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babylonsister

babylonsister's Journal
babylonsister's Journal
February 15, 2019

Trump Attorneys May Have Lied About Cohen Payments



https://politicalwire.com/2019/02/15/cummings-says-trump-attorneys-lied-about-cohen-payments/

Trump Attorneys May Have Lied About Cohen Payments
February 15, 2019 at 5:22 pm EST By Taegan Goddard


House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said that his panel received new documents showing that two attorneys for President Trump may have lied to government ethics officials about Michael Cohen’s payments to women alleging affairs with the president ahead of the 2016 election, Politico reports.

Said Cummings: “It now appears that President Trump’s other attorneys — at the White House and in private practice — may have provided false information about these payments to federal officials.”
February 15, 2019

Charles P. Pierce: Trump's 'National Emergency' Is a Purely Dictatorial Action

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a26345673/trumps-national-emergency-is-a-purely-dictatorial-action/?fbclid=IwAR1uXPJeXSoClaLXWeUZM2RHURIJgjxy8K-kRXEm8veA68ec8n1y0meM9cQ


Trump's 'National Emergency' Is a Purely Dictatorial Action
It is an abuse of power. It is an assault on Congress's Article I powers. Mitch McConnell is complicit.
By Charles P. Pierce
Feb 15, 2019

snip//

Between Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, most of the Republicans seem to have made a kind of peace with the inevitability of the president*'s behaving like a tinhorn. We should be accustomed to this by now. The president* is going to raid the military. He is going to raid drug interdiction money. He is going to take money appropriated for one purpose and finance his own dark visions. He is lost in his own nightmares, abandoned in his own bigotry. His mind is a writhing ball of snakes. And there is nobody there to stop him. As Starbuck said of Ahab, he is a madman begetting other madmen. His speech was incoherent in thought, contemptuous of intellect, insane with bloodlust, and completely detached from anything that would be recognizable as reality even in Bedlam. Centuries after we ran a mad king off these shores, we now have one of our own.

This is a bill in response to nothing. This is a bill passed in order to address a delusion that the president* has shared with his most fervent supporters. There is no national emergency on the southern border. There isn't going to be a national emergency on the southern border, unless this president* has some other big, beautiful stupid ideas on how to boot brown people out of the country. Everybody voting on this bill knows all of this very well. The entire United States government has been placed in a freight car on the trolley that runs to the Neighborhood of Make Believe.

It can be argued that this precipitous move by the White House is another bit of legerdemain through which the president* can make the Andrew McCabe revelations vanish from the news cycle. That seems less important than usual now that the Senate has decided to share the president*'s delusions and bring us along for the ride.

This is a direct assault by this president* on the Congress's Article I powers. Usually, presidents use these powers to do things like levy sanctions on countries that are slaughtering their own people. What this president* is trying to do is to redirect money already appropriated for a project that Congress already has declined to fund—the last time only a couple of days ago. That is purely a dictatorial action. It is an abuse of power. It cannot be allowed to stand.

The argument being made by some on both the left and the right that, OK, if he can do this, then the next Democratic president can declare a national emergency on gun violence, say, or the climate crisis is sadly beside the point, and Democrats, in particular, should shut up about it. (This means you, Speaker Pelosi.) This is a clear and present danger to the constitutional order. Without the power of the purse, Congress has no power at all.

Mitch McConnell knows this. He even has been warning against this very power grab for a couple of weeks now. But he seems determined to neuter his own institution in order to curry favor with a failed president* and a bunch of idiot pundits from Fox News. He is abandoning his own responsibilities in the hopes that the courts will bail him out. And, again, there is no national emergency to be declared. Not outside of the Oval Office, anyway.
February 15, 2019

Boyfriend's Email: Butina 'Manipulated' Russian Spy Agency for NRA Trip


Boyfriend’s Email: Butina ‘Manipulated’ Russian Spy Agency for NRA Trip
According to her boyfriend, Russian agent Maria Butina had major sway with the FSB officers ‘assigned’ to her.
Betsy Woodruff,
Spencer Ackerman
02.14.19 7:51 PM ET


The boyfriend of confessed Russian agent Maria Butina wrote that she “manipulated” a Russian spy agency when arranging NRA bigwigs’ trip to Moscow, The Daily Beast has learned.

Paul Erickson, Butina’s boyfriend, made this claim on Nov. 25, 2015 in an email to a trip participant. The light-hearted, chummy tone of the email, which was subsequently read to The Daily Beast, contrasts significantly with how Erickson characterized Butina’s relationship with the FSB to The New Republic: tense, bordering on hostile.

It also shows that at least one trip attendee was led to believe that Russia’s FSB—whose predecessor was the KGB—helped lay the groundwork for the trip.

Erickson began the email, sent to then-incoming NRA President Pete Brownell, with florid language.

