Last Call For Not Having The Energy For Climate Change

The Trump regime embarrasses America again, this time with Energy Secretary Rick Perry spouting climate denier nonsense as the official position of the Klep-Trump-cracy.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry told CNBC on Monday he does not believe carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are the main driver of climate change, joining the EPA administrator in casting doubt on the conclusion of some of the government's top scientists.

Asked whether CO2 emissions are primarily responsible for climate change, Perry told CNBC's "Squawk Box": "No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in."

"The fact is this shouldn't be a debate about, 'Is the climate changing, is man having an effect on it?' Yeah, we are. The question should be just how much, and what are the policy changes that we need to make to effect that?" he said.

In March, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told "Squawk Box" he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.

Those statements contradict the public stance of the Environmental Protection Agency, at least until recently.

We're still "having the debate" so of course any action taken by our new government would be "rash" at this point, despite decades of data and literally dozens of other countries choosing to take action that we now refuse to.

The EPA's webpage on the causes of climate change used to state, "Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change." The EPA recently took down the web page containing that statement.

Perry and Pruitt's views are also at odds with the conclusion of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Despite those conclusions, Perry said, "This idea that science is just absolutely settled and if you don't believe it's settled then somehow you're another neanderthal, that is so inappropriate from my perspective."

Being a skeptic about climate change issues is "quite all right," he said, suggesting that skepticism is a sign of a "wise, intellectually engaged person."

Gravity isn't "settled science" and neither is the earth being round, so questioning that makes me smart like Rick!  At least, that's how the logic goes.  If you don't believe in science, it still doesn't give a damn about you personally but it still goes about working anyway.

Vile Speech Must Be Allowed To Exist

In a sweeping 8-0 ruling that could potentially apply to a massive number of situations, the Supreme Court issued arguably the largest First Amendment ruling in years, that the government cannot restrict trademark or copyright protections of the law on vile speech. Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post:

That’s what the Supreme Court just held this morning, in Matal v. Tam. The court was unanimous on the result and some basic principles, though split 4-4 (Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wasn’t yet on the court when the case was argued) on some details. I’ll blog more on the case throughout the day, but here are the core pillars on which the justices agreed:

1. By denying registration to trademarks that allegedly disparage certain kinds of groups, the federal trademark law (the Lanham Act) discriminates based on viewpoint:

Our cases use the term “viewpoint” discrimination in a broad sense, and in that sense, the disparagement clause discriminates on the bases of “viewpoint.” To be sure, the clause evenhandedly prohibits disparagement of all groups. It applies equally to marks that damn Democrats and Republicans, capitalists and socialists, and those arrayed on both sides of every possible issue. It denies registration to any mark that is offensive to a substantial percentage of the members of any group. But in the sense relevant here, that is viewpoint discrimination: Giving offense is a viewpoint.

We have said time and again that “the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers.” Street v. New York, 394 U. S. 576, 592 (1969). See also Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 (1989) (“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable”) [more cases omitted] …

That’s from the majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Stephen G. Breyer; but a concurring opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, agreed:

[The Government argues] that the law is viewpoint neutral because it applies in equal measure to any trademark that demeans or offends. This misses the point. A subject that is first defined by content and then regulated or censored by mandating only one sort of comment is not viewpoint neutral. To prohibit all sides from criticizing their opponents makes a law more viewpoint based, not less so. … The logic of the Government’s rule is that a law would be viewpoint neutral even if it provided that public officials could be praised but not condemned. The First Amendment’s viewpoint neutrality principle protects more than the right to identify with a particular side. It protects the right to create and present arguments for particular positions in particular ways, as the speaker chooses. By mandating positivity, the law here might silence dissent and distort the marketplace of ideas.

The Government next suggests that the statute is viewpoint neutral because the disparagement clause applies to trademarks regardless of the applicant’s personal views or reasons for using the mark. Instead, registration is denied based on the expected reaction of the applicant’s audience. In this way, the argument goes, it cannot be said that Government is acting with hostility toward a particular point of view. For example, the Government does not dispute that respondent seeks to use his mark in a positive way. Indeed, respondent endeavors to use The Slants to supplant a racial epithet, using new insights, musical talents, and wry humor to make it a badge of pride. Respondent’s application was denied not because the Government thought his object was to demean or offend but because the Government thought his trademark would have that effect on at least some Asian-Americans.

