Last Call For Last One Out Turn Off The Lights

Ben Wittes at Lawfare sums up where we are on the Mueller report tonight:

Attorney General William Barr now has the Mueller Report, and the world looks a heck of a lot like it did yesterday, when Barr did not have the Mueller Report. At least, it appears to. The major difference is that the mystery before us has slightly changed form. Before today, we asked what Mueller was going to do, what indictments he was going to bring, and what allegations he was going to make. Today, we ask a subtly different question: What is it that he has written? What allegations has he made? And why has he decided not to make those allegations in the form of additional cases?

We don’t, at this stage, know anything about what information the Mueller Report contains. We don’t know what form the document takes. We don’t even know how many pages comprise it. We don’t know when we will learn what Mueller has found. Speculating about these questions is not useful. A huge amount depends here on how Mueller imagines his role—and on how Barr imagines his.

But there are certain things we do know: We know, for example, that Mueller was able to finish his investigation on his own terms. We know this because Barr said so in his letter to Congress Friday evening. The special counsel regulations, writes Barr, “require that I provide [Congress] with ‘a description and explanation of incidents (if any) in which the Attorney General’” countermanded an investigative step of the special counsel. “There were no such instances during the Special Counsel’s investigation.” This is reassuring. From it, we can at least tentatively conclude that the Mueller report—whatever is in it—reflects Mueller’s best assessment of the evidence, following his having taken every investigative step he felt necessary and appropriate to reach that assessment.

We also know that Mueller is not going to indict more people. Though what precisely this means is unclear, it means at a minimum that we should not expect the major collusion indictment that ties together the earlier Russian hacking allegations and social media indictment with conduct by figures in the Trump campaign. It also means that whatever Mueller found on the obstruction prong of the investigation, it’s not resulting in criminal charges either.

The president should wait before popping the champagne corks over this and tweeting in triumph. Yes, in the best-case scenario for the president, Mueller is not proceeding further because he lacks the evidence to do so. But even this possibility contains multitudes: everything from what the president calls “NO COLLUSION!” to evidence that falls just short of adequate to prove criminal conduct to a reasonable jury beyond a reasonable doubt—evidence that could still prove devastating if the conduct at issue becomes public.

There are other possibilities as well. It’s possible, for example, that Mueller is not proceeding against certain defendants other than the president because he has referred them to other prosecutorial offices; some of these referrals are already public, and it’s reasonable to expect there may be other referrals too. In this iteration, what is ending here is not the investigation, merely the portion of the investigation Mueller chose to retain for himself. It’s possible also that Mueller is finished because he has determined that while the evidence would support a prosecution of the president, he is bound by the Justice Department’s long-standing position that the president is not amenable to criminal process. On the obstruction front, he may well have concluded that, while the president acted to obstruct the investigation, he cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the president’s obstructive acts were not exercises of Trump’s Article II powers. It’s also possible that Mueller has strong prudential reasons for not proceeding with otherwise viable cases.

My gut instinct is that it is some combination of these factors that explains the end of the probe. Without knowing the reasons the investigation is finished, it is impossible to know how to assess its end—and nobody should try.

I certainly won't.  We don't know what's in the report, and America may never know.

On we go to the SDNY and NY state investigations.

BREAKING: It's Finally Mueller Time

After nearly 22 months, the Mueller report is now on Attorney General Bill Barr's desk.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has submitted a confidential report to Attorney General William P. Barr, marking the end of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.

The Justice Department notified Congress late Friday that it had received Mueller’s report but did not describe its contents. Barr is expected to summarize the findings for lawmakers in coming days.

In a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, Barr wrote that Mueller “has concluded his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and related matters.”

Barr wrote that Mueller submitted a report to him explaining his prosecution decisions. The attorney general told lawmakers he was “reviewing the report and anticipate that I may be in a position to advise you of the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions as soon as this weekend.”

So what's in the report?  Nobody's talking.  We'll see if there are any leaks.

Republicans are already declaring victory, of course.  And it's 100% up to Bill Barr if any of this information goes public or not.

For now, we wait.

It's Mueller Time.

Trump's Race To The Bottom, Con't

We all know that Donald Trump likes to hear himself talk and hold rallies to fawning crowds, but his constant hateful rhetoric and pro-white supremacist statements matter more than people think.  The Washington Post has found hate crimes in counties where Trump has held his rallies have more than tripled.

Does Trump’s political rhetoric have a measurable link to reported hate crime and extremist activity?

