US Politics, February 2018: Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots

The invaluable Marcy Wheeler makes sense of releasing the memo and the GOP's phony hysterics about civil liberties.

Every single privacy activist I know cares about privacy in significant part to ensure the rule of law and to prevent the arbitrary exercise of justice to focus just on select groups like Muslims or Chinese-Americans, rather than those who pose the greatest risk to society, like people allegedly doing Russia’s secret bidding. Yet the actions of Ryan and Nunes reverse that, using a sham concern for civil liberties as a way to prevent themselves, their associates, and the president from being subject to the rule of law like the rest of us would be.

If we’re going to have this secret surveillance ― and Nunes and Ryan insist we need it ― the key to protecting Americans is drafting the law to provide protections and ensuring those standards are met. Section 702, as Nunes and Ryan reauthorized it, fails that test, because it permits the warrantless access of completely innocent Americans’ communications. And for all its bluster, the Nunes memo doesn’t tell us critical details we need to assess whether what happened to Page was improper specifically, or simply indicative of known concerns about outside consultants that Nunes and Ryan have long ignored (and continue to ignore with all other Americans)

how long before someone pulls a Pentagon Papers and leaks the actual intel that spurred the memo or the FISA application itself?

i think if trump somehow got rid of mueller that would happen immediately

it wouldn't be prudent to leak that yet, for anyone who wants the investigation to succeed

we've been going about it all wrong, tapes about grabbing pussies won't kill Trump's popularity. release a tape where he says he loves Muslims and gays, that'll kill him with his base

No, they'd go all dilbert and assume he was brilliantly playing the long game and trolling the libs and alinskying us by forcing us to be held to our own blah blah blah...

Remember that his base assumed the feud with Bannon was orchestrated between the two of them, as a genius act of misdirection. I saw this offered in apparent earnest.

WTF are you all talking about, Trump has said many times how much he loves Muslims and the Gays, and how much they love him, and how much he employs them. It’s only the Radical Muslims and the marriage-destroying Gays that will get what’s coming to them, and that’s due to their own choices. Obviously.

Trump loves everyone, like Jesus.

Speaking of which, does the guy even go to church? Did he even join a church? No one cares right? Only when it's Obama?

he doesn't go to church. church goes to him

Trump could be in the act of gutting one of his supporters like a fish and that supporter would give his own evisceration a thumbs-up because tribalism.

the 'tax cuts for the wealthy' crowd is revving up their attack on (republican) rod rosenstein

https://pjmedia.com/trending/report-deputy-ag-rosenstein-threatened-subpoena-gop-intel-reps-calls-texts/

oh PJ media, yeah trustworthy source that

story only picked up on red sites currently

bellwethers for what these assholes will push soon. i wish it weren't the case but it is sadly

if Robert Mueller is fired, wouldn't it wind up becoming a federal court case like the Archibald Cox case eventually did?

I feel like he should fight fire with fire and say "I'm not fired and this investigation continues"....

sometimes I have to remind myself that even with a Democratic Congress, it took 9 months after the Saturday Night Massacre for the first articles of impeachment to be approved. justice is slow sometimes (when it arrives at all).

"I'm not fired and this investigation continues"....

As I recall, when Cox was fired, a new special prosecutor (Leon Jaworski) was named and the Watergate investigation was allowed to continue. Trump would certainly order the Mueller investigation halted, defunded, and the investigative team dismissed. He thinks like that.

That action would precipitate an immediate crisis and the filing of articles of impeachment by House democrats. Ryan would do all he could to bury that crisis for Trump, but the election in November would become all about that crisis, no matter the outcome in the House.

just curious, if you are career government like Rosenstein, and all this bullshit is going on around you, and you know you're in crosshairs for bulshit reasons, how do you go about your day supporting this monkey?

it must be kinda hard

John Brennan hired as MS/NBC pundit

Isn't it a little strange to constantly rail about "state TV" when it comes to RT & Fox and then hire CIA Directors & General as your "news analysts"? https://t.co/YqOHP3dfQa - also, remember this? Anyone who likes to rail about "state TV" should: https://t.co/nYEQDpNGs9

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 4, 2018

“So what if I’m on Hannity? Look at who else is on cable news!!!!”

In what twisted mind does that tweet make sense?

