I don't know what Kagan's reasoning is, but if I come across it, I'll update. I expect the Strict Scrutiny podcast will discuss it when they publish next.
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Interesting split
I don't know what Kagan's reasoning is, but if I come across it, I'll update. I expect the Strict Scrutiny podcast will discuss it when they publish next.
The darkest of dark money in Missouri
This is quite the thread. And you'll recognize some of the names if you're in Missouri. Read the whole thing here.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Oh, definitely get a lawyer
Do NOT turn over your phones without talking to an attorney. Maybe they can get a discount if they all use the same one.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE:
This is definitely not a good look for the Biden administration
What a surprise: another Democratic administration letting down black folks.
At least they're pretending to do something this time
The House may do something, but I expect the Senate to come up with school-hardening recommendations rather than gun safety regulations.
Durham loses his first case in his unreasonably long investigation
Haha. That might be going a little far.A jury in Washington, D.C., has acquitted lawyer Michael Sussmann on a single charge of lying to the FBI, dealing a blow to the three-year investigation by special counsel John Durham.
Jurors deliberated for six hours, spread over two days, before delivering the unanimous verdict.
[...]
The jury forewoman, who did not give her name, told reporters outside the courthouse that "I think we could have spent our time more wisely."
"It didn't pan out in the government's favor and that's on them," she also said.
[...]
The Trump administration appointed Durham to probe the origins of the FBI's investigation into possible links between former President Donald Trump and Russia. This case amounted to the first courtroom test for Durham, a prosecutor known for going after mobsters and corrupt public officials But his now three-year-long probe has not uncovered explosive evidence of wrongdoing by the FBI. Instead, in this case, the FBI was cast as a victim.
NPR
And that's when the whole thing should have been dropped.The two-week trial featured witnesses with prominent political ties including election lawyer Marc Elias, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, and several former FBI and Justice Department officials who served in key roles in 2016.
[...]
Prosecutors produced a Staples receipt for thumb drives they said Sussmann had billed to the Clinton campaign, as well as calendar entries and other bills from Perkins Coie, the law firm where the defendant had worked until his indictment.
The defense focused in on taxi receipts, apparently to and from the FBI meeting, which Sussmann had not billed to clients with Democratic ties.
The case has been closely watched as the first courtroom test for the Durham probe, launched by former Attorney General Bill Barr amid hostile tweets from then President Trump about the investigation into Russia's election interference in 2016.
[...]
"Despite being falsely accused, I am relieved that justice ultimately prevailed in this case," [Sussman] said, adding that it had been a "difficult year" for him and his family.
His lawyers, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth from the law firm Latham & Watkins, LLP, went further in a statement, saying the verdict "sends an unmistakable message to anyone who cares to listen: politics is no substitute for evidence, and politics has no place in our system of justice."
[...]
The single criminal count stemmed from a meeting Sussmann brokered with then FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016, only weeks before the election. Sussmann was accused of lying to Baker about whether he appeared on behalf of Democratic clients such as the Clinton campaign or a technology executive named Rodney Joffe.
[...]
In the months before the trial, prosecutors belatedly asked Baker to sift through his electronics for relevant evidence. Baker found a text from Sussmann, who typed that he was coming on his own – "not on behalf of any client or company."
I would hope Sussman would at least be able to recover costs.
Durham secured a guilty plea from an FBI lawyer who ultimately avoided prison time. Another one of his cases is scheduled to go to trial in Virginia later this year against Igor Danchenko, a Russian citizen and former think tank employee who faces five charges for allegedly lying to the FBI.
Danchenko, who is fighting the charges, is accused of lying about the sources of the information he provided to former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, for what became the Steele dossier.
UPDATE:
The apple doesn't fall far from the ignorant tree
I agree with the part that they need smart people.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Rudy's boy no brighter than Rudy
He just killed whatever chances he might have had.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Monday, May 30, 2022
Reagan rumors redux
But it's not the first story of the "homosexual ring".It was not until a boozy lunch with a man claiming to have been a “long time Reagan associate,” however, that Best found what he believed to be the “smoking gun” proving that Reagan was controlled by homosexuals. “Bill, you don’t understand the problem,” the man told Best. “I once engaged in a homosexual act with Reagan.”
[...]
This account of the alleged “homosexual ring” that controlled Ronald Reagan, and the efforts to expose it on the eve of the 1980 Republican National Convention that nominated him for the presidency, is compiled from interviews with several of the surviving participants and documents uncovered in the papers of former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee. Appropriately for a story involving what was once considered the gravest sin in American politics, it has never been told until now.
Politico
Sunday, May 29, 2022
It's Sunday
Once again, religion as sexual abuse. Wolves in shepherds' clothing.
I'm a little gobsmacked by that last sentence.
MTG strikes again
Previously: Nancy Pelosi's gazpacho police.
She must be dieting and constantly thinking of food. Or she's just dumb as a box of hammers. Or both.
Or, as my son reminds me what my brother used to say, rest his soul: Sharp as a pound of wet liver.
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Unbelievable
I guess we now know what the time period is between the time children are slaughtered by a gun to when you can promote it.