We examined this question, given that so many politicians and pundits accuse Trump of emboldening white nationalists. White nationalist leaders seem to agree, as leaders including Richard Spencer and David Duke have publicly supported Trump’s candidacy and presidency, even if they still criticize him for not going far enough. The New Zealand shooter even referred to Trump as a “renewed symbol of white identity.”

So, do attitudes like these have real world consequences? Recent research on far-right groups suggests that they do, especially when these attitudes are embraced and encourage by peers. Specifically, the quantity of neo-Nazi and racist skinheadgroups active in a state leads to increased reports of hate crimes within that state.

Using the Anti-Defamation League’s Hate, Extremism, Anti-Semitism, Terrorism map data (HEAT map), we examined whether there was a correlation between the counties that hosted one of Trump’s 275 presidential campaign rallies in 2016 and increased incidents of hate crimes in subsequent months.

To test this, we aggregated hate-crime incident data and Trump rally data to the county level and then used statistical tools to estimate a rally’s impact. We included controls for factors such as the county’s crime rates, its number of active hate groups, its minority populations, its percentage with college educations, its location in the country and the month when the rallies occurred.

We found that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally.

Of course, our analysis cannot be certain it was Trump’s campaign rally rhetoric that caused people to commit more hate crimes in the host county. However, suggestions that this effect can be explained through a plethora of faux hate crimes are at best unrealistic. In fact, this charge is frequently used as a political tool to dismiss concerns about hate crimes. Research shows it is far more likely that hate crime statistics are considerably lower because of underreporting.

Additionally, it is hard to discount a “Trump effect” when a considerable number of these reported hate crimes reference Trump. According to the ADL’s 2016 data, these incidents included vandalism, intimidation and assault.

What’s more, according to the FBI’s Universal Crime report in 2017, reported hate crimes increased 17 percent over 2016. Recent research also shows that reading or hearing Trump’s statements of bias against particular groups makes people more likely to write offensive things about the groups he targets.

Even if your argument is that correlation does not equal causation, Trump still shouldn't be publicly saying the things he does as leader of America.

On top of all that however, the evidence is pretty strong that Trump causes bad things to happen, and hey, let's not pretend that it isn't happening right now.

A 17-year-old male was arrested over race-based threats against the Charlottesville school system, local police say.

The Virginia city's public schools were closed for two days -- Thursday and Friday -- in light of the threats that were made online.

Charlottesville police announced Friday they had arrested a juvenile in connection to the online threats. He is being charged with one felony and one misdemeanor.

The police gave few details about the threats in question, announcing only that they were alerted to the "biased-based language targeting specific ethnic groups" at the public high school on Wednesday afternoon.

At a subsequent news conference, Charlottesville City Schools superintendent Rosa Atkins said that the teen was not a student at the school.

She said that the individual was "a person who is not a part of the Charlottesville school system and community" and added that he made the "hateful threat... under the guise of being a Charlottesville high school student."

Rashall Brackney, the chief of the Charlottesville Police Department, said at the news conference that the threats "referenced ethnic cleansing."

The entire public school system -- which includes seven elementary schools, one middle school, one high school and one education program for young patients at the University of Virginia Children's Hospital -- was closed on Thursday and Friday.

But it's okay if Trump does it, right?

Jared, The Galleria Of Crime, Con't

Just a reminder that Jared Kushner is far from the worst person at criming in the Trump regime, but he does have the distinction of still being there to screw up.  Jerry Nadler and the House Judiciary are already taking their swing at this pinata, and now it's Elijah Cummings's turn at House Oversight.

House Democrats are raising new concerns about what they say is recently revealed information from Jared Kushner’s attorney indicating that the senior White House aide has been relying on encrypted messaging service WhatsApp and his personal email account to conduct official business. 

The revelation came in a Dec. 19 meeting — made public by the House Oversight and Reform Committee for the first time on Thursday — between Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the former chairman of the Oversight panel, and Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell.

Cummings, who now leads the Oversight Committee, says in a new letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone that Lowell confirmed to the two lawmakers that Kushner “continues to use” WhatsApp to conduct White House business. Cummings also indicated that Lowell told them he was unsure whether Kushner had ever used WhatsApp to transmit classified information. 

"That's above my pay grade," Lowell told the lawmakers, per Cummings' letter. 