“Dear International Man of Mystery or should we just start calling you “Austin Powers” to your face??” he wrote, with a smiley face.

“Miss Butina has (apparently) moved heaven and earth and manipulated the Russian FSB (the current incarnation of the old KGB) and gotten you cleared for a tour of one (1) Russian arms factory the day before the NRA delegation arrives in Moscow,” he continued. “She found a way to shrink a normally 3-week process into about 3-days (probably because most of the FSB agents ‘assigned’ to her want to marry her).”


“The right thing to do would have been to inform the FBI and cancel the trip,” Sipher said. “Cavorting with those who claim to be at war with you is unpatriotic at best. Mr. Erickson’s actions are especially abhorrent.”

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/boyfriends-email-butina-manipulated-russian-spy-agency-for-nra-trip?ref=home
February 15, 2019

Trump's Emergency Declaration Will Face Many Lawsuits

https://politicalwire.com/2019/02/15/trumps-emergency-declaration-will-face-many-lawsuits/

Trump’s Emergency Declaration Will Face Many Lawsuits
February 15, 2019 at 6:12 am EST By Taegan Goddard


“If President Trump declares a national emergency to construct a wall on the southern border, only one thing is certain: There will be lawsuits. Lots of them. From California to Congress, the litigants will multiply,” the Washington Post reports.

“They will file suit in numerous jurisdictions — certainly within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on the West Coast, in U.S. District Court in Washington and maybe even in New York. That’s been the pattern in the hundreds of lawsuits, many of them successful, brought against the Trump administration, the idea being that some judge somewhere will block the wall.”

New York Times: “As a matter of legal reality, the proposal is likely to be bogged down in a court challenge, leaving any actual construction work based on emergency powers spending an uncertain and, at best, distant prospect.”
February 15, 2019

Democrats Set Qualifications for Presidential Debates

https://politicalwire.com/2019/02/14/democrats-set-qualifications-for-presidential-debates/

Democrats Set Qualifications for Presidential Debates
February 14, 2019 at 6:09 pm EST By Taegan Goddard


“As many as 20 Democratic presidential candidates will be invited to the party’s first sanctioned debates this summer if they can meet new polling or grass-roots fundraising thresholds to qualify,” the Washington Post reports.

“Candidates can qualify either by attracting campaign donations from at least 65,000 people, including at least 200 people from at least 20 states, or by registering at least 1 percent in three state or national polls from a list of surveys approved by the party.”
February 14, 2019

National Emergency will be blocked by courts temporarily, DOJ warns White House

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/national-emergency-blocked-courts-temporarily-doj-warns-white/story?id=61086962&cid=social_fb_abcn&fbclid=IwAR02zuOStegRnlsqpb8vfL1aOUCJlwf2U6FJ8ql6JAEFskvaRjfxDFwZLp4

National Emergency will be blocked by courts temporarily, DOJ warns White House
A senior official said the White House would win an appeal.
WATCH Video @ Link~~| News headlines today: Feb. 14, 2019
By Jonathan Karl, Mike Levine and Katherine Faulders16m ago


The Justice Department has warned the White House a national emergency declaration is nearly certain to be blocked by the courts on, at least, a temporary basis, preventing the immediate implementation of the president's plan to circumvent Congress and build the wall using his executives powers, ABC News has learned.

However, a senior White House official tells ABC News that the White House is confident the administration can ultimately win the case on appeal.

Lawyers at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and at the Pentagon have been working for weeks to iron out different options the president would have to obtain funds for his border wall.

By declaring a national emergency at the border, the president could potentially free up billions of dollars to begin work on construction of a southern border wall. Much of that money would be pulled from the Department of Defense.
February 14, 2019

The Denver teachers strike is over. They won.


The Denver teachers strike is over. They won.
Denver teachers snagged $23 million in pay raises during a three-day strike.
By Alexia Fernández Campbell@AlexiaCampbellalexia@vox.com Feb 14, 2019, 12:40pm EST


Denver’s teachers may soon be returning to school.

More than 2,000 educators, who have been on strike since Monday, said they reached a tentative deal Thursday with the local school district.

Details are not yet available, but the deal includes an average 11.7 percent pay raise and annual cost of living increases, according to the school district and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, a labor union representing more than 5,000 educators in Denver public schools. It will also include raises for school support staff. Bus drivers and cafeteria workers may also get a raise, but that’s not part of the official agreement with the teachers union.

It also addresses the teachers’ biggest concern: the need to overhaul the merit-pay system, which relies heavily on annual bonuses that fluctuate from year to year. The new system will place more emphasis on education and training when considering promotions, while keeping some bonuses in place.

Where will they find the $23 million to pay for this? The district agreed to cut back on administrative costs, and will eliminate about 150 positions in the school’s central office. Five-figure bonuses for senior school administrators will also come to an end.