The Government may not insulate a law from charges of viewpoint discrimination by tying censorship to the reaction of the speaker’s audience. The Court has suggested that viewpoint discrimination occurs when the government intends to suppress a speaker’s beliefs … but viewpoint discrimination need not take that form in every instance. The danger of viewpoint discrimination is that the government is attempting to remove certain ideas or perspectives from a broader debate. That danger is all the greater if the ideas or perspectives are ones a particular audience might think offensive, at least at first hearing.

What this means is that as Eugene Volokh points out, the government cannot restrict trademark protections on something offensive, like the Washington Redskins.  The Washington NFL team has already declared victory and is immediately pressing the Supreme Court for relief from the Patent Office.

The 4-4 part of the ruling deals with the scope: Alito, Thomas, Roberts and of all people, Justice Breyer wanted very badly to say that the government could not weigh in on deeming commercial speech offensive at all, which would have been the largest SC ruling in decades.  It would have effectively reversed the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" precedent, rather that, the people themselves have to determine what commercial speech was unacceptable through the "discourse of regular democracy".

For now at least, the ruling is limited to what punitive actions the government can take through non-application of third-party patent protections.  In the future, well, we could have a Citizen's United-type ruling where commercial free speech is limited only by what corporate shareholders are willing to tolerate.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Syria...

As if things weren't already bad enough in the Middle East this month with the continuing blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia and the continued diplomatic reverberations from Trump's disastrous trip to Jerusalem that required more than a dozen political operatives from both parties more than a week to stabilize (because State Department? We outsourced that!) it appears now Tehran is causing major problems in Syria.

Iran's military announced on Sunday that it launched several missiles into Syria, targeting Islamic State fighters in retaliation for the attacks in Tehran on June 7. 

The missile strikes are the first reported ground-to-ground attack from Iran into Syria since the Arab country descended into a civil war in 2011. 

"In this operation, several ground-to-ground midrange missiles were fired from IRGC bases in Kermanshah Province and targeted Takfiri forces in the Deir Ezzor region in Eastern Syria," the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on its official news website, Sepah News. The IRGC uses the term Takfiri to describe ISIS. 

Tehran was rocked by two deadly attacks on June 7targeting Iran's Parliament building and a shrine dedicated to the republic's revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini. 

Six assailants killed at least 16 people in the twin attacks, which ISIS claimed. It was the first time that ISIS, a Sunni Muslim group fighting Iranian-backed militias in Syria, has claimed responsibility for an attack in Iran. 

The IRGC had vowed revenge for the attacks and accused Saudi Arabia of supporting ISIS in the operation. 

At this point we're on the edge of an impressively serious regional conflagration in the Middle East, and we barely have a functioning State Department, let alone a real diplomatic corps right now.  Trump is running around attempting to loot the US Treasury and while Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq have been various levels of awful for the last fifteen years, we're close to a full-out royal rumble.

Stay tuned.  Things are about to go from bad to much worse.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Two stories on, well, if you'll excuse the pun, the Russian front today.  The plan as of today for the Trump regime is whataboutism involving the Democrats, and deflection of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's growing list of inquiries.  First comes the most ridiculous of denials...

An attorney for President Donald Trump was adamant on Sunday that the president is not under investigation, despite the president’s tweets this week referring to one as a "witch hunt."

“Let me be clear here,” said Jay Sekulow, a member of the president’s legal team, on NBC's “Meet The Press.” “The president is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction."

On Friday morning, President Trump sent a tweet that seemed to confirm that he was under scrutiny, writing, “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt.”

But Sekulow claimed the president wasn’t referring to an actual investigation in the message, but instead a news report about one.

“The tweet from the president was in response to the five anonymous sources purportedly leaking information to the Washington Post,” he said, referring to the Post’s report this week that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the election now also includes a look at whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice.

Sekulow claimed the president is not spending a lot of time composing the tweets, but defended them as a means of speaking directly to voters, saying "he's responding to what he's seeing in the media in a way in which he thinks is appropriate to talk to those people that put him in office."

"He's not afraid of the investigation — there is no investigation," Sekulow said, adding, "there is not an investigation of the President of the United States, period."

