Last Call For Free Of Charge

FBI Director James Comey gave Republicans and Bernie Sanders supporters the bad news today that the agency is not formally recommending charges against Hillary Clinton over her email server. Ian Millhiser explains why charges aren't forthcoming:

Clinton, like her two most recent predecessors Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, maintained at least two email accounts: one specifically set up to receive classified information and the other for other communications. Clinton’s non-classified email was hosted on a private server (as opposed to Powell’s non-classified email address, which was an AOL account), while the classified email could only be accessed if Clinton complied with a byzantine array of security rules. 

Clinton says that the emails she received at her non-classified address “were not marked classified,” although she acknowledges that “there are disagreements among agencies on what should have been perhaps classified retroactively.” Government officials also confirm that “none of the emails the State Department redacted, or any other emails made public, contained classification markings at the time they were sent.” Although the FBI determined that 110 emails did contain classified information. 

This matters because of a legal concept called mens rea. As a general rule, most crimes require prosecutors to prove that an individual acted with a particular state of mind before they can be convicted of a specific crime. Most federal laws dealing with classified information require someone to “knowingly” violate that law in order to sustain a conviction. Thus, Clinton cannot be charged with transmitting or receiving classified information based on that fact alone. She had to have acted with knowledge that specific information was classified when it was transmitted. There is little, if any, evidence that Clinton possessed this state of mind.

Stupid? Sure. Criminal? Nope. And nearly impossible to prove.

But apparently people are worried that this might be worse than the raging orange anti-semite racist Islamophobe the other team is running.

It’s hard to read Comey’s statement as anything other than a wholesale rebuke of the story Clinton and her campaign team have been telling ever since the existence of her private email server came to light in spring 2015. She did send and receive classified emails. The setup did leave her — and the classified information on the server — subject to a possible foreign hack. She and her team did delete emails as personal that contained professional information. 

Those are facts, facts delivered by the Justice Department of a Democratic administration. And those facts run absolutely counter to the narrative put forth by the Clinton operation: that this whole thing was a Republican witch-hunt pushed by a bored and adversarial media. 

Now for the key question: How much do the FBI findings hurt her campaign? 

Clinton did avoid indictment, a ruling that would have effectively ended her campaign or left it so badly weakened that there would have been a major move within Democratic circles to replace her as the nominee. 

That said, campaigns aren’t governed by the ultimate legality of what Clinton did or didn’t do. So, while dodging an indictment is a good thing — she isn’t under criminal investigation and remains a candidate — it’s a far different thing from being cleared (or even close to it) in the court of public opinion.

Umm, Hillary Clinton has been triend in the court of public opinion since Whitewater, guys. The notion that large swaths of voters are going to be affected by this narrative is next to zero (unlike an actual indictment.)

So no, barring Loretta Lynch indicting, it's not going to happen, kids.

Russian To Judgment

WaPo's Josh Rogin argues that while President Obama may have painfully learned his lesson about trying to negotiate with Republicans who only want to see him obliterated from history, he still hasn't gotten around to figuring out that Vladimir Putin is just as untrustworthy and far, far more dangerous.

The United States cannot afford to write off the U.S.-Russia relationship. There is truth to the argument that the world’s most pressing problems, including Islamic extremism, cannot be solved without some Russian involvement. But Washington cannot ignore Russia’s increasingly horrendous behavior. Russia’s dangerous military maneuvers near U.S. ships are now regular occurrences. Russian harassment and intimidation of U.S. diplomats across Europe is at an all-time high. Russian government cyberespionage and propaganda campaigns have run amok. 

“The fact is, they are engaged in a new global Cold War against the U.S.,” said Samuel Charap, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “There’s absolutely no question about that. We have this festering wound on the relationship that nobody on the U.S. side is spending much time trying to fix.” 

The United States has complicated relationships with lots of problematic countries. China, for example, is internally repressive and externally aggressive, but there’s no thought of cutting off relations with Beijing. Similarly, the policy of isolating Russia as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine has limits. Russia was determined not to cave to sanctions, and if the recent vote in the French senate is any indication, the sanctions regime will not last forever. 

“Putin is a very smart, sophisticated political animal,” said [former Ukranian PM Arseniy] Yatsenyuk. “He can wait and wait for a quite long and extensive period of time. He knows how the Western powers act.” 

