SSHoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 4, 2018 18:36:23 GMT -5
November is coming. It’s clear the GOP, while in control of the House and Senate, will aid and abet the President. It’s up to us to go to the polls, vote, and change the balance of power. That’s the only way this will change. I previously posted a link to this article. It bears worth reposting: We have both spent our professional careers strenuously avoiding partisanship in our writing and thinking. We have both done work that is, in different ways, ideologically eclectic, and that has—over a long period of time—cast us as not merely nonpartisans but antipartisans. Temperamentally, we agree with the late Christopher Hitchens: Partisanship makes you stupid. We are the kind of voters who political scientists say barely exist—true independents who scour candidates’ records in order to base our votes on individual merit, not party brand. This, then, is the article we thought we would never write: a frank statement that a certain form of partisanship is now a moral necessity. The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger political apparatus that made a conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).So why have we come to regard the GOP as an institutional danger? In a nutshell, it has proved unable or unwilling (mostly unwilling) to block assaults by Trump and his base on the rule of law. Those assaults, were they to be normalized, would pose existential, not incidental, threats to American democracy.We understand why Republicans, even moderate ones, are reluctant to cross party lines. Party, today, is identity. But in the through-the-looking-glass era of Donald Trump, the best thing Republicans can do for their party is vote against it. We understand, too, the many imperfections of the Democratic Party. Its left is extreme, its center is confused, and it has its share of bad apples. But the Democratic Party is not a threat to our democratic order. That is why we are rising above our independent predilections and behaving like dumb-ass partisans. It’s why we hope many smart people will do the same. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/boycott-the-gop/550907/
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hoyarooter
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
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Post by hoyarooter on Jun 4, 2018 19:57:46 GMT -5
There was a man in 1776 that could have named himself king, he chose to be a President with limited Powers... “Hail to the king” Even Richard Nixon's DOJ didn't think he could pardon himself. Aside from the fact the President is idk... arguing he is above the law, it's very interesting that the same guy complaining about the length of the investigation is the same one who says he's too busy for an interview. An interview might speed up the process for him... But he can't interview because his own lawyers believe he's a serial liar who at minimum would perjure himself. Welp... I guess in the meantime we'll just watch him act like a tin-pot dictator, making claims he can gun down the FBI director and face no recourse, while Republicans pretend it's normal. It's like the time when.... Yes, sure, numerous legal scholars, such as, uh, Kid Rock? This is idiocy of the first order.
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SSHoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 4, 2018 19:57:50 GMT -5
Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up! WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who has been indicted by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, attempted to tamper with potential witnesses, Mueller said in a court filing on Monday. Mueller, who is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, asked the judge overseeing the case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to revoke or revise an order releasing Manafort ahead of his trial. www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/manafort-attempted-to-tamper-with-potential-witnesses-u-s-special-counsel-idUSKCN1J1043Methinks that Manafort is still subject to ELSUR: In court documents, prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said that Mr. Manafort tried to contact witnesses by phone and through an encrypted messaging program.
Prosecutors said that was a violation of Mr. Manafort’s release while he awaits trial. They asked a federal judge to revise the terms of his release or revoke it entirely, which would send him to jail until trial. An F.B.I. agent, Brock W. Domin, wrote in court documents that at least one witness reported Mr. Manafort’s contact and said that he appeared to be trying to coach their story about Mr. Manafort’s lobbying practices. www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/us/politics/paul-manafort-mueller-witness-tampering.htmlwww.lawfareblog.com/document-mueller-accuses-manafort-witness-tampering
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njhoya78
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
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Post by njhoya78 on Jun 4, 2018 20:05:14 GMT -5
Those of us who came of age in the Watergate era thought that we'd never see an attack on the Constitution and the bedrock principles that have guided this country again, after Richard Nixon's resignation a mere three weeks before I unpacked my belongings in First New North as a rising freshman. We were wrong.
