StupidiNews!

• Once again Congressional leaders say they have reached a deal in principle to avoid a Friday shutdown, but the White House is already saying that Donald Trump will not sign the bill.
• Five people are dead after a mass shooting in a small East Texas town, Sherriff's officials in Polk County, Texas are looking for the suspect.
• Virginia lawmakers are so far refraining from impeachment charges against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax after multiple allegations of sexual assault, but they are continuing to call for his resignation.
• The White House says it will veto any bill withdrawing authorization for US troops in Yemen, saying it would lead to a direct threat to US national security.
• California is looking to fight a tripling in the rate of medical exemptions for vaccinations as the state banned non-medical exemptions three years ago.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

While Trump is in El Paso tonight stoking up hatred and racism, it's important to note that we already live in a country where Trump's immigration gestapo forces are freely conducting massive workplace raids looking for "illegals" to round up and deport.

Immigrant communities in North Carolina were rattled this weekend after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested an estimated 200 undocumented immigrants last week.

The rural town of Sanford was “like a ghost town” after nearly 30 employees at a manufacturing plant were taken into custody Tuesday morning as part of an “ongoing criminal investigation.”

“My godmother was here,” an 18-year-old man told local station ABC11.
“He was like, ‘yeah they took her and what they were doing is taking people to the breakroom, and if you didn’t have valid ID, they were taking them out.'”

The raid was filmed by 27-year-old local musician Christian Enrique Canales and showed ICE agents checking the identification of anyone trying to leave the property. Lee County officers took Canales into custody for “communicating threats” to law enforcement. Canales and immigration activist groups believe he was arrested in retaliation for documenting the raid.

“I’m telling you to be careful out there, they are arresting everybody,” Canales said in Spanish on the Facebook Live stream. “Do you know how many families I know right now that are going to be split up?”

In east Charlotte, an area that prides itself on its diversity, at least a dozen undocumented immigrants were arrested. Many were pulled over randomly by ICE, told to show proper identification, and subsequently handcuffed, according to local immigrant outreach organization Comunidad Collectivo.

These are test runs, guys.  More of these are coming and they will only get bigger with more ICE jackboots and larger cities and town being terrorized, and we're being told to expect this as the new normal.

And if you think this won't happen in red states, well...

ICE officials argued during a press conference that these sweeping raids are what happens when local sheriffs offices don’t cooperate with the agency, as a result of sanctuary city policies, which bar such cooperation. However, there are no official sanctuary cities in North Carolina.

“This is the direct conclusion of dangerous policies of not cooperating with ICE,” said Sean Gallagher, who oversees the agency’s operation in the Carolinas and Georgia. “This forces my officers to go out onto the street to conduct more enforcement.”

This is a war being fought right now.  ICE is saying that they reserve the right to come in and raid any city in America, demand identification, and round people up for non-compliance or even documenting the atrocities.

This is Trump's America in 2019.

A Border Line Insurrection

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has finally (and correctly) decided that the state's National Guard troops would be better stationed fighting wildfires and going after narco-trafficking than hanging out for show at the border with Mexico to further Trump's agenda.

Newsom said he will rescind authorization Monday for the deployment of the Guard troops, which Trump requested and then-Gov. Jerry Brown approved in April. Brown extended the deployment in September, and the state’s 360 Guard troops were scheduled to stay on the border through March.

Brown declared last year that “California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws.” Newsom’s office, however, said the troops were operating cameras along the border, doing vehicle maintenance and performing other jobs that would normally fall to federal agencies, freeing up resources for U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Voice of San Diego, an online news outlet, reported in August that in at least two cases, Border Patrol agents apprehended immigrants crossing into the state illegally after being notified by California National Guard troops.

Newsom’s withdrawal order comes one day before he delivers his first State of the State address at 11 a.m. Tuesday. According to excerpts of the speech released by his office, the governor will say that “the border ‘emergency’ is a manufactured crisis. And California will not be part of this political theater.

“Which is why I have given the National Guard a new mission. They will refocus on the real threats facing our state.”

Under the new order Newsom intends to sign, 110 Guard troops now at the border will be redeployed to help the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection with fire prevention efforts, and 100 troops will conduct antidrug trafficking intelligence operations, including screening cargo at points of entry.

