embarrassment. Trump of course is the head bully, mocking Page repeatedly, including engaging in a simulated orgasm between her and the FBI agent with whom her affair was exposed in the texts. Page is suing the Department, but the Department is not bringing its own charges against the officials who undertook this obvious abuse.

Nor is the Department investigating the ubiquitous 2016 leaks about the Clinton email probe.The sentiment against Clinton among conservative FBI agents was at such a fervor that agents would openly cheer on colleagues investigating her with comments like “You have to get her” and “You guys are finally going to get that bitch.” They pressured Comey to bring charges by leaking constant stories to the right wing media. “FBI agents say the bureau is alarmed over Director James Comey urging the Justice Department to not prosecute Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information,” stated a report in the Daily Caller. Giuliani was literally broadcasting his leaks from conservative agents on television.

This history is relevant for two reasons. First, those leaks were far more historically significant than any of the leaks that are currently being investigated. The anti-Clinton cabal was trying to force Comey to violate DOJ protocol and announce an investigation of a candidate leading up to an election, and they succeeded.

Second, the flagrant nature of the 2016 anti-Clinton leaks show just how unseriously the bureau has taken its rules on leaking. The behavior was so common precisely because everybody on all sides assumed the prohibition would never be enforced, which is what makes the new selective enforcement of strict anti-leaking protocol so obviously biased. It would be as if every car in Washington, D.C., driving even one mile over the speed limit was suddenly pulled over and subjected to the maximum penalty allowed by law.

Trump is not arbitrarily having his opponents arrested. He is doing something more subtle, but still extremely dangerous: using the Department of Justice to selectively hold his opponents to the most exacting levels of legal scrutiny that are not broadly applied. It doesn’t even matter that not every investigation brings charges, and the charges themselves probably won’t hold up in court. The time, expense, and reputational cost of the investigations will be damaging enough.

It's sad that we can see this coming a mile away, and it's still going to most likely work.

It's About Suppression, Con't

Florida's state Supreme Court has sided with state Republicans and Gov. Ron DeSantis that felons must pay back all court costs and restitution fees related to their sentences before being allowed to vote.

It came down to a question of wording, after Florida voters in 2018 approved amendment 4.

The amendment called for the restoration of voting rights for felons who were not convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense “after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole and probation.”

That statement led to more than a year of legislative and court battles over the meaning of “complete all terms”.

Gov. Ron DeSantis sided with a number of Republican lawmakers who asserted the amendment requires felons to pay all fines, fees and restitution before their voting rights are restored. Civil rights groups like the ACLU argued that amounted to an illegal poll tax designed to further disenfranchise a potentially large block of voters.

On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court finally dropped the gavel on the debate.

The justices issued an opinion advising the governor and the attorney general that the wording of amendment 4 – “complete all terms of their sentence” – does include all the money a felon is required to pay.

“The phrase 'completion of all terms of sentence' includes any period of incarceration, probation, parole and financial obligations imposed as part of an individual’s sentence. The financial obligations may include restitution and fines, imposed as part of a sentence or a condition of probation under existing Florida statute,” the justices wrote in their opinion.
It’s unclear how this ruling with affect felons who have already registered to vote.

There are nearly 1,500,000 felons in Florida.

That number includes one in five potential voters in the African American community.

Everything you need to know about what Republicans are doing here is summed up by a tweet from Gov. DeSantis.

I am pleased that @FLCourts confirms that Amendment 4 requires fines, fees & restitution be paid to victims before their voting rights may be restored. Voting is a privilege that should not be taken lightly, and I am obligated to faithfully implement Amendment 4 as it is defined.

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) January 16, 2020

You catch that? Voting is a privilege, not a right.  And only Republicans get to determine who is allowed to exercise that privilege.

That privilege doesn't extend to groups that primarily would vote Democratic.

Republicans replaced felony bias for 1.5 million Florida citizens with a legal poll tax.  It has nothing to do with voter ID or "integrity of the vote", it's just there to keep black and brown people from voting.

That's it.

That's all it ever was.