The United States must establish a new relationship with Russia that is intellectually honest about Moscow’s actions and intentions while preserving whatever cooperation is possible. That may mean finding an endgame to the Ukraine sanctions before they crumble under their own weight. But it also means pushing back more against Russian provocations and raising the cost for Putin when he acts out on other fronts.

And again, that's a great idea on paper, but "raising the cost" for Putin is kind of hard to do when you need him more than he needs you.  He's perfectly fine walking away from coopoeration in Syria, continuing to hit Ukraine, and conducting a cyberspace Cold War, and frankly there's not a hell of a lot we can do to stop him without friends to back us up.

Ol' Vlad has already made most of our friends offers that they can't refuse either.  He's a smart guy and as smart as Obama is, he's outmanuvered Obama in the President's second term time and time again.

Hopefully Clinton can do a bit better, but I doubt it.  I do know that Trump will do Putin's heavy lifting for him, and Sanders would be too busy muttering about class warfare to realize Putin was taking him to the cleaners on a daily basis.

It's not looking good to "reset" the Russian relationship anytime soon, guys. He's holding most of the cards and more importantly he's willing to play them without constraint.

The Right To Connect

The United Nations has passed a resolution calling for the world's nations not to restrict internet access to citizens and affirming access as a basic human right in 2016, something that's really, really not going over well with the more repressive regimes on the planet.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed a non-binding resolution condemning countries that intentionally disrupt citizens' internet access. The resolution builds on the UN's previous statements on digital rights, reaffirming the organization's stance that "the same rights people have offline must also be protected online," in particular the freedom of expression covered under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The resolution was passed by consensus last Friday, but was opposed by a minority of authoritarian regimes including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, as well as democracies like South Africa and India. These nations called for the UN to delete a passage in the resolution that "condemns unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to our dissemination of information online." 

Resolutions like this are not legally enforceable, but put pressure on governments and give credence to the actions of digital rights advocates around the world. The UN's decision to target internet shutdowns is particularly relevant, as governments have started freely using this method as a means of controlling citizens in what appear to be even minor matters. 

Just in the last month social media sites have been throttled in Turkey after a terrorist attacks on Istanbul's airport; mobile internet has been shut down in Bahrain and India following local protests; and social media has been blocked in Algeria simply to stop students cheating on school tests. According to digital rights group Access Now, there were at least 15 internet shutdowns in 2015 around the world, and at least 20 just in 2016 so far.

Frankly, when you count the populations of China, India, Russia and the other countries that opposed the resolution, that's not a "minority" at all, it represents the governments of more than half the world's population.  That stuff matters, guys.  Many of us here in the states take access to the internet for granted.

Internet blackouts like this are only getting worse in the post-Arab Spring world and I'm betting they will continue for some time.  Internet is always the first casualty of a crackdown, it seems.

StupidiNews!

• NASA's Juno space probe has reached Jupiter's orbit after a nearly five-year flight and will spend the next several months mapping the largest planet in our solar system.
• A London law firm is suing the British government over Brexit, saying that departure from the EU requires a formal act of Parliament. 
• Three coordinated bombings in Saudi Arabia have killed four and injured dozens as Eid approaches Wednesday, signaling the end of the month of Ramadan.
• Australia's mail votes from Sunday's election are still being counted as neither current PM Malcolm Turnbull's Liberal coalition nor opposition Bill Shorten's Labor party have a majority.
• China continues cracking down on social media, calling services like Facebook and Twitter full of "hearsay" and "distortions" and banning them from being cited by state news agencies.

Last Call For The Frenemy Zone

You have to give the Clinton crew credit: they certainly know how to massage the Village in all the bipartisan erogenous zones.

Should she win the presidency, Hillary Clinton would quickly try to find common ground with Republicans on an immigration overhaul and infrastructure spending, risking the wrath of liberals who would like nothing more than to twist the knife in a wounded opposition party.

In her first 100 days, she would also tap women to make up half of her cabinet in hopes of bringing a new tone and collaborative sensibility to Washington, while also looking past Wall Street to places like Silicon Valley for talent — perhaps wooing Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook, and maybe asking Tim Cook from Apple to become the first openly gay cabinet secretary.

Former President Bill Clinton would keep a low public profile, granting few interviews and avoiding any moves that could create headaches for his wife, like his recent meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch during the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.