Newsom will also request funding from the U.S. Defense Department to expand the state Guard’s antidrug task force by at least 150 members.

“This is our answer to the White House: No more division, xenophobia or nativism,” Newsom plans to say in his State of the State speech.

Good for Newsom, especially telling the feds "give us the people we need to do the real work and address the real problems we have" instead of not making any use of the National Guard that has been called up.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham did the same thing last week.  I hope Arizona and Texas will follow, but with both being Republicans (Doug Ducey and Ken Paxton) there's zero chance of sanity breaking out there.

Meanwhile, Trump will be in El Paso tonight, at one of his Anti-Immigrant Hate Klan Rallies, unwanted by the people there, and we all soldier on like this is normal.

The Trump Tax Time Tango

Millions of Americans are finding out the hard way doing their taxes this month that Trump's "middle-class tax cut" was a screw job, and that average Americans are footing the bill for massive tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Millions of Americans filling out their 2018 taxes will probably be surprised to learn that their refunds will be less than expected or that they owe money to the Internal Revenue Service after years of receiving refunds.

People have already taken to social media, using the hashtag #GOPTaxScam, to vent their anger. Many blame President Trump and the Republicans for shrinking refunds. Some on Twitter even said they wouldn’t vote for Trump again after seeing their refunds slashed.

The uproar follows the passage of a major overhaul to the tax code in December 2017, which was enacted with only Republican votes and is considered the biggest legislative achievement of Trump’s first year. While the vast majority of Americans received a tax cut in 2018, refunds are a different matter. Some refunds have decreased because of changes in the law, such as a new limit on property and local income tax deductions, and some have decreased because of how the IRS has altered withholding in paychecks.

John Prugh of Ewing Township, N.J., was irate when he completed his 2018 tax return this month and discovered his refund would be $3,000 less than what he received last year. Prugh considers himself “solidly middle class.”

The 39-year-old is a manager at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and his wife works for the state government. They have two children. Prugh said he had no reason to believe their tax situation would change this year because he and his wife have lived in the same house for years while their incomes have remained stable.

“It totally feels like a scam,” said Prugh, who did not vote for Trump. “I did still get a small refund, but compared to what I was expecting from previous years, it was shock.”

The average tax refund check is down 8 percent ($170) this year compared to last, the IRS reported Friday, and the number of people receiving a refund so far has dropped by almost a quarter.

And as the tax provisions in the 2017 GOP Tax Scam bill fade, the tax burden is only going to increase dramatically in the coming years on middle-class Americans, particularly homeowners who are used to deducting their state taxes from their federal taxes.

Of course, Democrats warned Americans that this was exactly what was going to happen back in 2017, and Republicans passed it anyway.  I sure hope voters remember directly who screwed them over when it comes to going to the polls in November 2020.

StupidiNews!

• North Carolina GOP Rep. Walter Jones died Sunday after his health declined due to a broken hip, Jones served in Congress for 25 years representing the Outer Banks.
• A new UC-Berkeley study on American wealth inequality finds that the nation's 400 wealthiest Americans now control more wealth than the bottom 150 million adults, or 60% of the country.
• The top US Army commander in the Middle East says plans to withdraw American troops from Syria could begin within "weeks", some equipment has already begun its trip back to the States.
• The British government will need tens of billions of pounds or several ministry departments face "years" of austerity budgets.
• A new Kaiser Health News analysis finds more than 40% of FDA-approved generic drugs aren't for sale in the US by drug companies in order to keep profits high and competition low.

Last Call For Another Hat Enters The Ring, Con't

Another 2020 Democratic contender made a big announcement on Sunday, this time it's Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar entering the race and taking aim squarely at Silicon Valley.

Most Democratic contenders have entered the race attempting to outflank one another from the left on big progressive ideals like universal health care and criminal justice reform, but Klobuchar, a third-term senator, is sidestepping that progressive fight to carve out a space on consumer protection.

“We need to put some digital rules into law when it comes to people’s privacy. For too long the big tech companies have been telling you ‘Don’t worry! We’ve got your back!’ while your identities are being stolen and your data is mined,” she said during her launch on Sunday. “Our laws need to be as sophisticated as the people who are breaking them.”

Klobuchar has made the oversight of big tech one of her banner issues in Congress. “The digital revolution isn’t just coming, it’s here,” she said.

