Patterico's Pontifications

5/23/2018

Your Open Trump Thread

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:41 am



To discuss Trump and the Trumpy Trump news of this Trump day. Trump Trump Trump.

Is SPYGATE likely to be one of the biggest political scandals in history? Or just of the last week? It’s a very special episode.

399 Responses to “Your Open Trump Thread”

  1. Obama not only tried to sabotage Trump’s campaign, he succeeded in sabotaging Bernie’s, and he was not born in America either.

    nk (dbc370)

  2. If Woody Allen and Billy Graham could have an engaging conversation together…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BEa_DqbEYE

    Paul Montagu (e6130e)

  3. The con always has his escape route planned, just in case. Trump’s methods include using the gossiper’s language of “people say”, “could be” and “by all accounts”…. as his way out of being called on his lies. Red meat for the base while evading responsibility.

    noel (b4d580)

  4. nk says…. “and he was not born in America either”

    OK. You are joking or…. you are an officer in the GOP??

    noel (b4d580)

  5. Trump is living in your headline.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  6. Ah-ha! So you agree that Obama sabotaged Bernie’s campaign and tried to sabotage Trump’s!

    nk (dbc370)

  7. Trump’s been at this for a while now. Don’t forget all of those birther quotes….

    “A lot facts are emerging and I’M STARTING TO WONDER myself whether or not he was born in this country.”

    “Now, SOMEBODY TOLD ME — and I have no idea if this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be — that where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim”

    “..IF he wasn’t born in this country, WHICH IS A REAL POSSIBILITY … then he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics.”

    “A LOT OF PEOPLE DO NOT THINK it was an authentic certificate. …MANY PEOPLE DO NOT THINK it was authentic. His mother was not in the hospital.”

    The Gossiper in Chief.

    noel (b4d580)

  8. “There will be a meeting at the White House on Thursday between FBI Director Wray, Attorney General Rosenstein, House Oversight Committee’s Gowdy and House Intelligence Committee’s Nunes. No one from the White House will be at the meeting and no Democrats will be there either.

    “To my knowledge the Democrats have not requested that information so I would refer you back to them as to why they would consider themselves randomly invited to see something they’ve never asked to,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday.

    What will happen at this meeting? Will the meeting be yet another discussion about the documents that Congress has legally demanded and the DOJ has ignored? Or will the requested documents be produced as required by law?

    Let me tell you right now that I doubt they will be turning over those documents.

    The documents in question have to do with the origination of the investigation into Trump. When did it start? The story keeps changing. Early spring? July? What evidence was presented to the FISA court FOUR TIMES to continue surveillance on the campaign, even after Trump was elected and serving as president? It’s obvious the DOJ and the FBI don’t want you or me to know. Why?”

    https://pjmedia.com/blog/liveblogevent/wednesdays-hot-mic-60/entry-230969/

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  9. Just got back from a week on a boat diving in the ocean. A week of no news. No internet. No phone. No politics. A couple of days back with the news and I’m already wishing I was back under-water where the only sound is that of bubbles; where there are sharks but no politicians.

    Marci (fbaa8c)

  10. You seem upset, noel. Is everything ok?

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  11. Sharks, politicians, lawyers: they all have the ability to sense blood in the water

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  12. Trump on Obama birth certificate…. “then he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics.”

    Oh, that sounds suspiciously like last nights tweet…. “a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before!”

    Another day, another con.

    noel (b4d580)

  13. “JAMES CLAPPER: LEAKER, LIAR & SLEAZEBALL
    Neither of the two Obama-era intelligence chiefs turned Trump resisters — John Brennan nor James Clapper — is anyone’s idea of a luminary. Of the two, though, Clapper seems the more intelligent, the more clever, and thus the more dangerous.

    Sean Davis’ report, cited by Scott earlier today, that Clapper leaked the anti-Trump dossier to CNN and then lied about it demonstrates the point. Clapper testified before the House Intelligence Committee that he did not discuss the anti-Trump dossier compiled by Christopher Steele with journalists. His testimony to the Committee included this exchange:

    MR. ROONEY: Did you discuss the dossier or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists?

    MR. CLAPPER: No.

    But Clapper changed his story after he was confronted specifically about his communications with Jake Tapper of CNN. According to the Committee’s report, “Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the ‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’ and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic.” The report continues, “Clapper’s discussion with Tapper took place in early January 2017, around the time IC leaders briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump, on ‘the Christopher Steele information.’

    Thus, Clapper is, indeed, a leaker and a liar.”

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/04/james-clapper-leaker-liar-sleazeball.php

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  14. I guess that’s easier than debate, right BuDuh?

    But I’ve seen you guys use that “you seem upset” or “calm down” thing on me and others many times before. Try another one.

    noel (b4d580)

  15. I don’t think that we ever saw Obama’s real birth certificates (yes, plural, at least three) either, but I think it has to do with the names he had as a child and not his place of birth.

    Unless you’re a Hawaiian nationalist and believe that fascist imperialist America illegally annexed the nation of Hawaii, and then it’s a brand new ballgame.

    nk (dbc370)

  16. Ninja rattlesnakes… what next!?!? http://www.thestate.com/news/nation-world/national/article211609889.html

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  17. Barry never gained much traction with Sotero.

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  18. This comment isn’t about Trump.

    There are Republican leaders and conservative media who support Trump but who dislike, and perhaps even despise, the Republican/conservative base that supports him. The same leaders and media happily trash former GOP Presidents and grassroots populist leaders (such as Sarah Palin) because they no longer have power. They claim they care about principles and loyalty but power is all that really seems to matter to them, and they will turn on Trump if his support goes South.

    IMO lasting change comes through an agenda, not the ups and downs of one President.

    DRJ (0280d9)

  19. Has there ever been any research done on whether rattlers actually intend to warn that they’re about to strike, or whether it’s an involuntary tremor as they tense their coils preparatory to striking?

    nk (dbc370)

  20. And did you notice how I used “there, they’re, their” in that sentence?

    nk (dbc370)

  21. nk…. “I don’t think that we ever saw Obama’s real birth certificates”

    You guys may accuse me of being “upset” but no…. I am really, truly LMAO.

    noel (b4d580)

  22. Trump is living in your headline.”

    Indeed, rent-free.

    He can’t see the Trump forest for the Trump trees.

    You would think a govt spy amongst the campaign would have warranted a mention, especially after so many ridiculed the idea.

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  23. I think what you wrote is more true about Trump than any other other President I can think of, DRJ, because his appeal, even to his core 13.4 million, is all based on salesmanship and not substance.

    nk (dbc370)

  24. You guys may accuse me of being “upset” but no…. I am really, truly LMAO.
    1. Please do not lump me in with BuDuh; and
    2. Yes, you should be laughing LYAO.

    nk (dbc370)

  25. It’s also one of the Alinsky rules: Power is not only what you have but also what you appear to have.

    nk (dbc370)

  26. What we have here is a vast Leftwing conspiracy originated by Obama and his Administration’s appointees and White House staff to shield Hillary Clinton from felony prosecution, and to use the machinery of our Federal government’s Intelligence Community (in cahoots with Democrat politicians and Mockingbird media) to spy on candidates, entrap advisors, and infiltrate campaigns in order to subvert the 2016 Presidential Election and put Crooked Hillary in the White House.

    Obama, Hillary, Lynch, Slick, Holder, Rice, Powers, Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, Comey, Rosencriminal, Muller, et al are involved up to their chinny chin chins.

    During the Watergate scandal I was in summer school taking a history course on the Roman Empire. But I told my professor I wanted to stay home and watch the Senate Watergate Committee’s hearings. He said I could come to school and learn ancient history, or stay home and watch history unfold.

    Today, we’re all watching raw history in the making as the GOP struggles to keep the Republic our Founders bequeathed us.

    ropelight (4cb598)

  27. The Daily Beast
    @thedailybeast
    Report: Iran appears to restart long-range missile program
    — –

    PapaSwamp
    @PapaSwamp
    Replying to @timgoral and @thedailybeast
    It never stopped. They had 8 tests since the ‘deal’ went into effect.
    — –

    Jrod™ 🇺🇸
    @Jrod940
    Replying to @thedailybeast
    The headline of the week so far. This is funny stuff. They never stopped this program. They just received lots of funding for it. 🤦‍♂️
    — –

    steakfries
    @gravyfist
    Replying to @thedailybeast
    The only thing the Iran deal did was give them the cash to keep doing what they were always doing.
    — –

    Jake R.
    @jaker1419
    Replying to @thedailybeast
    “restart”

    Did Ben Rhodes write this for you because your just a dumb 21 year old college grad?

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  28. rope light…..”Obama, Hillary, Lynch, Slick, Holder, Rice, Powers, Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, Comey, Rosencriminal, Muller, et al are involved up to their chinny chin chins”

    You’ve got about five Republicans on that list. Several are appointees of…. let me think…… ahhh…… well….. hmmmm….

    Trump?

    noel (b4d580)

  29. I guess that’s easier than debate, right BuDuh?

    But I’ve seen you guys use that “you seem upset” or “calm down” thing on me and others many times before. Try another one.

    Whoa! Asking if someone is upset is a disingenuous debate tactic? The deuce you say.

    I was told different.

    Sorry about that Noel. I didn’t mean to interrupt your debate with the birther.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  30. harkin, I forgot “rent free.” Dang it.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  31. 18. Mark my words, ladies and gentlemen; the Trump regime will carry with it a legacy of brand-building and bravado. Meaningful policy change will be non-existent.

    Gryph (08c844)

  32. 29. Don’t ever ask me if I’m upset. Always assume my answer will be “yes.” If not the Trump humpers, I’ll always have something else to be upset about when the topic of conversation turns to politics.

    Gryph (08c844)

  33. Yes. Asking if/why someone is “upset” or asking them to “calm down” is indeed a debate tactic designed to make your opponent appear out of control and emotional. Whether or not you intended it as such.

    noel (b4d580)

  34. How about this:

    “A judge sides with parents and rules their 30-year-old son must move out.”

    What was the son’s position? You support me for life? The parents went so far as to give him $1,100 and instructions on how to find an apartment.

    AZ Bob (9a6ada)

  35. I think Obama was born in Hawaii, but his so-called Birth Certificate is absolutely useless as verification. It’s as phony as a $3.00 bill, and obviously so.

    No doubt Obama is hiding something important (like maybe his real father’s identity).

    ropelight (4cb598)

  36. Still waiting for the LA Times to release the Khalidi video. Isn’t 10 years long enough?

    NJRob (b00189)

  37. When exactly are we not watching raw history in the making, ropelight?

    Was 2014 such a year? Nope, I can think of several important things that happened then. 1997? Naw, that year was consequential too.

    Doesn’t your phrase actually mean, “I think this is really important?” But you don’t want to say that, because “the opinion of ropelight” isn’t nearly as impressive-sounding on the most superficial levels as a suggestion that some future hypothetical historian is going to find this year, or month, or week, especially historical?

    If you’re living your life based on bad cliches, is it possible you’re missing something important?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  38. What was the son’s position? You support me for life?

    It’s the same as the DACA and trannies-in-the-military court arguments. You (Obama) created expectations that you (Trump) cannot now just take away even if I was not entitled to them in the first place.

    nk (dbc370)

  39. 37. I think you really hit on something here. I am a big fan of Ken Burns’ documentaries for precisely that reason. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to living through the events he describes. History books and lectures just don’t cover it in the same way.

    Gryph (08c844)

  40. But the parents having to sue is not as ridiculous as it sounds. If you grant someone occupancy of a home, even your home, you cannot take it back except in a peaceful manner, meaning a court order and a sheriff or bailiff. They can’t throw the twerp out by the scruff of his neck because he’ll charge them with domestic violence.

    nk (dbc370)

  41. And, noel, the use of smarmy debate tactics against you aren’t necessary. The positions you espouse as well as the objections you push are ample for readers to form an opinion as to the value of your contributions.

    ropelight (4cb598)

  42. #37, Beldar, are you upset?

    ropelight (4cb598)

  43. 42. He doesn’t sound upset to me, Trump humper.

    Gryph (08c844)

  44. 41. Damn skippy. And the value of Noel’s contributions is infinitely higher than the value of yours.

    Gryph (08c844)

  45. BuDuh is repeating things he’s said to me in recent weeks. He doesn’t like it when I ask people if they are upset. I do it with commenters I know online and am concerned about. I believe he thinks I am faking concern to score points or that I am being hypocritical, but his motive isn’t clear. Maybe he thinks it’s clever.

    On this topic, I am also concerned about Hoagie’s absence. I hope he is having his transplant.

    DRJ (15874d)

  46. And now ropelight is doing it. Is this forum now completely populated by lawyers and engineers?

    DRJ (15874d)

  47. We had fun, here, for a while making fun of the Obama media which labeled everything he did as “historical”.

    nk (dbc370)

  48. 46. To answer your question in a strictly logical sense, I am neither a lawyer nor an engineer. So no, this forum isn’t completely populated by them — even if it seems close. 😛

    Gryph (08c844)

  49. This comment is about Trump.

    I think Trump is right to be concerned about the FBI. I think the CIA may also be involved, and we should add the NSA, too. SPYGATE is a clever name for this topic.

    I want to know the facts. I fear that using this as a reason to tweet will prolong and inflame the controversy and means we will end up with a partisan result, ironically not unlike Obama’s birth certificate. People will believe what they want to believe because each President milked the controversy for maximum PR value. The losers are Truth and Americans’ confidence in our government.

    DRJ (15874d)

  50. “What was the son’s position? You support me for life? The parents went so far as to give him $1,100 and instructions on how to find an apartment.”

    I have a friend going through similar stuff only his 28 year old son is an even bigger tool. I’ve been telling him to kick him out for years, that he’ll never start learning how to live till he’s forced to provide for himself. He just got his second DUI and last time I saw him his biggest complaint (besides Trump) was the quality of beer in the fridge. He’s an absolute Obama/Bernie-loving snowflake too. The daughter is awesome, good head on her shoulders and has worked full time since she was a teen, moved to the midwest years ago for good job.

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  51. Thanks for that diversity, Gryph!

    DRJ (15874d)

  52. 35. I think Obama was born in Hawaii, but his so-called Birth Certificate is absolutely useless as verification.

    Why is this even relevant? One, Obama exited the birth canal of an American citizen, which makes him natural born. Two, he’s not the president.

    Paul Montagu (e6130e)

  53. We wouldn’t have gotten Obamacare unless Obama was being blackmailed into signing it and that blackmail was over the circumstances of his adoption by Ann Dunham.

    nk (dbc370)

  54. Paul,

    If Obama had been born outside the US, his mother’s age might prevent him from being a citizen.

    DRJ (15874d)

  55. We do have the evidence of his first book’s dust jacket blurb which stated that he was born a poor black child in Kenya.

    nk (dbc370)

  56. ropelight says, “The positions you (noel) espouse as well as the objections you push are ample for readers to form an opinion as to the value of your contributions.”

    You mean that you looked right past all of those happyfeet posts to say that to me? And really, most of my posts are just Trump quotes. But I do see why those reminders might bother you.

    noel (b4d580)

  57. Well add one to the Ms. Comey, Ms. Les Miles and Ms. Kurt Warner wing of the museum: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/election/article211666119.html

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  58. The forum is largely populated by deeply opinionated argumentative people who believe themselves to be the smartest and most morally superior person in the room. Humility is in short supply.

    steveg (a9dcab)

  59. DRJ, Has swc answered your concern post? Do you expect him to?

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  60. Behavior that stereotypically is to be found in doctors, lawyers, engineers.

    steveg (a9dcab)

  61. I am more humble than Donald Trump. I swear.

    noel (b4d580)

  62. On one more thread, an open one at that, BuDuh has nothing to say and he says it.

    nk (dbc370)

  63. nk 19,

    Researchers apparently think it is a warning but I’m not sure they really know. Rattlesnakes are recent evolutionary additions and are still evolving, including some with no rattles. I did not know it but they can’t hear so the rattle is presumably for predators, not for other rattlers.