StupidiNews!

• The Pentagon is now saying that 11 US soldiers were injured in Iran's attack on an Iraqi base last week, initially no casualties were reported.
• Citing damage to state Republicans, the head of Connecticut's GOP wants Lev Parnas associate Robert Hyde to drop out in his congressional bid.
• The Government Accountability Office has found that the White House broke the law by withholding security aid for Ukraine as senators were sworn in Thursday by Chief Justice Roberts.
• Lev Parnas's latest interview with Rachel Maddow last night implicated former Energy Secretary Rick Perry as part of the group of Trump regime people working with Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine.
• The year ahead in spaceflight could finally bring space tourism, manned missions by private companies, and multiple missions to Mars from space agencies around the globe.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

The Trump regime is shipping asylum seekers to Guatemala by the literal planeload now, being sent to a country they know nothing about, and where they become somebody else's problem. It's only a matter of time before ICE detainees are sent there too...along with US citizens caught up in immigration hell.

The chartered U.S. government flights land here every day or two, depositing Honduran and Salvadoran asylum seekers from the U.S. border. Many arrive with the same question: "Where are we?"

For the first time ever, the United States is shipping asylum seekers who arrive at its border to a “safe third country” to seek refuge there. The Trump administration hopes the program will serve as a model for others in the region.

But during its first weeks, asylum seekers and human rights advocates say, migrants have been put on planes without being told where they were headed, and left here without being given basic instruction about what to do next.

When the migrants land in Guatemala City, they receive little information about what it means to apply for asylum in one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries. Those who don’t immediately apply are told to leave the country in 72 hours. The form is labeled “Voluntary Return.”

“In the U.S., the agents told us our cases would be transferred, but they didn’t say where. Then they lined us up to get on the plane,” said Marta, 43, from Honduras. She sat in a migrant shelter here with her 17-year-old son, who nursed a gunshot wound in his left cheek — the work, mother and son say, of a Honduran faction of the MS-13 gang.

“When we looked out the window, we were here,” she said. “We thought, ‘Where are we? What are we supposed to do now?’ ”

Human rights organizations in Guatemala say they have recorded dozens of cases of asylum seekers who were misled by U.S. officials into boarding flights, and who were not informed of their asylum rights upon arrival. Of the 143 Hondurans and Salvadorans sent to Guatemala since the program began last month, only five have applied for asylum, according to the country’s migration agency. 

Safe third country is one of the Trump administration’s most dramatic initiatives to curb migration — an effort to remake the U.S. asylum system. President Trump has called it “terrific for [Guatemala] and terrific for us.”

But an Asylum Cooperation Agreement is bringing migrants to a country that is unable to provide economic and physical security for its own citizens — many of whom are themselves trying to migrate. In fiscal 2019, Guatemala was the largest source of migrants detained at the U.S. border, at more than 264,000. The country has only a skeletal asylum program, with fewer than a dozen asylum officers.

If Trump is reelected, we will learn only after the fact that hundreds of thousands of US citizens were disappeared into Guatemala.

This was always the plan.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas is singing like Aretha Franklin at the Super Bowl, not only is he cooperating fully with US Attorneys in Manhattan, he's giving interviews like the one with Rachel Maddow last night, and as Greg Sargent points out, he's nailing Rudy and Trump to the wall.

There are any number of bombshells in Lev Parnas’s new interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, and as we’ve experienced at other major points in this saga, it’s once again hard not to feel overwhelmed by the bewildering scale and magnitude of this scandal.

But the importance of one particular exchange needs special attention: It’s the one in which Parnas flatly accuses Rudolph Giuliani, and also possibly his “client,” as Giuliani likes to put it, of a criminal conspiracy. That “client,” of course, is President Trump.

The exchange in question concerns Trump’s freezing of military aid to Ukraine to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to carry out Trump’s dirty political deeds. Parnas ties Giuliani more directly to this act than anyone else has, and shares what appears to be new information about it, though this still needs to be confirmed.