Dr Morbius hired as Hannity mouthpiece

xp the same mind that equates J. Edgar Hoover with some rando biology prof from UT Austin because the latter said something mean about him.

fuckin christ

http://www.newsweek.com/holocaust-denier-republican-nomination-illinois-congress-race-799222

Literally about to post that!

This means that if he wins the Illinois GOP will support him right quick.

check, please

they actually publicly condemned him in a statement but couldn't keep him off of the ballot and apparently had nobody else interested in running. still though....even though he's going to get his ass kicked, a neo-Nazi will be getting thousands of party line GOP votes who literally think Democrats are worse than Nazis.

Interestingly (or not), the GOP couldn't get its shit together because that is such a heavily democratic area. But the reigning old guard Dem, Dan Lipinski, is getting primary challenged from the left in response to his relatively conservative voting record.

I don't know whether to be thankful or bummed that I'm in IL-9. I'd kinda love to be part of that ass kicking.

jake and elwood otm

https://m.popkey.co/19ba7c/0D7q8.gif

“The Illinois Republican Party and our country have no place for Nazis like Arthur Jones,” party chairman Tim Schneier said in a statement to the Sun-Times. “We strongly oppose his racist views and his candidacy for any public office, including the 3rd Congressional District.”

there is no place for nazis, except here, where there is a place for nazis, because no other republican can be found to oppose him

Our reliable but unexceptional local rep, Danny Davis, is getting primaried by a couple of good candidates.

I wonder how Conor Lamb will do in PA next month. The narrative is that they are trying to keep it from becoming a national race so that perhaps the lack of hype will depress GOP turnout (for a typical Trump asshole).

Meanwhile, stock market back to ... correcting itself.

Trump stayed up all night talking to the stock market and convinced it to go up

https://leapsmoothies.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/power-of-positive-thinking.jpg

Dear T and F, GG does not work for Fox News.

love,

wheeeeee

Life expectancy, UK vs. US:
🇬🇧 male: 79.4; 🇺🇸 male: 76.9
🇬🇧 female: 83.0; 🇺🇸 female: 81.6

Healthcare spending (OECD):
🇬🇧: 9.9% of GDP
🇺🇸: 16.6% of GDP

Uninsured:
🇬🇧: 0
🇺🇸: 28 million https://t.co/Qjcx4N2owz

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) February 5, 2018

lol brexit

🇬🇧

Morbius you do understand that all of the talking heads are compensated, right? I imagine Hannity pays better than MSNBC daytime, too.

could be; i can't pretend i care.

ICYMI

Shortly after suggesting Democrat claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is akin to “McCarthyism” — a reference to irrational, unfounded accusations of communist-ties made by late Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s — Donald Trump Jr. said the Democrat Party are “left of commies.”

Donald Jr., who made the comments during an appearance on Fox News with host Jesse Watters, attacked Democrats and the media for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Kremlin election tampering — as he deems the investigation to be a witch hunt against President Donald Trump.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/donald-jr-compares-russia-investigation-to-mccarthyism-then-says-dems-are-left-of-commies/

now there's a man with a solid grip on a) history and b) politics

More of this please: http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180205/trump-sexual-harassment-accuser-running-for-ohio-house

One of the women who came forward to accuse President Donald Trump of sexual harassment that took place before his election plans to run for an state House seat in northern Ohio, House Democrats say.

Rachel Crooks, a former Trump Tower receptionist who accused Trump of forcibly kissing her in 2005, is expected to file today to run in the 88th House District, where she will challenge two-term Rep. Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin.

Trump has generally denied the accusations made by Crooks and roughly a dozen other women. Crooks has called Trump a “pathological liar.”

Aaron Fisher, executive director of the Ohio House Democratic Caucus, said he thinks that Crooks’ entrance into the race makes the seat a pickup opportunity for the party, which is trying to climb its way out of a deep minority. The district includes Sandusky and Seneca counties.

Crooks, of Tiffin, who currently works as a foreign students recruiter for Tiffin University, had expressed interest in running for office, and House Democrats have been actively recruiting her for about a month, Fisher said.

Vote for Crooks!

there's gotta be a good campaign slogan there somewhere

psyched to see just how utterly repugnant a campaign her opponents can spin up against her

"Russia Russia Russia with no evidence at all!"