She’s scrutinized Facebook, Google, and Twitter as they’ve been forced to explain their policies on privacy and political advertising. She wants to make it harder for big companies to buy or merge with smaller companies. And while other Democrats have worked on these issues, too — including Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker — Klobuchar has introduced or cosponsored nearly twice as many bills on these subjects in the past few years than any other Democrat currently in the race (or likely to get in).

Conversations with more than a dozen members of Congress, current and former agency officials, tech industry insiders, and antitrust experts showed that she’s considered an expert in tech policy and a pragmatist by even her political and policy adversaries, who see her as a pragmatist.

“She not only has a deep background on facts and figures, she’s thought deeply about the issues,” says Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), one of her co-sponsors on a data privacy bill. “She has a unique ability to get down into the weeds but also be able to look at an issue from 30,000 feet.”

Experts in relevant agencies respect her, too. “Among her colleagues, I think she is one of the most impressive measured by her extensive study of these topics,” said Bill Kovacic, the Republican former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, who praised Klobuchar’s positioning on and understanding of antitrust and privacy. “She’s made an investment that really stands out, building a base of knowledge that is formidable.”

And even those in the tech industry grudgingly acknowledge she knows what she’s talking about. “What I would say about her is that it’s the kind of office that you want to deal with,” said one tech industry source. “I don’t mean that in the sense that we always get what we want. You want somebody who’s thorough and fair-minded and deliberate.”

The question is whether her signature issue is one that will capture the attention (and the votes) of Democratic primary-goers. A knock on Klobuchar is that she’s the “senator of small things,” a practical lawmaker who works on consumer issues like toy safety or airline ticket price transparency. But while these are often seen as small potatoes, her latest forays go after some of the biggest corporations in America.

Arguably, Klobuchar’s biggest victory came in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

She introduced the Honest Ads Act alongside Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), a bill that would force platforms like Facebook to disclose the purchaser of an advertisement, as is required on television for political ads.

Frankly, the Dems are going to have three major balance challenges to overcome, the Israel BDS movement vs the Aipac Lobby, privacy issues vs Big Tech, and campaign finance reform vs. having cash on hand to beat Trump.  They have the third well in hand as they showed in 2018's midterms, but the other two are going to be a major issue.

Klobuchar is definitely leading on the second issue., but she has a serious problem with the first, so far making her the only declared Democratic 2020 candidate to vote with nearly all Senate Republicans (except for Rand Paul!) who want to criminalize boycotting Israel.

We'll see if it's enough, but this is a decidedly mixed start to Klobuchar's already long shot campaign at best.

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

Meanwhile, the government shuts down on Friday again and there's no reason to think that Senate Republicans will do anything to stop Trump from doing it.

“The talks are stalled right now,” Republican Senator Richard Shelby told “Fox News Sunday” after a dispute over immigrant detentions. He said he hoped negotiators would return to the table soon.

Efforts to resolve an impasse over border security funding extended into the weekend as a special congressional negotiating panel aimed to reach a deal by Monday, lawmakers and aides said.

Democratic Senator Jon Tester played down any breakdown in talks. “It is a negotiation. Negotiations seldom go smooth all the way through,” he told the Fox program. He said he was hopeful a deal could be reached.

However, no further talks were scheduled, a source told Reuters on Sunday on condition of anonymity.

The group of 17 lawmakers are hoping to reach a deal to allow time for the legislation to pass the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and get to President Donald Trump by Friday, when federal funding is due to expire.

Trump agreed on Jan. 25 to end a 35-day partial U.S. government shutdown without getting the $5.7 billion he had demanded from Congress for a wall along the border with Mexico, handing a political victory to Democrats.

Instead, a three-week spending deal was reached with congressional leaders to give lawmakers time to resolve their disagreements about how to address security along the border.

One sticking point has been Democrats’ demands for funding fewer detention beds for people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) than the Trump administration seeks. Republicans want to increase the number as part of their drive to speed immigrant deportations.

Shelby said talks were suspended over the issue but he hoped negotiators would come back to the table soon.

“I am hoping we can get off the dime later in the day or the morning,” he said. “We have some problems with the Democrats dealing with ICE detaining criminals ... They want a cap on them. We don’t want a cap on that.”

While a number of Republicans in Congress have made it clear they would not embrace another shutdown, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said he could not rule it out.

