Last Call For Supreme Misgivings

Just letting everybody know that there's yet another reason why Brett Kavanaugh shouldn't be confirmed as Justice Anthony Kennedy's replacement on the Supreme Court, and that's because he will destroy the checks and balances on the man who nominated him.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh suggested several years ago that the unanimous high court ruling in 1974 that forced President Richard Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes, leading to the end of his presidency, may have been wrongly decided. 

Kavanaugh was taking part in a roundtable discussion with other lawyers when he said at three different points that the decision in U.S. v. Nixon, which marked limits on a president’s ability to withhold information needed for a criminal prosecution, may have come out the wrong way. 

A 1999 magazine article about the roundtable was part of thousands of pages of documents that Kavanaugh has provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the confirmation process. The committee released the documents on Saturday. 

Kavanaugh’s belief in robust executive authority already is front and center in his nomination by President Donald Trump to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. The issue could assume even greater importance if special counsel Robert Mueller seeks to force Trump to testify in the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

“But maybe Nixon was wrongly decided — heresy though it is to say so. Nixon took away the power of the president to control information in the executive branch by holding that the courts had power and jurisdiction to order the president to disclose information in response to a subpoena sought by a subordinate executive branch official.  That was a huge step with implications to this day that most people do not appreciate sufficiently...Maybe the tension of the time led to an erroneous decision,” Kavanaugh said in a transcript of the discussion that was published in the January-February 1999 issue of the Washington Lawyer. 

At another point in the discussion, Kavanaugh said the court might have been wise to stay out of the tapes dispute. “Should U.S. v. Nixon be overruled on the ground that the case was a nonjusticiable intrabranch dispute? Maybe so,” he said. 

Kavanaugh was among six lawyers who took part in the discussion in the aftermath of independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Kavanaugh had been a member of Starr’s team. 

The discussion was focused on the privacy of discussions between government lawyers and their clients. 

Philip Lacovara, who argued the Watergate tapes case against Nixon and moderated the discussion, said Kavanaugh has long believed in a strong presidency. “That was Brett staking out what has been his basic jurisprudential approach since law school,” Lacovara said in a telephone interview Saturday. 

Still, Lacovara said, “it was surprising even as of 1999 that the unanimous decision in the Nixon tapes case might have been wrongly decided.”

Trump is trying to appoint someone who will almost certainly rule in his favor on his multiple Constitutional abuses.  Trump remains under investigation.  Under no circumstances should this nomination move forward while that is the case.

Whether or not Democrats are willing to do what is needed to stop Kavanaugh will determine where this country is in a few short years.

If we still have one.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

It was only a matter of time before news organizations started digging up the travel agenda of accused Russian agent Maria Butina, currently under arrest and federal indictment for, among other things, being the conduit between her Moscow boss Alexander Torshin and the NRA and GOP, but Butina was everywhere, and we're just now starting to learn who else she was involved with.

Accused Russian agent Maria Butina had wider high-level contacts in Washington than previously known, taking part in 2015 meetings between a visiting Russian official and two senior officials at the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury Department.

The meetings, revealed by several people familiar with the sessions and a report from a Washington think tank that arranged them, involved Stanley Fischer, Fed vice chairman at the time, and Nathan Sheets, then Treasury undersecretary for international affairs.

Butina traveled to the United States in April 2015 with Alexander Torshin, then the Russian Central Bank deputy governor, and they took part in separate meetings with Fischer and Sheets to discuss U.S.-Russian economic relations during Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration.

The two meetings, which have not been previously reported, reveal a wider circle of high-powered connections that Butina sought to cultivate with American political leaders and special interest groups.

The meetings with Fischer and Sheets were arranged by the Center for the National Interest, a Washington foreign policy think tank that often advocates pro-Russia views.

The meetings were documented in a Center for the National Interest report seen by Reuters that outlined its Russia-related activities from 2013 to 2015. The report described the meetings as helping bring together “leading figures from the financial institutions of the United States and Russia.”

Not a good look, but it seems the Treasury Department and Fed meetings were an excuse to be in town for the real deal arranged by the Center for National Interest.  And again, the time frame shows this was a long-term operation.

During the same trip, Torshin and Butina also participated in a private “off the record” discussion at the center about the “Russian financial situation and its impact on Russian politics,” according to people familiar with the meeting and the think tank’s report. That event was moderated by the group’s chairman emeritus, former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the report showed. Greenberg did not return calls for comment.

Among the think tank’s board members is David Keene, a former NRA president and former chairman of the American Conservative Union. Keene has previously been photographed alongside Butina at events.

Paul Saunders, the think tank’s executive director, said Torshin spoke at an April 2015 event about the Russian banking system and Butina attended. Saunders said people at the organization cannot recall details of Torshin’s presentation.

“We were unaware of any charges or suspicions of illegal or inappropriate conduct or of any connections to Russian intelligence services,” Saunders said in an email.

Prosecutors said the think tank’s magazine published an article by Butina in June 2015 in which she said “certain U.S. politicians and Russians share many common interests.”

Randy Weber, a Republican U.S. congressman from Texas, also met with Torshin during the April trip, according to the think tank’s documents. A spokeswoman for Weber did not respond to multiple calls or emails seeking comment.

But it wasn't just Butina's contact with Americans that was disturbing, it was her contacts with prominent and wealthy Russians in America as well.

Maria Butina, the Russian woman charged in federal court lastweek with acting as an unregistered agent of her government,received financial support from Konstantin Nikolaev, a Russian billionaire with investments in U.S. energy and technology companies, according to a person familiar with testimony she gave Senate investigators. 