    DRJ (15874d)

  64. I did not see an answer, BuDuh, but I think he would answer if he sees it.

    DRJ (15874d)

  65. We go back a long way and are friends.

    DRJ (15874d)

  66. DRJ, Hoagie has been absent since about the time a few of the usual jerks ganged up an gave him a pretty rough going over.

    He may be taking a break, or as you say maybe he’s getting a transplant. Either way I’ll celebrate his return. Keep the Faith.

    ropelight (4cb598)

  67. Maybe you can email him?

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  68. The forum is largely populated by deeply opinionated argumentative people who believe themselves to be the smartest and most morally superior person in the room. Humility is in short supply.

    steveg (a9dcab) — 5/23/2018 @ 8:50 am

    I disagree. It’s humbling to put your opinions out to be analyzed, dissected and attacked. It’s also a good way to decide which ideas are worthwhile and which ones lack merit. The ones who arguably lack humility confine themselves to analyzing, dissecting and attacking but rarely offer their own opinions.

    DRJ (15874d)

  69. I don’t have swc’s email. He has a busy real life but he will come back sometime, as do we all.

    DRJ (15874d)

  70. I hope he is getting his transplant. I think it’s been about two years. That’s a long time to wait when you need help.

    DRJ (15874d)

  71. steveg,

    I think doctors, lawyers and engineers (and others) think in different ways because our professions require it. Sometimes that causes problems in our discussions. Maybe humility is part of it but I think it’s more an issue of each believing their way is the best way.

    DRJ (15874d)

  72. Since I am of mixed feelings about Trump, I can only quote what Winston Churchill said about democracy:

    Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

    Trump is the worst president we could have. Except for all the alternatives that were available.

    Bored Lawyer (998177)

  73. There were more but I don’t want to spoil what appears to be a birther open thread.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  74. It’s humbling to put your opinions out to be analyzed, dissected and attacked. It’s also a good way to decide which ideas are worthwhile and which ones lack merit.

    I disagree. The real world is where it is decided which ideas are worthwhile and which…fail. But I’m an engineer and thus…well, you get the idea. Which is quite worthwhile. If you ask me.

    Also, over the weekend I was wondering where Rev. H went and dug around. He got fed up with the BS here and said he was taking the month off. Something to the effect of “See you in June”. I think it was at that point he then got called a snowflake. About that high level of discourse…

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  75. Yes, I recall it is hard for you to have your ideas challenged, BuDuh.

    DRJ (15874d)

  76. 59 — Holy cow, the “concern” stuff is getting a little thick.

    When my comments take on a bit of urgency or stridency, its usually because there are 2-3 rattling around in my head, and I’m trying to rush from one to the next.

    As for Dave, I jumped on him because his comments are usually full of mis-directions and half truths. He’s the one who posted a few days ago that while in Moscow Carter Page met with the head of Rosneft, an linked to an article quoting Carter Page.

    But the article said Page stated that me met with the Head of “Investor Relations” for Rosneft.

    I quit crediting Dave a while ago for integrity in what he posts. For all I know he’s on the staff of Adam Schiff — they share a lot of tactics. Late last night he posted a response to one of my comments from earlier in the evening, and cited to the Minority Intel Comm memo, taking parts of it wildly out of context, and other parts were simply overblown by him.

    I started to reply, but quit because it was a waste of time.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  77. Then what is the point of talking about things here, Skorcher, if ideas don’t matter and the real world is all that matters?

    DRJ (15874d)

  78. I was concerned when you used sarcasm with me and called Dave an idiot, swc. The rest is BuDuh trying to get under my skin.

    DRJ (15874d)

  79. Who called Hoagie a snowflake?

    BTW, that is very “interesting” Kentucky primary you linked @ 57, urbanleftbehind? 😉

    nk (dbc370)

  80. Thinking good thoughts for you, Rev.

    mg (9e54f8)

  81. 54. If Obama had been born outside the US, his mother’s age might prevent him from being a citizen.

    Thanks, DRJ, and for the link (one of a multitude) debunking this birther stupidity.

    Paul Montagu (e6130e)

  82. And did you know that it was a “historic primary night”? (You have to click the link to see the headline.) Can’t the Democrats do anything that’s not historic?

    nk (dbc370)

  83. Apparently Hoagie is taking a break.

    DRJ (15874d)

  84. Yes, I recall it is hard for you to have your ideas challenged, BuDuh.

    Isn’t that the point of debate? If it was easy, we would all be mindless drones.

    There is a reason you resorted to a strawman that day, DRJ. It is because you found it hard to challenge my cogent point.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  85. You have little patience for people you think are wrong. I even admitted I was wrong and you still can’t let it go.

    DRJ (15874d)

  86. Then what is the point of talking about things here, Skorcher, if ideas don’t matter and the real world is all that matters?

    Well for most of what gets hashed and re-hashed and corn-hashed around here, not much. OK, I exaggerate. But only a little. Of course ideas need to be discussed. Many different ones, yes. Did I say there was no point? But at some point ideas need to be implemented and if one is honest, one has to do an assessment of their impact. Which is very, very hard to do outside of a laboratory. But most discussion, especially here lately but as has been going on in increasing intensity over the last few decades in our society, consists of reframing the argument and refusing to concede a point. The closest people get to a concession is goal-post moving. Meanwhile, the real world turns and turns and turns irrespective of the number of angels on the heads of various pins. Because stuff has to get done. And the people who do the stuff are getting increasingly impatient with the people doing the arguing. And this is how you get Donald Trump. Is that an acronym yet? Like TANSTAAFL we need a ATIHYGDT.

    And further more…my historical perspective is this is why we must have wars. Just has to be. Right makes might and BS gets relegated to the dustbin of history. Don’t like it. But then I didn’t make the world. Just tiny, tiny parts of it.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  87. But I learned something that day, about Trump and about you, so I thank you for the discussion.

    DRJ (15874d)

  88. Like this, Skorcher?

    DRJ (15874d)

  89. How many times have you regurgitated that thread to slam me, DRJ? Now I need to let it go.

    Ok. Let’s both let it go then.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  90. You guys may accuse me of being “upset” but no…. I am really, truly LMAO.

    noel (b4d580) — 5/23/2018 @ 7:26 am

    Now don’t lose your head, son.

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  91. The Last Honest Man in Washington(tm) strikes back!

    Facts matter. The FBI’s use of Confidential Human Sources (the actual term) is tightly regulated and essential to protecting the country. Attacks on the FBI and lying about its work will do lasting damage to our country. How will Republicans explain this to their grandchildren?

    Dangerous time when our country is led by those who will lie about anything, backed by those who will believe anything, based on information from media sources that will say anything. Americans must break out of that bubble and seek truth.

    Dave (445e97)

  92. OK, thanks to DRJ refinding the link to what I found last weekend, noel didn’t call him a “snowflake” and in fact said he was NOT one. But he did condescendingly say “Good luck finding that safe-space you so desire.”

    https://patterico.com/2018/05/05/there-is-a-new-scandal-based-on-partisan-descriptions-from-house-intelligence-committee-members/#comment-2115098

    Hey, I was going from memory. Wasn’t going to spend time looking it up again.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  93. That was a really mean thread. I enjoyed it immensely.

    nk (dbc370)

  94. #52, Paul, it’s always relevent when a US President presents obviously phony documents to establish his bona-fides.

    It’s also relevent when the Mockingbird media unquestionably accepts obvious lies as revealed truth, and then mocks anyone who refuses to swallow their cloyed Milk of Amnesia.

    It’s also relevant because not only was Obama concealing his provenance, he conducted the most corrupt Administration in America’s (raw) history.

    Consider Shovel Ready Jobs, Solendra, Fast-n-Furious, Cash for Clunkers, Benghazi, Weaponizing IRS aganist the TEA Party, Arms shipments to ISIS, Billions in Bribes to Iran, Shipping our jobs overseas, Squeezing the American middle class into dependency on food stamps, flooding our nation with illegal aliens, looking the other way as Russia invaded Ukraine and seized the Crimean Peninsula, and on, and on.

    Had the 4th Estate insisted on a full vetting of the mysterious usurper, we wouldn’t have had to endure 8 long years of the increasing rise of racism, loss of International standing, sharp loss of military strength, and across the board social, economic, and political decline.

    ropelight (4cb598)

  95. Yes, like that DRJ. Engineers laughing at their own perception of their moral and intellectual superiority. It’s sort of our fall back position. When there’s no lawyers around.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  96. I enjoyed it immensely.

    I know. You dig it the most.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  97. BuDuh, face it. You can’t let me go but someday I hope you will tell me why I bug you so much. I think lawyers have a tendency to discuss and discuss and discuss, and that is annoying to doctors, engineers and accountants who deal in concrete, provable hypotheses and want clear solutions. Maybe that’s part of our problem.

    DRJ (15874d)

  98. What ropelight, said. Even though I think the dissembling about the birth certificates was only to hide the various names he went under, it was part of the res gestae or modus operandi or course of conduct of eight years of lies and obfuscation enabled by a lap dog media.

    nk (dbc370)

  99. I think Adams is an engineer so that’s his focus but it applies to all humans, Skorcher.

    DRJ (15874d)

  100. I think lawyers have a tendency to discuss and discuss and discuss, and that is annoying to doctors, engineers and accountants who deal in concrete, provable hypotheses and want clear solutions. Maybe that’s part of our problem.

    That. That thing right there. With feathers.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  101. 93:

    Yeah and supposedly we had all kinds of controls on the NSA databases as well. But it turns out that 85% of about searches were improper.

    Comey is a sea lawyer excuse-maker and a DC area get ahead schemer. “Lack of candor.”

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  102. I agree with nk and ropelight. Obama milked it to discredit his opponents.

    DRJ (15874d)

  103. I think Adams is an engineer so that’s his focus but it applies to all humans, Skorcher.

    Yes. Yes it does. To all humans.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  104. Hoagie is hopefully getting the new lungs he’s been waiting for, don’t think he needs to get his blood pressure raised on a continuous basis. In fact, ain’t nobody got time for dat!

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  105. I think lawyers have a tendency to discuss and discuss and discuss, and that is annoying to doctors, engineers and accountants who deal in concrete, provable hypotheses and want clear solutions.

    Make it “doctors, engineers and accountants want to impose solutions and have people follow their prescriptions”, and I’ll agree with you.

    nk (dbc370)

  106. But there aren’t clear solutions in politics, Skorcher. Not with so many human variables. I think the answer is discussion and trying to reach a consensus, and it starts in places like this.

    DRJ (15874d)

  107. My beef with you on that particular thread is the total lack of effort to digest what I said and then attempt to reword it to your advantage, DRJ.

    In general I believe that you will do anything the shed the Trump voting skin you wore in November. Your verbal efforts to distance yourself from that decision make it sound like you were faced with a choice that no one else had to make. Yet when other people explain that they too had to decide between Trump and Hillary you don’t rise to their defense.

    I think you are capable of more.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  108. I misunderstood what you said and that was complicated by the fact I was ignorant of Shulkin’s history. I apologized and was glad to learn the facts.

    I was challenging what you said, not you. Is it possible you have trouble separating the two?

    DRJ (15874d)

  109. Make it “doctors, engineers and accountants want to impose solutions and have people follow their prescriptions”, and I’ll agree with you.

    No. You have it EXACTLY wrong. It is lawyers, via the government, and lately via the shadow government of “standard expectations” or some such, that do the IMPOSING…all up in it, as someone might say. Doctors and engineers don’t force their ideas on anyone. Accountants OTOH are just lawyers who can do math so…well they do have that going for them.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  110. As for Trump, I am not sorry about my vote. I helped keep Texas red and still hope for a Wall. Why would I even announce it here and discuss it, repeatedly, if I was sorry?

    DRJ (15874d)

  111. The time for the clowns and the dancing bears and the ninja rattlesnakes has passed.

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  112. DRJ, your next comment, after accepting the fact that Shulkin was an Obama holdover is completely contrary to to the point I was making. It was shortcut to the appearance of a win. You were no longer “challenging my ideas.”

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  113. I want Trump to do better and discussing with other conservatives how to make that happen can make a difference. This isn’t The Trump Show, it is America, and our voices matter.

    DRJ (15874d)

  114. I shouldn’t say “contrary” because that is the point of having two sides of a debate. Your response was simply not connected at all to the point I was making.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  115. Voices do matter. Victory mincing doesn’t.

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  116. 93 — and I’m quite confident when it all comes out that he CHS employed tactics that are contrary to Bureau policy, he did so because he was on British soil at the time, and he did so with the tacit approval of the CIA.

    The Bureau response will be “he was outside our control at the time.”

    Its the same game played between DEA and FBI when DEA is running informants in Mexico and doesn’t want to get caught up in the bureaucratic entanglements of the Bureau.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  117. I shouldn’t say “contrary” because that is the point of having two sides of a debate. Your response was simply not connected at all to the point I was making.

    BuDuh (fc15db) — 5/23/2018 @ 10:04 am

    I have to go out but if you want to link my comment that bothered you, I will come back and address it later.

    DRJ (15874d)

  118. Many professions inculcate practitioners with circumscribed thought processes. It’s often said they retain a trained incapacity to venture outside the bounds of convention. Think of it as peer group imposed mental inertia.

    Typically when confronted with evidence which challenges established belief, the practitioner is most likely to stop short of crossing the line and withdraw his hesitating foot.

    ropelight (4cb598)

  119. — Take one tablet every twelve hours.
    — Write a check payable to “Internal Revenue Service” for $_____.
    — Use AISI 4140 steel.

    nk (dbc370)

  120. Start at my 1st link and read the dialog, DRJ. It was somewhat downhill when you attributed “untrustworthy and devious” to my 1st comment.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  121. 120. ropelight (4cb598) — 5/23/2018 @ 10:09 am

    Typically when confronted with evidence which challenges established belief, the practitioner is most likely to stop short of crossing the line and withdraw his hesitating foot.

    That’s what peer review is for.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  122. nk, is that an argument? Seriously? Look, I may disagree with you on many things (may? hahahaha…i kill me) but that is mighty weak. One of those things doesn’t belong there. One of those things isn’t the same. Can you tell which one is not like the others? Before I finish playing this game?

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  123. Yes, please tell me.

    nk (dbc370)

  124. You seriously do not understand? Really? Come on now…just try for me. I think you can take a stab at reasoning it out.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  125. No, tell me or shut up.

    nk (dbc370)

  126. 100. nk (dbc370) — 5/23/2018 @ 9:49 am

    I think the dissembling about the birth certificates was only to hide the various names he went under,

    I think it was to hide the fact that he lost or threw out or his family lost or threw out the original 1961 birth certificate, and people maybe wouldn’t accept a later re-issue. (now the point is, the original 1961 birth certificate had no more legal value by the 1990s.)

    The state of Hawaii seems to indicate that his name originally was Barack Hussein Obama II. (not Jr.) so if he’d had it he could have used it, and nobody would have asked for changed versions, if any.

    Now the person whose birth certificate I’d really like to see is that of Bill Clinton, because I think he changed his date of birth after the draft lottery to escape the draft. I think his family had enough political influence in parts of Arkansas to do that.

    The original date of birth would have been in his passport file (and that’s the onl;y significant thing that could have been in his passport file, (What? You would expect something there about meeting someone in the KGB?) so Clinton staged the whole controversy to make sure nobody would dare to look at it.

    15.