“You absolutely cannot,” Mulvaney, who is also Trump’s acting chief of staff, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Is a shutdown entirely off the table? The answer is no.”

Of course these jackasses are going to shut down the government.

Sunday Long Read: The Final Words Of A Legend

Something I never can recall doing on Sunday Long Read: a shorter piece, in full, but if anyone deserved it, it was the "Dean of the House".  Legendary Rep. John Dingell, who spent 60 years in Congress, passed away Friday and dictated these final words to his wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell, on his deathbed.

One of the advantages to knowing that your demise is imminent, and that reports of it will not be greatly exaggerated, is that you have a few moments to compose some parting thoughts.

In our modern political age, the presidential bully pulpit seems dedicated to sowing division and denigrating, often in the most irrelevant and infantile personal terms, the political opposition.

And much as I have found Twitter to be a useful means of expression, some occasions merit more than 280 characters.

My personal and political character was formed in a different era that was kinder, if not necessarily gentler. We observed modicums of respect even as we fought, often bitterly and savagely, over issues that were literally life and death to a degree that — fortunately – we see much less of today.

Think about it:

Impoverishment of the elderly because of medical expenses was a common and often accepted occurrence. Opponents of the Medicare program that saved the elderly from that cruel fate called it “socialized medicine.” Remember that slander if there’s a sustained revival of silly red-baiting today.

Not five decades ago, much of the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth — our own Great Lakes — were closed to swimming and fishing and other recreational pursuits because of chemical and bacteriological contamination from untreated industrial and wastewater disposal. Today, the Great Lakes are so hospitable to marine life that one of our biggest challenges is controlling the invasive species that have made them their new home.

We regularly used and consumed foods, drugs, chemicals and other things (cigarettes) that were legal, promoted and actively harmful. Hazardous wastes were dumped on empty plots in the dead of night. There were few if any restrictions on industrial emissions. We had only the barest scientific knowledge of the long-term consequences of any of this.

And there was a great stain on America, in the form of our legacy of racial discrimination. There were good people of all colors who banded together, risking and even losing their lives to erase the legal and other barriers that held Americans down. In their time, they were often demonized and targeted, much like other vulnerable men and women today.

Please note: All of these challenges were addressed by Congress. Maybe not as fast as we wanted, or as perfectly as hoped. The work is certainly not finished. But we’ve made progress — and in every case, from the passage of Medicare through the passage of civil rights, we did it with the support of Democrats and Republicans who considered themselves first and foremost to be Americans.

I’m immensely proud, and eternally grateful, for having had the opportunity to play a part in all of these efforts during my service in Congress. And it’s simply not possible for me to adequately repay the love that my friends, neighbors and family have given me and shown me during my public service and retirement.

But I would be remiss in not acknowledging the forgiveness and sweetness of the woman who has essentially supported me for almost 40 years: my wife, Deborah. And it is a source of great satisfaction to know that she is among the largest group of women to have ever served in the Congress (as she busily recruits more).

In my life and career, I have often heard it said that so-and-so has real power — as in, “the powerful Wile E. Coyote, chairman of the Capture the Road Runner Committee.”

It’s an expression that has always grated on me. In democratic government, elected officials do not have power. They holdpower — in trust for the people who elected them. If they misuse or abuse that public trust, it is quite properly revoked (the quicker the better).

I never forgot the people who gave me the privilege of representing them. It was a lesson learned at home from my father and mother, and one I have tried to impart to the people I’ve served with and employed over the years.

As I prepare to leave this all behind, I now leave you in control of the greatest nation of mankind and pray God gives you the wisdom to understand the responsibility you hold in your hands.

May God bless you all, and may God bless America.

This was a man who witnessed the birth of the greatest era of legislation in American history...and saw much of it destroyed by the Roberts Court.  He was there for Medicare and Medicaid, he was there for the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, he was there for the Assault Weapons Ban, he was there for the Affordable Care Act.

Much of that is now gutted or in dire trouble.  When the current occupant of the White House and his supporter bleat about making America "great" again, they mean "back to the era before John Dingell was ever in the House."  That's where they want black and Hispanic and Asian and Native people, that's where they want women, that's where they want LGBTQ folk, beneath white men of the 50's.

Dingell fought all his life to make America better.  I'm just sad that he won't get to see Trump get his reckoning.