Butina told the Senate Intelligence Committee in April that Nikolaev provided funding for a gun rights group she represented, according to the person. A spokesman for Nikolaev confirmed that he was in contact with her as she was launching the pro-gun rights group in Russia between 2012 and 2014. He declined to confirm whether Nikolaev gave her financial support. 

Nikolaev’s fortune has been built largely through port and railroad investments in Russia. He also sits on the board of American Ethane, a Houston ethane company that was showcased by President Trump at an event in China last year, and is an investor in a Silicon Valley start-up. 

Nikolaev has never met Trump, according to his spokesman. 

However, Nikolaev’s son Andrey, who is studying in the United States, volunteered in the 2016 campaign in support of Trump’s candidacy, according a person familiar with his activities. Konstantin Nikolaev was spotted at the Trump International Hotel in Washington during Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, according to two people familiar with his presence. 

In a court filing last week, prosecutors said Butina’s emails and chat logs are full of references to a billionaire as the “funder” of her activities. They wrote that the billionaire is a “known Russian businessman with deep ties to the Russian Presidential Administration.” 

Prosecutors did not identify Butina’s funder by name but said he travels often to the United States and was listed by Forbes this year as having a net worth of $1.2 billion — which is the same as Nikolaev’s current listing.

A whole lot of people met Maria Butina over the last three years.  It's clear just how much of a keystone she was to this operation.

A whole lot of people are in trouble because of that.

A whole lot of people should be sweating prison right now.

Maria Butina, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn are just the beginning.

Stay tuned.

Sunday Long Read: The Last Blockbuster

Justin Heckert at The Ringer gives us the last days of the final three Blockbuster Video stores in Alaska, stores that went for eight years after their corporate home collapsed in 2010 after a double hurricane of Redbox and Netflix, in a land where renting videos and DVDs was king of the frontier.

It was hard to remember exactly what it had been like to rent a movie. What it felt like on a Friday or Saturday night, hoping all the copies in the NEW RELEASE section weren’t already gone. What it felt like to run into people, the serendipity of movie store as gathering spot, what it felt like to stand around the counter and listen to the banter of the staff, who knew each other’s tastes, and peccadillos. The slogans that were everywhere — MAKE IT A BLOCKBUSTER NIGHT! — on walls and the desks and dangling on string from the overhead tiles. It was hard to remember exactly how bright it was in Blockbuster, and just how big the stores were, and the gray-blue carpeting and that the walls were yellow-dull and they all looked pretty much the same. And that its membership cost nothing at all, that going there and getting a movie didn’t require an entry fee, like the internet. That even the video games had stickers, like it was a corporate mandate to slap them on everything: TO PLAY IS HUMAN. TO REWIND IS DIVINE. That children had a kind of feral autonomy unsupervised in the Family sections of the store. That it was fun to go just to … go, having no idea what to get; that it was OK not to have instant access to the previews of every movie, to make a choice by relying on instinct.

The general manager saw this phenomenon in Anchorage, Alaska. At the Blockbuster on Debarr Road, the busiest Blockbuster and the biggest of the three in the state, a store that had peaked years ago at $2 million in annual sales, one of the most popular stores in the country. A store that had thrived years after corporate went bankrupt in 2010. A store that had survived under the ownership of a man in Texas, made its sustenance in renting tons of New Releases, and TV series, and selling candy, and keeping late fees.

For the regular customers, of course, the residents, renting movies there hadn’t really changed; it was a continuous part of life — they dropped them off in the slot by the door, and used laminated cards, and argued about late fees like it was 1997. And tourists came, too, the tourists who dreamed about Alaska; the tourists who got out of their cabs and rental cars and could see the white panorama of the mountains just beyond the Blockbuster Video sign in that strip mall, who took selfies in the parking lot, the tourists who entered and stood inside the store almost breathless in the landscape of alphabetized physical media. The tourists whom Kevin Daymude watched with their mouths hanging open and the edges of their eyes puckering with tears.

“You get these stories … it’s amazing,” he said. “‘I had my first date at Blockbuster!’ Or, ‘I met someone at Blockbuster and married them; we hit it off with the same kind of movies.’”

Kevin was 55. He was not a fan of technology, or Netflix, a word he used like a slur. He’d worked for Blockbuster for 27 years. “I think technology has really hindered us,” he said. “Hindered our social skills. I mean, how many times you see on commercials, You don’t have to leave the comfort of your own home! Well, I’m sorry, I like to leave my home. I don’t want to sit there and do my shopping online.” Kevin was a former college defensive tackle, and he was bald and had huge forearms and he was tan. He wore slender, black-frame glasses, he had a trimmed silver beard, and in a store that was full of sounds — the beeping of the bar code scanners, the Disney movies playing overhead, the phones ringing, the cases snapping — the most memorable was the wheezing of his constant and almost habitual laugh: “Whoo, hahah, hehhehe!” Everything seemed to make him laugh, which made it fun to be in the store. He hated Redbox. Redbox? “It’s a vending machine,” he said. “Hoo-hehh, heah! Think about it.”

“When I have someone come in and say, ‘Kevin, do you know anything about John Wayne?’ and I say, ‘Well, YEAH, I’m a John Wayne fanatic,’ I mean, that happens. All. The. TIME! Hooehee-hah!”

The assistant manager, Danielle Provence, nicknamed Dani, kind of a badass behind the counter, was great at remembering whether the store had certain movies in stock, and rolled her own cigarettes. She was 24 and took classes at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She said to him, “Do you know why the Scarecrow won an Academy Award?”