No penalty for Sekulow to lie on TV here, which he's obviously doing and has every reason to continue doing.  Meanwhile, Trump's allies in Congress have locked on to a new target now that their plans to go after former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice failed, and their attempt to discredit Mueller ran into Trump's ham-fisted attempts to float Mueller's firing, prompting calls even from the GOP that such an act would be obviously over the line.

Their new obsession is former Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch, briefly mentioned by James Comey in his testimony earlier this month.

The move could allow Republicans to attempt to pivot away from the investigation into Russia's election meddling — which top GOP lawmakers have signaled belongs to the Intelligence Committee — and focus on Lynch, who has long been a target of Republicans.

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican who is a member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, said it “would be very helpful” for Lynch to testify before the Judiciary panel, which oversees the Justice Department.

“Frankly, a lot of what Hillary Clinton was exposed to by Director Comey’s misconduct and the way he handled that was apparently in response to his lack of confidence in the attorney general, and I think there is a lot we could learn from that,” Cornyn said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also wants to hear from Lynch and is pushing for the Judiciary Committee to “get more involved.”

“The accusations now that ... the current and former attorney general were political — that has nothing to do with Russia as much as it has to do with how the Department of Justice is being run,” he said. “I want to find out all about that.”

A spokesman for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Judiciary Committee chairman, stressed that no decisions have been made and staffers needed to first “gather evidence."

But the spokesman said it was “likely” after Comey’s remarks before the intelligence panel that Lynch’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee “will become necessary at some point.”

Republicans are tying anything to get the story off Russia, but every time Trump tweets he shoots his own party in the foot.  I suspect that this will only continue as the Trump camp gets more and more desperate.

Sunday Long Read: Landing A Narc Out Punch

We talk about US wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea and Europe, but the most costly and devastating war in US history remains the War on Drugs over the last 50 years. It's important to note that much of the collateral damage from it has fallen on our border neighbor to the south, and the town of Allende, Mexico was one of those tragic casualties.

There’s no missing the signs that something unspeakable happened in Allende, a quiet ranching town of about 23,000, just a 40-minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas. Entire blocks of some of the town’s busiest streets lie in ruins. Once garish mansions are now crumbling shells, with gaping holes in the walls, charred ceilings, cracked marble countertops and toppled columns. Strewn among the rubble are tattered, mud-covered remnants of lives torn apart: shoes, wedding invitations, medications, television sets, toys.

In March 2011 gunmen from the Zetas cartel, one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, swept through Allende and nearby towns like a flash flood, demolishing homes and businesses and kidnapping and killing dozens, possibly hundreds, of men, women and children.

The destruction and disappearances went on in fits and starts for weeks. Only a few of the victims’ relatives — mostly those who didn’t live in Allende or had fled — dared to seek help. “I would like to make clear that Allende looks like a war zone,” reads one missing person report. “Most people who I questioned about my relatives responded that I shouldn’t go on looking for them because outsiders were not wanted, and were disappeared.”

But unlike most places in Mexico that have been ravaged by the drug war, what happened in Allende didn’t have its origins in Mexico. It began in the United States, when the Drug Enforcement Administration scored an unexpected coup. An agent persuaded a high-level Zetas operative to hand over the trackable cellphone identification numbers for two of the cartel’s most wanted kingpins, Miguel Ángel Treviño and his ​brother Omar.

Then the DEA took a gamble. It shared the intelligence with a Mexican federal police unit that has long had problems with leaks — even though its members had been trained and vetted by the DEA. Almost immediately, the Treviños learned they’d been betrayed. The brothers set out to exact vengeance against the presumed snitches, their families and anyone remotely connected to them.

Their savagery in Allende was particularly surprising because the Treviños not only did business there — moving tens of millions of dollars in drugs and guns through the area each month — they’d also made it their home.

For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Treviños but never acknowledged the devastating cost. In Allende, people suffered mostly in silence, too afraid to talk publicly.

A year ago ProPublica and National Geographic set out to piece together what happened in this town in the state of Coahuila — to let those who bore the brunt of the attack, and those who played roles in triggering it, tell the story in their own words. They did so often at great personal risk. Voices like these have rarely been heard during the drug war: Local officials who abandoned their posts; families preyed upon by both the cartel and their own neighbors; cartel operatives who cooperated with the DEA and saw their friends and families slaughtered; the U.S. prosecutor who oversaw the case; and the DEA agent who led the investigation and who, like most people in this story, has family ties on both sides of the border.