The key exchange with Maddow comes after she asks Parnas if he met with Sergey Shaffer, a senior Zelensky aide. Maddow notes that it has been reported that Parnas conveyed to Schaffer that Zelensky must announce an investigation of Biden, in order to get the military aid released.

Then this happened:

PARNAS: The message that I was supposed -- that I gave Sergey Shaffer was a very harsh message. I was told to give it to him in a very harsh way, not in a pleasant way. 

MADDOW: Who told you to give it to him a harsh way? 

PARNAS: Mayor Giuliani, Rudy, told me after, you know, meeting the president at the White House. He called me. The message was, it wasn’t just military aid, it was all aid. Basically their relationships would be sour, that he would -- that we would stop giving them any kind of aid that -- 

MADDOW: Unless? 

PARNAS: -- unless there was an announcement made.

The important thing here is that Parnas is alleging that Giuliani directly told him to convey the message to Ukraine that the military aid was contingent on announcing the investigations Trump wanted — after talking to Trump about it.

Let’s state clearly here that this is just Parnas’s word, and that we need more confirmation. Parnas is a slippery character who’s trying to cooperate with federal prosecutors, probably for a reduced sentence, having been indicted on campaign finance charges last fall.

Giuliani has generally responded that Parnas is lying, without offering a specific rebuttal.

But here’s the thing. We already know for a fact that this message — that Trump made the military aid conditional on announcing investigations that would smear Biden and absolve Russia of 2016 electoral sabotage — actually was delivered to Ukraine, by one of Trump’s top henchmen.

That henchman would be Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who has testified that he told a top Zelensky aide that the money was conditioned on Zelensky announcing those investigations.

Not that the fact Trump directed a criminal conspiracy will matter one bit to his current impeachment trial, and now McConnell has to absolutely bury any hope of witnesses or Parnas will be called, but here we are.

Trump did it.  He's guilty.

And it doesn't matter one bit.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Con't

With Lindsey Graham as the Senate Judiciary chair having to pretend to be impartial for the impeachment trial next week, Mitch McConnell temporarily needs a new enforcer to keep the likes of Susan Collins and Mitt Romney in line, and that thug is apparently Rand Paul.

Sen. Rand Paul is waging a fierce campaign to prevent the Senate from hearing witnesses in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, vowing to force tough votes on his fellow Republicans if they break with the president or back Democrats' demands for new evidence.

The Kentucky Republican is occasionally at odds with Trump, from his killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani to his national emergency to build his southern border wall. But when it comes to impeachment, Paul is taking the hardest line possible in Trump’s favor.

Paul says if four or more of his GOP colleagues join with Democrats to entertain new witness testimony, he will make the Senate vote on subpoenaing the president’s preferred witnesses, including Hunter Biden and the whistleblower who revealed the Ukraine scandal — polarizing picks who moderate Republicans aren’t eager to call. So he has a simple message for his party: end the trial before witnesses are called.

“If you vote against Hunter Biden, you’re voting to lose your election, basically. Seriously. That’s what it is,” Paul said during an interview in his office on Wednesday. “If you don’t want to vote and you think you’re going to have to vote against Hunter Biden, you should just vote against witnesses, period.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned Republicans not to divide the party and endanger his slim GOP majority, but Paul’s play could be useful to him. If the pressure campaign stifles the small group of Republicans open to hearing from witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton, McConnell will be able to conclude the trial in the swift fashion he’s long sought.

But if a majority of the Senate agrees to hear witnesses, Paul is ready to go all out to make sure everyone in the Senate is on the record about whether they stand with Trump.

“My first preference would be to be done with it as soon as possible and not to have any witnesses,” Paul said. “If they insist on having people like Bolton coming forward, my insistence will be not just one witness. But that the president should be able to call any witnesses that he deems necessary to his defense.”

Paul’s threat is backed up by real power under the process envisioned by McConnell and allowed for under Senate rules.

After hearing opening arguments and questioning from House impeachment managers and the White House counsel, the Senate is expected to take a vote on whether to consider the witness issue at all, according to senators familiar with McConnell’s plans. If the Senate agrees to hear witnesses, every senator will have the chance to force a motion seeking testimony.