“Wizard of Oz?” Kevin asked.

“Ha! No … it’s because he was out standing in his field.”

At this Kevin bellowed, took his glasses off, and said, “Shut uuuup, hehahah!”

“That guy who was just [here], he does the cleanest jokes,” she said. “I love that guy. … That’s his thing! He likes clean ones. They’re hilarious.”

“Oh my gosh, go away,” Kevin replied.

This type of interaction at a video store, this type of customer service, was a dying art, and was definitely not enough to keep the business going. That was the painful truth. No matter how many customers knew Dani and Kevin, or called themselves regulars, or came in to rent 15 individual discs of different TV series, time was running out.

“I gotta come and give Kevin hugs,” said Deb Day, 63, a lady wearing a ball cap who rolled up her sleeves to show vivid tattoos of snakes and flowers and birds on her arms. “Why do I come here? … I could probably find everything I ever wanted online. I was on Netflix for a while. I like coming here, though, because I got to know the people. … And so, when you don’t have this” — she waved her tatted arm around the store — “you really start cutting yourself off. I work with a lot of people who are younger than me, and they laugh at me. For being here. … ‘Why am I not streaming?’ and I tell them, I like being able to get in my car, come here, bitching to Kevin.”

The joke about Anchorage was that it was 10 years behind the Lower 48, like that’s how long it took for time to breach the barrier of the mountains. But the store was going to close and the joke about time no longer applied to the situation. The store was wondrous in its nostalgia, though, in its hum of movement and goings-on; so it was easy to feel the arguments skew in support of the past. Netflix, for example, didn’t have a bargain bin or a giant Yoda holding a cane, and it didn’t have Dani, and it didn’t have Kevin, guffawing about how he’d won Yoda in a contest years ago and put it on top of the Monster Energy drink cooler and swore he would sell it only if he could make 10 grand.

This Blockbuster had 26 copies of Black Panther, an entire shelf, which made the movie seem even bigger. And Toxic Waste–brand gummy bears. The movies in the Foreign section had all been carefully stickered with the tiny flag of the origin country, a nice personal touch. They had seven seasons of Ice Road Truckers. They had Richard Pryor … Here and Now and Road House 2. They had Critters 3 (with a tiny Leonardo DiCaprio!). They had a whole section of martial arts movies, and a Drama section that had faced the outside window so long — 28 years, in the sun — that all the white people on the covers of the DVDs had been blanched even whiter, so that they had almost disappeared. Many of the rental options had been out of print forever. And they had the most ridiculous item of all, the star of the show, Blockbuster’s last big draw, the item behind a glass case with bright lights shining on its leather, the thing people asked Kevin whether they could touch, and talk about, and take pictures with, the thing the local news had livestreamed on Facebook, that tourists and locals had asked Kevin to wear, that one person had offered him $20 to smell: Blockbuster in Anchorage had Russell Crowe’s used jockstrap from Cinderella Man.

It almost seems like these people were too good to be true, like they were a combination of Northern Exposure and Clerks.  But they ran these stores for year, the lived and breathed movies, and some of them were employed for almost three decades.  My generation grew up at Blockbuster.  Hell, I even worked there one summer twenty years ago.

But it's gone, officially gone.  It's not the end of the business though.  Family Video still has 700 locations across the country, mostly in the Ohio Valley, Midwest and the Carolinas.

Not in Alaska though.

The Good, The Bad, And The Shopping

GOP Sen. Rand Paul is in trouble again, this time over accusations by congressional watchdog CREW that he used donor money for personal expenses like lavish shopping trips to Europe.

Sen. Rand Paul spent hundreds of donor dollars on shopping trips and thousands on meals, travel and other expenses abroad, according to a report from nonpartisan watchdog groups released this week.

The spending was funneled through a political leadership committee, which are meant to enable lawmakers to donate to other political campaigns to secure leadership positions. But, according to the "All Expenses Paid" report, they're often used to fund "lavish lifestyles on their donors' dimes."

Paul, Kentucky's junior senator, spent $11,043 at restaurants in Italy and Malta last year through his leadership PAC, Reinventing a New Direction, according to the report.

In the same year, he spent $4,492 on limousine services in Rome and $1,904 on a hotel in Athens that boasts "breathtaking panoramic views."

His PAC, known as RAND PAC, also spent $337 on apparel at a Nebraska Men's Wearhouse, $438 on apparel at a shoe store on Madison Avenue in New York City, $201 at TJ Maxx and $1,575 at a restaurant in the Trump Hotel.

It's that last one that bothers me the most.  Paul has spent years growling about unethical spending like this, and the fact that he's just as crooked as his dad in unsurprising, it's just that he's an even worse liar about it.

In a statement sent Saturday, Paul defended his expenses, saying they were part of fundraising efforts for his leadership PAC

“This week I defended the President’s foreign policy against the establishment of both parties," Paul said. "I was rewarded with a left wing attack story about overseas spending. The truth is, I’m probably one of the only senators who has never traveled at taxpayer expense, and all trips taken were for fundraising and made money for RANDPAC.”

His expenses likely aren't against the law. They do, however, illustrate his use of political contributions for expenses that don't fall squarely in the realm of donations to other campaigns.

Paul is also highlighted in the report for his lower-than-average contributions to other candidates or committees. The report says less than 7 percent of his expenses over the past three election cycles have gone to others, according to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics. On average, 45 percent of lawmakers' leadership PAC spending goes toward such donations.

The Center for Responsive Politics shows that in the 2018 cycle, Paul's contributions to other candidates constitute 15.6 percent of spending from his leadership PAC.