When pressed about his role, the agent, Richard Martinez slumped in his chair, his eyes welling with tears. “How did I feel about the information being compromised? I’d rather not say, to be honest with you. I’d kind of like to leave it at that. I’d rather not say.”

Martinez's story is a hell of a tale, both a cautionary one and a rallying point for those opposed by the senseless ocean of blood that has been spilled over the decades in the name of "keeping our streets safe from drugs."

Give it a read.

Trials And Tribulations

Not one, not two, but three cases (well, a bad verdict, a mistrial, and a non-verdict) in the past 24 hours in three high-profile jury cases.  First, another murderous police officer is acquitted on the sole reason his victim, Philando Castle, was black, and therefore not deserving of human rights.

A jury found St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty Friday in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, whose livestreamed death during a traffic stop stunned a nation.

Castile’s family called the decision proof of a dysfunctional criminal justice system, while prosecutors cautioned the public to respect the jury’s verdict “because that is the fundamental premise of the rule of law.”

“I am so disappointed in the state of Minnesota,” Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, said at a news conference shortly after the verdict was read in court about 2:45 p.m. “My son loved this state. He had one tattoo on his body and it was of the Twin Cities — the state of Minnesota with TC on it. My son loved this city and this city killed my son. And the murderer gets away.”

Hours later, at the tail end of a protest march through the streets of St. Paul, hundreds of people headed out on Interstate 94 at Dale, shutting down the freeway. Over the course of about an hour, the crowd thinned out and was moved to a ramp near Marion before State Patrol officers moved in after 12:30 a.m. Saturday and began making 18 arrests. Among those arrested were reporters Susan Du of City Pages and David Clarey of the Minnesota Daily, who were covering the protest.

The decision came on the last day of a three-week trial in a case that had been closely watched ever since Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, livestreamed the brutal aftermath on Facebook.

The jury of five women and seven men reached its verdict after about 30 hours of deliberations over five days. They appeared stalled Wednesday, and were called into the courtroom and asked to continue deliberations. Juror Dennis Ploussard said the jury was deadlocked 10 for acquittal, two for conviction until Friday afternoon.

It didn't matter that Castle's death was effectively broadcast to the nation, he was pulled over by a cop, the cop "felt his life was in danger" and Castle's life was ended.  That's all it takes to die as a criminal if you're black in America, the gut feeling of a cop and your life is forfeit without due process or recompense.  You die.  That's it.  The end.

If you're however a famous black celebrity who preyed on women for decades, you're fine.  Jurors were unable to come to a decision on the guilt of actor Bill Cosby.

The judge in the Bill Cosby trial declared a mistrial Saturday after the jury failed to reach a verdict in the case. The jurors -- five women and seven men -- were unable to come to a unanimous decision in a courtroom battle closely watched by the public as well as dozens of women who have accused Cosby of similar misconduct in the past. Cosby faced three charges of aggravated indecent assault.

Prosecutors announced they will retry the case.

Again, the Defense team was able to get a mistrial and rested their case after six minutes and it was enough to force a mistrial after six days.

That brings us to here in Cincy, where the trial of Sam DuBose's killer continues as Ray Tensing himself took the stand at the end of his retrial.

As Ray Tensing tried to open the car door, Sam DuBose pulled it shut with his left hand and restarted the car with his right.

Then came Tensing's decision to reach inside and try to remove the key from the ignition. His attorney called it a mistake. A prosecution witness said it was “tactically unsound.”

“He was so fast putting the car into drive," Tensing testified Friday. "He just mashed the accelerator to the floor.”

The former University of Cincinnati police officer said his left arm became “trapped,” pinned against the steering wheel by one of DuBose’s arms. He said he lost his balance and fell backwards as DuBose accelerated.

Tensing, who was 25 at the time, felt his body “moving with the car.”

“Instinctively, I reached for my gun,” he said. “I didn’t want to get sucked under his car and run over."

Tensing fired one shot to DuBose’s head, killing him instantly. The 1998 Honda Accord drove up the Mount Auburn street and crashed about 300 feet away through a guardrail into a utility pole.

Jurors heard Tensing explain the July 2015 incident, as he took the stand in his own defense and testified for more than two hours. He was the last witness called by his attorney, Stew Mathews.