In other words, Paul is promising scorched earth if any witnesses are called, ranging from Hunter Biden to whoever Trump wants to call, and Trump has previously said he wants Rep. Adam Schiff, Joe Biden, and the Ukraine whistleblower to take the stand to be grilled on national TV for who knows how long, and Paul probably has the votes to make those rules stick.

Paul's threat isn't really for Susan Collins, it's for Doug Jones and Joe Manchin, and maybe Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown and other blue state Dems. The White House says it wants the trial over before Trump's State of the Union speech on February 4, where he can take a national victory lap on TV and bask in that for several weeks.

This is still by far the most likely outcome, but it would be amazing to see Collins and company actually stand up and do the right thing.

But like I've said time and again, depending on Republican senators to contain Trump in any real way is a sucker's bet every time.

 

StupidiNews!

• At least 77 people have been killed by avalanches triggered by heavy snow and rain in northeast Pakistan, with dozens killed as homes were crushed by snow and ice.
• Virginia has become the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, but the Trump Justice Department says that the timeframe for ratification has expired.
• Protests in Lebanon have turned violent for the second night in a row as the country has now gone three months without a Prime Minister.
• Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has declared a state of emergency as the state expects armed protests against a package of gun safety bills in the State Assembly.
• Climatologists have found that preliminary data shows 2019 was second only to 2016 as the hottest year on record globally.

Last Call For Bad-imir Like Vladimir

Vladimir Putin is tossing out his entire government so he can take control of the country the old-fashioned way: since he can't be President anymore after 2024, he's moving power over to the Prime Minister as current PM Dmitri Medvedev announced his resignation, along with the entire Russian government.

The entire Russian government is resigning, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced Wednesday, after Vladimir Putin proposed sweeping reforms that could extend his decades-long grip on power beyond the end of his presidency. 

Putin thanked members of the government for their work but added that "not everything worked out." Putin added that in the near future he would meet with each member of the cabinet. The mass resignation includes Medvedev. 

The surprise announcement came after Putin proposed constitutional amendments that would strengthen the powers of the prime minister and parliament at the expense of the presidency. 

Taking power from the presidency and handing it to parliament could signal a power shift that has been long speculated about in Russia. 

Putin's critics have suggested that he is considering various scenarios to retain control of the country after his presidential term ends in 2024, including the option of becoming prime minister with extended powers. Similarly, in 2008 Putin swapped places with the prime minister to circumvent the constitutional provision banning the same person from serving two consecutive terms. 

In his statement, Medvedev indicated that the government was resigning to clear the way for Putin's proposed reforms. 

Putin "outlined a number of fundamental changes to the constitution, significant changes not only to a number of articles of the constitution, but also to the balance of power as a whole," Medvedev said in his statement, which was aired on Russian state television. 

"In this context, it's obvious that we, as the government ... should provide the president of our country with the opportunity to make all the decisions necessary for this. And in these conditions, I believe that it would be right, in accordance with Section 117 of the constitution," for the government to resign, Medvedev added. 

Putin nominated the head of the Federal Taxation Service, Mikhail Mishustin, to replace Medvedev as prime minister, according to a Kremlin statement. 

The Putin autocracy marches on, and I mysteriously predict he'll be the country's Prime Minister in 2024, a position that will have even more power than the Russian presidency does today by the time Putin is done fiddling with the levers of government.

Trump is absolutely paying attention.  

Impeachment Reached, Con't

As the impeachment proceedings officially move on to the Senate with Nancy Pelosi naming seven Democrats as House impeachment managers for the upcoming Senate trial slated to start on Tuesday, it's important to know that the Senate GOP absolutely considers a free press allowed to cover the proceedings live as a threat to national security and as a threat to the senators themselves, and a major press crackdown is already being planned.

The Senate sergeant-at-arms and Capitol Police are launching an unprecedented crackdown on the Capitol press corps for the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, following a standoff between the Capitol’s chief security officials, Senate Rules Chairman Roy Blunt and the standing committees of correspondents.

Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael C. Stenger will enact a plan that intends to protect senators and the chamber, but it also suggests that credentialed reporters and photographers whom senators interact with on a daily basis are considered a threat.

Additional security screening and limited movement within the Capitol for reporters are two issues that are drawing criticism from Capitol Hill media.

The Standing Committee of Correspondents, which represents journalists credentialed in the daily press galleries in the House and Senate, has come out forcefully against the planned restrictions that it says rejected every suggestion made by the correspondents “without an explanation of how the restrictions contribute to safety rather than simply limit coverage of the trial.”

Standing gallery committees are panels made up of journalists elected by their colleagues; they help oversee press operations and work to ensure press access to public officials and proceedings on Capitol Hill.

“These potential restrictions fail to acknowledge what currently works on Capitol Hill, or the way the American public expects to be able to follow a vital news event about their government in the digital age,” the Standing Committee of Correspondents said in a letter Tuesday.

When the articles of impeachment are delivered to the Senate, a procession full of pomp and circumstance, just one video camera and no still photographers will be allowed to document the historic moment. No audio recording at all will be permitted, leaving radio reporters empty-handed. 

This restriction was not in place when the articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton were delivered to the secretary of the Senate in 1998, a fact confirmed by CQ Roll Call file photos and coverage of the event.

During the trial, a single press pen will be set up on the second floor of the Senate, where lawmakers enter and exit the chamber. Reporters will be confined to the pen, unable to move with senators. No movement will be allowed outside the corrals, and reporters and photographers will need to be escorted to and from the pen.

This is being down for two reasons, one, to belittle and insult the press which Republicans clearly believe are an enemy of the people, and two, to control information flow during the trial and to make sure that it can successfully laundered through FOX News and other right-wing sources, who will still find a way to get their "exclusives" during the trial.

This is being done for the same awful reasons that the White House has in order to justify not having press briefings for the last nine months.

It's to make sure no embarrassing sound bites happen, like GOP senators letting their masks slip and admitting Trump is a criminal.

The Drums Of War, Con't

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia thinks his Iran War Powers act actually has a chance in the Senate because the briefing last week by the State Department and Pentagon went so badly that several GOP senators are considering handcuffing Trump on further action against Tehran.

“There were a couple of other problems I thought about that briefing,” Kaine added. “Without getting into classified information, many of us were underwhelmed by the evidence of imminence. Not everybody was, some thought it was fine, but many of us were underwhelmed by that.”

Several legislators left that briefing last week infuriated with what they considered evasive or dismissive answers on a question of war and peace. Memorably, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, a close ally of the president, laced into the briefers—Pompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire—for “telling us that we need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public.” Several others predicted to The Daily Beast that it would cost the administration congressional support over Iran ahead of the upcoming war-powers votes.

Since last week, Kaine has been in talks with GOP senators—including Lee, Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Todd Young (R-IN)—about shaping the text of his resolution in hopes of it garnering as much Republican support as possible. Those negotiations, Kaine said, have yielded compromise—including mutual support of striking text from the resolution that specifically mentions President Trump. “We’re trying to make it as palatable as we can for everybody,” he said.

Such efforts have proven fruitful so far. Young told reporters on Tuesday that he’d be backing Kaine’s resolution—and with Lee and Paul already supportive, only one more GOP senator is needed to support the measure in order for it to pass the Senate.

Kaine said he wasn’t sure how large the pool of possible GOP ‘yes’ votes is. “Probably a dozen, but I could be surprised,” he said. Lee, meanwhile, predicted to reporters that it would probably be close to the bloc of seven who voted with Democrats on the Yemen resolution.

But of course, making it palatable means making it toothless.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a similar Iran war powers resolution by a 224 to 194 margin. That resolution, led by Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin, is unlikely to receive a Senate vote, however. It is what’s known as a “concurrent” resolution—which, owing to obscure parliamentary procedure, doesn’t provide an obvious mechanism for senators to get it onto the floor for a vote.