Lowell added, according to Cummings, that Kushner is in compliance with record-keeping law. Lowell told the lawmakers that Kushner takes screenshots of his messages and forwards them to his White House email in order to comply with records preservation laws, Cummings indicated.

Kushner, whom the president charged with overseeing the administration’s Middle East policies, reportedly has communicated with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman via WhatsApp. 

The details of the discussion about Kushner’s email and messaging practices came as part of a new Oversight Committee demand for a slew of new documents from Kushner and other current and former White House officials, including his wife Ivanka Trump, former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland, and former top strategist Steve Bannon. 

Cummings is demanding the documents by April 4 and signaled he may issue subpoenas if the White House refuses to comply.

Kushner used WhatsApp to talk to MBS, Ivanka has her own email server that she uses for communication to Jared with, and KT McFarland apparently used an AOL account to email Steve Bannon about that secret plan to give the Saudis classified nuclear info.

They're all idiots and massive security risks and they need to be in small cells, preferably without sunlight.

StupidiNews!

• Mississippi is the latest state to pass a "heartbeat bill" that would ban abortions after six weeks, similar bills have been struck down in Iowa and Kentucky so far this year.
• The pro-Trump terrorist who was arrested for mailing explosive devices to several Democrats last year has plead guilty to multiple counts of using a weapon of mass destruction and other charges.
• The Trump regime has announced new sanctions against North Korea in the wake of last month's failed summit as Pyongyang continues to build missiles and evade UN sanctions.
• The European Union has given UK Prime Minister Theresa May two additional weeks to secure a Brexit deal from Parliament, the new deadline for Brexit action is now April 12.
• Facebook is reeling from yet another user data security failure as engineers discovered millions of user passwords were exposed and stored as plain-text as far back as 2012.

Last Call For Wag The Dog, Con't

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is facing felony fraud and corruption indictments and refuses to resign, confident that he'll be able to form a government again after elections next month.  He effectively needs a miracle or a short, victorious war to stay in power, and Thursday he got a huge boost to that second prospect with tacit permission from Donald Trump to blast the Golan Heights to ashes.

President Donald Trump’s tweet on Thursday recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory surprised members of his own Middle East peace team, the State Department, and Israeli officials.

U.S. diplomats and White House aides had believed the Golan Heights issue would be front and center at next week’s meetings between Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. But they were unprepared for any presidential announcement this week.

No formal U.S. process or executive committees were initiated to review the policy before Trump’s decision, and the diplomats responsible for implementing the policy were left in the dark.

Even the Israelis, who have advocated for this move for years, were stunned at the timing of Trump’s message.

“We all found out by tweet,” one Israeli official said. “We’ve been lobbying for this for a long time, but it was not the product of one phone call. There were hints, but we weren’t given advance notice.”
A second Israeli source said that the top-most Israeli leadership was given a heads-up shortly before Trump tweeted the decision, similar to how they were informed of the president’s decision in December to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

One U.S. diplomatic source told McClatchy there were “intimations” of a coming policy shift, citing the administration’s decision over a period of months to phase out the use of modifiers such as “occupied” in reference to the Golan Heights in government reports. But, “we weren’t prepared as a department,” the source said. “Usually there’s prep for a rollout and policy briefs on the consequences, but there was none of that.”

Washington has recognized the Golan as Syrian territory under Israeli occupation since the 1970s, subject to a negotiated settlement between the two nations still technically at war.

“After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!” Trump tweeted.

The wording of Trump’s tweet likely falls short of a formal, declarative recognition, according to Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel under former President Barack Obama. But little more than a statement from the president or secretary of state is necessary to secure the major U.S. policy shift.

The White House is mulling several ways to formalize the policy decision, including a potential executive order signing ceremony on Monday with Netanyahu present.

And then Bibi rolls in the tanks and blasts his way to another term.  You'd better believe Trump will be using the same playbook in Venezuela sooner rather than later.

Another Day In Gunmerica

New Zealand is banning and confiscating assault rifles, meanwhile here in Gunmerica, we've simply accepted mass shootings as a feature of democracy, not a bug, and now regularly train educators by shooting them with pellet ammo so they know "what it feels like" to be shot.

An active-shooter training exercise at an Indiana elementary school in January left teachers with welts, bruises and abrasions after they were shot with plastic pellets by the local sheriff’s office conducting the session.

The incident, acknowledged in testimony this week before state lawmakers, was confirmed by two elementary school teachers in Monticello, who described an exercise in which teachers were asked by local law enforcement to kneel down against a classroom wall before being sprayed across their backs with plastic pellets without warning.