The "All Expenses Paid" report, from Issue One and the Campaign Legal Center, both nonpartisan nonprofits, calls for changes to the leadership PAC fund regulations, arguing that such dollars are being abused with personal expenses by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

"Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have raised and spent millions from their leadership PACs. In doing so, they blur the lines between official and personal activity while schmoozing at venues far beyond the eyes, as well as the pocketbooks, of most of their constituents," the report said.

Of course, the Trump regime changed the rules on PACs this week, now advocacy groups don't have to disclose any donors at all as long as they can prove less than half of their expenses are going to political purposes.  You know, groups like the NRA.

Republicans are crooked as hell.  Yeah, Democrats do it too, but not to this extent.  And Trump just made it a lot easier to get away with.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

Charlie Savage at the New York Times dropped this piece tonight on Carter Page's FISA application, the basis of the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Trump administration disclosed on Saturday a previously top-secret set of documents related to the wiretapping of Carter Page, the onetime Trump campaign adviser who was at the center of highly contentious accusations by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that the F.B.I. had abused its surveillance powers. 

[Read the documents here.] 

Democrats in February rejected the Republican claims that law enforcement officials had improperly obtained a warrant to monitor Mr. Page, accusing them of putting out misinformation to defend President Trump and sow doubts about the origin of the Russia investigation. But even as Republicans and Democrats issued dueling memos characterizing the materials underlying the surveillance of Mr. Page, the public had no access to the records. 

On Saturday evening, those materials — an October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Mr. Page, along with several renewal applications — were released to The New York Times and other news organizations that had filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to obtain them. Mr. Trump had declassified their existence earlier this year. 

“This application targets Carter Page,” the document said. “The F.B.I. believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.” A line was then redacted, and then it picked up with “undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law. Mr. Page is a former foreign policy adviser to a candidate for U.S. president.”

Mr. Page has denied being a Russian agent and has not been charged with a crime in the nearly two years since the initial wiretap application was filed. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. 

The spectacle of the release was itself noteworthy, given that wiretapping under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is normally one of the government’s closest-guarded secrets. No such application materials had apparently become public in the 40 years since Congress enacted that law to regulate the interception of phone calls and other communications on domestic soil in search of spies and terrorists, as opposed to wiretapping for ordinary criminal investigations.

The contents of the documents were the source of the now infamous "Memogate" disaster in February as Republicans wanted to release "proof" that the Mueller investigation was somehow illegitimate because it was started by the "illegal" wiretap of Page.  Devin Nunes managed to screw that plan up royally.

It seems however that the Trump regime is trying the plan again by releasing redacted FISA documents, but I'm not sure what they're trying to sccomplish, as the documents make it clear Carter Page was a Russian agent working for the Trump Campaign.

I guess the plan is to try to undermine it, certainly the right-wing "legal eagles" at Power Line, Breitbart and The Federalist will be trying to do so, but the FISA documents are brutally damning.

Page has most certainly been flipped by Mueller already.  My guess is that we're about to find out very soon who Page has flipped on, and that the Trump crew wants to get away from Putin and kids in cages and get next week going on attacking the Mueller probe.

Put It On My Tabloid

One of the many side effects of the Cohen tapes are that people are starting to ask questions about what constitutes political news, and what constitutes political advocacy, even for a Trump-friendly tabloid like National Enquirer publisher AMI.

Federal authorities examining the work President Trump’s former lawyer did to squelch embarrassing stories before the 2016 election have come to believe that an important ally in that effort, the tabloid company American Media Inc., at times acted more as a political supporter than as a news organization, according to people briefed on the investigation. 

That determination has kept the publisher in the middle of an inquiry that could create legal and political challenges for the president as prosecutors investigate whether the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, violated campaign finance law. 

It could also spell trouble for the company, which publishes The National Enquirer, raising thorny questions about when coverage that is favorable to a candidate strays into overt political activity, and when First Amendment protections should apply. 

A.M.I.’s role in the inquiry received new attention on Friday with news that federal authorities had seized a recording from Mr. Cohen in which he and Mr. Trump discussed a $150,000 deal A.M.I. struck before the election, effectively silencing a woman’s claims of an affair by buying the rights to her story and not publishing it. The men also discussed whether Mr. Trump should buy the rights away from the company, which he did not ultimately do, according to a lawyer for the president, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The recording, from early September 2016, undercuts previous statements from Mr. Trump’s representatives that he did not know about the agreement between A.M.I. and the woman, the former Playboy model Karen McDougal. It also raises questions about the extent of Mr. Cohen’s involvement in the deal. 

From the beginning of the campaign, A.M.I. promoted Mr. Trump and savaged his opponents, sometimes with unsubstantiated stories alleging poor health, extramarital affairs and the use of prostitutes. A.M.I.’s chairman, David J. Pecker, is a close friend of the president and his former lawyer, and company leaders were in regular contact with Mr. Cohen, former employees have said in interviews.

By burying Ms. McDougal’s story during the campaign in a practice known in the tabloid industry as “catch and kill,” A.M.I. protected Mr. Trump from negative publicity that could have harmed his election chances, spending money to do so. 

The authorities believe that the company was not always operating in what campaign finance law calls a “legitimate press function,” according to the people briefed on the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. That may explain why prosecutors did not follow typical Justice Department protocol to avoid subpoenaing news organizations when possible, and to give journalists advance warning when demanding documents or other information.

So the feds are happy to look into this, and when you've got a candidate on tape saying he's glad to pay $150,000 to kill a nasty story on you specifically, well, it becomes very troublesome.