Slotkin’s measure, as a concurrent resolution, also doesn’t require a presidential signature to pass. House Democratic leadership considered that a strength, since it avoids a presidential veto—something Trump exercised when Congress voted to get the U.S. out of the Yemen war. But avoiding a veto has an upside for Trump, argued Matt Duss, the chief foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).

“If Trump wants to veto the second War Powers Resolution of his presidency and assert a unilateral right to escalate conflicts as he’s sending thousands more troops to the Middle East, he can do that, but it will just further reveal that he’s lying when he says he wants to end our country’s endless wars,” Duss told The Daily Beast.

Does anyone here think Trump gives a damn about that should the measure survive a near guaranteed filibuster?

StupidiNews!

• More than 50 people were injured when a jet making an emergency landing at LAX dumped fuel over populated areas, including a school playground. 
• A makeshift koala hospital in Australia is treating dozens of injured animals as wildfires continue to rage across the country, threatening homes and wildlife.
• Microsoft has issued a critical Windows 10 security fix after being tipped off last week by the National Security Agency, who considered the security flaw to be a major issue.
• The White House says that despite signing a partial trade accord with China, there are no plans to cut tariffs on tens of billions of Chinese imports until 2021.
• After months of protests, anti-vaxxers have successfully scuttled a New Jersey bill that would have banned religious exemptions for child immunizations.

Last Call For Insane In The Membrane, Con't

Indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas is fully cooperating with the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Trump now that a judge has cleared him to hand over documents, and those documents are a doozy.

The new documents come to light as the Senate prepares to open Mr. Trump's impeachment trial, and could bolster Democrats' arguments for admit new evidence and hearing from additional witnesses.

The three committees that led the initial phases of the probe released select material from what they called a "voluminous record of data" gleaned primarily from Parnas' cell phones.

The excerpts show Parnas acting as a conduit between Giuliani and current and former Ukrainian officials, including several close aides of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. One handwritten note reads: "get Zalensky to announce that the Biden case will be investigated" — a reference to the ongoing efforts to get Ukraine to announce probes to benefit Mr. Trump politically.

And yes, the Parnas documents show that Giuliani was acting on orders of Donald Trump.

Committee investigators found an image of a letter from Giuliani to Zelensky dated May 10, 2019, after Zelensky won election but before he was inaugurated. On the day before, The New York Times reported Giuliani planned to travel to Ukraine to try to dig up dirt against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

In the letter, Giuliani introduced himself as Mr. Trump's personal attorney.

"I am private counsel to President Donald J. Trump. Just to be precise, I represent him as a private citizen, not as President of the United States," Giuliani wrote. "This is quite common under American law because the duties and privileges of a President and a private citizen are not the same. Separate representation is usual process."

Giuliani requested a meeting with Zelensky on May 13 or 14 and said he had Mr. Trump's "knowledge and consent" to meet. He said he "would be accompanied by my colleague Victoria Toensing, a distinguished American attorney who is very familiar with this matter."

Giuliani and Parnas, in addition to working with Victoria Toensing and her husband, both GOP political operatives, were also working with a man named Robert Hyde.  Hyde is a Connecticut Republican currently running a long shot campaign in CT-5 who apparently has a real problem keeping his mouth shut.

Text messages between Hyde and Parnas were released by the committee and it gets much, much worse, as they were directly monitoring former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich.

The messages released by the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee show Hyde providing Parnas was regular updates on Yovanovitch’s location.

“They are moving her tomorrow,” he writes at one point on March 25.

Hyde, of Simsbury, fires off three more messages to Parnas in quick succession later that evening.

“She’s next to the embassy.”

“Not in the embassy.”

“Private security. Been there since Thursday.”

It wasn’t clear from the messages how Hyde knew about Yovanovitch’s movements.

“They know she’s a political puppet,” he wrote. “They will let me know when she’s one the move. And they’ll let me know when she’s on the move.”

Hyde wrote that his associates “are willing to help if we/you would like a price. Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money... what I was told.”

In a subsequent message to Parnas the next day he wrote: “If you want her out they need to make contact with security forces.”