“They told us, ‘This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing,’” said one of the two teachers, both of whom asked IndyStar not to be identified out of concern for their jobs. “They shot all of us across our backs. I was hit four times.

“It hurt so bad.”

Now, these teachers and the state’s largest teachers union want to stop this from happening in other Hoosier schools. The Indiana State Teachers Association is lobbying lawmakers to add language prohibiting teachers from being shot with any sort of ammunition to a school safety bill working its way through the Statehouse.

“What we're looking for is just a simple statement in this bill that would prohibit the shooting of some type of projectile at staff in an active shooter drill,” said Gail Zeheralis, director of government relations for the ISTA during testimony in support of House Bill 1004 before lawmakers Wednesday.

The side-effect of terrorizing red state teachers so that they quit their jobs, breaking the unions, and allowing Republicans to finish off public education in the state by turning it over to "learning corporations" is a surely not intended outcome, too.

The White County sheriff said Thursday that his department has conducted similar training before but, after receiving a complaint, will no longer use the air-powered device, called an airsoft gun, with teachers.

Teachers at Meadowlawn Elementary School were supposed to be receiving what is called ALICE training, an "options-based" approach that encourages students and teachers to be proactive in their response to an active shooter and teaches tactics that include rushing a shooter in some situations.

Thousands of schools across the country, including many in Indiana, are using ALICE already. Shooting teachers with plastic pellets is not typically part of the training.

Not yet, anyway.

State Media Successful In America

America deserves FOX News as state media, and we're getting it whether we want it or not as a new poll finds more than three-quarters of Republican viewers now believe Donald Trump is the most successful president in American history.

Almost 8 in 10 Republicans who watch Fox News say Donald Trump is the most successful president in history.

That was just one finding of a new poll showing the deep ideological divide between Fox News viewers and everyone else. The poll results were provided to The Daily Beast by Navigator, a project launched by Democratic groups Global Strategy Group and GBA strategies. They surveyed more than 1,000 registered voters online with the goal of examining the differences in views between Fox News viewers and non-Fox viewers.

It comes after Democratic strategists have debated whether candidates and officeholders should appear on Trump’s favorite cable news channel to win over its regular viewers. Candidates like Sen. Amy Klobuchar have deliberately made efforts to speak to Fox News viewers, and the Democratic National Committee briefly entertained the idea of hosting a debate on Fox News before deciding against it.

But Thursday’s survey shows why many in the party have largely written off the network’s viewers as a lost cause.

The survey’s authors argue that the network presents an “alternate reality” in American politics, and plays an “outsized role in the way many experience and form opinions on the most important issues facing the country.”
The data show numerous ways in which Fox News-watching Republicans have radically different beliefs from non-Republicans and even Republicans who do not watch Fox News. 

Republicans who don’t watch Fox News, for example, are over twice as likely to believe climate change is man-made, compared to just 12 percent of Republicans who watch Fox News. According to the poll, 78 percent of Republicans who watch Fox News believe Trump has accomplished more than any other president in history, compared to 49 percent of Republicans who do not watch Fox News. And 79 percent of Republican Fox News viewers said they believed people within the FBI and US intelligence agencies were trying to sabotage Trump, compared to 49 percent of non-Fox News viewing Republicans and just 8 percent of non-Fox News viewing registered voters who did not identify as Republican.

“Where Republican partisan affiliation and the Fox News echo-chamber overlap, there is near unanimity on the politics and even the facts defining the Trump presidency. This is the ‘FoxHole,’” the pollsters said. “What the Navigator data demonstrates is this particular segment of the public is so vastly different from the rest, it may serve progressives best to focus their attention on everyone else.”

Democrats.

Stop chasing FOX News viewers.

They are lost.  They are a cult.  They are dangerous.

StupidiNews!

• Keeping with policy changes announced earlier this week, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern has announced an assault rifle ban for the country that should be in place in as little as three weeks.
• Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan is under a government ethics investigation for his relationship with his former defense contractor employer, aerospace giant Boeing.
• Donald Trump is once again threatening Beijing with more trade tariffs, saying duties on imports from China will remain for a "substantial period" into the future to ensure any trade deal compliance.
• UK Prime Minister Theresa May called on Parliament to approve a delay in the Brexit deadline until June 30th, warning that failure to do so by March 29 will result in grave consequences. 
• A federal judge has ordered the Trump regime to conduct a thorough climate change analysis on lands leased for public oil and gas extraction.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan, Con't

On top of everything else awful about Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin, he's an anti-vaxxer dipstick who exposed his kids to chickenpox without vaccinating them so they would get sick on purpose.