Somehow, I bet he will.

The Drums Of War, Con't

The Trump Regime's plans for regime change and invasion in Venezuela continue apace, and we're not too far away now from the public relations full-court press to convince the American people that sending thousands of troops to Caracas in order to install a dictator more to our liking is a good thing. Certainly the replacement guy waiting in the wings is on board.

Venezuela’s self-proclaimed acting president Juan Guaido refused to rule out on Friday the possibility of authorizing United States intervention to help force President Nicolas Maduro from power and alleviate a humanitarian crisis.

National Assembly leader Guaido told AFP he would do “everything that is necessary... to save human lives,” acknowledging that US intervention is “a very controversial subject.”

The opposition leader launched a bid to oust Maduro last month, declaring himself interim president, a move recognized by the US and around 40 other countries, including 20 from the European Union.

Under Maduro’s stewardship, oil-rich Venezuela’s economy has collapsed leaving the country wracked by hyperinflation, recession and shortages of basic necessities such as food and medicine.

“We’re going to do everything that has a lower social cost, that generates governability and stability to deal with the emergency,” said Guaido, 35.

He is trying to bring in food and medicines from the US but the supplies are stuck in warehouses in Colombia because the Venezuelan military has blocked their entry.

Earlier, Maduro vowed not to let in “fake humanitarian aid” and claimed Venezuela’s crisis has been “fabricated by Washington” to justify intervention.

Guaido says 300,000 people could die if desperately-needed aid isn’t brought in.

We'll have to save the Venezuelan people from Maduro's Socialist hellhole, and that of course will need tens, if not hundreds of thousands of US troops to fight and possibly die in South America just to let everybody know that the US still means business.

And with the razor-sharp competence of the Trump regime running this particular shitshow, I'm sure it won't explode into a massive regional proxy conflict.

Or worse.

Last Call For A Supreme Disregard Of Precedent

Late Thursday night, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court to block a lower court order that would have effectively closed Louisiana's remaining abortion clinics in what was clearly another "I don't want the Roberts Court to be remembered for that" decision (see saving Obamacare a few years ago).

That wasn't the problem, of course.  The problem was Justice Kavanaugh's first major case opinion as a Surpeme Court Justice, a shocking dissent that makes it very clear he was put on the court to end Roe v Wade and reduce America's women to birthing units.

The Supreme Court gave reproductive justice advocates an unexpected win on Thursday night when it voted 5 to 4 to stay a court of appeals’ decision that could have closed abortion clinics in Louisiana. The chief justice joined the four more liberal justices in voting to prevent the Louisiana law from going into effect. That small achievement underscores how much progressives stand to lose with the new court and how low our standards for victory have become.

At issue in June Medical Services v. Gee is a Louisiana law that requires abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where the providers perform abortions. Just two and a half years ago, the Supreme Court held that very same requirement unconstitutional when Texas enacted it.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit maintained that the burdens imposed by Louisiana’s admitting privileges requirement are less severe than the burdens imposed by the same requirement in Texas. The Texas law would have shuttered some 20 clinics, whereas Louisiana’s law would shutter only one or two of the state’s three clinics. Similarly, the 5th Circuit acknowledged that it did not have any evidence that the Louisiana admitting-privileges requirement would help the health or safety of any women, even though it created a burden on providers and their patients. That is the standard the Supreme Court set in the Texas case for when a law is unconstitutional, but the court of appeals said that it could imagine how it might be plausible to think the requirement might benefit some women.

It is easy to see how this kind of analysis will make safe, accessible abortions a thing of the past in many parts of the United States. If a law does not amount to an unconstitutional burden unless it does something as dramatic as close 20 clinics in a geographic area as large as Texas, almost every law would be constitutional. And if a law does not amount to an unconstitutional burden if courts can invent a justification for it, then laws would be upheld even when there is no evidence that they would help any woman, ever.

That is how Roe v. Wade will die. Not with a bang, but with a million little distinctions that judges will draw to limit the impact of any cases that invalidate restrictions on abortion. By voting to allow the Louisiana law to go into effect, four justices gave the okay to states and lower courts to limit Roe by whatever means necessary.

How long Chief Justice Roberts will stand as the only bulwark between women's reproductive rights and a future where half the states in the country have banned safe abortion procedures, I can't tell you.

And that's the problem.