Mrs. Clinton would even schmooze differently than the past few presidents have. Not one to do business over golf or basketball, she would bring back the intimate style of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson, negotiating over adult beverages. Picture a steady stream of senators, congressmen and other leaders raising a glass and talking policy in the Oval Office with her and her likely chief of staff, John D. Podesta, as her husband pops in with a quick thought or a disarming compliment.

Deeply confident that she would perform better as the president than as a political candidate, Mrs. Clinton wants to pursue a whole new approach at the White House to try to break through years of partisan gridlock, according to a dozen campaign advisers and allies who described her goals and outlook. From policy goals and personnel to her instinct for patiently cultivating the enemy, Mrs. Clinton thinks she would be a better dealmaker than President Obama if she finds willing partners on the other side.

I'm with Steve M. on this: when reality comes by and kicks Hillary Clinton in the ass, it's going to get brutal, fast.

Obama also had large majorities in the House and Senate. Because of gerrymandering in GOP states, a Democratic House is next to impossible in 2017, and the widespread optimism about a Democratic takeover of the Senate seems awfully premature -- the Cook Political Report finds no current Republican seat that so much as leans Democratic (though several are tossups), and Democrats could lose Harry Reid's seat in Nevada, which is also a tossup. If Democrats take back the Senate, it'll be by one or two seats, far less than their margin in 2009.

And Republicans, up against huge Democratic majorities in 2009, still dug in their heels and blocked as much of Obama's agenda as they could manage.

Conventional wisdom says they loathed him more because he's black. I don't buy that. They've hated Hillary Clinton for a quarter of a century. Their voters despise her. And she's likely to win in the fall without being well liked by the broad electorate.

They're going to consider her weak and vulnerable. They know Democrats don't vote in midterms. So they're going to effectively shut the government down again, then blame Democrats, the party that believes in government, for the gridlock, in the hope of another off-year midterm rout.

And there is every reason to believe this will work.  Let's recall Mitch McConnell and the GOP were plotting how to obstruct the Obama agenda on his inauguration day. It worked, too.  They lost on Obamacare, but they won back Congress and all but ended the Democrats in the South in 2010 and in the Midwest in 2014, or have we forgotten that Obama 2008 swing states like Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Ohio and Florida, and even deep blue states like Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland now have GOP governors and in many cases, GOP legislatures?

Hell, the NYT is talking about "Team of Rivals" again and a new era of bipartisanship and I guarantee you that Paul Ryan will be commenting on the "growing anger by GOP rank and file over articles of impeachment" before St. Patrick's Day, if not sooner.

Grow the hell up, guys.  You'll have Republicans screaming "burn that Clinton bitch!" on the House floor from day one, and the Village will happily enable it by buying into Clinton happy talk.

Does anyone here think the party that created Trump and enabled his hatred and racism, or the 60 million racist, hate-fueled people who will vote for him in November will just magically vanish come January?

Sure, NYT.  Let's test that theory in six months.

Love Is A Battleground State

I know pundits and prognosticators have months of electoral vote predictions to make in order to get clicks and sell ads, and a big part of that is pretending that there's ten or twelve "battleground states" that are true toss-ups when the reality is that Hillary Clinton has got this in the bag. For instance, this is how prediction site 270 To Win sees the 2016 race:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

And this is ridiculous.

Here's the reality:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Even being super, super generous to Donald Trump and saying that Florida, Ohio, Nevada and New Hampshire are somehow toss-ups when I expect Clinton to win all four, Clinton still has 272 electoral votes and the presidency.

However, that does mean North Carolina is a actually true toss-up this year, and is being fought as such by both campaigns.

Politically turbulent North Carolina, where Barack Obama won in 2008 and then Republicans rose up to engineer a conservative revolution, has suddenly emerged as a focal point in the presidential race.

The battle lines will be clear Tuesday in dueling rallies in the state’s two major cities.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will appear in Charlotte alongside President Obama, who is making his debut on the campaign trail and will try to reenergize his multiethnic coalition.

That night, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will take the stage in Raleigh, where he is expected to lambast Clinton and present her as seeking a third Obama term.

The two campaigns are angling to motivate their core supporters but also to sway a large pool of newly transplanted centrist voters such as Eric and Tonya Mills, both 46, who met here in college and moved back in 2013.