In a move experts say is medically unsound — and can be dangerous — Gov. Matt Bevin said in a radio interview Tuesday that he deliberately exposed all nine of his children to chickenpox so they would catch the disease and become immune.

“Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox," Bevin said in an interview with WKCT, a Bowling Green talk radio station. "They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children. They were miserable for a few days, and they all turned out fine.”

Three medical experts called the practice unsafe and unwise.

"I would never recommend or advise it," said Dr. Robert Jacobson, a pediatrician and expert in vaccines and childhood diseases at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "It's just dangerous."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also urges against deliberately exposing kids to chicken pox, including the past practice of "chicken pox parties" held by some parents

"Chickenpox can be serious and can lead to severe complications and death, even in healthy children," according to the CDC website.

A Bevin spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bevin and his wife, Glenna, have nine children, ages 5 to 16, according to his campaign website.

Again, Bevin's example is putting the people of Kentucky at risk.  It's ludicrous.

In the interview, Bevin also suggested that the government stay out of mandating vaccines. In Kentucky, varicella (chickenpox) is among vaccines mandated for all children entering kindergarten, though parents may seek religious exemptions or provide medical proof that a child has already had the disease.

“And I think, why are we forcing kids to get it?" Bevin said in the radio interview, speaking about the chickenpox vaccine. "If you are worried about your child getting chickenpox or whatever else, vaccinate your child. ... But for some people, and for some parents, for some reason they choose otherwise. This is America. The federal government should not be forcing this upon people. They just shouldn’t."

Jacobson said he recommends vaccines as a safe and effective way to prevent disease.

"We're no longer living in the 17th century," he said. "I really recommend to my parents that they vaccinate their children, that they do it in a timely manner, and they recognize they are doing the right thing for their children."

In response to Bevin's comments, the Kentucky Democratic Party called on the governor to clarify his position on vaccination against the hepatitis A virus, which has killed 44 people in the state.
“Kentucky is currently experiencing the worst outbreak of Hepatitis A in the country. It is a major public health risk at this point. The last thing we need is Governor Bevin suggesting that immunization is not important," KDP spokeswoman Marisa McNee said in an email. "Governor Bevin should reassure the public that he supports the recommendation of the entire medical community with respect to controlling an outbreak of Hepatitis A, which is immunization.”

Bevin's comments followed news reports this week of a chickenpox outbreak at a Northern Kentucky Catholic school, where at least one student reported not being vaccinated for religious reasons.

I'm so tired of this.  The government doesn't mandate that you don't jump off cliffs without safety gear, but people don't choose to do it just to spite the government, and more importantly they don't push their own kids off cliffs in order to prove God exists or something.

And actually, that's manslaughter and felony child endangerment pretty much in all 50 states.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is now cooperating with House Judiciary Democrats in Rep. Jerry Nadler's wide-ranging investigation of the Trump regime.

Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director and long-time confidante of President Donald Trump, plans to turn over documents to the House Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation into potential obstruction of justice. 

Rep. Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent Hicks a detailed letter earlier this month, asking for documents on a wide-range of topics, including over former national security adviser Michael Flynn's false statements to the FBI, the firing of then-FBI Director James Comey, Trump's involvement in a hush-money scheme to silence stories about his alleged affairs and the drafting of a misleading 2017 statement to the media about Donald Trump Jr.'s 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Russians. 

The request included documents from "any personal or work diary, journal or other book containing notes, a record or a description of daily events" about Trump, the Trump campaign, the Trump Organization and the executive office of the President. 

Hicks and other current administration officials have agreed to provide documents to the committee, according to Nadler's spokesman Daniel Schwarz. Hicks' attorney declined to comment. 

The development comes amid a growing fight between House Democrats and the White House over a range of investigations -- after the White House has ignored a number of deadlines set by Democratic chairmen, who now wield subpoena power. The White House has not yet provided information to Nadler, a Democrat from New York, as part of his investigation -- despite a deadline this past Monday.
Hicks' cooperation comes in stark contrast to former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who is facing an array of questions from the House Oversight Committee over his role in the White House security clearance process. Kelly is allowing the White House counsel's office to respond to the Democrats' demands for information, but Hicks appears to be interacting directly with the House Judiciary Committee. 