Meat The Press, Con't

The Trump regime's cover-up of the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi is now in violation of US law as the regime is refusing to comply with the Magnitsky Act.

President Trump refused to provide Congress a report on Friday determining who killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, defying a demand by lawmakers intent on establishing whether the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was behind the grisly assassination.

Mr. Trump effectively bypassed a deadline set by law as his administration argued that Congress could not impose its will on the president. Critics charged that he was seeking to cover up Saudi complicity in the death of Mr. Khashoggi, an American resident and a columnist for The Washington Post.

“Consistent with the previous administration’s position and the constitutional separation of powers, the president maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate,” the Trump administration said in a statement. The statement said the administration had taken action against the killers and would consult with Congress.

But Democrats said Mr. Trump was violating a law known as the Magnitsky Act. It required him to respond 120 days after a request submitted in the fall by committee leaders — including Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — a period that expired Friday.

“The law is clear,” said Juan Pachón, a spokesman for Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “It requires a determination and report in response to the letter we sent with Corker. The president has no discretion here. He’s either complying with the law or breaking it.”

The Trump administration imposed sanctions in November against 17 Saudis accused of being involved in the killing, but has refused to blame Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a key ally and the country’s de facto ruler, despite a C.I.A. conclusion that the crown prince ordered it.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent letters to the committee leaders describing actions taken against individuals without offering the determination of who was responsible as demanded by the lawmakers.

“I anticipate a more detailed briefing from the administration on this issue and look forward to working with them and the members of my committee in our ongoing effort to address the killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” said Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho, who succeeded Mr. Corker as chairman.

Don't hold your breath.

Mitch McConnell of course won't allow the Senate to lift a finger on this. We'll only get Trump regime compliance when they've mutually decided along with the Saudis whose head will roll in place of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan, and not a day before that. 

Of course, it's taken more than four months to decide on "the person or persons responsible for this rogue operation" so far, because evidence keeps popping up that MbS did it, mainly because MbS is the person who ordered Khashoggi's death by bone saw.

Besides, the Saudis almost certainly had US help, and on top of all that, Jared Kushner has deep financial ties to the Crown Prince, and Riyadh is making it very clear that if MbS goes down, the Saudis will take Kushner and Trump down with them.

So, this awful status quo will continue.  Republicans certainly won't allow anything to happen to Trump or Kushner for refusing, and the Saudi ggovernment absolutely won't let anything happen to MbS, so really there's no point in a Magnitsky Act, is there?

I'm sure Putin will be happy to hear that last part.

Blackmail As A Business Model

The National Enquirer picked a blackmail fight with Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos this week, and apparently the Trump-leaning tabloid and its parent company, American Media Inc., are well known for dirty deeds done extremely expensively.

It may have shocked the world when the publisher of the National Enquirer allegedly tried to use nude pictures to coerce Jeff Bezos. But it came as no surprise to three veterans of the Enquirer’sparent company, American Media Inc. 

“The threats, the blackmail, that’s their business model,” one former National Enquirer staffer told The Daily Beast. 

That model burst out into public view on Thursday night when Bezos—the world’s richest man, the founder of Amazon, and the owner of the Washington Post—published emails from AMI chief content officer Dylan Howard that threatened the release of a “dick p*ck” if the Post didn’t relent in its investigation of AMI. 

It was a familiar moment to Paul Barresi, a private investigator who spent years working on jobs for AMI and other tabloids. “The National Enquirer had some people who would go to a celebrity and say, ‘unless you give in to a one-on-one interview that would amount to a fluff piece with us, we’re going to report XYZ,” he said. “The celebrity would then acquiesce to their demand.” 

“The nice way of calling it was quid pro quo, but really it was blackmail,” Barresi said. “I know that the same methodology is practiced today,” he added. “Obviously it's practiced, because they did it” to Bezos. 

And Daniel “Danno” Hanks, who said he worked as an on-contract investigator for the Enquirer “off and on” for 40 years, used the phrase “war of blackmail” to describe the AMI empire’s ethos. 

“I’ve known this newspaper’s tactics for years, and I’d rather the truth be told,” Hanks stressed. 

“The Enquirer had a list of which attorneys worked for which celebrities, and if someone approached [the tabloid] for a story, they would approach the attorneys and say, ‘Make us a better offer,’” Hanks said. 