    I don’t think that we ever saw Obama’s real birth certificates

    What we saw at the end was a photograph of a printout done on April 25, 2011.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  127. Now if I just give you the answers, how will you ever learn? Come on, you can do this. Try. Just a little. What is different about a doctor giving you a prescription, an engineer stating specifications, and the government demanding payment? Do you need a hint? It’s somewhat related to human will, but not directly. Like I said, I’m not giving you the answers. You gotta think for your self.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  128. It’s not only that crap Colonel, it used to be fun to click in here. It used to be a great place to discuss the politicians and the politics of the day and opine about what was going on. Then it became 18 months of b!tchin’ about how bad that bastard is who won the last election. Every day. Every damn day! We don’t talk politics any more we get our daily lecture of neverTrump crap and if we support Trump then we too are immoral, what’s that word? Oh, yeah “lickspittles”. Well screw that. I want to talk conservative politics and policies. I want to plan for the next elections. I want to hear how to beat the leftist and the slime. I don’t want to spend another two and a half years hearing about how immoral Trump is cause he banged a whore twelve years ago. I also don’t want to be constantly insulted because I refuse to have my political life revolve around Trumps, or Beldars, or DRJ’s moral compass.

    We are in a civil war and what’s going on here is not helping our side. Hell, I’m not even sure any more what our side is. I only know my side and my side has no room for leftists or any other anti American nonsense. It seems this site wants to attract the Gryphs, noels 1nd Q!’s rather than conservative contributors. I guess it would be nice to have a couple leftist trolls if half the “conservatives” weren’t going so neverTrump themselves. The half dozen of us left who aren’t neverTrumpers can’t have any political discussions without it turning into a clusterTrump because Dave interjects how Trump lied about stopping gonorrhea in Africa or something.

    I think it was either ropelight or NJRob who needs a break but you need one too. I’m gonna pop Patterico off my favorites for the rest of May to give you guys a break.

    Rev.Hoagie (c5d6cf) — 5/6/2018 @ 4:47 pm

    God bless you Hoagie. Didn’t see this because it was during my own break. I hope you are well. Be safe.

    NJRob (b58d3c)

  129. I caaan’t hear you!

    nk (dbc370)

  130. DRJ (15874d) — 5/23/2018 @ 8:26 am

    I want to know the facts. I fear that using this as a reason to tweet will prolong and inflame the controversy and means we will end up with a partisan result, ironically not unlike Obama’s birth certificate.

    Just calling it spying and saying that it was for political reasons is a problen, when, so far we have at most, an attempt to spy, except that some of the things Clapper and Brennen and Comey et al are saying may indicate they did successfully get somebody (not Halper) into the Trump campaign.

    Rush Limbaugh says the thing was they didn’t try to alert Trump that Manafort and Page and so on were security risks. Rush Limbaugh says the reason Trump wasn’t alerted was that they didn’t
    to want to stop Russian infiltration wanted to find collusion.

    I think its more likely because they didn’t trust Donald Trump – they treated him on the basis that he might very well be….

    …a conscious and articulate instrument of the…{Russian] conspiracy.

    Rush Limbaugh even says, and I don’t know how good this information is, that Comey alerted Loretta Lynch who then convened a big meeting and she said was going to tell Trump but that she never did, and he also says Obama knew, but that’s misreading things.

    Obama did tell Putin, in his words to “cut it out,” but he was talking about hacking and running advertisements maybe but not planting people in organizations, although it is an obvious extension of that and there were some grounds for suspicion. Rush doesn’t mention or realize who was the most suspicious person of all: Mike Flynn.

    Rush says that the infiltrating organizations is nothing new – the Soviets did that and a lot better than this group of ex-KGB people.

    Rush still had one important detail wrong. Halper probably had nothing to do with putting George Papadoupolous in touch with the Australian [Ambassador] to the UK Alexander Dowling

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  131. It was John McCain who was not born in the United States of America.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  132. 8th Grade Mean Gurlz Speak to Teh Hand Script™

    Use it and tell ‘em Morty sentcha!

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  133. Well, if you’re not even gonna try I can’t help you. Does help explain to me why you got the children’s story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz all mixed up. Some do, others teach, those that can’t be helped become lawyers.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  134. nk @55 Is that in the jacket blub (I never heard that) or is it in the literary agent’s biography of Obama?

    She says she wasn’t lying – she was guessing. She actually had aminor job but later ran the agency.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  135. Rush Limbaugh says the thing that gets him is (paraphrasing) this idea that only the people conducting an investigation can be trusted to be impartial and have no bias.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  136. The only thing I can surmise Mr. Skorcher is that you have never run your own business where every month, every quarter, and every year, your accountant/payroll service handed you the monthly, quarterly, and yearly IRS returns and payment vouchers for your signature and with a little slip of paper attached which read exactly “Make check payable to ‘Internal Revenue Service’ for $_____”; but instead you got your taxes withheld at your place of employment and always got a refund.

    nk (dbc370)

  137. Well at least you’re trying now. In fact you did pick the one that’s different. Yay, you. Now do you understand how/why the IRS payment is different from the doctor’s prescription or the engineer’s specification? It’s a word, one syllable. Begins with “c-h”…

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  138. Article in the March 2018 Atlantic about Paul Manafort that seems to deal only with what he did before he got into trump’s campaign (except for noting that his friends warned him not to take the job)

    It has a very jumbled chronology.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925

    Manafort got his reputation as a delegate counter in 1976 for Ford (and James Baker) and then for Roger Stone.

    In the spring of 1977 the Young Republicans (ages 18-40) had a convention in Memphis to select anew eader (for a 2-year term apparently) As part of a deal he promised to back Noel Acker for 1979, but then when 1979 rolled around demanded that Acker support Ronald Reagan for president (Acker wanted to remain neutral) Acker had pledges but at the 11th hour Manafort ran a campaign against him.

    One thing that jumped out at me:

    Manafort had long befriended ambitious young diplomats at the trailhead to power, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington. When Bandar attended the 1984 Republican National Convention, Manafort dedicated a small group of advance men to smooth his way. Manafort arranged for Bandar to arrive at the presidential entrance, then had him whisked to seats in the vice-presidential box.

    That seems to lock it in almost that Manafort was corrupt. He even stole from his partners and later they sold the firm. He worked for a number of clients then for about ten years his only or main client was Viktor Yanukovych. Manafort stole from someone in Ukraine probably (by not buying a company)

    Somebody, by the way, hacked and released text messages from one of his daughter that she wrote from 2012 to 2016

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  139. Ha, ha, ha! Stick to children’s stories, Mr. Skorcher, because anything more complex will be incomprehensible to you.

    nk (dbc370)

  140. Back atcha, sunshine. Except for the children’s stories part. They’re beyond your ken, barbie.

    Skorcher (5b282a)

  141. I understand you better than you think, Mr. Skorcher. Clever people like you are the reason I had such a good win-loss record in court. Stormy’s lawyer thought he had a choice about remitting payroll taxes to the IRS, too.

    nk (dbc370)

  142. And just to show that I give Trump credit when credit is due. Trump vindicated; the NFL caved.

    nk (dbc370)

  143. If this is illegal, shouldn’t Twitter be given the court order? And this applies only to trump? Sure, it’s very bad top those people, and discriminatry, but is this legal decison justified?

    https://nypost.com/2018/05/23/trump-ordered-to-stop-blocking-people-on-twitter

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  144. The judge did not order Trump to unblock people he already blocked.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  145. judges are corrupt and stupid anymore

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  146. Problem with (so far secret) testimony in late March of John Mashburn to the Senate Judiciary Committee:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/us/politics/john-mashburn-trump-russia-email-papadopoulos.html

    In the case of Mr. Mashburn’s testimony, investigators will now have to decide what to do with a witness who appears to be telling the truth and remembers a potentially volatile detail that cannot be corroborated.

    John Mashburn is a former Trump campaign official (he was the policy director from April, 2016 on) who later on went to work on the transition team and in the Administration. First, until mid-April, he was the deputy cabinet secretary at the White House, and now is a senior adviser to Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy.

    Mashburn claimed that he recalled receiving a message from George Papadouplous with some detail saying that Russia had damaging information about Hillary Clinton before the conventions and before the Wikileaks publication. He said he did not take it seriously, and that he probably forwarded it to others or others were copied on it and that he replied to Papadoupolous saying he should tell someone else.

    No such emails can be found

    They did find an email concerning George Papadoupolous. Papadopolous had travelled to London in May where he gave an interview to the The Times of London where he called upon British Prime Minister David Cameron, to apologize to Donald Trump for criticizing something Trump said. The campaign had
    reprimanded him for not clearing his comments before speaking on its behalf.

    So sometime later, Papadouplous asked for reimbursement of his travel expenses. On June 24, 2016 Mashburn wrote to two otehrs in the campaign saying “He cost us a lot more in having to deal with what he said about Cameron 2 [sic] months ago … he got no approval for the travel and did it on his own,” “Let him eat the cost and maybe he will learn to play nice with the team, not go off on his own.”

    Mr. Mashburn told the investigators that he did not take Mr. Papadopoulos, a volunteer adviser with few political connections and scant experience, seriously.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  147. Oops. The last line in #149 is a quote from the New York Times article.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  148. This one more than most. Except maybe Jed Rakoff.

    nk (dbc370)

  149. 8 signs pointing to a counterintelligence operation deployed against Trump’s campaign

    It may be true that President Trump illegally conspired with Russia and was so good at covering it up he’s managed to outwit our best intel and media minds who’ve searched for irrefutable evidence for two years. (We still await special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings.)

    But there’s a growing appearance of alleged wrongdoing equally as insidious, if not more so, because it implies widespread misuse of America’s intelligence and law enforcement apparatus.

    http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/388978-growing-signs-of-a-counterintelligence-operation-deployed-against-trumps

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  150. Skorcher, I was the person who talked to you about the Wizard of Oz.

    DRJ (15874d)

  151. because of the wonderful things he does!

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  152. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/grassley-seeks-removal-of-remaining-redactions-on-strzok-page-texts

    Why redacted the the $70,000 cost of a conference table?

    Anyway, much more interesting to know what Strzok and Page were talking about when texting regarding the White House running this operation

    Steveg (f966f2)

  153. they redacted about the conference table cause it’s way way WAY more money than anything Mr. Pruitt spent at EPA

    it completely effs up the whole entire CNN Jake Tapper fake news propaganda slut media narrative 🙁

    redact redact redact

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  154. Federal court rules today that Trump can’t block Patterico on Twitter! Or, apparently, anyone else.

    My motto remains “Twitter delenda est,” but I’m beginning my plunge into the court’s 75-page opinion today in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, No. 1:17-cv-05205-NRB in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which (hot off of PACER in full text) begins:

    This case requires us to consider whether a public official may, consistent with the First Amendment, “block” a person from his Twitter account in response to the political views that person has expressed, and whether the analysis differs because that public official is the President of the United States. The answer to both questions is no.

    Is this ruling a dagger in the heart of the Trump communications strategy? I tend to doubt it. But maybe after reading this seventy-five page opinion, I’ll understand why thinking persons continue to choose, quite deliberately, to use a medium whose defining attribute is its rigid truncation of any communication that exceeds 280 (formerly 140) characters.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  155. https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/05/23/why-is-an-investigation-assumed-to-be-pure/

    Why is an investigation never corrupt? Why the hell can you not question an investigation? Why do investigators come off demanding and expecting no scrutiny? This is something that has always baffled me. I don’t care whether it’s a local sheriff, the local cop, or the FBI. Once a, quote-unquote, “investigation” starts, it’s hands off, and you can’t be seen trying to influence. Where can the hell not? Who the hell are they? Do you think they are nonpartisan? Do you think they have no interest in the outcome?

    Do not make me puke! There isn’t pure objectivity anywhere. There is bias everywhere. The idea that “the investigation” — whatever “the investigation” is — is unassailable, is sacrosanct, you don’t dare question it. Says who? When did this start? …

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  156. BuDuh,

    I don’t understand why you thought I called you or your comment “devious and untrustworthy.” Here is what you said, with my reply:

    As you can easily see, the spokeshole was lying when he made his statement about Shulkin.

    In this instance, don’t you think it is necessary? Letting top people know they are about to get canned could result in them retaliating with some sort of sabotage that would prolong a cleaner start for the new person.

    I agree that constant lying about everything isn’t a good thing at all, but I also think the public statements that throw the media, and the soon to be fired, off the scent are a necessary component of running an executive in the environment that has been around a long time before the age of Trump.

    BuDuh (fc15db) — 3/30/2018 @ 11:23 am

    ************************

    If Shulkin is so untrustworthy and devious, why would Trump nominate him for his Cabinet?

    We aren’t talking about some mid-level employee that Trump doesn’t even know. Shulkin was a Cabinet member who was hand-picked by Trump. If Trump thought it was even possible that Shulkin could act the way BuDuh suggests, then Trump is the one to blame for picking him.

    DRJ (15874d) — 3/30/2018 @ 11:54 am

    I was replying to your comment that I thought made a good point, i.e., don’t tell employees you are about to fire them if they may try to hurt you or your business. Disgruntled employees can retaliate. But my point was that we aren’t talking about a low-level functionary. This is one of Trump’s Cabinet members, someone who Trump vetted and talks to and believes is reliable enough to be in his inner circle. Why treat him like a saboteur? Moreover, why pick someone who you think coukd be a saboteur.

    Of course, later you pointed out that Shulkin was an Obama holdover. Good point, and I acknowledged it. I even apologized for not knowing that and that changed my opinion of Shulkin’s trustworthiness. But it also changed my opinion of Trump’s culpability in picking someone like that for his Cabinet.

    However, back to the main point: I did not call you untrustworthy or devious. I understood your point to be that Trump should think about whether fired employees might act in untrustworthy or devious ways. I still think that was your point. I thought then and now that it was a valid point, but my analysis of the situation was different than yours.

    DRJ (15874d)

  157. “Mueller and Russia, Russia and Mueller: This is the drumbeat, sometimes deafening and often drowning out all else. It’s the yardstick whose measurement has come to matter more than any other, the one test that Trump must pass.

    What if he passes it? That won’t make him a successful president, a fit leader or even a decent human being. But it will permit a master of distraction to distract many Americans from his other misdeeds.”

    The NYTimes now misdirecting from the bogus clown car scandal/crisis they’ve been stoking relentlessly for over a year.

    You can tell they don’t like where the Mueller witch hunt is headed when they start saying it’s a distraction from more important things and Mueller scares them…..lol

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2018/05/23/robert_mueller_you039re_starting_to_scare_me_442997.html

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  158. There was no spy against Trump, and if there was, it’s entirely justified.

    Richard Aubrey (10ef71)

  159. “There was no spy against Trump, and if there was,”

    So pure

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  160. I didn’t know that blocked user can see the original tweet only if they are not signed in.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  161. Those 280 characters comprise the Devil’s Dandruff.

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  162. Behar specifically asked Clapper if the FBI was “spying on the Trump campaign.” He said it did not. Still, Trump distorted Clapper’s answer, putting these words in the mouth of the former intelligence head: “Trump should be happy that the FBI was SPYING on his campaign.”

    Trump’s choice of words is verbatim from a headline on Real Clear Politics — except that the website only put the words “happy” and “spying” in quotation marks.

    In remarks to reporters later in the day, Trump said Clapper “sort of admitted that they had spies in the campaign, yesterday, inadvertently.”

    The exchange between Clapper and Behar shows that Clapper, in fact, never said that “the FBI was SPYING on his campaign.” Quite the opposite.

    Clapper, May 22: With the informant business, well, the point here is —

    Behar: Well, let me get to my questions.

    Clapper: — are the Russians, not spying on the campaign. But what are the Russians doing and in a sense, unfortunately, what they were trying to do is protect our political system and protect the campaign.

    Behar: … So, I ask you, was the FBI spying on Trump’s campaign?

    <b Clapper: . No, they were not. They were spying on, a term I don’t particularly like, but on what the Russians were doing. Trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage and influence which is what they do.

    Behar: Well, why doesn’t he like that? He should be happy.

    Clapper: Well, he should be.