Of course I fully expect this to end up in front of Trump's Supreme Court some day with a 5-4 ruling finding that AMI's free speech rights were violated.  That'll be a fight for another year, I suspect.

Trump Cards, Con't

The Donald lost his marbles on the tweeting machine this morning after yesterday's Cohen tape story broke, and if you're wondering just how damaging the information on those tapes is, Trump is once again using his office and FOX News state media to call for the arrest of a private American citizen.

President Trump on Saturday described former lawyer Michael Cohen’s taping of a private conversation between them as “totally unheard of & perhaps illegal,” but he reassured supporters that he has done nothing wrong. 

Trump did not mention Cohen by name but appeared to be responding to reports that Cohen recorded a conversation with him in September 2016 in which they discussed possible payments to former Playboy model Karen McDougal -- who claimed she had an affair with Trump in 2006. 

The New York Times first reported that the FBI seized the recording during the raid earlier this year on Cohen’s office as part of an investigation into the former Trump lawyer's payments to women to shut down stories about his client leading up to the 2016 election -- a practice known as “catch-and-kill.” Fox News has confirmed the details of the tape. 

On Saturday, Trump appeared to slam both the FBI raid and Cohen’s behavior as “inconceivable.” 

“Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of,” he tweeted. “Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal.”

It's not, at least not in New York state, which has one-party consent laws for recording conversations (unlike California, which is two-party consent).   Trump knows that, it's one of the many reasons why he's based his business in NYC and not LA.

Again, the closer the various federal and state investigations get to pay dirt, the more Trump's words now will become his vile actions later.  So far, America is definitely flunking this test.

Race To The Bottom, Con't

Republicans haven't stopped being the Southern Strategy Dxiecrat party of Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, even as they became the Reagan/Bush party of "young bucks and Cadillac queens" and obsessed with the "soft bigotry of low expectations".  We've just come right back around full circle to the days of Jesse and Strom again, where good ol' Southern white supremacy is on full display with Midwest Republicans like Minnesota's Jason Lewis.

Republican Rep. Jason Lewis has a long history of racist rhetoric about African-Americans, pushing claims of a "racial war" by blacks on whites and arguing that violence regularly occurs at black gatherings. He also frequently claimed that black people have an "entitlement mentality" and viewed themselves as victims. 

Lewis made those comments on "The Jason Lewis Show," a syndicated radio program Lewis hosted from 2009 until 2014 with the tagline "America's Mr. Right." CNN's KFile obtained five months of audio from Michael Brodkorb, the former deputy chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota. Brodkorb, who is currently a columnist for the MinnPost and works in public affairs, initially reported on several comments from Lewis in 2016. KFile contacted Brodkorb to request the raw audio files of Lewis' show, which he provided. 

CNN's KFile reported on Wednesday that Lewis made a large number of deeply misogynistic comments on the show, including one monologue in which he lamented not being able to call women "sluts" anymore. 

Narrowly elected to represent Minnesota's 2nd District in 2016, Lewis is now considered one of the most endangered House Republicans in the midterm election. CNN rates the race as a "toss up," the most competitive designation. 

In a statement to CNN on Friday, Lewis' office said highlighting the congressman's past statements amounted to "an orchestrated attempt at making anyone who supports reducing illegitimacy or crime in minority communities, Voter ID laws and work requirements for public assistance back off their public policy positions." 

On his radio show in 2012, Lewis, who has described himself as libertarian Republican, regularly expressed a belief that African-Americans had an "entitlement mentality," leading to violence in the community. 

"There's a cultural problem in the African-American community that is leading to this. The entitlement mentality," Lewis said in December 2012. "You're a victim. It's OK to hate women, beat up women. It's OK to hate gays. All this, we're just sort of feeding this to people who are very lost because of the breakdown of society to begin with."

There's so much to unpack here about Lewis and his screaming hatred for black folks.  I used to live in Minnesota and there's not a hell of a lot of us in the state outside the Twin Cities, believe me.  In the Ohio Valley and the Midwest, there's still a lot of states with 90%+ white populations.  Republicans in these states absolutely believe this nonsense about us because it's been programmed into them for 30 or 40 years.

I'll be the first to admit that there's a toxic masculinity problem in America too, and it affect the black community for sure, but pretending it's just the province of black neighborhoods (or of Latino machismo) and somehow not an issue in men of all races in America is just blithe projection, especially when you're lamenting not being able to call women "sluts".

And the racism, the smug condescension, the need to control black America and to "civilize" us that Lewis displays, that we're all "criminals and savages" and that justifies us being treated as obstinate beasts of burden, well that's definitely a product of the FOX News generation of Southern Strategy Republicans taking a 50-state approach.

Lewis's opponent is Democrat Angie Craig, and I hope she wins by twenty points.  We need to get rid of these guys and their baggage.  Vote like it matters, folks.  It does.

Last Call For The Friday News Dump

I gotta tell ya, the Friday News Dump in the Trump era is really something beautiful, in the way moonlight glittering off the blades of an invading army is beautiful.

President Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recording. 

The F.B.I. seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen’s office. The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Cohen’s involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws, and any conversation with Mr. Trump about those payments would be of keen interest to them. 

The recording’s existence appears to undercut the Trump campaign’s denial of any knowledge of payments to the model. And it further draws Mr. Trump into questions about tactics he and his associates used to keep aspects of his personal and business life a secret. And it highlights the potential legal and political danger that Mr. Cohen represents to Mr. Trump. Once the keeper of many of Mr. Trump’s secrets, Mr. Cohen is now seen as increasingly willing to consider cooperating with prosecutors. 