While she has agreed to cooperate, it's unclear how much information Hicks will ultimately provide the committee. 

Last year, Hicks testified behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee, but she did not answer all of the questions from Democrats, who at the time were in the minority. 

One of the Trump campaign's earliest hires, Hicks in 2018 was willing to answer questions about the 2016 campaign and some questions about the Trump transition, but she would not address questions about her time in the White House. Democrats on the committee had urged their Republican colleagues to subpoena Hicks to answer their questions. Now in the majority, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, has indicated he also is interested in getting additional information from Hicks, too. 

Nadler had set a Monday deadline for 81 individuals and entities to provide information to the panel as part of his investigation into possible abuses of power, corruption and obstruction of justice. Republicans contended that few -- only eight -- complied by Monday's deadline. But Democratic aides said far more witnesses had agreed to provide information in the coming days -- and Hicks is just one such example. 

Hicks isn't the only former White House official who is cooperating with the House Judiciary Committee. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, for instance, has already provided the committee with several thousands of pages of documents.

It's those early meetings with the Russians in 2016 that are the key to this whole mess.  Hicks was right in the center of dealing with Trump's communications.  She knows everything, frankly.

She's going to have a lot to say, I'd imagine.

It's About Suppression, Con't

Florida Republicans are in full panic mode knowing that the state passed a constitutional referendum last year to restore voting rights to felons who have served their time, a move that would add potentially a million new voters to the rolls.

And the vast majority of those new voters would be black.

You can imagine the scent of flop sweat and fear in Tallahassee.  This week, Florida Republicans moved to start stripping black voters off the rolls in other ways, staring with a bill re- disenfranchising felons over costs and state fees.

A Florida House committee approved a bill addressing the rollout of Amendment 4 despite concerns that it would limit the number of former felons who could have their voting rights restored. 

Voting along party lines, Republicans advanced the measure, which would require felons pay back all court fees and costs before being eligible to vote, even if those costs are not handed down by a judge as part of the person’s sentence. 

That standard goes beyond the old system, which only required someone pay back restitution to a victim before applying to have their civil rights restored. And Democratic representatives and others blasted it. 

“It’s blatantly unconstitutional as a poll tax,” said Rep. Adam Hattersley, D-Riverview.

At issue was how broadly or narrowly to interpret the amendment, and whether the Legislature needs to do anything at all. 

Advocates of Amendment 4 believe no bill is needed, and that lawmakers are just meddling. Already, felons are registering to vote — and voting — across the state. 

But elections supervisors and others have said they want help interpreting the historic amendment, which Floridians passed last year. It allowed more than 1 million ex-felons to have their voting rights restored, except for those convicted of “murder” and “sexual offenses.” 

Committee chair Jamie Grant, R-Tampa, said he took the language explicitly at its word, and he pointed to testimony Amendment 4 lawyers gave to the Supreme Court. 

Nobody defined what “sexual offenses” meant, Grant said, so he included every felony sexual offense on the books, including prostitution and placing an adult entertainment store within 2,500 feet of a school. 

“There is absolutely zero significance to the term ‘felony sex,’” Grant said. "Had the language said ‘sex offender,' that would have meant something.” 

And he said he cited Amendment 4′s own advocates before the Supreme Court, who said completing someone’s sentence could include fees and court costs.

And he considered it offensive to consider the fines a poll tax. 

“To suggest that this is a poll tax inherently diminishes the atrocity of what a poll tax actually was,” Grant said. “All we’re doing is following statute. All we’re doing is following the testimony of what was presented before the Florida Supreme Court explicitly acknowledging that fines and court costs are part of a sentence.”

So by piling on loopholes and turning everything into a legal nightmare, Republicans would tie up the voting rights of hundreds of thousands for years, if not permanently.  That's how terrified they are, they know the Florida GOP will go the way of the Republican party in California, New York, and Illinois soon.  And with 2020 determining which party is in charge of redistricting, they have to do everything they can to kill this now or they will be wiped out next November.

And they know it.

StupidiNews!