    Rush Limbaugh attemots to refute this by arguing. among other things, that they should have warned Trump/

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  163. “There was no spy against Trump, and if there was, it’s entirely justified.”

    Well, okay then, that settles it.

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  164. 162… lol, harkin. Always trust NYT content!

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  165. My next comment, explained that it didn’t matter whether Shulken was a saint or the devil for the purposes of the idea I put on the table for debate. You continued as if I was making the case that Trump was unwise to hire someone so unscrupulous.

    I never said that and it was irrelevant to my point.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  166. Oh Mike. Glad to have known you, Mr. Pompeo. Our new Secretary of State and former head of the CIA should be sent packing any tweet now. He sure blew it.

    He denied the existence of the “Deep State” today. Wow. See ya later.

    noel (b4d580)

  167. I did not call you untrustworthy or devious

    I said you attributed it to my comment. To clarify, you added language to my 1st comment that I didn’t intend to convey. I quickly explained what I meant and you still ran with your language.

    I have not, nor have I ever said that you called me untrustworthy or devious.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  168. Trump said Clapper “sort of admitted that they had spies in the campaign, yesterday, inadvertently.

    “sort of”

    noel (b4d580)

  169. Actually, your next comment to me started with:

    “Ugh. It is as if you try to not understand.”

    BuDuh, I tried talking to you about an interesting topic. Everything I said seemed to annoy you, and it still does. I am certain everyone else is tired of this topic. I’m moving on.

    DRJ (15874d)

  170. Further to my comment & link at #157 above:

    When I went to law school, I never thought I’d have occasion to read anything like this in a court decision:

    Because a retweet or a reply to a tweet is itself a tweet, each retweet and reply, recursively, may be retweeted, replied to, or liked.

    But apparently that is not only true, but stipulated to be true! And I had to get past that to get to the explanation for exactly what happens when a Twitter user “blocks” another:

    In addition to these means of interaction, Twitter offers two means of limiting interaction with other users: blocking and muting. First, “[a] user who wants to prevent another user from interacting with her account on the Twitter platform can do so by ‘blocking’ that user. (Twitter provides users with the capability to block other users, but it is the users themselves who decide whether to make use of this capability.) When a user is signed in to a Twitter account that has been blocked, the blocked user cannot see or reply to the blocking user’s tweets, view the blocking user’s list of followers or followed accounts, or use the Twitter platform to search for the blocking user’s tweets. The blocking user will not be notified if the blocked user mentions her or posts a tweet; nor, when signed in to her account, will the blocking user see any tweets posted by the blocked user.” Stip. ¶ 28. “If, while signed in to the blocked account, the blocked user attempts to follow the blocking user, or to access the Twitter webpage from which the user is blocked, the blocked user will see a message indicating that the other user has blocked him or her from following the account and viewing the tweets associated with the account.” Stip. ¶ 29.

    While blocking precludes the blocked user from directly interacting with the blocking user’s tweets — including from replying or retweeting those tweets, blocking does not eliminate all interaction between the blocked user and the blocking user. “After a user has been blocked, the blocked user can still mention the blocking user. Tweets mentioning the blocking user will be visible to anyone who can view the blocked user’s tweets and replies. A blocked user can also reply to users who have replied to the blocking user’s tweets, although the blocked user cannot see the tweet by the blocking user that prompted the original reply. These replies-to-replies will appear in the comment thread, beneath the reply to the blocking user’s original tweet.” Stip. ¶ 30. Further, “[i]f a blocked user is not signed in to Twitter, he or she can view all of the content on Twitter that is accessible to anyone without a Twitter account.” Stip. ¶ 31.

    And here, apparently, is why the plaintiffs in the case care one way or the other that Trump or his Twitter guru, Daniel Scavino, have blocked them:

    “As a result of the President’s blocking of the Individual Plaintiffs from @realDonaldTrump, the Individual Plaintiffs cannot view the President’s tweets; directly reply to these tweets; or use the @realDonaldTrump webpage to view the comment threads associated with the President’s tweets while they are logged in to their verified accounts.” Stip. ¶ 54. However, “[t]he Individual Plaintiffs can view tweets from @realDonaldTrump when using an internet browser or other application that is not logged in to Twitter, or that is logged in to a Twitter account that is not blocked by @realDonaldTrump.” Stip. ¶ 55. Additionally, “[s]ome of the Individual Plaintiffs have established second accounts so that they can view the President’s tweets.” Stip. ¶ 56.

    So basically, blocking gets in the way of their heckling Trump in a way that will show up on Trump’s Twitter webpage. And heckling it was; both sides have also stipulated:

    Defendants do “not contest Plaintiffs’ allegation that the Individual Plaintiffs were blocked from the President’s Twitter account because the Individual Plaintiffs posted tweets that criticized the President or his policies.”

    But the defendants did contest the plaintiffs’ standing to sue, and lost on that issue:

    In this case, the record establishes a number of limitations on the individual plaintiffs’ use of Twitter as a result of having been blocked. As long as they remain blocked, “the Individual Plaintiffs cannot view the President’s tweets; directly reply to these tweets; or use the @realDonaldTrump webpage to view the comment threads associated with the President’s tweets while they are logged in to their verified accounts.” Stip. ¶ 54. While alternative means of viewing the President’s tweets exist, Stip. ¶¶ 55-56, and the individual plaintiffs “have the ability to view and reply to replies to @realDonaldTrump tweets, they cannot see the original @realDonaldTrump tweets themselves when signed in to their blocked accounts, and in many instances it is difficult to understand the reply tweets without the context of the original @realDonaldTrump tweets,” Stip. ¶ 58.

    These limitations are cognizable injuries-in-fact. The individual plaintiffs’ ability to communicate using Twitter has been encumbered by these limitations (regardless of whether they are harms cognizable under the First Amendment)….

    This much is mostly unexceptional and unsurprising, as is the discussion on causation. But the guts of the opinion rest in its conclusion that Trump’s Twitter timeline is a “designated public forum” in which the government may not block speech based on its political content. From the court’s summary:

    We hold that portions of the @realDonaldTrump account — the “interactive space” where Twitter users may directly engage with the content of the President’s tweets — are properly analyzed under the “public forum” doctrines set forth by the Supreme Court, that such space is a designated public forum, and that the blocking of the plaintiffs based on their political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment. In so holding, we reject the defendants’ contentions that the First Amendment does not apply in this case and that the President’s personal First Amendment interests supersede those of plaintiffs.

    I’m not sure I buy into this analysis. As the court concedes, “for a space to be susceptible to forum analysis, it must be owned or controlled by the government.” To get to that conclusion with respect to Trump’s Twitter account, the court has to distinguish between ownership and control of the total account, including its tweeting privileges, and some subset of the account’s features, which it does thusly:

    Because the access [the plaintiffs] seek is far narrower, we consider whether forum doctrine can be appropriately applied to several aspects of the @realDonaldTrump account rather than the account as a whole: the content of the tweets sent, the timeline comprised of those tweets, the comment threads initiated by each of those tweets, and the “interactive space” associated with each tweet in which other users may directly interact with the content of the tweets by, for example, replying to, retweeting, or liking the tweet.

    Then after carving off that aspect of the account privileges, the court finds that there’s enough “ownership” inherent in Trump’s and Scavino’s practical ability to control that “interactive space”:

    Here, the government-control prong of the analysis is met. Though Twitter is a private (though publicly traded) company that is not government-owned, the President and Scavino nonetheless exercise control over various aspects of the @realDonaldTrump account: they control the content of the tweets that are sent from the account and they hold the ability to prevent, through blocking, other Twitter users, including the individual plaintiffs here, from accessing the @realDonaldTrump timeline (while logged into the blocked account) and from participating in the interactive space associated with the tweets sent by the @realDonaldTrump account, Stip. ¶¶ 12, 28-32, 39, 54. Though Twitter also maintains control over the @realDonaldTrump account (and all other Twitter accounts), we nonetheless conclude that the extent to which the President and Scavino can, and do, exercise control over aspects of the @realDonaldTrump account are sufficient to establish the government-control element as to the content of the tweets sent by the @realDonaldTrump account, the timeline compiling those tweets, and the interactive space associated with each of those tweets. While their control does not extend to the content of a retweet or reply when made — “[n]o other Twitter user can alter the content of any retweet or reply, either before or after it is posted” and a user “cannot prescreen tweets, replies, likes, or mentions that reference their tweets or accounts,” Stip. ¶ 26 — it nonetheless extends to controlling who has the power to retweet or reply in the first instance.

    I think this is where the opinion is vulnerable to attack on appeal. I think that to reach this conclusion, the district judge has essentially ignored the practical power that Twitter itself has, through its terms & conditions of usage and end-user license agreements that are enforceable in civil law, to reassert control — including content-based control — over this specific forum. And I think that underlying contract-based control over the content that anyone, including the POTUS or these plaintiffs, use the Twitter service to communicate through is inconsistent with it being considered a “designated public forum” owned or controlled by the government.

    It’s Twitter-dot-com, after all, not Twitter-dot-gov. And yes, that has constitutional implications that I think this judge has missed. Twitter is not a public square or park created and owned by the government; its virtual space continues to be owned, and therefore controlled ultimately, by Twitter.

    And what I don’t get a good handle on from this opinion, alas, is the practical consequences to either side from this ruling in the real world. Will Trump’s inability to block users turn his Twitter page into the sort of sewer of hate and abuse that hatefulfeet daily tries to make the comments of this blog? Obviously the scale is massively different. But since I continue to have no sense of — nor much interest in, frankly — the dynamics of the running arguments on Twitter, I really don’t know how big a deal this ruling is, to either would-be hecklers/political opponents, or to Trump himself. Perhaps our host or others who engage in Twitter will enlighten us about that.

    Regardless of this opinion and its real-world impact if any, though, I maintain: Twitter delenda est. It is a spreading rot, a heckler’s medium, and a constant encouragement to the abandonment of good judgment and decency. I do not propose that the government shut it down; that would be unconstitutional. I continue to propose, instead, that people who value decency and robust communication avoid it like the plague.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  171. I’m moving on.

    I figured.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  172. “Is this ruling a dagger in the heart of the Trump communications strategy? I tend to doubt it. But maybe after reading this seventy-five page opinion, I’ll understand why thinking persons continue to choose, quite deliberately, to use a medium whose defining attribute is its rigid truncation of any communication that exceeds 280 (formerly 140) characters.”

    Why would any thinking person or business want a worldwide communications platform? Why would any thinking person want to learn communications discipline when dealing with a large, real-time audience? Where did all these newfangled electro-gizmos come from? Why do people not like managerial speak when it covers all the legal bases even when no one reads it? Why did this Trump character win anyway?

    It’s like poetry, it rhymes, every little inane statement from a NeverTrumper just echoes with all the assumptions and prejudices of the past that led to people non-virtually hating, shunning, and tuning them out before they could vote them out.

    Tellurian (b07080)

  173. Twitter is no more a government entity than Patterico’s bird cage, once famously lined with the LAT.

    If it were a part of the government, DJT could order it to make certain editorial decisions and act/not act in certain other ways.

    This decision is a disgrace. DJT’s personal papers are not subject to judicial review, unless there is significant proof that they may be associated in a meaningful manner to a crime. POTUS gets to choose who is invited to any event he may hold, including any dissemination of news. You ever try to gain access to a presidential news conference?

    Ed from SFV (b95465)

  174. Trump is the word and the word is good.

    The word is Trump! If he blocks you on the twitter that means you’re an unperson and should go live with a friendly clutch of sea otters.

    This is obvious to anybody but this stupid judge.

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  175. Tellurian asked, before an oblique and stupid passive-aggressive personal insult that I assume was directed at me:

    Why would any thinking person or business want a worldwide communications platform? Why would any thinking person want to learn communications discipline when dealing with a large, real-time audience? Where did all these newfangled electro-gizmos come from? Why do people not like managerial speak when it covers all the legal bases even when no one reads it? Why did this Trump character win anyway?

    Is Twitter the only worldwide communications platform? I believe we’re both posting to another one right now, in fact.

    Do thinking persons need a machine to teach them communications discipline? What, besides themselves, is stopping them from being disciplined anywhere else other than Twitter?

    The rest of your questions make no particular sense to me in this context. Twitter’s a publicly traded private company whose board has fiduciary duties to make money for shareholders. Your next sentence is logical nonsense — what “managerial speak” are you talking about, and what legal bases are you talking about? As for the last question, I have a one-word answer: Hillary.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  176. BTW, Tellurian, I’m guessing “communications discipline” is the last phrase any of the POTUS’ lawyers, or even WH staff, would use in describing Trump’s Twitter usage. Thanks for the laugh!

    Beldar (fa637a)

  177. @ Ed from SFV (#181): It would be very hard for this judge to distinguish the comments here from the sort of “designated public forum” in which the government is forbidden to make content-based regulation, to the extent that Trump ever decided to post comments here. Under her theory, a sort of cloud of “designated public forum-ness” must float around the POTUS wherever he or she walks, talks, speaks, or tweets.

    Twitter — which by the way wasn’t even a party to this litigation! — could decide tomorrow that Trump has violated its terms and conditions of use or its end-user license agreements, all of which give it contractual power to exclude users on an essentially arbitrary basis that can, and frequently does, include the political content of the users’ communications. And it could, with a keystroke, abolish entirely this “designated public forum.”

    That alone is inconsistent with, and fatal to, the notion that even some subset of Trump’s Twitter account is a “designated public forum” that’s owned or otherwise adequately controlled by the government.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  178. Beldar:

    Saying a few weeks ago that you should feel any sense of “shame” for the thought process that led you to cast your vote as you did, was an unnecessary and inappropriate personal attack on a decision that I’m sure you took a great deal of care in reaching. So I apologize for having used that language.

    I think we can still engage in a healthy debate over the merits of our various views and decisions on the voting options that we all faced — even Patrick — and come out the other side with our respect for each other maybe bruised but still intact.

    Sometime soon I’ll try to rephrase the point I was trying to make in that comment many weeks ago, and we can discuss the merits of that point rather than the insult that was felt.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  179. I wrote this last night, but it got lost when the new thread started. It fits better here for anyone who missed it.

    I was an AUSA for 23 years. You give me 2 FBI agents, an empaneled GJ, and the names and social security numbers of everyone on this board tonight, and I can guarantee you that in 6 months I can half of them indicted on some federal crime. half of those might be only for having lied to my investigators, but what the heck, its a crime so why not charge em?

    I’m not attacking the FBI and DOJ based on what they have done.

    I’m attacking the FBI and DOJ — I continue to have close associations with both — based one what political actors in each agency did 24 months ago, based on my view of the “evidence” they had.

    Initiating a federal criminal investigation should never be done lightly — for the reasons I set forth at the outset — given enough time, a federal prosecutor can get something on just about anyone.

    So what’s important to the integrity of the process IMO is what was the nature of the EVIDENCE in front of them at the time they started??

    This case DID NOT begin because some agent in the Washington Field Office got a tip from a citizen about Russian involvement, and ran with it.

    This investigation began IMO because political actors decided they wanted to investigate Donald Trump, and Carter Page’s past involvement with Russian operatives, and Paul Manafort’s history of doing political work in the Ukraine, was their EXCUSE.

    Neither one of those factors were evidence of criminal activity.

    The Feds went LOOKING for criminal activity when they had no evidence at that time they started that criminal activity was afoot.

    THAT is an abuse of power.

    Think its not? Give me your name and social security number. I’ll pass it along to some colleagues. Then consider how well you might sleep at night.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  180. @ swc, re your #193: Thanks for that, and let’s both work on being civil, to each other and otherwise.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  181. Oh, Good Lord… what rough beast born of the coupling of Sammy and Beldar slouches toward Pattericoville!?!?

