kpete
kpete's Journal
Ferguson’s GOP mayor to Trump: You’re wrong — there are no ‘roving bands of illegal immigrants’ here
The mayor of Ferguson, Mo., said Wednesday morning that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is wrong when he says that city, which became a symbol of racial unrest after the police shooting of Michael Brown last year, is besieged by criminal illegal immigrants.
"He's never been here, as far as I know," said James Knowles, a Republican who has been mayor of Ferguson since 2011, during an interview with Fox2 in St. Louis.
Trump, during a campaign stop in Iowa on Tuesday, repeated a line he has used before when discussing illegal immigration, in which he claims Ferguson, a 21,000-person, majority black city, is plagued by gangs of violent illegal immigrants.
"You know, a lot of the gangs that you see in Baltimore and in St. Louis and in Ferguson and Chicago, you know they’re illegal immigrants," Trump declared on Tuesday. "They’re here illegally. And they’re rough dudes. Rough people. They’re going to be gone so fast if I win that your head will spin."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/26/fergusons-gop-mayor-to-trump-youre-wrong-there-are-no-roving-bands-of-illegal-immigrants-here/
In taking on Jorge Ramos, Donald Trump may have picked the wrong media star
Morning Joe had 450,000 viewers on Monday.
"Spanish-language news has almost the same pull as the priest in the pulpit," Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), told the Los Angeles Times in 2013. "And Jorge Ramos is the pope, he's the big kahuna."
Ramos has a lot of followers: According to Nielsen ratings, more than 2 million viewers tune in to “Noticiero Univision” nightly. For perspective, in 2013, that was three times the audience of CNN’s “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer.”
And according to recently published research, the GOP's presidential nominee would need to win nearly half of the Latino vote to make it to the White House. (President Obama won reelection with 71% of the Latino vote).
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-na-jorge-ramos-donald-trump-20150826-htmlstory.html
CHARLES P. PIERCE: "C'mon, Wayne.....A grateful nation awaits your wisdom."
The Virginia TV Shooting and the End of American Exceptionalism
Today's events are a horrifying example of the way we live now.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
I've been away from my TV for a while, so can anyone tell me whether Wayne LaPierre has leaped to a microphone yet to explain that, if there only had been a .50-caliber machine gun or a Stinger missile mounted atop the camera when that guy exercised his Second Amendment rights in Roanoke this morning, the two murdered journalists still would be alive? C'mon, Wayne. It's time for your now-monthly argumentum ad dementum about our country's lunatic attachment to its firearms. A grateful nation awaits your wisdom.
................
A news crew, doing a completely ordinary happy-face morning feature at a mall get blown away on camera. If this had happened in Somalia, we'd have a lot of earnest talk about the dangers of a failed society. If it had happened in Syria, Lindsey Graham might liquefy entirely and disappear in a rush down a storm drain. But it happened here, in the exceptional home of American exceptionalism, so, once again, we will be told that Alison Parker and Adam Ward are merely more of the price we pay for the exceptional exceptionalism of a free society.
.................
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a37435/the-virginia-tv-shooting/
FOIA RELEASE: John Yoo OLC Memo, on President's authority to withhold info from Congress
OLC: President May Withhold WMD Info from CongressPosted on Aug.26, 2015 in Congress, Intelligence, WMD by Steven Aftergood
Despite an explicit statutory requirement to keep Congress “fully and currently informed” about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the President may withhold proliferation-related information from Congress if he determines that doing so could harm the national security, according to a sweeping opinion from the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that was prepared in 2003.
The opinion, written by then-OLC deputy John C. Yoo, was released this week under the Freedom of Information Act. See Presidential Authority to Protect National Security Information, January 27, 2003.
The OLC opinion takes an uncompromising view of presidential authority. It reviews multiple statutes that mandate disclosure of various types of information to Congress, including requirements to report on WMD proliferation and to keep the intelligence committees “fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities.” It then concludes that those statutes cannot override, modify or limit the President’s constitutional prerogatives.
“Despite Congress’s extensive powers under the Constitution, its authorities to legislative (sic] and appropriate cannot constitutionally be exercised in a manner that would usurp the President’s authority over foreign affairs and national security,” the OLC opinion said.
* Yoo claims that the statute requiring reporting of WMD proliferation was obviated by a signing statement issued by President Clinton in 1999. “In signing the legislation, President Clinton stated that section 1131 and similar provisions raised serious constitutional questions.” But upon examining the text of that 1999 signing statement, one finds that Clinton did not mention section 1131 at all, and the President’s comments there have no bearing on WMD proliferation or congressional reporting requirements.
* Yoo uses the word “disclosure” throughout the opinion to refer to classified reporting to Congress, which excludes public release of the information. At no point does he try to explain how such reporting through classified channels “could harm the national security” if the information never became public.
* Yoo does not acknowledge or mention the Supreme Court’s 1952 Youngstown decision which addressed Presidential authority in the face of contrary statutory imperatives: “When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter.” To sustain his position, Yoo cannot admit the existence of any relevant constitutional powers of Congress, since those would diminish the President’s freedom of action.
* Yoo does allow that “the President can disclose such information as a matter of inter-branch comity to members of Congress of his choosing when he judges it consistent with the national security.” But this is incoherent, even by Yoo’s own lights, since whenever disclosure is consistent with national security, the President’s authority to withhold it evaporates. Then disclosure to Congress would not be a matter of comity at all, but a binding requirement.
http://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/olc/nsi.pdf
http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2015/08/olc-nsi/
Nation Needs Cheaper Way to Find Worst People - BY ANDY BOROWITZ
The question is whether he should be free to roam among us:
https://www.facebook.com/andyborowitz/posts/10153674865620681
“After we crunch the numbers and find the twelve or so worst people in our database, we could then put them on television to demonstrate just how awful they are as people,” said Logsdon, who noted that that part of the current system “works very well.”
All in all, Logsdon believes that his method for finding the nation’s worst people would cost practically nothing, leaving five billion dollars left over to help rebuild the nation’s schools, roads, and other crumbling infrastructure.
The political scientist expects to encounter significant resistance to his proposal, however. “It’s hard to imagine a new system finding worse people than our current one does,” he admitted.
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/nation-needs-cheaper-way-to-find-worst-people
Heck of a job, Jeb: Bush features official behind botched Katrina response in ‘hurricane’ ad
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) marked the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by featuring the official who became associated with the poor federal response to the disaster in a new campaign ad, CNN reported.
The commercial shows Bush standing next to former FEMA director Michael D. Brown as Bush calling Florida disaster-response workers “the best emergency response team on the ground, in the country and in the world.”
Brown, who was appointed by Bush’s brother, then-President George W. Bush, in 2003, resigned following rotund criticism for his efforts during the hurricane two years later, and was mocked after the president gave him a public vote of confidence by telling him, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/heck-of-a-job-jeb-bush-features-official-behind-botched-katrina-response-in-hurricane-ad/
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