• Police officials in New Zealand say the suspect behind Friday's massacre at two mosques that killed 50 was planning to attack a third mosque and traveling there when police stopped him.
• The British Museum has returned an ancient Babylonian tablet to Iraq after the artifact was found by customs officials in 2012 after being looted during the Iraq War.
• A San Francisco jury has found that pharmaceutical giant Bayer is responsible for causing cancer with its widely used weed killer Round-Up, which could open the company up to billions in lawsuits.
• Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has joined Amazon boss Jeff Bezos in the twelve-figure net worth club, both men are now worth upwards of $100 billion.
• Aluminum producer Norsk Hydro says its US division was hit by a major ransomware attack that has crippled operations, the Norwegian company says that the attack has spread to other countries.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

In a major victory for the Trump regime's coming mass detainment and deportation strategy, the Roberts court gave the green light for permanent detainment for non-US citizens with criminal records with no due process whatsoever.

The Supreme Court held on Tuesday that the government can detain -- without a bond hearing -- immigrants with past criminal records, even if years have passed since they were released from criminal custody. 

The case centered on whether detention without a bond hearing must occur promptly upon an immigrant's release from criminal custody or whether it can happen months or even years later when the individual has resettled into society. The statute says simply that the detention can occur "when the alien is released" from custody. 

The court voted 5-4 in favor of the government. 

The challenge was brought by lawful permanent residents who committed a crime that could lead to their removal. 

In his opinion for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said that the immigrants in the case had argued they were "owed bond hearings" in order to argue for their release. Alito said that the law did not support their argument. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately to say that the ruling was based entirely on the language of the statute at hand. He said it would be "odd" to interpret the statute as mandating the detention of certain "non citizens" who posed a serious risk of danger of flight, but "nonetheless" allow them to remain free during their removal proceedings if the executive branch failed "to immediately detain them upon their release from criminal custody." 

"The court correctly holds that the Executive Branch's detention of the particular non citizens here remained mandatory even though the Executive Branch did not immediately detain them." 

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the dissent, and took the unusual step of reading the opinion from the bench. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. 

"It runs the gravest risk of depriving those whom the Government has detained of one of the oldest and most important of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms: the right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law."

Indefinite detainment without due process for undocumented with criminal records is important, because the next step is for the Trump regime to then say that the act of being in the country illegally constitutes a national security threat, and that opens up the legalization of mass roundups of millions of undocumented in the US to be processed and deported, while the rest are simply kept in government internment camps.

SCOTUS laying down precedent to say that due process doesn't exist for a class of people living in the country is exactly the opening that the GOP has been looking for over the last several decades.  The ultimate endgame of this of course is to then argue that if due process doesn't apply to non-citizens, then the Trump regime can revoke that citizenship.  Expand the class to include your political enemies, in other words.

And then the real nightmare begins.

That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

Turns out Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein isn't leaving the Justice Department (and oversight of the Mueller probe) this month after all.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is planning to stay on at the Justice Department "a little longer" than originally anticipated, according to a Justice official familiar with his thinking. 

Initially, he planned to leave in mid-March, but no firm date was ever set and after consulting with Attorney General William Barr, he will now stay in his position a bit longer. 

He has not given the White House his two weeks' notice. 

Rosenstein has been overseeing the Russia investigation and as CNN has reported, he has signaled to other officials that he would leave when he was satisfied that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation was either complete or close enough to completion that it was protected.

This jibes with last week's often overlooked news that while the Manafort part of the Mueller probe is winding down with Manafort's sentencing, the probe itself continues as Manafort's business partner Rick Gates continue to provide information.

Rick Gates, the longtime right-hand-man to Paul Manafort who had high-level roles on the Trump campaign and inauguration, is not yet ready for sentencing, Mueller’s team said Friday— because Gates “continues to cooperate with respect to several ongoing investigations.”

Gates struck a plea deal with Mueller’s team in February 2018 and testified against Manafort at his trial in August 2018.

What’s left tantalizingly unclear, as ever, is what’s going on with Mueller’s own investigation. For weeks, it’s been rumored in Washington that the special counsel is close to wrapping up — but no Mueller report has yet materialized.

However, Gates’s continued cooperation doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about the state of the special counsel probe because he isn’t only cooperating with Mueller.

There are at least two known investigations, beyond Mueller’s own, that Gates is believed to be cooperating with: an investigation into the Trump inauguration’s money and an investigation into lobbyists’ and lawyers’ unregistered work for Ukraine.

Since both of those investigations appear to remain active, it makes perfect sense that Gates isn’t yet ready for sentencing. Gates could also be providing assistance to other investigations we don’t know about.

Rosenstein leaving was probably the biggest single sign the Meuller probe was winding down.  Now he's staying on.

We have a lot more ground to cover, it seems.