“There’s just something that seems shady to me” about Clinton, said Eric Mills, a patent lawyer, as the couple strode through a “First Friday” street party last week in Raleigh. Still, he said, he did not think he could bring himself to vote for Trump, whose political rise has been a curiosity among those Mills has met on recent business trips overseas. Tonya Mills, a civil engineer, called her vote a “toss-up,” saying that if she had to vote today, she would opt for Clinton, “but it wouldn’t be with my heart behind it.”

And yes, the state is plagued by New South conservative dipsticks like the Mills here who don't see any difference in their lives between how Trump as president would affect them and how Clinton would affect them.  They've got their corporate six-figure jobs working for a Charlotte bank or an RTP biotech startup, and "Clinton, I guess, maybe" is the best you're going to get out of them because they don't want to admit that they secretly want Trump to pull it off and take "their" country back from those people who voted for Obama in 2008.

Believe me, I know the type. They're cool with and even proud of their kids learning Spanish as a second language in an immersive elementary school program, seeing the black family from work at the minor-league baseball field and eating at the newest Thai fusion restaurant in the hipster part of town, not so much with the carniceria in the strip mall next to the Fantastic Sam's where you take the kids, the black family moving in next door, or the Hmong church being built down the street.

This is where the battleground may be, but keep in mind that the 2016 election war is likely already over.

Sir Nigel Bravely Runs Away

Across the pond in Brexitville, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage figures he's won by destroying the EU and the UK economy, so he's done with being the guy in charge of creating the disaster.

Nigel Farage says he is standing down as leader of the UK Independence Party.

Mr Farage said his "political ambition has been achieved" with the UK having voted to leave the EU.

He said the party was in a "pretty good place" and said he would not change his mind about quitting as he did after the 2015 general election.

Leading UKIP was "tough at times" but "all worth it" said Mr Farage, who is also an MEP. He added that the UK needed a "Brexit prime minister".

Mr Farage said the party would campaign against "backsliding" on the UK's exit from the EU, saying he planned to see out his term in the European Parliament - describing his party as "the turkeys that voted for Christmas".

He said his party's "greatest potential" lay in attracting Labour voters, adding that he would not be backing any particular candidate to replace him.

"May the best man or woman win," he said.

And why would Farage want to stick around?  He knows full well that Britain is headed into the jet intake and will get shredded and spat out against the wall at several hundred miles an hour. He won't be the guy who has to actually deal withthe rise of racist nationalism he's helped to create.

That's for the little people.  See you, suckers!

Sunday Long Read: A Tale Of Angels

Isaac Butler and Dan Kois give us this week's Long Read from Slate as they document the oral history of Tony Kushner's seminal Angels in America on the play's 25th anniversary.

Twenty-five years ago this summer, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America premiered in the tiny Eureka Theatre in San Francisco’s Mission District. Within two years it had won the Pulitzer Prize and begun a New York run that would dominate the Tony Awards two years in a row, revitalize the nonmusical play on Broadway, and change the way gay lives were represented in pop culture. Both parts of Angels, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, put gay men at the center of American politics, history, and mythology at a time when they were marginalized by the culture at large and dying in waves. It launched the careers of remarkable actors and directors, not to mention the fiercely ambitious firebrand from Louisiana who wrote it—and rewrote it, and rewrote it, and rewrote it again. Its 2003 HBO adaptation was itself a masterpiece that won more Emmys than Roots. But the play also financially wiped out the theater that premiered it; it endured casting and production tumult at every stage of development, from Los Angeles to London to Broadway; its ambitious, sprawling two-part structure tested the endurance of players, technicians, and audiences. Slate talked to more than 50 actors, directors, playwrights, and critics to tell the story ofAngels’ turbulent ascension into the pantheon of great American storytelling—and to discuss the legacy of a play that feels, in an era in which gay Americans have the right to marry but still in many ways live under siege, as crucial as ever.

Tony Kushner (playwright of Angels in America): Around November of 1985, the first person that I knew personally died of AIDS. A dancer that I had a huge crush on, a very sweet man and very beautiful. I got an NEA directing fellowship at the repertory theater in St. Louis, and right before I left New York, I heard through the grapevine that he had gotten sick. And then, in November, he died.