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  182. In a deep red state its unlikely that a cote for Hillary would make a huge difference on the margins, same as a vote for California. Now Twitter is a fractious medium on balance, but as cimpared to MSNBC of CBS?

    narciso (d1f714)

  183. DRJ,

    When I look back over my comments with someone I view as a troll, and then your comments to the same troll, I’m really impressed with your patience, clarity, and respect. Ideals I’ll work harder towards.

    SWC,

    I also appreciate your intelligent and respectful contributions. We are richer for having a place to discuss these issues if we do disagree in good faith and with respect.

    Dustin (6c266f)

  184. Numbers 1… 7… 8 branded on its skull…

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  185. DRJ (#18):

    There are Republican leaders and conservative media who support Trump but who dislike, and perhaps even despise, the Republican/conservative base that supports him. The same leaders and media happily trash former GOP Presidents and grassroots populist leaders (such as Sarah Palin) because they no longer have power. They claim they care about principles and loyalty but power is all that really seems to matter to them, and they will turn on Trump if his support goes South.

    I find myself pleasantly surprised to be agreeing (almost) entirely with your comment. I would add the phrase “claim to” just before “support Trump but who dislike” in your first sentence.

    I think they despise Trump even more than his followers, but find it politically expedient to be seen publicly as supporters. They do this for the same reason they don’t come out and do a Hillary and call them all deplorables. They need those votes, so they pretend to be something they are not to get them.

    I am disappointed Trump was unable to find a spot for Palin in his administration.

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438)

  186. 118:

    Yeah, I suspect a lot of I’m a car, I’m a pedestrian bicyclist gaming going on. FBI will claim stuff was run by CIA. CIA will claim that FBI ran ops against US citizens. And they used contractors. Probably the Five Eyes game as well.

    “Lack of candor” from the “ethics professor”.

    Anonymous (1448ff)

  187. Yeah, Beldar, there’s room in modern communications for a system with 280 character limitations. I don’t use it, but I’m glad Trump does. He uses Twitter to give the Mockingbird media a pink belly anytime they get too bog for their britches.

    ropelight (ff7eac)

  188. DRJ (#49):

    I think Trump is right to be concerned about the FBI. I think the CIA may also be involved, and we should add the NSA, too. SPYGATE is a clever name for this topic.

    I want to know the facts. I fear that using this as a reason to tweet will prolong and inflame the controversy and means we will end up with a partisan result, ironically not unlike Obama’s birth certificate. People will believe what they want to believe because each President milked the controversy for maximum PR value. The losers are Truth and Americans’ confidence in our government.

    Not following your logic. You are on the right track in the first paragraph, but I don’t see how the second follows from the first.

    First off, Spygate is more than clever. It’s accurate. It’s bigger than Watergate. So, how does Trump shooting out a tweet prolong it? It should be going on for quite a while. The former administration, through the use of our intelligence agencies, spied on a political adversary in order to throw an election. When that failed, they attempted to falsely portray the incoming administration as having colluded with the Russian government to steal the election.

    This should take a lot of time. But, how does tweeting about it make any difference whatsoever?

    And, seriously, being on the receiving end of this behavior, do you seriously think that Trump should be all non-partisan about this, even as his opponents are continuing their partisan efforts to whitewash this criminal conspiracy? And I might add, still trying to remove him from office.

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438)

  189. SWC, well said.

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  190. I’m really impressed with your patience, clarity, and respect. Ideals I’ll work harder towards.

    You are already there.

    BuDuh (f89d65)

  191. Regardless of this opinion and its real-world impact if any, though, I maintain: Twitter delenda est. It is a spreading rot, a heckler’s medium, and a constant encouragement to the abandonment of good judgment and decency. I do not propose that the government shut it down; that would be unconstitutional. I continue to propose, instead, that people who value decency and robust communication avoid it like the plague.

    … or show good judgment by doing the decent thing and donning a bespoke weasel mascot costume when they decide to heckle a public figure defalcator.

    🙂

    Dave (250470)

  192. This so-called opinion by so-called Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald is nothing more than a piece of partisan hackery. A New York liberal siding with her tribe. Hopefully, the Second Circuit will stay it so the Supreme Court won’t have to. And maybe those clowns in the House of House who touted Trump for the Nobel should bring a motion to impeach her. She deserves it.

    nk (dbc370)

  193. shipwreckedcrew, at 193: your apology was to Beldar, not to me, but I still want to express thanks; thank you for being the kind of person who is willing and able to post that comment, and stand by it. everyone’s experience of this blog is enhanced for it, as (I imagine) is the life experience of those who have you in their life.

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  194. DRJ: amusingly, i’m both a lawyer AND an engineer. 😛

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  195. Does #206 mean you’ve changed your mind about contributing to my GoFundMe page, Dave? The response was rather underwhelming, I have to admit. I’d have thought there were at least five people who’d pay good money just to see me in a weasel costume.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  196. @194 I’m not attacking the FBI and DOJ based on what they have done.

    Indeed.

    You are attacking them based on mere speculation about what they have done, since you offer no actual evidence that supports your accusations.

    Your approach seems indistinguishable from the one you criticize the FBI and DOJ for using: decide your conclusions first, THEN (maybe) worry about finding evidence.

    Dave (250470)

  197. Oh Mike. Glad to have known you, Mr. Pompeo. Our new Secretary of State and former head of the CIA should be sent packing any tweet now. He sure blew it.

    He denied the existence of the “Deep State” today. Wow. See ya later.

    He’s been saying it all along. I heard him say it on CBS radio months ago. When the Wolff book came out. He was on before Paul Rand who gave a review of the book and discussed being sucker punched. It’s one of the reasons his appointments sailed through, comparatively speaking for Trump nominee. He’s one of Them.

    nk (dbc370)

  198. NTTAWWT

    nk (dbc370)

  199. Well the first rule of fight club…it seems you can speak most anything but the truth, downer can pretend to be somecitinerant aussie diplomat, not a board member of quantum.

    narciso (d1f714)

  200. Does #206 mean you’ve changed your mind about contributing to my GoFundMe page, Dave? The response was rather underwhelming, I have to admit.

    I’m holding out until we hear about the stretch goals.

    I’m curious, though – was your choice of mascot inspired by this statement in Comey’s January 28 memo?

    “I said I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.

    Dave (250470)

  201. @ aphrael: Did the law degree or the engineering degree come first? I’m betting the engineering degree.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  202. Yes inspector dreyfus is team mustiladae

    narciso (d1f714)

  203. @ Dave: Comey has denied many, many times that he’s a “weasel,” but yes, that’s one of them.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  204. This Congressional testimony was when I first decided that ever after, I would use the word “weasel” in reference to Jim Comey, Rodent Defalcator Extraordinaire.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  205. Rodent Defalcator Extraordinaire

    That’s just mean.

    Dave (250470)

  206. Beldar: I have no engineering degree, but I worked as a software engineer for more than a dozen years before I started law school. 🙂 In the 90s it was easy to get into software, in the bay area, without a degree.

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  207. A lawyer and engineer? For those who think bar exams are just anti-competition devices, just try to be a patent lawyer without also possessing an engineering degree.

    pete (a65bac)

  208. Comey was on the fiddle too?

    ropelight (ff7eac)

  209. @ aphrael: That’s interesting, and makes sense. I went computer-crazy when I hit UT-Austin in 1975, and the friend who’d helped teach me programming and I nearly got expelled for making computer games of that era (some of which we’d written, others of which were floating around various college campuses) available illicitly on the university’s mainframe. I believe, however, that many of the mainframe guys actually were playing our games, and when we promised we’d restrict their availability to nights & weekends (so we wouldn’t slow down the calculations for the likely reentry of Skylab or whatever), they let us off with a warning and, in fact, helped us get legitimate tape storage space and mainframe time. I ended up writing an ASCII-graphics & text game simulation of a nuclear attack submarine, in which the player both hunted and was hunted by the computer AI, which became my senior honors thesis. So if I hadn’t gone to law school, I almost surely would have gone into computer software and, probably, computer games. When I entered law school, whether my head was, in the words of Professor Kingsfield, full of mush, or instead full of Fortran, it is certain that I left law school thinking instead like a lawyer, and I probably therefore would have been intolerable amongst hard-core game designers & programmers.

    Now I’ve got two adult sons, one of whom has a computer science degree and is working for IBM, the other of whom has a law degree & license, but has just started working in a non-legal job for a consulting firm that’s helping the VA digitize all of its records (medical and otherwise). I’m content that they’ve gravitated to computers instead of the practice of law, and it could easily have gone the other way with me, perhaps had I had more imagination in the late 1970s.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  210. @ pete: You’re right about patent lawyers! Most of the ones I’ve seen, though, get their engineering degrees first, and then go to law school. Is that consistent with your observation?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  211. In the 90s it was easy to get into software, in the bay area, without a degree.

    …and this clearly explains the quality of software products written and sold around that time. 🙂

    Speaking of which, I’ve always marveled at the disclaimers that software producers get away with in their license agreements. They generally start out with something equivalent to: “You should not assume that this product is good for anything, including what it was advertised to do, or meets even the most basic quality standards customary among commercial products marketed for sale, or that it is free from defects up to and including (but not limited to) destroying your computer, erasing your data, or killing you…”

    Dave (250470)

  212. 227 –I’m told by friends that Engineering Degree followed by MBA or Accounting degree is common as well. That’s a combo that leads to you being a valuable analyst for Wall Street firms in the sector where you specialized with the Eng. degree.

    Had a recent client who had a PhD in Hydrological Engineering. Got an MBA at Stanford, and went to work at Merril Lynch as analyst on oil and gas exploration companies. Later started and ran a hedge fund that invested in mining stocks.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  213. James Comey says that spying on the Trump campaign was “tightly regulated and essential to protecting the country.”

    And he said that asking questions about any of this would do “lasting damage to America.”

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  214. Any of the learned in here willing to take a gander at an opinion by a Northwestern prof as to why Mueller’s behavior, if not his empowering by Rosenstein fails the Appointments Clause and/or has overreached as an inferior officer?

    Mark Levin has been vociferous on these points in the last couple of days.

    My un-legal reaction is that the prof puts too much stake in Rosenstein’s perceived lack of supervision. Seems to me as a principal officer, Rosie enjoys wide latitude in his oversight methodology. The argument that Mueller enjoys the powers of a principal officer intrigue me. It’s just the sort of thing Scalia warned, is it not?

    Many thanks to anyone who responds.

    https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=032102104004098030117070006024065028042048049042095026105086109064086086113096120000043045125052037037114122066078122082084115118061035009009021099002100065083111063062037121123000022124083066098004029086098121066109096094081001001016020097097103072&EXT=pdf

    Ed from SFV (b95465)

  215. In the end, Trump will make a deal with Deep State. They’ll give him a clean bill of health and he’ll let the secret police alone so they can go on insuring the collection of next year’s taxes. Believe you me, I guarantee it.

    nk (dbc370)

  216. Nuisance value.

    nk (dbc370)

  217. Unfortunately, many people with college degrees have loads of potential but the potential doesn’t translate into performance. Employers know that a person who has hung in and obtained a useful degree – especially those who worked and paid their own way while getting that education – have at the very least shown they are self-motivated… which is half the battle these days.

    But there are many that aren’t that motivated and they often washout and drift into less-desirable employment or teaching.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  218. You don’t think that part of his strategy is “Stop trying to turn me into sausage or I’ll show everybody how you make sausage”?

    nk (dbc370)

  219. 227. There’s a great essay which I believe was published in print soon after it was made freely available on the MIT library’s servers called “The Hacker Crackdown,” by Bruce Sterling. You don’t have to be a techie-nerd to appreciate the content. Part of the essay deals with the inherent untrustworthiness of software as relates to telephone systems.

    Gryph (08c844)

  220. There was a fellow i went to high school with, he got his degrees in electrical engineers and computing, his goal was to work for NASA, but that fell through with the Columbia debacle, then he went to work for the army corps of engineer and ultimately the oil business

    narciso (d1f714)

  221. @Beldar. Yep, most get their BA in an engineering field (I think chemistry/biology majors also qualify) and then go to law school. I have yet to meet many lawyers who want to go back to school for anything (even an LLM) after finishing law school and taking the bar exam.

    Out of curiosity, I just did a google search on if patent firms will pay for law school and found this at a California law school (mid tier).http://law.scu.edu/hightech/engineer-to-patent-attorney-program/ Not bad, get paid $80-115k a year will going to law school, which in turn is likely completely paid for by the law firm, and they pay for bar review and bar exam. Don’t know of any other area of the law where something like that is offered by a law firm.

    pete (a65bac)

  222. A few days ago, I asked why Trump hasn’t done anything to stop the lava in Hawaii. Somebody speculated that Trump caused the lava eruptions to erase Barack Obama’s (fake!) birthplace.

    There appears to be growing evidence for the Trump/lava collusion theory, as the lava has now apparently spontaneously formed a wall:

    A lava flow from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano is not posing an immediate threat to the Puna Geothermal Venture plant, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.

    The lava created a natural wall that blocked the flow from reaching the plant, USGS scientist Wendy Stovall told reporters.

    That is some Trump-y lava, right there.

    Dave (250470)

  223. “Your approach seems indistinguishable from the one you criticize the FBI and DOJ for using: decide your conclusions first, THEN (maybe) worry about finding evidence.”

    FBI and DOJ – more like invade privacy under specious claims and then trying to find anything to prosecute.

    harkin (e4ec42)

  224. You got us Dave , training the dolphins to aim the lasers at the right volcano vent was the trickiest part.

    narciso (d1f714)

  225. Mueller is on his heels in the Russian Troll Farm case.

    In 23 years I NEVER heard of a situation where the GOV’T moved to exclude time under the Speedy Trial Clock on the basis of complexity.

    That is option that defendants have when they are suddenly indicted in a complicated case and hundreds of thousands of pages of discovery land on their lawyer’s desk at one time.

    The federal “Speedy Trial Act” requires that trial start no more than 70 days after the Defendant makes their initial appearance. There are many ways to “exclude” time, and to stop the clock, but they are all 1) caused by a defendant motion, or 2) the result of a stipulation between the two sides.

    But the Speedy Trial Act is a statutory recognition that a Defendant has the constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial.

    The government got to pick the timing of the initiation of the case because it chose when to file the indictment.

    Its pretty ballsy to go into court and tell the Judge “Ignore that 70 day clock, we have a lot of things to do before we can go to trial and we can’t get that done in 70 days. We need more time.”

    FYI — Ted Stevens’ lawyer demanded that his trial start within the 70 days, and the government was not ready to start. That led to a lot of “corner cutting” in trial preparation, which led to the errors made by the prosecution and FBI in getting their evidence in proper form and delivered to the defense. The conviction was ultimately over-turned based on government misconduct in not fulfilling their discovery obligations.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  226. 241… you just know the lady spent a lot of money on depilatories before that glamour pic.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  227. That’s the most charitable view of the case, shipwrecked, the more jaundiced was the lead witness was a stone cold liar protected by his handler, the evidence was lacking but the clock was ticking toward the election.

    narciso (d1f714)

  228. Thank you, Haiku.

    nk (dbc370)

  229. Do you know schulte who said the review, or was that just another section,?

    narciso (d1f714)

  230. Sonny Bunch
    @SonnyBunch
    I’m honestly looking forward to a future in which every city councilor and every publicly employed bureaucrat gets sued for blocking randos on Twitter

    harkin (e4ec42)

  231. I don’t think that we ever saw Obama’s real birth certificates (yes, plural, at least three) either, but I think it has to do with the names he had as a child and not his place of birth.

    Unless you’re a Hawaiian nationalist and believe that fascist imperialist America illegally annexed the nation of Hawaii, and then it’s a brand new ballgame.

    nk (dbc370) — 5/23/2018 @ 7:15 am

    A person who is adopted gets a new Birth Certificate with the adopted father’s name, right? And if he got a sex change in Kentucky.

    GK Chesterton said any news of his birth was hearsay anyway.