Closing arguments in the retrial are set to begin Monday in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. Before jurors left for the day, Judge Leslie Ghiz told them to pack enough clothes for a two-night stay. The 12 jurors and four alternates will be sequestered if necessary during deliberations.

I have little to no hope for Tensing to be convicted.   Black people are simply vermin to be shot at the will of cops in America.  I'm only alive because my time hasn't come yet, I guess.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

The slow death of the civil rights era under the Trump regime continues as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will proceed with handcuffing the department's civil rights office, because systemic racism and sexism in education is embarrassing to Dear Leader, so in order to Make America Great Again™ it will no longer be exposed or even acknowledged.

The Department of Education is scaling back investigations into civil rights violations at the nation’s public schools and universities, easing off mandates imposed by the Obama administration that the new leadership says have bogged down the agency.

According to an internal memo issued by Candice E. Jackson, the acting head of the department’s office for civil rights, requirements that investigators broaden their inquiries to identify systemic issues and whole classes of victims will be scaled back. Also, regional offices will no longer be required to alert department officials in Washington of all highly sensitive complaints on issues such as the disproportionate disciplining of minority students and the mishandling of sexual assaults on college campuses.

The new directives are the first steps taken under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to reshape her agency’s approach to civil rights enforcement, which was bolstered while President Barack Obama was in office. The efforts during Mr. Obama’s administration resulted in far-reaching investigations and resolutions that required schools and colleges to overhaul policies addressing a number of civil rights concerns.

That approach sent complaints soaring, and the civil rights office found itself understaffed and struggling to meet the department’s stated goal of closing cases within 180 days.

The office’s processing times have “skyrocketed,” the Education Department spokeswoman, Liz Hill, said, adding that its backlog of cases has “exploded.” The new guidelines were to ensure that “every individual complainant gets the care and attention they deserve,” she said.

In the memo, which was first published by ProPublica, Ms. Jackson emphasized that the new protocols were aimed at resolving cases quickly.

“Justice delayed is justice denied, and justice for many complainants has been denied for too long,” Ms. Hill said in a statement.

But civil rights leaders believe that the new directives will have the opposite effect. They say that Education Department staff members would be discouraged from opening cases and that investigations could be weakened because efficiency would take priority over thoroughness.

“If we want to have assembly-line justice, and I say ‘justice’ in quotes, then that’s the direction that we should go,” said Catherine Lhamon, who was the assistant secretary of the Education Department’s civil rights office under Mr. Obama, and who now heads the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

It's so funny, these assholes see that Obama demanded action and accountablility, and then under Trump they say "Well we can't possibly close civil rights cases in six months, so why bother opening them?"

Oh well, black and brown people with inferior schools, you're on your own. As long as Taylor and Hunter and Cameryn are OK in their school in the suburbs, well why would their parents need to worry about the rest of those kids in school district?

They don't need no education if it's going to come at the expense of the zero-sum game of education funding in America, right?

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

For a guy who is "vindicated" and "not under investigation" Trump sure is doing a bang-up job of lawyering up.

President Donald Trump has added another high-profile lawyer to his personal legal team as the special counsel investigation heats up.

John Dowd, who investigated Pete Rose for Major League Baseball and represented John McCain during the Keating Five Scandal, among other high-profile clients, has joined the president's legal team, according to two people familiar with the pick. Dowd declined to comment Friday.

The addition of Dowd, a 76-year-old former prosecutor who has practiced law in Washington for decades, adds an experienced hand in the investigation. He joins Marc Kasowitz, Trump's longtime New York lawyer, Mark Bowe, who works with Kasowitz, and Jay Sekulow.

Trump and his aides are facing multiple investigations, including a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller into allegations Russian leaders tried to meddle in last year's election and that Trump's campaign colluded with the Kremlin in the effort. The probe has since expanded to also look at whether Trump obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, who was leading the broader Russia investigation and by allegedly pressuring intelligence officials to interfere in the probe.

Dowd is a pretty big hitter, and he's been around the DC area for decades, so he knows how the game is played.  He's the reason John McCain wasn't in prison for the Keating Five mess when I was a kid almost 30 years ago.

Now Trump has hired him.

Let that sink in.

Bit Of A Break

On vacation for a bit, so regular posting will be less than usual.

I should be around but not as much.  Just use the below image to sum up the next few days of the Trump regime.