Hanks, who was recently released from prison for involvement in a gambling and drug organization (Hanks claims he was duped into it), added that those Hollywood or celebrity lawyers often asked Enquirer investigators to do investigative work and “trash runs” for them. 

“They would have a particular name, and we would track that person down, and once we did that information would be turned over to [the celebrity’s] lawyer,” he said. 

AMI did not respond to a request to comment for this story, but the company said in a statement on Friday that it “believes fervently that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr. Bezos.” The company has not been prosecuted for any crimes related to the blackmail claims made by its former investigators. 

However, the supermarket tabloid company’s bag of dirty tricks also is well-chronicled and includes catch-and-kill operation: paying for an exclusive interview only to bury it, as a favor to an ally or after using the dirt to convince a celebrity to play ball with them.

There's a very good chance that David Pecker and friends are going to get a visit from the Feds over this as AMI is not in full panic mode.

The National Enquirer’s alleged attempt to blackmail Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with intimate photos could get the tabloid’s parent company and top editors in deep legal trouble and reopen them to prosecution for paying hush money to a Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Donald Trump. 

Federal prosecutors are looking at whether the Enquirer’s feud with Bezos violated a cooperation and non-prosecution agreement that recently spared the gossip sheet from charges in the hush-money case, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday. 

The clash between the world’s richest man and America’s most aggressive supermarket tabloid spilled into public view late Thursday when Bezos accused it of threatening to print photos of him and the woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. 

He said the Enquirer made two demands: Stop investigating how the publication recently obtained private messages that Bezos and his girlfriend had exchanged. And publicly declare that the Enquirer’s coverage of Bezos was not politically motivated. 

Enquirer owner American Media Inc. said Friday that its board of directors ordered a prompt and thorough investigation and will take “whatever appropriate action is necessary.” Earlier in the day, the company said it “acted lawfully” while reporting the story and engaged in “good-faith negotiations” with Bezos.

Stay tuned.

Vaccination Nation

I swear, the anti-vax movement is as awful and as selfish as it comes, exposing kids to measles and rubella and mumps and whooping cough because you read something on Facebook that one time. Amid a major measles outbreak in Washington State this month, people are actually rallying at the capitol in order to keep on hurting their kids.

With more than 50 cases of measles in Washington state, there's been a new push to change the law. Washington is one of 17 states that allow parents to refuse vaccines for philosophical reasons.

But on Friday, hundreds rallied to preserve their right not to vaccinate their children. Lawmakers heard arguments on a proposed bill that would ban the measles vaccine exemption for philosophical reasons. Thirty-two other states have similar laws.

Measles is so contagious that an unvaccinated person has a 90 percent chance of catching the disease if they're near someone who has it. The virus can survive for up to two hours in a room where an infected person sneezed.

Measles vaccination rates here, at the epicenter of the outbreak, are now up by 500 percent.

"I think we're seeing people rush to the doctor now because it's real and it's been growing every week. And so folks actually see a real threat," said Washington Secretary of Health John Wiesman.

But opponents of the bill still think the measles vaccine is a bigger threat than the disease itself.

"I don't feel I'm putting my child at risk. There's nothing that's going to change my mind on this on that specific vaccination," said mother Monique Murray.

If you don't vaccinate your kids, I feel child services should get involved, but that's just me.

Last Call For You Wrecked It, Ralph

Embattled Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam now say he will not resign over recently uncovered pictures in blackface in his medical school yearbook, despite calls from national Democrats for Northam to step down.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam told his top staff Friday that he is not going to resign over the racist photo that has roiled state politics, despite intense pressure to step down, according to a top administration official.

Northam called a Cabinet meeting Friday afternoon to announce his intention to stay, the official said. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity

The announcement comes at the end of an unprecedented week in Virginia history that has seen the state’s three top Democrats embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals.

The tumult began last Friday afternoon, when Northam’s medical school yearbook page surfaced with a picture of one person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.

Northam immediately apologized for appearing in the photograph, saying he could not “undo the harm my behavior caused then and today.” Most of the Democratic establishment called for his resignation by the end of the day.

On Saturday, though, the governor reversed course and said he wasn’t in the picture. He said he wasn’t going to resign immediately because he owed it to the people of Virginia to start a discussion about race and discrimination and listen to the pain he had caused.