Cawthorn update
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Friday, May 27, 2022
Is it RICO?
Threats from MAGAts, that would be.The process, which is set to begin on Wednesday, is likely to last weeks, bringing dozens of subpoenaed witnesses, both well-known and obscure, into a downtown Atlanta courthouse bustling with extra security because of threats directed at the staff of the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis.
NYT
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.At a rally in January, [Trump] described the Georgia investigation and others focusing on him as “prosecutorial misconduct at the highest level” that was being conducted by “vicious, horrible people.” Ms. Willis has had staffers on the case outfitted with bulletproof vests.
[...]
“I’m not taking on a former president,” Ms. Willis said. “We’re not adversaries. I don’t know him personally. He does not know me personally. We should have no personal feelings about him.”
She added that she was treating Mr. Trump as she would anyone else. “I have a duty to investigate,” she said. “And in my mind, it’s not of much consequence what title they wore.”
[...]
The potential crimes to be reviewed go well beyond the phone call that Mr. Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Jan. 2, 2021, during which he asked him to find enough votes to reverse the election results.
Ms. Willis is weighing racketeering among other potential charges and said that such cases have the potential to sweep in people who have never set foot in Fulton or made a single phone call to the county.
[...]
Her investigators are also reviewing the slate of fake electors that Republicans created in a desperate attempt to circumvent the state’s voters.
[...]
“There are so many issues that could have come about if somebody participates in submitting a document that they know is false,” she said.
No amount of police funding would have helped this
"May not be anybody living." Pretty sure that means there may BE.Law enforcement officers who were in the hallway of a Uvalde elementary school did not breach the classroom that the gunman was in because they thought the children inside were already dead, an official said, even though students were still calling 911 from the classroom.
"The on-scene commander at the time believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject ... [and] there were no more children at risk," Steven McCraw, the Texas Department of Public Safety director, told reporters Friday.
"Obviously, based upon the information we have, there were children in that classroom that were at risk, and it was in fact still an active shooter situation and not a barricaded subject."
It's the latest excuse from law enforcement about the shifting timeline of their response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School, where 19 children and 2 adults were killed.
"When you go back to the timeline, there was a barrage — hundreds of rounds were pumped in in 4 minutes into those two classrooms; any firing afterwards was sporadic, and it was at the door," McCraw said. "So the belief was that there may not be anybody living anymore and the subject is now trying to keep law enforcement at bay or entice them to come in."
MSN
Someone said that with all the updates getting worse and worse, we're about one update away from being told the police themselves slaughtered the kids.
Maybe they should have taken control.Law enforcement's account of the police response has changed over the days, angering the close-knit Uvalde community.
[...]
Parents outside the school that day told the Wall Street Journal that police were "doing nothing" during the shooting and tried to stop them from entering the school themselves to help their kids.
The New York Times also reported that federal agents who traveled from the US-Mexico border to Uvalde were held back from going into the school by local police when they arrived.
They didn't need the benefit of hindsight to make that determination. They should have made it by 12:03.The gunman first entered the school at 11:33 p.m. and began shooting inside one of two adjoining classrooms, McCraw said. Uvalde police officers followed two minutes later, and more officers entered the school as they exchanged gunfire with the shooter.
There were 19 officers in the school hallway by 12:03 p.m., McCraw said. The on-site commander decided that "there was time" to get the keys and wait for a tactical team equipped to breach the door and engage the gunman, he added.
Law enforcement finally entered the classrooms at 12:50 p.m. after getting keys from the janitor, and then killed the gunman.
"With the benefit of hindsight ... of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision," McCraw said.
Jesus Christ.Meanwhile, according to law enforcement's account, children inside the adjoining classrooms were making frantic calls to 911 begging the police to save them.
The first call came in at 12:03 p.m., McCraw said, the same time 19 officers had converged in the hallway. The girl whispered that she was in Room 112. She called back at 12:10 p.m. saying multiple people in the room were dead, and then again at 12:13 p.m. and 12:16 p.m. saying that 8-9 students were still alive.
The caller contacted 911 again at 12:36 p.m. saying the gunman shot the door. At 12:43 and 12:47 p.m., she told 911 to "please send the police now," McCraw said.
Jesus. Is this the same guy who complained that he couldn't go home and hug his kids because they were working so hard?"I don't have anything to say to the parents other than what had happened," McCraw said. "If I thought it would help, I'd apologize."
Oh, that was Victor Escalon.
That guy should lose his job, effectively immediately. Then he can go home and hug his kids all he wants."I'm a father. I can't go home tonight and hug my kids. That hurts," Victor Escalon, the South Texas regional director for the state Department of Public Safety, said during a press conference on Thursday.
Pointing to his colleagues standing behind him, he added: "The members behind me — our family members. Their kids. It's tough. It's hard. But that gives us the motivation to move on to do good work for Uvalde, Texas."
[...]
Escalon made the remarks while providing updates on Tuesday's mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, which has left at least 19 students and two adults dead.
Insider
UPDATE:
What happened when the assault weapons ban was allowed to lapse
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Yes, Henry Kissinger is STILL alive
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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