I'll be back on normal schedule Wednesday.

Last Call For Mr. Unpopular Over Here, Con't

And the hits keep on coming for Donny Disaster.

Republicans' satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. took a hit since last month. Forty-one percent of Republicans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., down 17 percentage points since May. At the same time, satisfaction among Democrats and independents has remained low.

The honeymoon may, in fact, be over for Trump among his base.  When only the base matters, and you stop pretending you ever actually cared about said base, well, things start going bad, fast.

In the week since fired FBI Director James Comey leveled his explosive charges at the president, Capitol Hill Republicans have followed a two-track response. With virtual unanimity, they have insisted that even if Trump did everything Comey alleged, the behavior does not warrant criminal action or impeachment. And simultaneously, while the Trump-Comey confrontation has monopolized media attention, both chambers have advanced deeply conservative policy proposals—with House Republicans voting to repeal the major financial regulations approved under former President Barack Obama, and Senate Republicans working in private toward a plan to repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act. 

Both of these responses rest on the calculation that Republicans can best avoid losses in 2018 by mobilizing their base supporters, no matter how other voters respond to their actions. But the choice to aim their governing decisions at such a narrow spectrum of Americans could magnify the risks facing Republicans in 2018—and, for that matter, Trump in 2020. As Trump’s presidency careens through increasingly turbulent waters, congressional Republicans are lashing themselves ever more tightly to its mast.

That was most apparent in their collective shrug at Comey’s Senate Intelligence Committee testimony. Strikingly, no leading Republican argued that Comey was fabricating when he said Trump encouraged him to drop the FBI investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Rather, in virtual unison, Republicans declared that even if Trump made the remarks Comey reported, his actions were at most inappropriate, and not illegal. 

The unanimity among Hill Republicans contrasted sharply with the response to Comey’s testimony from the mainstream legal community. Some experts defended Trump’s actions. But a wide array of former federal prosecutors, like prominent former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara; Watergate investigators; and law professors argued that the pattern of behavior Comey described justified opening an obstruction-of-justice investigation. Congressional Republicans have summarily dismissed those conclusions. 

That supine acceptance follows the pattern established when Trump previously violated other norms, like not releasing his tax returns. Every time Trump has broken a window, GOP leaders have obediently swept up the glass, if sometimes after some initial grumbling. That pattern of deference could help explain why Trump might imagine Republicans would ultimately defend him even if he fired special counsel Robert Mueller, as he’s reportedly mused this week.

Trump went on another tirade about witch hunts and Hillary on Twitter today.  If even the base decide he's a petulant loser, then all bets are off as to what depths Trump will sink to in order to try to stay in power.

Guess Who's Coming To Father's Day

The Trump regime isn't even really trying to hide their contempt for public education anymore, and are just being obviously awful now whenever Education Secretary Betsy DeVos can manage it.

The Education Department invited representatives from two anti-LGBT groups to speak at a secretive event on Thursday, a move that prompted the national Parent Teacher Association to pull out of the daylong "Engaging Fathers and Families" event. 

Representatives for the evangelical groups Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council — which advocate for gay conversion therapy — both spoke at the event, according to a copy of the agenda that was obtained by BuzzFeed News, sitting on a panel called "Family Engagement in Faith-based Organizations." The agenda was first reported by Politico. 

The National PTA, which has 4 million members nationwide, said it withdrew from the event after it learned of the two groups' participation, saying in a statement that they were "not in alignment" with the PTA's stance on protecting gay youth. 

The event Thursday, which was hosted ahead of Father's Day, included several high-level officials, including acting undersecretary Jim Manning and the head of elementary and secondary education. 

While the event was live streamed, there was no agenda made publicly available in advance. 

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did not attend the event, according to the agenda. She has said publicly that she "supports equality" and has "always" been opposed to gay conversion therapy, but under her watch, the department has come under fire for several stances that advocates say harm gay children. Along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, DeVos rescinded protections for transgender children put in place by the Education and Justice departments under Barack Obama. 

DeVos's extended family are some of the biggest donors to both Focus and the Family and FRC, giving millions of dollars over the course of the past decade.

On its website, FRC warns of the danger of allowing gays to raise children, and it has falsely claimed that gay men are more likely to sexually abuse children in their care.