“I believe this moment can be the first small step to open a discussion about these difficult issues,” Northam said. But the governor left his long-term plans open, saying he would reassess his decision not to resign if it became clear he had no viable path forward.

The pressure on Northam reached a crescendo Saturday when almost the entire Virginia Democratic establishment, as well as nearly every Democratic presidential hopeful, called on him to resign. That pressure has tapered off as a cascade of scandals involving top politicians has rocked the state.

Meanwhile, Virginia's Lt. Governor, Justin Fairfax, is now being accused by a second woman of sexual assault.

A Maryland woman said Friday she was raped by Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) in a “premeditated and aggressive” assault in 2000, while they both were undergraduate students at Duke University. She is the second woman this week to make an accusation of sexual assault.

The woman, Meredith Watson, said Friday in a written statement through her attorney that she shared her account immediately after it happened with several classmates and friends. Watson did not speak publicly Friday and her lawyer did not make her available for an interview.

Watson was friends with Fairfax at Duke but they never dated or had any romantic relationship, the lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said.

“At this time, Ms. Watson is reluctantly coming forward out of a strong sense of civic duty and her belief that those seeking or serving in public office should be of the highest character,” Smith said in the statement . “She has no interest in becoming a media personality or reliving the trauma that has greatly affected her life. Similarly, she is not seeking any financial damages.”

Sadly, Northam has decided that if Donald Trump can survive worse allegations, he shouldn't have to go anywhere.  Fairfax too denies the second allegation and says he too will not resign. 

If Democrats go down that road, there's no coming back.

And the voters will remember.

Adelson's Gamble Pays Off Big Time

GOP casino magnate Sheldon Adelson bought and paid for Donald Trump's 2016 campaign to the tune of more than $20 million, and now Adelson is getting his reward as the Trump Justice Department has quietly issued new guidelines all but putting an end to online gambling and interstate lotteries like Powerball and Mega Millions, leaving brick-and-mortar casinos like Adelson's empire as the only game in town.

The Justice Department’s decision last month to release a legal opinion that could further restrict Internet gambling is drawing fire from state attorneys general and former department officials amid questions about casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s long-standing push for the move.

The legal opinion, which was posted online during the partial government shutdown, reversed a 2011 Justice Department interpretation of the Wire Act that effectively gave the states a green light to authorize lotteries and other forms of online gambling.

The change was long sought by Adelson, a major Republican donor who spent more than $20 million to back Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016.

“We can see no good reason for the Justice Department’s sudden reversal,” Josh Shapiro, attorney general of Pennsylvania, and Gurbir S. Grewal, attorney general of New Jersey, wrote this week in a joint letter to acting U.S. attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

In their letter, the Democratic attorneys general said they were concerned by reports that the drafting of the new opinion “followed substantial lobbying by outside groups.”

The opinion released Jan. 14 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) echoed arguments outlined in a memo written by the law firm of Washington attorney Charles Cooper, who was working as part of an Adelson-backed lobbying team. Cooper’s memo reached the OLC in 2017, officials confirmed.
Cooper himself is a former head of the OLC and has worked as a personal lawyer for former attorney general Jeff Sessions.

In an interview, Cooper confirmed that he lobbied Justice Department officials to reconsider its previous opinion on the Wire Act and expressed satisfaction that his memo resonated with his successor.

The opinion “accords entirely with the analysis my firm undertook and I shared with the DOJ,” said Cooper, who compared his memo to law review articles and opinion pieces that serve as research material for department lawyers.

Justice Department officials said the process that led to the new opinion was independent and in keeping with department norms and guidelines.

“The 23-page opinion reflects the Office of Legal Counsel’s best judgment of the law, and the accusation that the opinion was shaped by any outside interest is baseless and offensive,” said Nicole Navas Oxman, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

[Justice Department issues opinion that could further restrict online gambling]

The opinion centers on an interpretation of the Wire Act, a 1961 statute that makes it a criminal offense to transmit information to promote interstate or foreign wagering.

In September 2011, the Obama Justice Department issued an opinion that only sports betting fell within the purview of the act.

The reversal of that decision could have an impact on interstate lotteries and has upset state officials, who have come to rely on lottery revenue to fund key programs.

We'll see how this shakes out, but it could be a major disaster for states, infrastructure, and anyone who isn't a casino owner.