The former model, Karen McDougal, says she began a nearly yearlong affair with Mr. Trump in 2006, shortly after Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, gave birth to their son Barron. Ms. McDougal sold her story for $150,000 to The National Enquirer, which was supportive of Mr. Trump, during the final months of the presidential campaign, but the tabloid sat on the story, which kept it from becoming public. The practice, known as “catch and kill,” effectively silenced Ms. McDougal for the remainder of the campaign.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, confirmed in a telephone conversation on Friday that Mr. Trump had discussed payments to Ms. McDougal with Mr. Cohen on the tape. He said the recording was less than two minutes long, said Mr. Trump did not know he was being recorded and claimed that the president had done nothing wrong. 

Mr. Giuliani said there was no indication on the tape that Mr. Trump knew before the conversation about the payment from the Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., to Ms. McDougal.

Two things:

1) Lordy, there are tapes.

2) Rudy Giuliani is still the worst criminal defense lawyer who ever lived, right behind Michael Cohen.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Democrats are getting young voters registered ahead of the 2018 midterms, particularly 18 to 29-year-old voters who are very eager to vote for the first time in the era of Trump and the Parkland High shooting in Florida.

Young voters are flocking to register to vote in key battleground states in the wake of the February school shooting at a Parkland, Fla. high school, according to a new analysis from Democratic data firm TargetSmart.

The report, released exclusively to NBC News, shows that young voters between the ages of 18 and 29 years old make up an increasing share of those registering to vote in a handful of key states. 

Pennsylvania has seen the sharpest increase—61 percent of new voter registrations come from young voters, compared to 45 percent before the shooting. 

Virginia, Indiana and New York have all seen an increase of about 10 percentage points in the youth share of new voter registrants, while Arizona and Florida have seen gains of about 8 percent. All of these states are home to some key Senate or House races that will play a crucial role in deciding control of Congress. 

Other key battleground states—like California, North Carolina and Ohio—have seen more modest increases. And in West Virginia, home to one of the top Senate races on the map, the youth share of new registrants fell 11.5 percentage points. 

Democrats are boosted by the general upward trend—TargetSmart found a 2 percent uptick in the share of youth registrants across the country—considering young voters skew more liberal and are more supportive of enacting new gun control measures. The February shooting in Parkland, where 17 people were killed, has served as a motivator for activists looking to make the case to pass new measures like expanding background checks and restricting access to certain weapons.

Of course, the question then becomes will Millennials even bother to vote at all even after registering, and the evidence still points to at least 75% of them staying home.  In 2014, Millennial turnout was just 21.4% and they made up just 13% of people who voted, and Democrats were stomped in races across the country as a result.

The thing is if even 30% of voters born after 1980 actually showed up to the polls, Dems would take back the House and most likely the Senate as well.  But if the turnout model is 2014 again, where white men make up a third of Millennials who do actually vote, then we're in trouble.

It's not just how many people show up, it's who shows up too, and our voting system has long been biased against younger voters.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

It's hard to overestimate the contribution America's media pundits made to helping Russia damage Hillary Clinton in 2016, and it seems some of the worst offenders are now starting to have second thoughts after finding out this week that they squarely fell into the useful idiot category over the last two years or so.  Our first contestant: Politico's Blake Hounshell.

When I wrote, back in February, that I was skeptical that President Donald Trump would ever be proved to have secretly colluded with Russia to sway the 2016 election in his favor, I mistyped.

What I meant to write was that I wasn’t skeptical.

Last week’s events have nullified my previous skepticism. To recap: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein revealed indictments against 12 Russians for the hacks of the Democratic National Committee, and we learned that Russian hackers went after Hillary Clinton’s private office for the first time on the very day Trump said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” At the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump attacked a close European ally—Germany—and generally questioned the value of the alliance. Next, he visited the United Kingdom and trashed Prime Minister Theresa May. Then, in Helsinki, he met with Vladimir Putin privately for two hours, with no U.S. officials present other than a translator. After this suspicious meeting, he sang the Russian strongman’s praises at a news conference at which he said he viewed Putin’s denials on a par with the unanimous and unchallenged conclusions of America’s intelligence agencies.

With every other world leader, the physically imposing Trump attempts to dominate—witness his alpha-male handshakes with French President Emanuel Macron or his flamboyant man-spreading next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Yet with the diminutive Putin—who is maybe 5 feet, 6 inches tall—he’s oddly submissive. During the public portion of their encounter, Trump was slumping in his chair, as if defeated. Why? Why did he insist on a one-on-one meeting with Putin in the first place?

Because Trump respects and wants what Putin has: a President-for-Life gig where he can do whatever, and arguably Putin is the wealthiest person on the planet if you start counting up the assets he truly controls.  The guy is worth maybe $200 billion, easily doubling what Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk have.  Trump wants that so badly that he can taste it, and this is a man whose taste buds are drowning in burnt steaks with ketchup.  Putin's enormous wealth is one of the worst-kept secrets on Earth, and Trump wants that for himself.

What about my argument that Trump was constitutionally incapable of keeping a secret? That, too, is no longer operative. Since I first wrote, we’ve learned that Trump—a skinflint who once had his own charity pay a $7 fee to register his son for the Boy Scouts—was willing to shell out $130,000 of his own money to hush up a fling with a porn actress, Stormy Daniels. And he still hasn’t copped to sleeping with her, despite the discovery of their nondisclosure agreement and contemporaneous evidence that the affair really happened. None of this leaked out until well after the election, proving that Trump is indeed capable of keeping his yap shut when he wants. Not convinced? How about the fact that Brett Kavanaugh’s name didn’t leak out as Trump’s latest Supreme Court pick until minutes before the announcement?