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  232. It’s also one of the Alinsky rules: Power is not only what you have but also what you appear to have.

    nk (dbc370) — 5/23/2018 @ 7:32 am

    “Power perceived is power achieved.”- Ernie Hudson The Substitute

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  233. A person who is adopted gets a new Birth Certificate with the adopted father’s name, right?

    Yes. Either or both parent’s names in fact. Also, when there’s a legal name change.

    nk (dbc370)

  234. This one’s for nk…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/23/2018 @ 7:17 pm

    If anyone is still wondering why Hill stumbles all the time I think the French call them bluetooth enabled Benoit…

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  235. If his actual name was Barry Durham, that would be a let down

    narciso (d1f714)

  236. Now I get it. The Russians didn’t hack the emails they hacked Adam & Eve.

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  237. What Obama posted online — what I recall seeing — is a “Certificate of Live Birth” issued by the State of Hawaii, Department of Health. I have 4 of them for my 4 children born here. Its generated from data recorded by the State that it receives from the hospital. The Hospital gives the family a “certificate” generated by the Hospital with the birth details — date, time, size, etc. That is not an official record.

    But the “Green” form is the only official birth record that I’m aware of in this state. You can order them for your family anytime, for $10 each, but it will bear the date it was issued.

    I don’t know if there were other “birth records” generated in 1961 when Obama was born, but today the form Obama posted online is what the State of Hawaii gives you when you ask for an official record of your child’s birth.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  238. Yes the city of miami county special events dept was proud of that one and the specialist before that, tom berenger never went the sit com route.

    James woods chew a whole florsheim of leather products. As for rod steigers accent.

    narciso (d1f714)

  239. You know like former badguys Kurt (the one in rob cop) and daniel Von Bergen.

    narciso (d1f714)

  240. We have two forms of birth certificate for my daughter. The long form we got when she was born that we keep under lock and key. It is the official record which was registered with the County Clerk when she was born. From that are generated the $10.00 ones that I get from the County Clerk for enrolling her in school, getting her a passport, or a driver’s permit, etc.

    The date you want to look for is “Date registered (or recorded or similar)”. If it’s the same as, or within a day or two of, the date of birth, it’s the original birth name and likely birth parents. (There are maternity ward adoptions.) If it’s years apart, there’s been a change for some reason.

    nk (dbc370)

  241. I did not know it but they can’t hear so the rattle is presumably for predators, not for other rattlers.

    DRJ (15874d) — 5/23/2018 @ 9:06 am

    They do read lips though.

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  242. Nit that stallone doesn’t as well:
    http://dailycaller.com/2018/05/23/halper-false-russia-claims

    narciso (d1f714)

  243. My long form BC has my footprints on it. Well, I assume they are mine.

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  244. Well it could be your clone from the future.

    narciso (d1f714)

  245. As I think most persons paying attention now realize, the investigation into foreign interference with the 2016 election was created as a cover for domestic interference with the 2016 election.

    Nice opening by Mark Steyn.

    https://www.steynonline.com/8667/tinker-tailor-clapper-carter-downer-halper-spy

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438)

  246. Its like those nesting dolls, the Russians ate the big shell but the British the Saudis and the Italians are on the inside:
    https://www.ft.com/content/fdbaaff8-4e89-11e8-a7a9-37318e776bab

    narciso (d1f714)

  247. Good to see that Mark Steyn agrees with me. Fig leaf. And it’s wilting fast. And I just saw that Trump tweeted yesterday

    …Follow the money! The spy was there early in the campaign and yet never reported Collusion with Russia, because there was no Collusion. He was only there to spy for political reasons and to help Crooked Hillary win – just like they did to Bernie Sanders, who got duped!

    Heh! I had not seen that when I left my first comment here this morning.

    nk (dbc370)

  248. BTW, he will be on Fox and Friends at 6:00 am tomorrow. Trump, not Bernie.

    nk (dbc370)

  249. It was John McCain who was not born in the United States of America.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 5/23/2018 @ 10:43 am

    At least he can die here so there’s that.

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  250. If you understood my last comment raise your hand.

    narciso (d1f714)

  251. @ Ed from SFV (#230): Prof. Calabresi is a smart guy, but his article that you linked doesn’t persuade me, and I don’t think he’s right about either the law or the facts. As to the former, the now-expired independent counsel statute gave such appointees vast power that was almost completely independent of the DoJ, and yet it was nevertheless upheld by Chief Justice Rehnquist’s majority opinion in Morrison v. Olson over Justice Scalia’s memorable “wolf that comes as a wolf” dissent. I thought, and think, that Justice Scalia had the better of the argument; but until a future SCOTUS majority overrules Morrison, it’s still good law. Under the independent counsel statute that the SCOTUS upheld, the DoJ and AG didn’t even get to pick who would be chosen as the independent counsel; rather, he was chosen by a special court composed of sitting Article III federal judges constituted solely for that purpose, who would also define the independent counsel’s jurisdiction. Once appointed, the independent counsel had, by statute, “full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions and powers of the Department of Justice, the Attorney General, and any other officer or employee of the Department of Justice,” from grand jury through appeals. The AG and DoJ were required to “to suspend all investigations and proceedings regarding the matter.” The AG couldn’t remove an independent counsel except for “good cause,” which the AG would then have to justify to both the special court and then to Congress, and the independent counsel could ask the special court to reinstate him anyway. And the independent counsel had on-going reporting duties — not to the AG, but to Congress, with a statutory requirement that the independent counsel inform the House of Representatives of “substantial and credible information which [the counsel] receives … that may constitute grounds for an impeachment.”

    None of this is true of a special counsel under the current regs at 28 C.F.R. part 600. The purpose and effect of those regs, as was described in the Federal Register when they were published for public comment, was to make a special counsel no more powerful than any of the ninety-four U.S. Attorneys, and indeed, substantially less powerful in most important respects, including independence on a day-to-day basis. Under those regs, not only does the AG get to decide when to appoint a special counsel, and who to appoint, and what his jurisdiction is, the AG can reverse any decision that a special counsel makes. And if the AG fires a special counsel for good cause, the fired special counsel can’t apply to some judge for reinstatement, and even the AG’s reporting requirements to Congress are quite limited.

    Everything that any special counsel does, then, is under the direct authority, and subject to the complete supervision of, the Attorney General. And thus, in short, if the Godzilla created by the prior independent counsel statute was constitutional, the vastly less powerful, regulatorial subservient (to the AG, not Congress or the Courts) special counsel is surely constitutional. Calabresi’s discussion of Morrison would not get a passing grade, frankly, in any con law class: It’s short, inapt, and unpersuasive.

    Prof. Calabresi also presumes facts that are not at all indisputable or undisputed, e.g., that a series of actions taken by Mueller have been without Rosenstein’s approval. But the actions he lists are themselves quite subject to dispute — e.g., his assertion that Mueller has “wiretapped
    telephone calls covered by Attorney-client privilege between President Trump and his longtime
    personal lawyer Michael Cohen.” I’ve been following quite closely the filings made by both Cohen’s lawyers, Trump’s and the Trump Organization’s lawyers, and the USAO-SDNY in the case before Judge Kimba Wood, and none of them are making that claim in her court. He accuses Mueller of “controlled leaks,” with no citation to any proof of that. And he concludes that “Robert Mueller’s work
    is not being supervised and controlled by principal officer Rod Rosenstein.” I’m quite sure that Rosenstein and Mueller would disagree with that; it’s an assertion that’s refuted adequately by the supplemental memorandum on jurisdiction from August 2017 that Mueller has produced in response to Manafort’s motions to dismiss; and Calabresi has no more idea than any of the rest of us schlubs regarding how often and to what degree Rosenstein is supervising Mueller.

    Calabresi may be getting his news from the Conservative Treehouse; he provides no sources at all for any of his factual claims about what Mueller has done, or what Rosenstein hasn’t done. But this opinion is shoddy in its analysis of the law, and unsourced and improbable in its assertion of facts.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  252. If you understood my last comment raise your hand.

    FT doesn’t let you read unless you pay, so no idea what’s at your link.

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438)

  253. It was John McCain who was not born in the United States of America.

    Nor Ted Cruz, for that matter.

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438)

  254. Regardless of this opinion and its real-world impact if any, though, I maintain: Twitter delenda est. It is a spreading rot, a heckler’s medium, and a constant encouragement to the abandonment of good judgment and decency. I do not propose that the government shut it down; that would be unconstitutional. I continue to propose, instead, that people who value decency and robust communication avoid it like the plague.

    Beldar (fa637a) — 5/23/2018 @ 2:08 pm

    Saying that the plaintiffs were irreparably harmed was a bit much if you want average citizens to take you seriously.

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  255. Its an unrelAted comment to the maverick presidential candidate bolsanaro, who is the lead.

    This,was more related to the multiple streams of data that seem to merge into the dodsier.

    narciso (95d175)

  256. 96. …it’s always relevent when a US President presents obviously phony documents to establish his bona-fides.

    The Obama birthers have it backwards. They made the claim, it’s up to them to back it up. And those claims don’t hold water. They’ve been fact-checked, over and over again, and that hissing sound is their credibility deflating.

    Paul Montagu (e6130e)

  257. So ignoring the law, hasn’t the 45 year history of the special counsel, proven it’s as best a flawed instrument, when it doesn’t serve as a,tool for out party retrivution.

    narciso (95d175)

  258. Who cares where Obama was born. The man came and did the damage he was sent to do. Now he’s gone, or at least in a position where he’s able to cause less damage.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  259. It was a theory floated by Sid vicious, because he didn’t have a particular ideological critique of obama.
    The first modern special counsel Archibald Cox employed a cadre of apparatchiks disguised as prosecutors. My friend Clarice had occasion to tangle with the handiwork of one of his minions.

    narciso (95d175)

  260. 194. The Feds went LOOKING for criminal activity when they had no evidence at that time they started that criminal activity was afoot.

    The difference here is that FBI started this as a counterintelligence investigation, not criminal. When two individuals who had been previously investigated by the FBI join the Trump campaign, and when Trump on down praised Putin, and Putin-instigated DNC hacks happen, and when Trump surrogates are having on all these meetings with Putineers, and when the one change to the GOP platform that Trumpalistas pushed happened to benefit Putin, the FBI may just do some counterintelligence. They’d be derelict not to.

    Paul Montagu (e6130e)

  261. Thank you for that gift, Beldar. Your time and effort would be worth a rather tidy sum of cash. To me, your kindness in honoring my request, and more importantly, your integrity, are worth vastly more than any material consideration.

    I wanted Levin to truly be on to something, but it seemed “off,” especially in light of SCOTUS’ overall affirmation of the constitutionality of an SC. Oh well.

    Ed from SFV (b95465)

  262. Based on unverified evidence from supposedly Russian sources I’ll surmise waldman was one, perhaps Milan maybe mifsud then you have the million dollars paid to halper,The part Mrs Turk seems to have played.

    narciso (95d175)

  263. admittedly Levin saw this star chamber nearly 35 years ago with ed Mersey,twice, when he,was his chief of staff, there were some tax issues but other than that, no criminal charges but his career was pretty much ober.

    narciso (95d175)

  264. His son, col.michael meese carried on the tradition as part of Petraeus staff designing the counterinsurgency strategy.

    narciso (95d175)

  265. David French at NRO has posted an analysis of the Twitter decision that faults it for the same reasons I do above:

    There are other issues in play — such as whether the plaintiffs suffered a legally-cognizable injury when their sole complaint is that they can’t use the Twitter account of their choice to reply to Trump’s tweets, or whether Trump’s own free speech rights are impaired when a federal judge prohibits him from blocking hostile accounts — but ultimately the decision is wrong for the simplest of reasons. Donald Trump’s Twitter feed isn’t a government-controlled forum.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  266. Sweet women lie. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/05/23/body-cam-footage-contradicts-womans-claim-trooper-sexually-assaulted-her-lawyer-apologizes.html

    And her so-called attorney confirms Beldar’s opinion (and mine) of lawyers who put Esq. after their own name.

    nk (dbc370)

  267. 231, he has to give them one imprisonable scalp and thats that.

    urbanleftbehind (d15944)

  268. Well evidence getting in the way of a proper hanging that won’t do

    narciso (95d175)

  269. You got us Dave , training the dolphins to aim the lasers at the right volcano vent was the trickiest part.

    Always trust content from ConDave.

    Dave (445e97)

  270. @ Ed from SFV (#281): Thank you, sir, for the link and the subsequent kind words.

    Manafort is certainly taking his best shot at challenging Mueller’s authority, with pending motions to dismiss under submission in both his D.C. and Virginia indictments. The Virginia judge — who’s seen the unredacted memo August 2017 supplemental memo from Rosenstein — might adhere to his well-publicized criticisms of Mueller’s team at the last oral hearing in his court and dismiss the indictments. The D.C. judge has already dismissed Manafort’s civil suit challenging Mueller’s authority, though, and hasn’t signaled comparable skepticism. It’s thus entirely possible that you might have two district courts, in two different circuits, reach diametrically opposite conclusions regarding Mueller’s ability to indict Manafort; if the split persisted up through the D.C. and Fourth Circuits respectively, that would certainly be a hard case for the SCOTUS to refuse cert on. I certainly don’t fault Manafort’s lawyers for making these arguments and setting up eventual appeals on them, since the current special counsel regs haven’t been tested in the SCOTUS yet. But I think the regs are constitutional on their face; Janet Reno’s DoJ had Morrison as a template, and generally pruned away features of the prior independent counsel statute’s independence quite deliberately to ensure the new regs would hold up even more readily. And unless, in their nonpublic communications and the documentation thereof, Rosenstein and Mueller have been far less bureaucratically competent than they both appear to be, I doubt that Manafort can win an as-applied unconstitutionality argument, either. But we’ll all see, in the fullness of time, I suppose.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  271. Maybe the same judge has similar thoughts about blocking code for testy blog commenters, maybe even extending to banning noxious trolls.

    Who knows? It could be worse, right?

    ropelight (ff7eac)

  272. Ues,William jeffersons atty who was once up before judge Ellis,

    So moving forward past Jaworski after a brief engagement with Bert lance special counsel came in like gangbusters against reagan.

    narciso (95d175)

  273. If I were Rudy Guiliani, evaluating the prospects of challenging Mueller’s legal authority on the grounds argued by Prof. Calabresi, I’d also be wondering whether the August 2017 supplemental jurisdiction memorandum that’s been already released — in redacted form publicly, and now also under seal in its unredacted form — is the only such supplemental memorandum that Rosenstein has written. The government’s briefing has been silent on that topic — but of course, it would be, wouldn’t it, if my hypothesized further memoranda and supervision was on parts of the Mueller investigation that are unrelated to Manafort? Is there a supplemental memo specifically on potential obstruction of justice related to the Comey firing? Is there one covering aspects of the investigation that no one in the public presently suspects at all? A lot has presumably happened since August 2017, so isn’t it likely that would, or at least could, have generated further interplay between Mueller and Rosenstein regarding the latter’s amendment of the former’s jurisdiction?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  274. She really should be impeached. Naomi Reice Buchwald.

    nk (dbc370)

  275. Jeff Flake drops a truth-bomb on Washington in a Harvard Law commencement address:

    Not to be unpleasant, but I do bring news from our nation’s capital. First, the good news: Your national leadership is… not good. At all. Our presidency has been debased by a figure who has a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction and division and only a passing familiarity with how the constitution works.

    And our Article I branch of government, the Congress (that’s me), is utterly supine in the face of the moral vandalism that flows from the White House daily. I do not think that the founders could have anticipated that the beauty of their invention might someday founder on the rocks of reality television, and that the Congress would be such willing accomplices to this calamity. Our most ardent enemies, doing their worst (and they are doing their worst), couldn’t hurt us more than we are hurting ourselves.

    Now, you might reasonably ask, where is the good news in that?