And I had this dream: Bill dying—I don’t know if he was actually dying, but he was in his pajamas and sick on his bed—and the ceiling collapsed and this angel comes into the room. And then I wrote a poem. I’m not a poet, but I wrote this thing. It was many pages long. After I finished it, I put it away. No one will ever see it.

Its title was “Angels in America.”

And I remember in college the massive, massive controversy over when the play came to Charlotte in 1996. Billy Graham went nuts, and eventually Mecklenburg County cut funding to the theater company that put the play on in 1997. The Charlotte Repertoire Theater folded nine years later.

That battle is still going on in North Carolina today, only now over trans people using bathrooms. North Carolina hasn't changed much.  I have, it's why I left and frankly I'm not coming back.

Sad when Kentucky looks less bigoted than the state you grew up in.

Meanwhile In Baghdad

Islamic State militants are still very much operating in Iraq, and as retaliation for Iraqi forces taking back the besieged city of Falluja this week, suicide bombers struck at Baghdad shopping area killing nearly 100 and injuring twice that many.

The attack is the deadliest since U.S.-backed Iraqi forces last month scored a major victory when it dislodged Islamic State from their stronghold of Falluja, an hour's drive west of the capital.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had ordered the offensive after a series of deadly bombings in Baghdad, saying Falluja served as a launchpad for such attacks on the capital. However, bombings have continued.

A convoy carrying Abadi who had come to tour the site of the bombings was pelted with stones and bottles by residents, angry at what they felt were false promises of better security.

A refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up in the central district of Karrada, killing 91 people and injuring at least 200. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulated online by supporters of the ultra-hard line Sunni group. It said the blast was a suicide bombing.

Karrada was busy at the time as Iraqis eat out and shop late during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends next week with the Eid al-Fitr festival.

Videos posted on social media showed people running after the SUV convoy of Abadi as he departed Karrada after touring the scene, throwing pavement stones, bottles of water, empty buckets and slippers, venting their anger at the inability of the security forces to protect the area.

Another video posted on social media showed a large blaze in the main street of Karrada, a largely Shi'ite district with a small Christian community and a few Sunni mosques.

I have to say, if a refrigerator truck full of explosives detonated in Paris or Brussels or London and killed 95 people, and Islamic State took credit for it, we'd have international coverage of the attack for weeks, not to mention Republicans talking about thoughts and prayers whenever possible.

But it happened in Baghdad, so nobody cares.

Oh well.

Is The Snow Job Coming To An End?

The adventures of Edward Snowden, the Dudebro Defector, seem to be winding down and not in a good way. If you blinked, you may have missed the fact that the nature of the relationship with his Russian handlers has taken a very dark turn as of this week.  NPR's Mary Louise Kelly explains:

MARK GALEOTTI: The point at which he put his first foot on Russian soil - at that point, he was bought and paid for.

KELLY: That's Mark Galeotti, an authority on Russia spy agencies, also a professor at NYU. He believes Snowden has almost certainly shared what he knows - secrets about NSA operations - with his Russian hosts. I put this question to Frants Klintsevich. He's the equivalent of a senator here in Russia and deputy chairman of the powerful defense and security committee.

FRANTS KLINTSEVICH: (Speaking Russian).

KELLY: "Let's be frank," he says. "Snowden did share intelligence. This is what security services do," adds Klintsevich. "If there's a possibility to get information, they will get it." It's a possibility that Snowden's lawyer, Ben Wizner of the ACLU, denies.

BEN WIZNER: Of course, it's impossible to prove a negative. But as he has made clear, he didn't even bring sensitive information with him to Russia, precisely because he didn't want to be in a position where he could be coerced. He was approached. He made very clear that he had no intention of cooperating, and he has not.

KELLY: In the U.S., intelligence officials insist Snowden's disclosures did grave damage to national security. Whatever he may or may not have shared with the Russian government, Snowden still faces charges of violating the Espionage Act - crimes that could land him many years in prison. When I reached him in New York, I asked Wizner about the other big question looming over Snowden's stay here - how long it might last. Wizner conceded his client is not a man with a lot of options.

WIZNER: The first is to be where he is in Russia. And the second is to be in a maximum security prison cell, cut off from the world. Of course we're working on option three.