The text messages, strongly suggesting that Parnas had placed a tail on former Ambassador Yovanovich, also mentions a "price" and "if you want her out".

Doesn't take a genius.

And yeah, we need to hear from Hyde, Parnas, and Giuliani under oath.  Now.

The Vox guys explain more.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

I don't believe this from CBS News for a second.

The White House is preparing for some Republican senators to join Democrats in voting to call witnesses in President Trump's impeachment trial, which could get underway in the coming days.

Senior White House officials tell CBS News they increasingly believe that at least four Republicans, and likely more, will vote to call witnesses. In addition to Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and possibly Cory Gardner of Colorado, the White House also views Rand Paul of Kentucky as a "wild card" and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee as an "institutionalist" who might vote to call witnesses, as one official put it.

Last week, Collins said she was working with a "fairly small group" of GOP senators to allow new testimony, adding that her colleagues "should be completely open to calling witnesses." Romney has expressed an interest in hearing from former national security adviser John Bolton, who has said he would testify under subpoena. Murkowski said last week that the Senate should proceed as it did during the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial.

By the end of this week, this will become "McConnell tamps down GOP calls for impeachment witnesses" and we'll all have a good uncomfortably long awkward laugh.  This is being done on purpose to sandbag Collins and to justify Trump attacking her to keep her in line.

Look, every time the country has turned to even a few GOP senators to rein in Trump, they have folded and Mitch McConnell has rounded them up, or Donald Trump has openly attacked them in tweets, or both.

Every time, they fold.

This time will be no different.

You are crazy to think otherwise.

This feels like a smart leak from the White House to gin up tons of calls aimed at vulnerable, wavering Senators. Hope it's answered by an equal and opposite effort on the left. https://t.co/gr6AVYCwhw

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) January 13, 2020

Climate Of Fear, EU Edition

The giveaway that the fascist, racist right in America will start adopting climate change as the reason for autocracy as well as ending immigration, the twin battle cries to "save our way of life", is coming from Europe's scarier corners, specifically people like Austria's leader, Sebastian Kurz.

Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said it is the government's duty to "protect young girls" from the harmful side-effects of immigration, defending his pledge to ban headscarves in schools for girls under the age of 14.

In an interview with the Financial Times, published Monday, Kurz also said controlling illegal immigration is at least as pivotal as tackling climate change, adding that both issues will be on top of his government's agenda.

“It is important to protect our environment but it is also important to decide who will live in our country," he said, adding that better control of immigration is an integral part of protecting cultural identity. He also announced more drastic measures to guarantee national security, such as preventive detention of immigrants suspected of religious extremism.

Kurz leads a governing coalition with the Greens after striking a deal earlier this month. While immigration and cultural identity traditionally are key concerns of Kurz's conservative People's Party (ÖVP), the Greens have long demanded a more ambitious strategy to protect the environment.

Kurz said Austria will strive to attain carbon neutrality by 2040.

Reelected in 2019 after his previous coalition government with the right-wing FPÖ collapsed over the so-called Ibiza scandal, Kurz has long championed tougher immigration rules on the national and European level, earning him both support and criticism.

I know this smacks of "well at least they made the trains run on time" reductionist claptrap, but climate change is going to be so awful over the next decade that fascists are simply going to use it to their advantage as we become a world of isolated, nationalist islands fighting over limited resources.

We won't survive.

StupidiNews!

• The US federal deficit topped $1 trillion from January to December 2019 as the Trump regime's tax cuts for the rich outpaced increased income from tariffs.
• UK's top defense official says he is "worried" that the Trump regime will withdraw from leadership around the world.
• South Korean President Moon Jae-in says that North Korea still wants to engage in "productive dialogue" with the United States.
• Officials in Puerto Rico say power has been restored to 99% of customers on the island after last week's 6.4-magnitude earthquake, but are asking residents to limit usage to keep the system stable.
• Tesla continues to be the largest automaker in the world on paper, the company's stock valuation is now worth more than GM and Ford combined.