    Well, simply put: We may have hit bottom.

    (Oh, and that’s also the bad news. In a rare convergence, the good news and bad news are the same — our leadership is not good, but it probably can’t get much worse.)

    This is it, if you have been wondering what the bottom looks like. This is what it looks like when you stress-test all of the institutions that undergird our constitutional democracy, at the same time. You could say that we are witnesses to history, and if it were possible to divorce ourselves from the obvious tragedy of this debacle, I suppose that might even be interesting, from an academic perspective. The way some rare diseases are interesting to medical researchers.

    Read the whole thing.

    I hope he’s right that this is as low as we can go, but that seems like dangerous over-optimism.

    Dave (445e97)

  276. If she gets the premise initially wrong this is also true of judge Jackson then marshals the wrong facts

    narciso (95d175)

  277. I guess Jeff Flake would be the sort of man Harvard Law would’ve asked to give the commencement address had he not been a total ahole about Trump and a major sellout and disappointment to his constituents.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  278. So they got no scalp with meese, after years they got Samuel pierce, him watt, some junior figures In Iran contra.

    narciso (95d175)

  279. 291… could be a real opportunity to see a much wider acceptance of the 8th Grade Mean Gurlz Speak to Teh Hand Script™.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  280. @ pete, re your #238: I’ve likewise seen or heard of IP/patent firms subsidizing law school for engineers. I think that’s one of the few career paths in law that are likely to remain promising during the next three or four decades, actually, for those with the discipline and talents to do well in both professions.

    One of my law school classmates was being put through law school by his previous employer, the CIA. We were summer clerks together at a firm in Austin after our first year of law school, but the next summer he had to go back to Arlington for his summer. He graduated near the top of the class, and immediately disappeared from public view: None of us has ever seen or heard of him again.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  281. ConDave™… accept no substidupes.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  282. “ He graduated near the top of the class, and immediately disappeared from public view: None of us has ever seen or heard of him again”

    Had friends in college with same situation. He told me he was going into the NSA and that he and he wife were going to drop off one day and they did.

    harkin (e4ec42)

  283. Apologies for the source and the writing style (and the detail, some assuming we are up to speed on details). But an interesting story about the Guccifer leaked oppo Trump file. Evidently, it came from Podesta email, not from DNC leak.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-23/day-guccifer-20-quit-hacking-dnc

    Always felt strange to me that what was leaked was something damaging to Trump, not Hill (not same case with WikiLeaks content). Also, just seemed strange that there was not more proof from “Guccifer” of knowing what would be in/out of the Wikileaks DNC dump.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  284. Our host takes great pains to remind us that his blog is not something he does as part of his day job as a subordinate to the District Attorney for Los Angeles County, California. He doesn’t blog “under color of state law.” Nor is he an officer of the federal government. And as mere commenters here, we don’t even own the content, meaning we have less control than any Twitter user, including Trump, has. Mr. Frey can ban, block, delete, republish, or whatever else he chooses to do with our comments; he is the Czar of Patterico’s Pontifications, and although he rarely throws any lightning bolts, he assuredly could if he so chose. The argument that Trump’s Twitter page is a “designated public forum” that’s “owned or controlled by the government” was weak, but not even that weak argument can be made about our host or this blog or its comment section. No one’s First Amendment rights are implicated in any way by the script.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  285. The Romans were onto something: nomen est omen. When it comes to Jeff Flake, his name is indeed an omen, and he lives down to it.

    ropelight (ff7eac)

  286. Fideloflake I dubbed him because of his perpetual coddling if the castros

    narciso (d1f714)

  287. The Romans were onto something: nomen est omen. When it comes to Jeff Flake, his name is indeed an omen, and he lives down to it.

    Flake is the third most conservative member of the senate, in the current congress.

    But unquestioning loyalty to the Dear Leader is all that matters in TrumpWorld.

    Dave (445e97)

  288. Besides the redacted August 2017 supplemental memorandum from Rosenstein to Mueller, the Mueller team’s briefing in both D.C. and Virginia referenced Rosenstein’s prior congressional testimony about Mueller and his investigation before the House Judiciary Committee on December 13, 2017. For instance, the DoJ brief quotes this bit from Rosenstein’s testimony:

    No political accountability question exists here — as the Acting Attorney General has confirmed, he “know[s] what [the Special Counsel]’s doing”; is “properly exercising [his] oversight responsibilities”; and can provide “assur[ance] … that the special counsel is conducting himself consistently with [the Acting Attorney General’s] understanding of the scope of his investigation.”

    This is reminiscent, of course, of the original order appointing Mueller, in which Rosenstein had referenced Comey’s Congressional testimony on March 20, 2017, about the foreign intelligence investigation before the House Permanent Select Committee on Foreign Intelligence, in describing the scope of Mueller’s original appointment.

    In both instances, the DoJ has used these past references to public testimony to avoid giving up internal secrets. Rosenstein could have written an affidavit in response to Manafort’s motions to dismiss, for example, in which he said, “Oh yes, I speak with Mueller at least twice a week, he copies me on all significant communications with his team, and I personally reviewed and authorized the indictments and superseding indictments against Manafort in my capacity as a Senate-confirmed principal officer of the Department of Justice.” That would undoubtedly have been more persuasive, for the purposes of defeating Manafort’s motions, than trying to find bits and pieces from Rosenstein’s testimony to document the fact and extent of Rosenstein’s supervision.

    But Rosenstein is clearly playing this all very close to his vest. And that’s exactly as it should be. That’s exactly what James Comey didn’t do with the Clinton email investigation.

    What I don’t know, and haven’t attempted to research, and lack the first-hand experience with the Exclusionary Rule and its analogs to make confident guesses about, is whether Rosenstein could effectively cure any shortcomings in the paper trail that might lead the Virginia judge to dismiss Manafort’s indictment, thereafter simply obtaining a fresh indictment with any gaps in authority remedied.

    And there’s already some strategic gamesmanship going on, with Mueller indicted in two different judicial districts. If the Virginia judge throws out the indictment before him, but the D.C. judge doesn’t throw out the indictment before her, maybe Mueller will simply refile what is presently in Virginia as part of a superseding indictment in D.C.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  289. I’m impressed that Patterico hasn’t had work conflicts from being a DA along same time as running a conservative blog. Not anything illegal about it. Just the optics.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  290. I’m impressed that Patterico hasn’t had work conflicts from being a DA along same time as running a conservative blog. Not anything illegal about it. Just the optics.

    LOL.

    He had an eight-year(?) lawfare campaign waged against him by a convicted bomber and perjurer, and was SWATted.

    As far as I understand, he hasn’t had any problems with his employer as such, but the (unsuccessful) legal attacks against him were predicated on the “optics” of his status as a DA.

    Dave (445e97)

  291. There hasn’t really been a comprehensive narrative of his ordeal, that I’ve seen, but that is my understanding gleaned from fragmentary reports.

    Dave (445e97)

  292. Calabresi may be getting his news from the Conservative Treehouse; he provides no sources at all for any of his factual claims about what Mueller has done, or what Rosenstein hasn’t done. But this opinion is shoddy in its analysis of the law, and unsourced and improbable in its assertion of facts.

    The only reason to read the Conservative Treehouse is that its value based on prior analysis and historical precedents tends to actually be PREDICTIVE far above ‘this claim is unsourced!’ (how many untrustworthy and fabulist sources was the FBI relying on to make up their briefs in volume?) and ‘improbable’ is almost never measured numerically among the lawyers who use it. If they deduce something from their own experience and publicly available information and three months later that something is revealed in prior redactions, then too bad for your slate of whatever TTT lawyers you have who mastered a list of logical fallacies and little else! You can talk all you want about whatever would convince YOU, your opinion is tainted at the source by your prior commitments, and not useful for making predictions!

    We’ve already had at least one sanctimoniously ‘helpful’ highly placed New York government financial type break confidentiality laws by leaking Cohen’s financial records because he couldn’t find the SARs and couldn’t be bothered to ask a few simple questions as to why that might be. It’s a fair assumption that these RESIST THE RISE OF THE NEXT HITLER, THE ABSOLUTE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO US types will in fact do every single illegal and underhanded thing imaginable in their mission against it, from fudging data, to public records, to colluding among themselves to subvert the course of American democracy if it produces results deleterious to their own careers and sensibilities.

    Tellurian (b07080)

  293. I’m way more sympathetic to the argument that the President’s twitter account is a de facto public forum than Beldar is, but I am in complete agreement with respect to this blog, as discussed in #304. The situations are easy to distinguish, and civil servants have the right to engage in their own speech without it automatically being attributed to their employer. It *might* be different if the elected district attorney of los angeles county were doing the same thing — the CEO speaks for the organization in a way that an employee does not.

    aphrael (3f0569)

  294. Tellurian, do you ever read aloud your own comments before hitting “Submit Comment”? I can’t follow your train of thought well enough to be properly insulted, but I gather that it’s me who’s triggering your … whatever it is.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  295. Is there any precedent for privately owned spaces that become, through custom or practice, effectively public fora acquiring de jure status?

    Suppose a plot of land belongs to a private entity, but they make no particular effort to assert their ownership and allow the public essentially unfettered access to it, and people begin using it as a public forum like a park. It seems to me the government couldn’t selectively chase some people off the property while allowing others, based on viewpoint.

    Dave (445e97)

  296. I miss the occasional RANT from GUS

    mg (9e54f8)

  297. I suggest, Tellurian, that you can improve your persuasive powers by using EVEN MORE ALL-CAPS! And more exclamation points! Also: More cowbell.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  298. I didn’t read any of their briefing, but I will say this about the lawyers in that Twitter case: They did a really comprehensive job in their list of stipulated facts, insofar as one can draw inferences about that from the district judge’s opinion.

    The most amazing thing to me is that nobody apparently attempted to bring Twitter into the lawsuit, and it didn’t intervene, even though this holding would appear to apply to every single public official Twitter account, federal, state, or local, in the United States.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  299. And I still don’t have, alas, any kind of insight or understanding into the extent to which this ruling is going to actually change either Trump’s use of Twitter, or his opponents’ use of Twitter. I can see a potential for the hecklers to be more efficient and effective, and for Trump to have less ability to avoid the display of unfavorable opinions as part of his Twitter page, in general; but I have no sense at all of the degree of such changes.

    I really hope our host or others with mad Twitter skillz will ponder that and share their thoughts about it.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  300. Dave — there is certainly precedent for private spaces that become effectively public spaces for first amendment analysis. A business that is open generally to the public may not exclude picketers who are not interfering with traffic or being unduly obnoxious, for example.

    But there is an underlying implication in the opinion that the President is *different* from ordinary public employees, that by virtue of being the Head of State, he has voluntarily given up his right to maintain a seperate *public* persona, for the duration of his time in office.

    It doesn’t come out and say that, to be sure. But I think it’s an implicit assumption even so.

    aphrael (3f0569)

  301. Treehouse has some good info, deductions, analysis, speculations at times. Obviously there is some signal to noise. Like I hate when they post video clips of Fox News or Dan Bongino (that lack new news, are long winded, and don’t even do helpful analysis/explanation of chronologies or known facts). And the guy has made some wrong guesses at times (Carter Page being UCE-1 for instance) and being too definite about it, rather than keeping it as a theory. And there is some censorship of debate (even from the choir). And there are a lot of venting chaff comments (but even there, occasionally one has a good insight or theory). And the guy seems to have made some reasonable inferences that have at least partially been validated over time.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  302. Beldar: I suspect that Twitter would go to great lengths to avoid openly taking sides in the fight, and will do everything to preserve just enough plausible deniability that allows both sides to willfully believe that Twitter is really on their side, regardless of the evidence.

    Being seen to take sides could cause them to lose huge chunks of their readership. Why run that risk if you can avoid it?

    aphrael (3f0569)

  303. If that analysis is right, though, it’s a sign that the Silicon Valley of my youth is well and truly dead. The ethos of the valley in the 1990s would have been to stand by the customer, knowing that it would reassure everyone that the company would stand by them, too.

    aphrael (3f0569)

  304. Beldar: I imagine it would also apply to, say, official facebook accounts (various national parks have these, for example), and analogs on other forms of social media.

    aphrael (3f0569)

  305. If it’s a “public forum” and the twitter account is not allowed to block people, does that imply Twitter can’t either (on public forum pages)? You might try to differentiate blocking for disagreement versus blocking for trolling, but that is a rather hard needle to thread. E.g. Twitter shadowbanning of conservatives could be illegal, at least on “public forum” pages.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  306. > does that imply Twitter can’t either (on public forum pages)?

    The simple answer: no.

    The more complicated answer: it would depend on the contract terms between Trump and Twitter. If Twitter is in compliance with its terms, then it’s going to be very hard to force Twitter to do something different *legally*; it would be more an issue of preventing the government from using Twitter in this way, I think.

    But *generally*, no. The government cannot viewpoint discriminate in the operation of its public forum. But a private company is under no such obligation.

    aphrael (3f0569)

  307. I miss the occasional RANT from GUS

    mg (9e54f8) — 5/23/2018 @ 11:30 pm

    Well check out JustOneMinute. I will vouch for you.

    So what do you lawyers think about this?

    A rape victim was awarded a $1 billion settlement verdict Tuesday by a Clayton County jury in a civil lawsuit, according to court documents.

    Hope Cheston, who is now 20 years old, sued a security company whose employee, Brandon Lamar Zachary, was convicted of rape and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The rape occurred in October 2012 when Cheston was 14.

    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s policy is to not name rape victims, but Cheston has chosen to speak out after the verdict.

    “Sexual assault is sexual assault,” Cheston said at a news conference Wednesday. “It’s not right, and it needs to be punished.”

    She said the verdict was a pleasant surprise that validates her struggles and emotional pain.

    “For the longest (time), I thought it would be pushed under the rug and no longer mattered … but come to find out 12 strangers feel like what I went through and my story and how I feel six years later is worth a billion dollars,” Cheston said.

    AJC

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  308. Beldar: I imagine it would also apply to, say, official facebook accounts (various national parks have these, for example), and analogs on other forms of social media.

    aphrael (3f0569) — 5/23/2018 @ 11:52 pm

    There are police departments getting sued because they delete negative comments on their FB page after one of their officers gets into an incident.

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  309. Flake is the third most conservative member of the senate, in the current congress.

    But unquestioning loyalty to the Dear Leader is all that matters in TrumpWorld.

    Dave (445e97) — 5/23/2018 @ 10:42 pm

    So he’s a Bronze Medalist in The Special Olympics?

    Pinandpuller (dc49cf)

  310. Pinandpuller: yeah, that makes sense. This decision would cover them, too.

    aphrael (3f0569)

  311. I’m going to go into the public forum which is Naomi Reice Buchwald’s courtroom, sit in the spectator area, and every time she says anything I’ll jump up and say, “That’s stupid and you’re an idiot and a disgrace to the judiciary”. What do you think will happen?

    Yes, exactly. Twitter is not a courtroom, and it’s not a public park, and it’s not a townhall, and it’s not a police department’s facebook page, and it’s not a company town, and it’s not a shopping center. It’s Twitter.

    nk (dbc370)

  312. BTW, Spygate is already taken. It was used when the New England Patriots were stealing other teams’ signals.

    nk (dbc370)

  313. In so far as rosenstein, was party to the last visa against page, and his record protecting the clintons in the tax division and in the previous special counsels his record shouldn’t be believed. It is striking the way the press first hid helper and his assistant for months who were part of a whuzpering campaign against everyone, but they show jaundice to will Campbell the real terranova/costigan /callen. And of the awan bros the pashtun chowders?

    narciso (d1f714)

  314. Nk, if it’s modern era bailiffs, you got a fighting chance

    urbanleftbehind (d15944)

  315. Next, CNN will be suing Trump for not watching it as much as he does Fox.

    nk (dbc370)

  316. I wouldn’t put it past morning Matthew Perry, but there’s probably some contractual limitations dating back from the Apprentice era.

    urbanleftbehind (d15944)

  317. Trump again today, “Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE – a terrible thing!”

    Clapper did not say that. In fact, he said the opposite. And James Comey has responded brilliantly….

