I don’t mind your positions, but your certainty and arrogance are often so condescending that you cross into self-parody, IMO.
I agree with this.
I think this makes perfect sense. The downside of a failed impeachment (and as long as McConnell is running the Senate, impeachment will fail to remove Trump) is too horrible to contemplate: an unfettered Trump for another 6 years. It’s not worth the risk. So the Democratic field has to do everything they can to make sure that the investigative muck sticks to Trump, and present themselves as a positive alternative.
The *real *problem is that 43% of the electorate is hopelessly cynical + completely removed from the norms and traditions of the Constitution + dumber than a bag of hammers. It’ll take a lot of work to fix that.
I won’t disagree with you - I know I go overboard sometimes, especially on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night after I’ve had a few pops. But let’s be honest: this is SDMB. I’d say a lot of us are pretty proud of ourselves from time to time, ain’t we? I’ve felt the smug, as much as I’ve given it.
I digress - I don’t wanna make another thread about me. :o
The magic hands of Bill Barr gets Manafort out of Riker’s.:rolleyes:
For the purposes of accuracy, it’s surely time to change the name of the place Barr works: from “Department of Justice” to “Department of Trump-Protection.”
(There’s always still a danger of Manafort becoming more cooperative with ongoing investigations if he gets too unhappy…)
Whether that’s how Eric Holder actually acted in his position or not, I couldn’t say, but it’s certainly what Trump seemed to be aiming to hire based on how he lamented not having his own “Eric Holder to protect him”.
How long before Trump issues an executive order to have lèse-majesté punishable in the US. Seriously, I’m really not seeing all that much difference between him and Scudder at this point.
I’m not Holder’s biggest fan, but the idea that he conducted himself in any way analogous to the way Barr has behaved, seems quite unfair to Holder.
Of course no one would expect Trump to understand such differences.
The Heinlein character? At least that character appears to have had enough familiarity with fundamentalist religious thought to be able to construct a government based on it. The same can’t be said for “Two Corinthians” Donald.
In any case, a bet that Trump hasn’t asked—repeatedly—if he can have critics jailed, would almost certainly lose.
No extra information beyond the headline that Rosenstein, at some point, expanded the scope of Mueller’s investigation at least a 3rd time:
As said, there’s no more information than what I just said.
I don’t suppose this appears in any other, more…reliable… news sources? The Washington Examiner is not exactly the go-to news organ for the reality-based readership.
It was the only right-wing news source to say that the caravan conspiracy theory was a load of crap, and mediabiasfactcheck gives it high truthfulness:
Obviously it is a right wing source, but that’s different from lying. It’s probably about as honest as Vox or someplace like that. There’s only so much you can do when the writers are partisan.
Hope Hicks transcript from (I believe) yesterday:
I’m on page 22. As yet, it’s a load of “Nope.” The White House has told her to say exactly nothing and, apparently, she is going with that.
Reading some more of it, I have to say that Pelosi messed up by keeping Schiff and Nadler as the heads of their committees (on the Democratic side). Obviously, Schiff isn’t part of the Hicks debacle, but my earlier recommendation holds: You’re not going to win this one by playing politics. Do this for real and by the book. If you’re just doing things to make a statement and/or spin it one way or the other, then you’re wasting the country’s time. And, particularly in the case where there’s actually a case to be made, goofing off and letting things fall by the wayside is stupid.
Granted, to be fair, there could be more to this than we know. It could be that this is all cover, while the FBI tracks down the bigger fish, but I have no reason to believe that to be the case at the moment.
Specifically, as one of the Republicans points out and liable is true, Nadler has been sending out subpoenas to individuals, rather than to the organizations who own the documents. And, I personally note, he’s simply accepting Executive immunity, despite that being something completely irrelevant for an impeachment hearing and it was already pretty clear that he was just going to get a load of nope if he’s going to accept all of the various privileges enjoyed by the Executive branch. And if, for whatever reason, he genuinely didn’t realize that the White House was going to object to all testimony going into this, it certainly should have been his key takeaway after. Instead, his statements after the hearing were just, “They refused to answer. I’m helpless against that, what do you want me to do?”
Do your job.
I don’t think you understand what Chairmen Nadler and Schiff are there to do. They are doing their job.
You have an occupant in the Oval Office who is unlawfully asserting a privilege that does not exist, in order to prevent lawful testimony being heard by congressional committees tasked with the legitimate purpose of oversight.
Additionally, you have an Attorney General who is acting wholly outside his authority, taking on the position of protector of his master and disregarding any part of his job that is in conflict with that objective – including ignoring any enforcement duties that would ordinarily fall to the DOJ on behalf of Congress.
In short, there is little Nadler can expect from Barr to undertake enforcement of congressional subpoenas and/or arrest warrants. This is an unparalleled situation that Nadler and Schiff face. It has never happened before.
So Nadler and Schiff are left with only the courts as their final remedy to this ongoing, dangerous, anti-democratic course of conduct.
What Nadler is doing is creating a record. He is demonstrating to any future court that will rule on these issues, perhaps even the Supreme Court setting precedent, just how many ways he attempted to work with the Executive Branch, how many times he gave them the opportunity to do the right thing. He is working to box those courts in, not give them any opportunity to say, “Gosh, Chairman Nadler, why didn’t you give the Executive Branch the chance to do fill-in-the-blank?”
Triers of fact do this all the time. It’s referred to as appeal-proofing your case. The judge – in this case, Nadler or Schiff or whomever is responsible for establishing the facts before them – bends over backward to accommodate an adverse party, usually the defendant, so the defendant cannot later make an argument to an appellate court that he was not afforded an opportunity to address his/her concerns.
Let them do their job.
And to get back to the original criticism, Pelosi isn’t the final arbiter of who is the committee chair or indeed, the committee membership. As Speaker she is first among equals and has a big influence but is not the only voice.
They could threaten contempt and inherent contempt, which doesn’t need Barr, unless they specifically invoke executive privilege. Right now, they’re just planning on wasting time in courts over a privilege that doesn’t even exist (absolute immunity). Then at least they could get on to the real fight instead of this gish gallop stuff that the administration is pulling.
After reading the beginning of the transcript, they should just skip challenging “absolute immunity” and apply whatever sanction they can to Hicks. She herself didn’t assert or claim any privilege, she just refused to answer questions. That’s on her.
What was the phrase in her local vernacular? Oh yes - “LOCK HER UP”.
The problem with this is that Hicks is a young, attractive, white female. Coming down hard on her is going to elicit major sympathy points from the public at large. It shouldn’t be that way, it sucks that its that way, but that is the way it is.