KELLY: Which Wizner defines as either somehow returning to the U.S., quote, "in dignity" or winning guarantee of safe passage to some other country. Snowden himself declined our request for an interview, but he's active on Twitter, with more than 2 million followers. Snowden follows only one account - the National Security Agency. Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News, Moscow.

Now, we have a highly ranked Russian lawmaker openly admitting that Snowden turned over US state secrets to the Russians, and that this admission happened just days after Snowden publicly criticized the Russians for passing a new mass surveillance measure.

Edward J. Snowden, an American who took refuge inRussia after leaking a trove of classified United States data from global surveillance, has criticized a proposed Russian law as an assault on freedom of speech, and has been rebuffed in an effort to collect a free-speech prize in Norway.

Mr. Snowden, who was charged by the United States in 2013 withviolating the Espionage Act, was invited to Norway by a writers’ advocacy group to receive the prize, and sought guarantees in court that he would not be handed over to the American authorities. News agencies reported on Monday that a court in Oslo rejected his bid.

His criticism of the Russian law came over the weekend, when he said on Twitter that it was “an unworkable, unjustifiable violation of rights that should never be signed.” The law was passed by the lower house of Parliament on Friday; the speaker of the upper house, Valentina I. Matviyenko, signaled on Monday that her chamber would pass it as well.

And so Putin and the Russians almost immediately outed him as a traitor as a result.  If you somehow thought this clown was going to come home and get a pardon before, that just ended thanks to the Russians admitting Snowden gave them intelligence.

Of course, anyone with a modicum of common sense knew very well that Snowden turned over intel and betrayed the US. And it looks like that ticket bought him three years as a guest at most.

What happens to Snowden now?  Well gosh, the life expectancy of an openly burnt spy isn't that long, now is it?

And I will repeat this again for the folks in the cheap seats: now matter how you feel about Snowden "starting a national conversation" about US surveillance (and he certainly did), the fact remains that the man is a traitor who broke the law, period. Both of these points can be and are very much true.

The Siege Of Cleveland

Any notion that the GOP convention in Cleveland is going to be a peaceful one can be disposed of rather quickly when you remember that the convention itself is supposed to be a gun-free zone, but the rest of the city of Cleveland is apparently fair game.

As the Republican convention in Cleveland approaches, several delegates from Pennsylvania who support Donald Trump say they are planning on bringing their guns with them to the GOP gathering. Why? They say they are worried about possible violent protest and even an attack from ISIS.

James Klein, a pro-Trump delegate from the Harrisburg area, notes that guns won't be needed inside the convention hall and that delegates won't be allowed to bring in weapons. "But," he adds, "there's the hotels. There's going to be dinners."

So Klein, an insurance executive and economist, has decided to come armed to Cleveland, and he has urged his fellow delegates to do the same. "We're talking about ISIS," he remarks, citing the recent shooting in Orlando and the bombings at the Istanbul airport. Referring to protesters outside Trump rallies, he adds, "We're talking about people who have shown a propensity for violence."

"There are a whole bunch of things happening: You go to various events, receptions, whatever, outside the convention hall," says Ash Khare, a delegate from the northwest corner of the state who applied for a concealed carry permit in preparation for Cleveland. "And you walk on the streets and, you know, people know that you are a delegate, and who knows what the crazy people are going to do? So you've got to be vigilant about what's going on and prepare yourself."

Yeah, because paranoid Trump delegates walking around with guns is a great idea.  What if you don't want these assholes walking around armed in Cleveland, near your kids and family?  Too bad.  Ohio's an open carry state thanks to the GOP that has controlled the state since 2004. 

You can open-carry in the state without any license whatsoever as long as you legally own the firearm.  You can't carry a loaded gun in a motor vehicle without a concealed carry license however.  Ohio has reciprocity agreements with states like Pennsylvania, so yes, these bozos can happily be carting around whatever firepower they like, especially with a CCL.

Boy, doesn't that seem like a great idea?

Marc Scaringi, another Trump delegate from the Harrisburg area, says that during the past few weeks there have been many emails exchanged among the Pennsylvania delegates discussing whether to bring weapons to Cleveland.

A lifelong member of the NRA who carries a gun every day, Klein notes he is particularly concerned about the threat of international terrorism. "I'm not a terrorist, okay, but I'm an academic and a theorist, and I would think that if I were an ISIS guy that I might want to attack the Republican National Convention," he says.