The pact was reached after an all-night negotiation marathon between the union and school administrators. Henry Roman, president of the union, described it as a “historic” deal. “No longer will our students see their education disrupted because their teachers cannot afford to stay in their classrooms,” Roman said in a statement Monday morning.

more...

https://www.vox.com/2019/2/14/18224848/denver-teachers-strike-over-deal
February 14, 2019

Pelosi, Schumer Draw Red Line: Emergency Declaration 'Would Be A Lawless Act'

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pelosi-schumer-a-national-emergency-would-be-a-lawless-act?fbclid=IwAR3xGh_HI8MSmmIZOT2lqcGN-8uCE6dGtVGpxGK3Wny83-ne3FQYIEGzPkw


Pelosi, Schumer Draw Red Line: Emergency Declaration ‘Would Be A Lawless Act’
By Matt Shuham
February 14, 2019 4:56 pm


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Thursday said President Donald Trump declaring a national emergency to get more border wall funds than Congress appropriates “would be a lawless act.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Thursday that Trump would declare an emergency, and that he would have the Republican leader’s support in doing so.

Schumer and Pelosi said of the move: “It is yet another demonstration of President Trump’s naked contempt for the rule of law. This is not an emergency, and the president’s fearmongering doesn’t make it one.”

Read Schumer and Pelosi’s full statement below:

Pelosi, Schumer Joint Statement On the Possibility of President Trump Declaring a National Emergency

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer released this joint statement on the possibility of President Trump declaring a national emergency:

“Declaring a national emergency would be a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall.

“It is yet another demonstration of President Trump’s naked contempt for the rule of law. This is not an emergency, and the president’s fearmongering doesn’t make it one. He couldn’t convince Mexico, the American people or their elected representatives to pay for his ineffective and expensive wall, so now he’s trying an end-run around Congress in a desperate attempt to put taxpayers on the hook for it. The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities.”

February 14, 2019

Trump Judicial Nominees Are Refusing to Endorse Brown v. Board of Education



Trump Judicial Nominees Are Refusing to Endorse Brown v. Board of Education
In normal times, it would be unthinkable. Under Trump, it’s become a trend.
Stephanie Mencimer
February 14, 2019 6:00 AM


There’s no Supreme Court decision more widely celebrated than Brown v. Board of Education, the unanimous 1954 ruling that abolished school segregation. But this month, when Neomi Rao appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on her nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, she refused to say whether she thought the case had been correctly decided.

Asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) whether the court had made the right decision in Brown, Rao replied, “As a judicial nominee, I think it’s not appropriate for me to comment on the correctness of particular precedents.” Blumenthal asked her for a yes or no, but Rao would say only that Brown is “an incredibly important decision of the Supreme Court”—a dodge she twice repeated when pressed further.

In normal times, the moment might have been extraordinary. During the Trump administration, it’s par for the course. Rao is one of at least 10 Trump nominees to the federal courts in the past year who have refused to offer an opinion on Brown. Several of those nominees have been confirmed or approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and set for a full Senate vote. Among them is Wendy Vitter, wife of former Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), whom Trump nominated to a district court seat in Louisiana. In April, she told the judiciary committee, “I don’t mean to be coy, but I think I get into a difficult, difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with.”

Until Trump took office, refusing to endorse Brown as a judicial nominee would have been unthinkable. Both of former President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and archconservative Justice Samuel Alito, had no trouble answering the question in the affirmative during their confirmation hearings, nor did Justice Elena Kagan when she was nominated to the court by former President Barack Obama. But times have changed.

“Rao’s refusal to acknowledge that Brown was rightly decided is a serious flouting of democratic norms and a judicial dog whistle,” says Todd A. Cox, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund policy director, “signaling that Brown, its legacy, and all the progress flowing from it are potentially up for renegotiation.”


more...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/trump-judicial-nominees-are-refusing-to-endorse-brown-v-board-of-education/
February 14, 2019

Justice Officials Discussed Pushing Trump Out of Office

I wish they'd gone with their first instincts.


https://politicalwire.com/2019/02/14/justice-officials-discussed-pushing-trump-out-of-office/
Justice Officials Discussed Pushing Trump Out of Office

February 14, 2019 at 10:38 am EST By Taegan Goddard


“Andrew McCabe, the former deputy F.B.I. director, said in an interview aired on Thursday that top Justice Department officials were so alarmed by President Trump’s decision in May 2017 to fire James Comey, the bureau’s director, that they discussed whether to recruit cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office,” the New York Times reports.

“The concerns about the president’s actions also prompted Mr. McCabe to order the bureau’s team investigating Russia’s election interference to expand their scope to also investigate whether Mr. Trump had obstructed justice by firing Mr. Comey. They also were to examine if he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests.”

After the interview aired, Trump ripped McCabe on Twitter, calling him “a disgrace to the FBI and a disgrace to our Country.”

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