I've long talked about the DeVos dream of privatizing the tens of billions spent on public education in America and creating a permanent two-tier system where only the "right kids" get a quality education, and "undesirable" children get nothing...hey, maybe they don't even need an education because they should maybe start working for a living, the little vermin.  The notion that groups like the FRC weren't specifically invited by DeVos, one of their biggest donors, is too stupid to fathom as she bravely ducked out of the meeting.

After all, you need to cover both ends of the school to prison pipeline in this country, and you have to profit from it while doing it.

The Trumpcare Tornado

Folks, it's not going to be just tens of millions of people on Medicaid or individual plans who are going to be utterly screwed should Trumpcare pass, it will also be tens of millions of people on employer group plans who will suddenly find themselves facing denied insurance coverage over the return of annual and lifetime coverage limits.

The Senate health care bill is expected to allow states to relax the Affordable Care Act rules only on benefits, not on pricing as the House bill does. But that change could impact people far beyond those states, according to a new analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress — because it could lead to a return of annual and lifetime benefit limits, and not just in the states with the waivers. 

The bottom line: As many as 27 million Americans could face annual limits on their coverage, and 20 million could be hit with lifetime limits, according to the analysis.

That's more than eight million people in the big Trump states: Florida, NC, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan who will get screwed by annual limits, and five million plus who will get lifetime limits on their employer-based coverage.

But that's what you voted for, America.

Why it could happen: The Affordable Care Act bans lifetime and annual limits, but only for the 10 categories of "essential health benefits" defined in the law. If a state decides that, say, prescription drugs or maternity care aren't essential benefits anymore, insurers can bring back annual and lifetime limits for them.

Why it could spread beyond those states: Large employers that operate in several states can choose which state they want to use as the basis for their benefits. So if an employer operates in 15 states, and one of them has a waiver from ACA benefit rules, it can set all of its benefits based on that state.

How the study was done: CAP based its estimates on a Willis Towers Watson survey of large employers, in which 20 percent said they'd bring back annual limits and 15 percent said they'd bring back lifetime limits if the ACA rules were repealed. It also used survey data suggesting how many people get their health insurance from large employers.

So that means that big blue states like California, New York, and Illinois would get screwed too as long as they provide insurance in red states who will waive protections on patients.   That's what those states didn't vote for, but hey.

And remember, this is the Senate bill we're talking about.  The details are still hidden because Mitch and the boys don't want America to see the cockroaches scatter in the light.  America overwhelmingly hates this plan, but it looks more and more like we're going to get it anyway, and Trump will sign it into law and screw tens of millions of us.

Fun, huh?

StupidiNews!

• The death toll in Wednesday's Grenfell Tower apartment block fire in West London has risen to 17 with more casualties expected as firefighters continue to search the gutted building.
• In addition to yesterday's shooting at a Virginia baseball field that left GOP Rep. Steve Scalise in critical condition, two more shootings happened yesterday in Brooklyn and San Francisco.
• Donald Trump will visit the US Supreme Court today under the cloud of his Muslim ban case as the court's newest Justice, Neil Gorsuch, is officially sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts.
• Furniture stores in the UK are suffering industry-wide slumps as Brexit uncertainty is driving couch and chair buyers away from shopping.
• Stanford researchers are working on new wireless power charging technology that takes advantage of some of the properties of quantum physics to get the job done.

Last Call For Russian To Judgement, Con't

Republicans are busy pretending that Trump has been exonerated already and that there was never any evidence at all of collusion, going so far as to compare the "liberal nutjob conspiracy" of Russian collusion to birtherism or 9/11 truther stuff, rather hysterically rich stuff considering Trump was a major proponent of pushing the Obama was born in Kenya story himself.

Millions of American believe the worst about their current president, claims every bit as toxic in their own way as “truther” smears against George Bush or “birther” smears against Barack Obama. The Trump collusion narrative has gotten a far wider and more respectable hearing than either of the two conspiracy theories that plagued the Bush and Obama administrations. Truth is truth, and it’s important for responsible people to not just understand and respond to actual evidence — no matter where it leads — but also acknowledge its absence. And so far the absence of evidence points to Trump’s innocence of some of the worst allegations ever leveled against an American president or his senior team.