Klein continues: "People will attack you at your weakest, at your softest." That is, he explains, attacks are not likely to occur at the convention hall but elsewhere in the city where police and Secret Service officers are unlikely to stop an attack.

In other words, there's going to be all kinds of jackholes like James Klein here wandering around Cleveland loaded for bear. 

Enjoy that, Forest City!

Forces Of Evil In A Bozo Nightmare

Banned all the music with a phony gas chamber
'Cuz one's got a weasel
And the other's got a flag
One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag

With all apologies to Beck, of course.

Anyway, speaking of bozo nightmares and flags, Donald Trump loves him some Confederate symbolism, and it's certainly helping his campaign in more than just Southern states.

A year later, the backlash against the Confederate flag has spurred a counter-backlash, one that is playing out in countless skirmishes in courtrooms, township council rooms, bedrooms and Facebook posts, especially in the South. In the six months after the Charleston shooting, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 364 Confederate flag rallies around the South. That doesn’t include a spurt of growth in the number of flags on private lawns and on bumper stickers.

“It’s like they say: Take one flag down and 1,000 go up,” says Tim Boone, who as founder of Rebel-lution, one of the many pro-flag activist groups that formed last summer and handed out “No votes for turncoats” stickers targeting the newly unpopular Haley and anyone else who might vote to take down a flag. 

The backlash has extended to the national scene as well. Haley, once floated as a veep choice, is no longer mentioned in elite GOP circles. She’s expressed a desire to see the Citadel remove the rebel flag from its chapel, but her hands are tied by the state Legislature. Haley has linked the tone of Trump's rhetoric to the kind of violence seen last year in Charleston, but she’s still indicated she’ll support him as the presumptive Republican nominee for president. 

Trump, meanwhile, has utterly dismissed the South Carolina governor, and he’s drawing support from many Confederate flag supporters who condemned Haley for her actions last year. And in contrast to his remarks about the flag a year ago, Trump has shifted rightward; many of those in the bizarre coalition of racists, anti-government radicals and states’ rights activists who’ve led the battle charge for restoration of the rebel flag believe the GOP presumptive nominee is dog-whistling encouragement to them. 

Not racist, just number one with racists.  Also just kidding, he's a racist. Let's stop pretending otherwise.

Trump’s face appears on the cover of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual report on domestic extremism, which found that from 2014 to 2015, right-wing hate groups grew 14 percent to almost 900. The Ku Klux Klan grew from 72 chapters to 190, although some of that growth came from the two largest groups splintering into smaller cells. Anti-government patriot/liberty groups, which have flourished over Obama’s two terms, grew to nearly 1,000. 

Despite his 2015 flag statement, his “New York values” and his status as a genuine Yankee, those groups, along with the rest of the disparate coalition that has vocally supported the Confederate flag over the past year, have aligned behind Trump. 

“I’m voting for him despite that [his statement about the flag],” says Boone. “The reason I’ll vote for Trump is probably the reason I feel most of the country is going to vote for him: They’re sick of the political correctness. We’re so worried about the minority getting their feelings hurt, with the flag, with transgender bathrooms and all that. Sometimes, the minority has to understand that their feelings get hurt too, and majority rules most of the time.”

Understand that this theory of Boone's here is called the Tyranny of the Majority for a reason. It's nothing new, John Adams was kicking it around in 1785 for a reason, guys. The notion that majority rule also means that rights and needs of the minority are ignored is frankly a founding principle of the country that took centuries to address, and even then only partially.

We're still having that struggle today, and the reason why Trump is so popular is that he wants to end that struggle, and not in a good way.

Rubio In The Gray Zone

The Republican party wants to somehow avoid wresting defeat from the jaws of victory in Florida's Senate race, but now that Marco "Private Citizen" Rubio is back in the contest, the focus is now on which Democrat he will face: resume-challenged Patrick Murphy or ethics-challenged Alan Grayson.

In one dramatic day this month, the entire race — one of roughly a half-dozen on which control of the Senate rests — was turned on its head. First, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio dropped his retirement plans and announced plans to run for reelection. Within hours, the CBS affiliate in Miami aired a bombshell investigative story accusing the Democratic establishment's chosen candidate, 33-year-old Rep. Patrick Murphy, of rampant résumé inflation.