Politically speaking, Trump’s devotion to his pro-Putin line doesn’t make sense. Yes, the GOP base is impressionable, and perhaps Republican voters would accept it if Trump came out and said, “You bet, Russia helped get me elected, and wasn’t that a good thing? We couldn’t let Crooked Hillary win!” But nobody would say his odd solicitousness toward the Kremlin leader is a political winner, and it certainly causes an unnecessary amount of friction with Republicans in Congress. He’s kept it up at great political cost to himself, and that suggest either that he is possessed by an anomalous level of conviction on this one issue, despite his extraordinary malleability on everything else—or that he’s beholden to Putin in some way.

Ahh, but Trump's friendship with Vladimir very much is a political winner, especially among the white supremacist set that admires Russian "purity".  They want Trump to have what Putin has too, because it would mean that Trump would be a fascist with the power to make their fever dreams of a "white ethno-state" very much a reality.   This is Trump's base, and they love him for it, and as for the rest of Trump's voters, well it's not a dealbreaker for them, now is it?

As I keep saying, Republicans overwhelmingly approve of Putin and Trump's relationship with him.  And yes, they will absolutely start saying "Well if the Russians helped us beat that Hillary bitch, then I'm all for it to continue."

This is exactly what's happening, guys.  There's some pushback now, but once it becomes clear that Republicans want to win in 2018 by any means necessary, then they'll take the help.  Also, the pushback has been symbolic and meaningless.

Besides, the zeitgeist has moved on from kids in cages and migrant families in detention camps, remember?  Putin is already helping the GOP in 2018.

StupidiNews!

• Missouri police are still searching for survivors after 11 people were killed and several injured when a duck boat capsized during a thunderstorm near Branson's Table Rock Lake.
• Israeli lawmakers have approved a bill that defines the country as a strictly Jewish state, bringing harsh criticism from Israeli Arabs and Christians and the European Union.
• French President Emmanuel Macron has fired a bodyguard caught on camera beating a protester during May Day protests in Paris after "new facts" emerged about the incident this week.
• Donald Trump says America is "ready to go" on nearly a half-trillion in Chinese import tariffs as his trade war with Beijing escalates to a new level that could greatly affect the global economy.
• Cable giant Comcast has folded its cards on the bidding war with Disney over 21st Century Fox's media properties, Disney will pay $71.3 billion for Fox's movie and TV assets.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin is throwing in the towel on his Medicaid dental and vision cuts after massive outrage from the hundreds of thousands of people who lost coverage and a defeat in federal court.

In a surprise reversal, Kentucky officials have announced the state will rescind Medicaid cuts that eliminated dental, vision and non-emergency transportation services for nearly 400,000 Kentuckians.

In a statement released late Thursday, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services announced that "we have begun the process to reinstate vision and dental coverage, as well as non-emergency transportation services."

The statement provided no explanation for reversing cuts officials had insisted were necessary as recently as Wednesday in testimony before a state legislative committee.

It came shortly after the Courier Journal reported sources had said the administration of Gov. Matt Bevin was working on an announcement that the cuts were being rescinded.

Advocates were delighted with the prospect that dental benefits would be restored.

"That is such good news," said Jennifer Hasch, manager of dental services for the Shawnee Christian Healthcare Center in West Louisville. "I think people are going to be thrilled. I think it's weight lifted for our office, both for our patient population and our team."

State Rep. Joni Jenkins, a Shively Democrat, who had criticized the governor for cutting the benefits, said she welcomes the news.

"I'm very pleased if that's true," she said.

Sources told the Courier Journal that the state plans to reinstate the benefits by Aug. 1, but will make them retroactive to July 1, so people can visit the dentist or eye doctor during July and the provider can bill Medicaid for the services. The sources asked not to be identified, saying they were not authorized to comment.

The abrupt cuts effective July 1 created an uproar across Kentucky, catching patients and providers off guard, causing the most disruption in dental services. Dentists were forced to turn away hundreds of patients who had lost benefits overnight, many suffering from pain from severe infection and dental abscesses.

While health advocates say all three services cut—dental, vision and transportation are important—the loss of dental services were most critical because of the very poor dental health of some Kentuckians and the fact that dental abscesses and infection can be life-threatening.

Needless to say, the local news coverage over the last couple of weeks has been brutal.  The state's top health official, Health and Family Services Cabinet Secretary Adam Meier, blew his stack in an angry letter to Kentucky Democrats blaming them and the Louisville Courier-Journal coverage of the cuts for "false information".

It's funny, because Bevin's health care reforms and been nothing but disaster after disaster, with the Kynect elimination and its replacement with the awful benefind system, an online benefits portal so badly designed that tens of thousands lost benefits that they qualified for.  Now these cuts have been rolled back because Republicans are getting crushed politically, and Bevin won't admit that, but it's true.

This is good for now, but I can't help but think that Bevin will try again.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

As I said yesterday, there's plenty of evidence that Trump is going along with Putin because his ego won't allow him to admit the Russians helped him, and that he likes Putin and his autocracy, something he imagines he can have here in America.  But that doesn't mean that the evidence that Putin has compromising material on Trump should be dismissed either, as they aren't mutually exclusive, and besides, the NY Times dropped a bombshell last night that heavily favors the theory that both conditions are true.

Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.

The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.

Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.

The shifting narrative underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear than this week.