    “Dangerous time when our country is led by those who will lie about anything, backed by those who will believe anything, based on information from media sources that will say anything.”

    noel (b4d580)

  318. Morning joke, which is like mos eiseley, a collection of tax deadbeats insurance schemers, deposit defaulters et al

    narciso (d1f714)

  319. “Dangerous time when our country is led by those who will lie about anything, backed by those who will believe anything, based on information from media sources that will say anything.”

    Does that include that women have XY chromosomes, penises and testicles, and men have XX chromosomes, vaginas and uteruses? Or are some alternative realities acceptable and some not?

    nk (dbc370)

  320. Back in 2012, clapper ran interference for Brennan, nabbing a low level bureau contractor who had no inside knowledge of the Saudi double agent, as the latter told townsend and clarje

    narciso (d1f714)

  321. Later in the year when general cartwrighr leaked the stuixtnet they sought to investigate general hayden, shut up that’s why.

    narciso (d1f714)

  322. nk says, “Does that include that women have XY chromosomes, penises and testicles, and men have XX chromosomes, vaginas and uteruses? Or are some alternative realities acceptable and some not?”

    Uhh. What??

    noel (b4d580)

  323. In that case, they subpoenaed reporter David sanger, why does that name ring familiar.

    narciso (d1f714)

  324. even a dirty fbi slutboy like James Comey knows having your name paired up in a headline with James Clapper just makes you look even more filthy dirty and cowardly

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  325. James Comey
    “Dangerous time when our country is led by those who will lie about anything, backed by those who will believe anything, based on information from media sources that will say anything. Americans must break out of that bubble and seek truth.”
    7:20 AM – May 23, 2018

    It takes a worried man to have a worried mind.

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  326. The times and the ap, dis their best tina turner pose, back then.

    narciso (d1f714)

  327. Clapper deserves the title of weasel more than Comey. What a freaking spin machine! “We weren’t spying on Trump’s campaign. We were spying on people in Trump’s campaign who we thought were spying on Trump’s campaign. He should be happy we spied on these snakes in his bosom.” “Least untruthful” Clapper. Snorfle.

    nk (dbc370)

  328. but inveterate fbi slut James Comey’s doing far more to profit off the treasonous traitorous efforts of the cowardly lickspittle men and women of the fbi

    hot and horny Lisa Page isn’t profiting

    Andy Panda had to go begging on gofundme like a dirty dirty prostitute

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  329. Worried Man

    It takes a worried man
    To post a worried tweet
    It takes a worried man
    To post a worried tweet
    It takes a worried man
    To post a worried tweet
    He’s worried now,
    He’ll be snatched up off teh street

    Got himself ten feet of rope,
    Rickety stool in brown
    Got himself in a jam
    Often happens in that town
    Got himself a worried look
    Suits him really fine
    He thought he’d skate
    Now he’s worried all the time

    It takes a worried man
    To post a worried tweet
    It takes a worried man
    To post a worried tweet
    It takes a worried man
    To post a worried tweet
    He’s worried now,
    He’ll be snatched up off teh street

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  330. There’s no evidence that page had strzok had any relations like described in billions, it was just a pretext like that rogue IRS cell in cincinatti.

    narciso (d1f714)

  331. that only makes her all the more hot and horny then

    if Andy Panda’s holding out on her

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  332. Get up on teh downstrzok… everybody get up

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  333. They always have a cover story available rogue cell. Shattered hard drive burn the crime scene at San Bernardino

    narciso (d1f714)

  334. 337, noel quotes Trump’s tweet, then claims Clapper didn’t admit there was spying in Trump’s campaign.

    But, tellingly noel neglects to include what Clapper said, and at the same time noel insists that Clapper actually said the opposit.

    The whole truth is that multiple attempts to spy on Trump’s campaign did in fact occur, from attempting to compromise low level advisors, to FISA court warrents obtained with lies and phony documents, to arranging a meeting with Trump Jr under false pretenses.

    Trump’s campaign was spied on, noel knows it, but he pretends otherwise. He then has the timidity to quote James Comey’s self-serving “ain’t it aweful” prattle projecting onto Trump the very sins of which Comey himself is so very guilty.

    Remember noel’s duplicity, it’s his defining characteristic.

    ropelight (0b27dc)

  335. Gay lover in the pulse shooter, univision went all Chris Hanson there to hide the fact, that the father was the frank costello of the south east

    narciso (d1f714)

  336. “During her weekly press conference, the House Minority Leader — whom some speculate will be the next Speaker of the House if Democrats recapture the majority this November — was seen uttering gibberish, bizarrely laughing and staring off mid-sentence before re-engaging the press during the appearance.”

    Ready to revise the national agenda after the mid-terms.

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  337. Just another day ending in y,

    narciso (d1f714)

  338. #335, kish, thanks for posting Trump’s letter to Kim withdrawing from the Singapore summit. Trump is getting pretty good at this diplomacy stuff.

    ropelight (0b27dc)

  339. The urgency was the missile tests, those have been postponed for a while the kimschi kruschev will rattle the tupperware for a while.

    narciso (d1f714)

  340. Thank you, Kishnevi. Well done, Mr. President! Now give Xi Jinping a littl realpolitik too.

    nk (dbc370)

  341. Rocket Man must have thought that information in the West is controlled the way it is in his sh!thole and we wouldn’t know that he was the one who requested the meeting.

    nk (dbc370)

  342. Kimchi Khrushchev. LOL

    nk (dbc370)

  343. here’s a nice read about a dead person named Mr. Potemra

    he was an Angeleno and he liked kitty cats and proust

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  344. Pompeo gets Walrus Gumboed; Trump is egg foo junged.

    Game, set, match, Kim. Well played, sir.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  345. 308 — Beldar. Mueller was forced to indict in two different districts because of venue rules. Manafort lives in the ND of Virginia, and that was his residence address for his tax returns. Thus, the tax counts could only be brought there, and not in the District Court in DC.

    A defendant must stipulate to face charges in a district where venue does not properly lie. Manafort refused to stipulate, so Mueller was forced to file different cases in the two districts.

    He might have been able to file all the charges in EDVA, but he doesn’t want to be in the EDVA — he wants a DC Jury.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  346. Keep up the delusions if you must, ropelight, but both Trump and you are easily rebutted….

    BEHAR: “So I ask you, was the FBI spying on Trump’s campaign?”
    CLAPPER: “No, they were not. They were spying on, a term I don’t particularly like, but on what the Russians were doing. Trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage or influence which is what they do.”

    Did FoxNews miss that quote?

    noel (b4d580)

  347. So, to you, “no” is yes.

    noel (b4d580)

  348. Spanky’s being such a big crybaby! He wouldn’t be all butthurt if he didn’t have something to hide.

    Tillman (a95660)

  349. Trump cancels meeting with Fat Kim.
    https://twitter.com/DPRK_News/status/999652195896254465

    Paul Montagu (e6130e)

  350. To me its roll-on-the-floor laughing time when Comey/Clapper are trying to find space in between “Spying” with an informant and “investigating” with an informant.

    IT’S THE SAME THING!!!

    The key fact in the matter is that they didn’t tell the Trump Campaign. If they were really only concerned about Russian interference, they would have told the campaign. They knew precisely who they wanted to look at — Page, Manafort and Gates. Papadopolous only came later.

    They didn’t want anyone in the Trump campaign to know because they wanted to catch the Trump campaign in bed with the Russians — hopefully even Trump himself maybe.

    The “Move along, there’s nothing to see here” attitude of the press is also a dead giveaway.

    Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies have TARGETED the opposition party’s nominee for President at the outset of the general election campaign, and used various surveillance means to gather intelligence BECAUSE of political views.

    I do not care that it was “Russia” — we are not a war with Russia. Advocating better relations with Russia as part of the 2016 campaign was a POLITICAL view, not a question of treason. The Obama Administration had at one point advocated better relations with Russia as a political position, as had the Bush Administration before them. In each instance the opposition party had challenged that view.

    Those are political differences, and the investigation was launched by the Obama DOJ on the issue of a policy difference between the party in power, and the party out of power.

    Who wrote this?:

    “The FBI’s interference with the democratic process was not the result of any overt decision to reshape society in conformance with Bureau-approved norms. Rather, the Bureau’s actions were the natural consequence of attitudes within the Bureau … combined with a strong sense of duty to protect society — even from its own “wrong” choices.

    The FBI saw itself as the guardian of public order, and believed it had the responsibility to counter threats to that order using any means available. At the same time, the Bureau’s assessment of what constituted a “threat” was influenced by its attitude towards the forces of change.” In effect, the Bureau chose sides …. and then attacked the other side with the unchecked power at its disposal.”

    The clearest proof of the Bureau’s attitude … is its own rhetoric. The language used in its internal documents which were not intended to be disseminated outside the Bureau is that of the highly charged polemic revealing clear biases.

    Church Committee Book II — Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  351. Isn’t it interesting that at the moment where it appears that the House GOP might be on the cusp of getting their hands on some of the documents at the core of the decision making process to initiate the investigation, that Comey, Clapper, and Yates have suddenly all gone hyperbolic at once?

    And that Loretta Lynch hasn’t said much of anything in six months.

    And that John Brennan has suddenly fallen silent for a few days.

    I’m wondering if Brennan hasn’t sought legal advice, and been told that he really needs to quit making public comments that might later be used against him in some form of official proceeding.

    Comey is too convinced of his own righteousness and fidelity to law to even entertain the thought that his own actions might be viewed by others to maybe have violated the law. He was the DAG and FBI Director dammit — he knows what the law is. He’d never violate it!!!!!!

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  352. He really isn’t the sharpest spoke in the cubbard.

    narciso (95d175)

  353. Now the nsa had minaret and shamrock the cia chaos Tom Huston actually though this was a new thing.

    narciso (95d175)

  354. A bit of news lost yesterday — Mueller signals to Court that he’s ready for sentencing in the Papadolopous case.

    Generally, a prosecutor holding the cards against a cooperator who has pled guilty, doesn’t move to sentencing until the cooperator’s usefulness is exhausted, because once he’s sentenced, all leverage is lost. I had cases where sentencing was put off 2 or 3 years while the agents continued to run down information and build new cases based on the cooperator’s information.

    So, the fact that Papadopolous is going to be sentenced means Mueller has not need for him in the future. He has nothing of usefulness to the ongoing investigation or any indictments already filed or anticipated to be filed in the future.

    IMO, this signals that Mueller may, in fact, be done indicting people.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  355. BEHAR: “So I ask you, was the FBI spying on noel?”
    CLAPPER: “No, they were not. They were spying on, a term I don’t particularly like, but on what the people in his household were doing. Trying to understand were they infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage or influence which is what they do.”

    Weasel Clapper.

    nk (dbc370)

  356. i’m sure Noel would appreciate the difference, and applaud the government’s efforts.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  357. Some here sound like they care more about whether Spanky was spied on and not if he’s guilty of taking our country for a ride. Where are the priorities? Our country is more important than one person.

    Tillman (a95660)

  358. Tillman — where’s the evidence that he has “taken the country for a ride” with respect to Russia and Putin???

    I’d be worried about it if there was any evidence of it.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  359. swc,

    Trump previously claimed that no one on his campaign team had any contact with Russians, although there are now dozens of publicly known contacts, many of which involved persons at the highest levels of the campaign, including Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner. Trump charged that the special counsel investigation was a corrupt “witch hunt” headed up by “all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama.” Yet, three Republicans — special counsel Robert Mueller, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein — are leading the investigation.

    http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/389199-there-is-no-justice-in-undermining-the-special-counsel-investigation

    Not only do they act guilty, as if there is something to hide, they are caught lying left and right, trying to cover up something completely innocent?

    Tillman (a95660)

  360. the first two undermined w fourteen years ago during stellar wind, the third was probably in reserve,

    narciso (d1f714)

  361. mueller isn’t investigating anything lol

    he’s trying to cover for the sleazy corruption at the dirty pedophile FBI

    they did bad touch all up in it, you see

    stranger effing danger

    boys and girls if any of the sleazy men and women from the perverted and corrupt FBI ever approach you

    don’t cooperate!

    the trash that work for the FBI have no integrity and you can’t trust them

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  362. Stellar wind??? This one could rightfully be named “Breaking Wind”

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  363. Yes, exactly. Twitter is not a courtroom, and it’s not a public park, and it’s not a townhall, and it’s not a police department’s facebook page, and it’s not a company town, and it’s not a shopping center. It’s Twitter.

    nk (dbc370) — 5/24/2018 @ 4:57 am

    Sometimes people who squat on a celebrity handle can sell it to them and sometimes Twitter evicts them for the celebrity.

    Pinandpuller (16b0b5)

  364. Weasel Words.

    “A weasel word, or anonymous authority, is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that a specific or meaningful statement has been made, when instead only a vague or ambiguous claim has actually been communicated.” (Wikipedia)

    Trump’s favorites….

    “many people say”, “everybody says”, “somebody told me”, “I’m starting to wonder”, “which is a real possibility”, “a lot of facts are emerging” and “by all accounts”.

    On and on and on. Weasel words.

    noel (b4d580)

  365. I call him…. Slick Weasel.

    noel (b4d580)

  366. StellAr wind was first generation nsa surveillance, we know zougam theadrid cell leader was in contact with other players going back to 2001

    narciso (95d175)

  367. Don’t be such a weasel, noel. You know, or should know, that hearsay can be the basis for probable cause or at least articulable suspicion. And you further know, or should know, that probable cause is the basis for warrants and indictments, and articulable suspicion for investigations (including stop and frisk, BTW). Isn’t that what the whole Russian collusion narrative is based on?

    nk (dbc370)

  368. I hate it when I have to defend Trump. Probably a sense of obligation for his last three foreign policy moves — Jerusalem embassy, Iran, North Korea — which I applaud. Hopefully, I’ll get over it soon.

    nk (dbc370)

  369. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. THAT WAS REPORTED, and nobody talks about it.” (On Ted Cruz father killing Kennedy)

    “The President does believe that, I think he’s stated that before, and stated his concern of voter fraud and people voting illegally during the campaign and continues to maintain that belief BASED ON STUDIES AND EVIDENCE PEOPLE HAVE BROUGHT TO HIM,” Spicer said.

    “…all of a sudden A LOT OF FACTS ARE EMERGING and I’m starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country.”

    James Comey is a proven leaker & liar. VIRTUALLY EVERYONE IN WASHINGTON THOUGHT HE SHOULD BE FIRED for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired.

    (Starting to see a pattern?)

    noel (b4d580)

  370. I tried finding his weasel words for his allegation that three million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 campaign, and I could not. There, he employed…. outright lies.

    noel (b4d580)

  371. I see teh ferret is up and at ’em early this morning.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  372. Weasel booster?

    noel (b4d580)

  373. Gelded ferret?

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  374. In all seriousness, I believe that we need to do more to demonstrate HOW politicians deceive us. That provides a more long term protection for voters than just pointing out individual falsehoods.

    noel (b4d580)

  375. Yes, noel, if Trump had a dollar for every lie he’s told, he’d be a very rich man. But I also think that Obama’s stooges spied on his campaign with a view to helping Hillary get elected and the Russian collusion narrative was and is a smokescreen to cover their unethical and illegal activities.

    nk (dbc370)

  376. You shouldn’t have to remind us of your superior manliness so often. Starts to resemble a mid-life Corvette.

    noel (b4d580)

  377. That was for Haiku.

    noel (b4d580)

  378. If you like your deceptive politicians, you can keep your deceptive politicians.

    BuDuh (fc15db)


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