Now, Republicans smell blood in the water, and they're looking to damage Murphy so badly that Democrats are forced to spend heavily on his behalf ahead of the state's Aug. 30 primary — or abandon the race altogether. The GOP is adopting a strategy that's been used against it repeatedly in recent election cycles: Propping up a politically toxic, outside-the-mainstream candidate in the other party's primary, in this case firebrand liberal Rep. Alan Grayson. 

"I think anybody would rather run against Grayson” in the general election, said Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, a vice chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
The reversal of fortunes in Florida could hardly have come at a better time for Republicans, after weeks of negative headlines about their presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and increasing concerns about a down-ballot disaster for the party. If Republicans can put the Sunshine State race out of reach, it would substantially boost their hopes of retaining the Senate. The party is clinging to a four-seat advantage, but faces an electoral map tilted decidedly in Democrats' favor. 

Florida was seen as a better-than-even Democratic pickup before Rubio changed his mind, given Trump’s lousy poll numbers in the diverse state and a slate of underfunded and little-known Republican candidates. Now, Republicans have not only a top-tier incumbent, but a major TV takedown of the leading Democrat: The CBS story, which Murphy's campaign has aggressively sought to refute, questioned his stated credentials as a CPA and other business experience. Republicans promptly launched an ad off it, backed by $45,000. It's running on cable in the D.C. area, to sow doubt among donors and operatives about whether Murphy is worth their investment.

The Murphy story is bad.  The comically stupid Rubio flip-flop mess is definitely worse, and given Trump's disastrous albatross status, it should be enough to offset Rubio's incumbency and make it an even race, which the polls show.

But Alan Grayson's ethics problems are lethal, and Republicans are hoping to pick their opponent, one so bad even Rubio can win.  The optimal answer is for Grayson to drop out, but we all know that's not going to happen.

Hillary Clinton can relate, you know?

The Lynch Pin Of The Investigation

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch is already under fire for meeting with Bill Clinton this week, with Republicans demanding her immediate resignation for the crime of "Talking To The Big Dog".

An airport encounter this week between Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and former President Bill Clinton has welled into a political storm, with Republicans asserting that it compromised the Justice Department’s politically sensitive investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices while she was secretary of state.

The Obama administration declined to say on Thursday whether the meeting between Ms. Lynch and Mr. Clinton, in Phoenix on Monday night, was appropriate. The press secretary, Josh Earnest, said that the investigation of Mrs. Clinton would be free of political influence and that he would leave it to the attorney general to explain the meeting.

Ms. Lynch said the meeting with Mr. Clinton was unplanned, largely social and did not touch on the email investigation. She suggested that he walked uninvited from his plane to her government plane, which were both parked on a tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

“He did come over and say hello, and speak to my husband and myself, and talk about his grandchildren and his travels and things like that,” Ms. Lynch said at a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, where she was promoting community policing. “That was the extent of that. And no discussions were held into any cases or things like that.”

It's rather insulting that Republicans automatically assume everyone in the Justice Department is as incompetent as, say, Alberto Gonzales or as nasty as John Ashcroft.  Regardless, Lynch says the decision on any action on the Clinton e-mail nonsense will be up to the FBI, not her, as she will follow their recommendations.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch plans to announce on Friday that she will accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and the F.B.I.director make about whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, a Justice Department official said. Her decision removes the possibility that a political appointee will overrule investigators in the case.

This is the correct choice to make, as Lynch is all but recusing herself from the decision-making process here and giving it instead to James Comey's FBI.

Of course, if it were up to Republicans, every Democrat in America would have to resign for something, so let's not actually take anything they have to say seriously on things.

StupidiNews!

• US officials believe that the mastermind behind this week's deadly Istanbul airport attack is ISIS terrorist Akhmed Chatayev, placed on a US terror watch list last year.
• Electric car company Tesla Motors is now under federal investigation following the death of a test driver in a crash that involved the company's autopilot driving systems.
• Czech President Milos Zeman is now calling for a referendum on remaining in the EU and in NATO in the wake of Brexit, although he says he favors remaining in both organizations.
• Austria's highest court has ordered a second presidential election this fall after agreeing with the far-right Freedom Party that voting irregularities could have cost them the election.
• Some 12 years after launch, the European Space Agency's comet-hunting Rosetta probe will end its journey and crash as it will be too far from the sun to recharge from solar panels.