I've long suspected that Trump was briefed on the Russian attacks at some point during the transition before he was sworn in or soon after, but the story gives us an exact date (January 6, 2017) and includes the fact that Trump was outright told, using intelligence from the crown jewels of specific CIA methods and means themselves as evidence, that Putin ordered these attacks as well.

America got a nice chunk of that briefing as an unclassified version was released to the public that day.  I wrote about it on January 7th last year, and how Trump supporters immediately dismissed it on January 8.

That hasn't changed.  What did change was that the question of "What did Trump know and when did he know it?" has been definitively answered. 

The Jan. 6, 2017, meeting, held at Trump Tower, was a prime example. He was briefed that day by John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command.

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was also there; after the formal briefing, he privately told Mr. Trump about the “Steele dossier.” That report, by a former British intelligence officer, included uncorroborated salacious stories of Mr. Trump’s activities during a visit to Moscow, which he denied.

According to nearly a dozen people who either attended the meeting with the president-elect or were later briefed on it, the four primary intelligence officials described the streams of intelligence that convinced them of Mr. Putin’s role in the election interference.

They included stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been seen in Russian military intelligence networks by the British, Dutch and American intelligence services. Officers of the Russian intelligence agency formerly known as the G.R.U. had plotted with groups like WikiLeaks on how to release the email stash.

And ultimately, several human sources had confirmed Mr. Putin’s own role.

Again, Trump was outright told by America's top intelligence officers that the Russians hacked the Clinton campaign with the intent of damaging her chances in the 2016 presidential contest, and that they were working with WikiLeaks.  Trump was also told of the Steele Dossier.  Finally, Trump was told the exact case behind why the US intelligence community believed Putin gave these orders.

Since we now know when the briefing was, we now know that Trump's guilty-looking response came the same day.

After the briefings, Mr. Trump issued a statement later that day that sought to spread the blame for the meddling. He said “Russia, China and other countries, outside groups and countries” were launching cyberattacks against American government, businesses and political organizations — including the D.N.C.

Still, Mr. Trump said in his statement, “there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.”

Mr. Brennan later told Congress that he had no doubt where the attacks were coming from.

“I was convinced in the summer that the Russians were trying to interfere in the election,” he said in testimony in May 2017. “And they were very aggressive.”

For Mr. Trump, the messengers were as much a part of the problem as the message they delivered.

Mr. Brennan and Mr. Clapper were both Obama administration appointees who left the government the day Mr. Trump was inaugurated. The new president soon took to portraying them as political hacks who had warped the intelligence to provide Democrats with an excuse for Mrs. Clinton’s loss in the election.

Mr. Comey fared little better. He was fired in May 2017 after refusing to pledge his loyalty to Mr. Trump and pushing forward on the federal investigation into whether the Trump campaign had cooperated with Russia’s election interference.

Former Obama DNI James Clapper is confirming that briefing happened this morning. And let's keep in mind that instead of supporting the finding and cooperating, Trump immediately chose to attack the people who told him Putin was behind the hacking, and to mislead America about it even before he took office two weeks later.  Just a week after that briefing was held, GOP Sen. Richard Burr opened up the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the Russian attacks.

It was also the same time period that heavy suspicion started falling on Michael Flynn, then still Trump's incoming National Security Adviser, for his multiple phone calls to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak on the day then President Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in December 2016.

So what does all this mean?  Whenever Trump has publicly gone after the US intelligence community, they have fired back with a pretty solid leak precisely laying out why Trump is full of horseshit on the matter.  This time is similar, but now the stakes are high enough after Trump's performance in Helsinki that they are willing to put specific information like this out in the open in order to refute Trump's latest lies.

There's no doubt left that Trump knew Putin was behind the attacks and the propaganda.  And immediately, Trump started lying about it to the American public.

I'd like to know when Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan were told of this, especially McConnell.  McConnell doesn't get nearly enough flack for blocking any efforts to make this a public bipartisan statement before the election.

But there's now no question that Trump knew.  Does it matter, however?  As I've said, it'll only matter if Trump's hold on his cult can be broken.  There's no evidence that this will ever happen, even now.

79% of Republicans approve of Trump's summit disaster.  85% still say the Russian investigation is a distraction.  And these people will go out in November and pull the lever for Republicans and demand that Congress protect "our leader".  CBS News found similar numbers, with 68% of Republicans approving of Trump's Helsinki performance, and in fact 42% saying that they simply believe that US intelligence agencies are lying about the entire Russia investigation.  Expect that figure to go up dramatically and soon.

Any Republican who speaks out now will be crucified on national television and none of them want to be that martyr, because they crave power more than patriotism.  Trump is already parroting Russian talking points that all Democrats and any right-wing critics must want an open war with Russia.  Tens of millions of Republican voters will agree and demand continued congressional GOP cowardice, and they will get it.

And we will continue to be doomed until that wall breaks, if it ever does.  But never forget, Trump knew.  Which means all the Republican leadership knew too, and they went along 100%.

StupidiNews!

• California's state Supreme Court has blocked a ballot measure that would split the state into three separate states over questions regarding the validity of collected ballot signatures.
• Donald Trump is again proposing separate bilateral trade deals with Mexico and Canada, putting the future of NAFTA in doubt as Mexico's new president has signaled that he wants an agreement.
• Trump's nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Kathy Kraniger, faces a Senate confirmation hearing today amid questions over her qualifications from both parties.
• The EU is expected to announce a new list of retaliatory tariffs on US goods ahead of trade talks in DC next week between EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Trump.
• The FDA is coming out against the term "milk" being used in conjunction with "non-lactation" products like soy, almond, and coconut milk in a move long-sought by US dairy farmers.