The right is convinced that the collusion story is over and done and that "nobody cares about Russia anymore, there's no evidence."  The problem is that the Trump regime has done a pretty lousy job of hiding the fact they've gone to great lengths to stop the investigation to determine if there's collusion or not, and that leads us to the old Nixonian adage "The cover-up is worse than the crime".

The special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election is interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes an examination of whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice, officials said.

The move by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to investigate Trump’s conduct marks a major turning point in the nearly year-old FBI investigation, which until recently focused on Russian meddling during the presidential campaign and on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Investigators have also been looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates, officials said.

Trump had received private assurances from then-FBI Director James B. Comey starting in January that he was not personally under investigation. Officials say that changed shortly after Comey’s firing.

Five people briefed on the requests, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said that Daniel Coats, the current director of national intelligence, Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, and Rogers’s recently departed deputy, Richard Ledgett, agreed to be interviewed by Mueller’s investigators as early as this week. The investigation has been cloaked in secrecy, and it is unclear how many others have been questioned by the FBI.

So there's now three components to Mueller's investigation:  Possible Russian collusion with Trump to help throw the election, Trump's possible money laundering through Russian connections, and the possible obstruction of justice.  Republicans are trying to convince you that while the first has no solid evidence yet, that the money laundering and obstruction must be FAKE NEWS too.  Hence the pressure on Mueller to resign or to be fired by Trump.

That's not how this actually works, of course.

The NSA said in a statement that it will “fully cooperate with the special counsel” and declined to comment further. The office of the director of national intelligence and Ledgett declined to comment.

The White House now refers all questions about the Russia investigation to Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz.

“The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Kasowitz.

The officials said Coats, Rogers and Ledgett would appear voluntarily, though it remains unclear whether they will describe in full their conversations with Trump and other top officials or will be directed by the White House to invoke executive privilege. It is doubtful that the White House could ultimately use executive privilege to try to block them from speaking to Mueller’s investigators. Experts point out that the Supreme Court ruled during the Watergate scandal that officials cannot use privilege to withhold evidence in criminal prosecutions.

The obstruction-of-justice investigation of the president began days after Comey was fired on May 9, according to people familiar with the matter. Mueller’s office has taken up that work, and the preliminary interviews scheduled with intelligence officials indicate that his team is actively pursuing potential witnesses inside and outside the government.

Again, the Republicans are trying to do everything they can to shift the investigation away from Trump and towards the FBI, NSA, CIA and the free press.  It's a concerted effort, but judging from the opinion polls it's failing miserably.

The larger point is that obstruction of justice has been part of Mueller's investigation since the beginning. 

And Trump is terrified.

Water We Waiting For In Flint, Con't

The wheels of justice grind slowly when it comes to the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan, but eventually they will crush the guilty.

The head of the Michigan health department was charged Wednesday with involuntary manslaughter, the highest-ranking member of Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration to be snagged in a criminal investigation of Flint’s lead-contaminated water. 

Nick Lyon is accused of misconduct in office for failing to alert the public about an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the Flint area, which has been linked by some experts to poor water quality in 2014-15. 

The manslaughter charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, while the misconduct charge carries a prison sentence of up to five years. 

The state’s chief medical officer, Dr. Eden Wells, was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to a police officer. The obstruction charge carries a prison term of up to two years. 

Lyon’s failure to act resulted in the death of at least one person, 85-year-old Robert Skidmore, special agent Jeff Seipenko told a judge. 

The charges were read in court by Seipenko, a member of the state attorney general’s team. Lyon and Wells were not in court. A message seeking comment was left for Lyon’s attorneys. Wells’ lawyer was not immediately known. 

Flint began using water from the Flint River in 2014 but didn’t treat it to reduce corrosion, resulting in lead leaching from old plumbing into the water system. When the state was made aware of elevated lead levels in the drinking water, the Snyder administration confirmed the result and switched Flint back to the Detroit area water system in October 2015. 

Some experts also have linked the water to Legionnaires’ disease, a type of pneumonia caused by bacteria that thrive in warm water and infect the lungs. People can get sick if they inhale mist or vapor, typically from cooling systems. 

Twelve people died and another 79 in the Flint area were sickened in 2014 and 2015.

Hopefully more charges are coming, but the person who needs to be prosecuted and put behind bars is Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder.  Never forget that he's the man behind this mess in Flint and still hasn't fixed the problem.

More as always on Flint from our friends at Eclectablog.