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SSHoya
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"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 4, 2018 20:09:51 GMT -5
Those of us who came of age in the Watergate era thought that we'd never see an attack on the Constitution and the bedrock principles that have guided this country again, after Richard Nixon's resignation a mere three weeks before I unpacked my belongings in First New North as a rising freshman. We were wrong. The difference is that Nixon's corruption and illegality was done in secret. Here, we have Trump and his corrupt cronies exhibit their corruption in full view of the public and the Republican base and the amoral Republicans on Capitol Hill don't really give a damn.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2018 11:59:16 GMT -5
Like I said, when the smear ends they just go on to the next conspiracy theory. If a confidential source has to be sacrificed for a political talking point, so be it....
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TC
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
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Post by TC on Jun 6, 2018 15:52:47 GMT -5
The conservative propagandosphere is going in on Comey...for releasing the Clinton letter and giving Trump the presidency. None of them actually mention that, they all say "defied authority" and "insubordinate", and they all want to discredit Comey on the Russia stuff and give the impression that Comey was out to get Trump by tipping the election to him.
The amount of bad faith in the conservative movement is just ridiculous.
Really gotta question at this point whether the IG is working on the up and up at this point. It sure doesn't seem it, given we've seen nothing on the leaks from the NY office.
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njhoya78
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
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Post by njhoya78 on Jun 6, 2018 16:17:54 GMT -5
I would have been more concerned had the IG concluded that Comey acted appropriately with respect to his announcement that the Clinton e-mail investigation was being reopened just before the 2016 election.
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TC
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
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Post by TC on Jun 6, 2018 16:32:06 GMT -5
I would have been more concerned had the IG concluded that Comey acted appropriately with respect to his announcement that the Clinton e-mail investigation was being reopened just before the 2016 election. Totally agree that Comey didn't act appropriately. "Insubordinate" is pretty charged language though in these circumstances.
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SSHoya
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"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 8, 2018 14:22:09 GMT -5
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SSHoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 12, 2018 10:55:41 GMT -5
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 13, 2018 10:41:28 GMT -5
Person close to Cohen says he hasn’t flipped yet, “he’s sending up a smoke signal to Trump: I need help.”
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SSHoya
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"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 15, 2018 10:49:14 GMT -5
Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up! Nothing worse than a Hoya wearing orange. . . but a well deserved wardrobe change for Manafort.
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SSHoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 17, 2018 11:53:01 GMT -5
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2018 12:59:22 GMT -5
I'll take money laundering for 1,000 Alex....
It's really starting to become clear why 1) Trump refused to release his taxes and goes ape anytime someone looks into his finances and what exactly that "thing" Russia has over him.
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SSHoya
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"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 20, 2018 5:09:50 GMT -5
The use of a Presidential power with corrupt intent = obstruction of justice: In no aspect of his presidency has Trump acted more immorally and done more damage to the rule of law and constitutional norms than in his exercise of the pardon power. He has granted only five pardons, far fewer than any modern president at a comparable stage. And the immediate practical consequences of these pardons have been modest relative to the havoc he has wreaked with other endeavors—for example, his all-out assault on federal law enforcement institutions. But his pardons violate core principles of justice and appear designed to settle scores with enemies and to encourage allies to resist cooperation with the Mueller investigation. Giuliani’s suggestion that the president might “clean up” the Mueller investigation with “some presidential pardons” takes direct aim at the special counsel’s investigation. One need not do much reading between the lines to understand that Giuliani is encouraging Manafort and Cohen to refuse to cooperate with Mueller and to count on the president’s beneficence to save them. Were Trump to make good on Giuliani’s assurance, it would be his worst abuse of the pardon power: not only is there no good case for pardons of Manafort and Cohen, but by granting such pardons Trump would sabotage the Mueller investigation and commit both the crime of obstruction of justice and an impeachable offense. And there are serious legal arguments that the pardons would not be valid. www.lawfareblog.com/trumps-corrupt-use-pardon-power
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SSHoya
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"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 20, 2018 15:38:34 GMT -5
There appears to be some confusion surrounding the question of whether a president can pardon himself. There are many judgments to be drawn from the familiar forms of legal argument—history, text, structure, prudence, doctrine and ethos—all of which cohere around the conclusion that such a pardon is not constitutionally permissible, a conclusion also reached by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). These arguments are discussed in more detail in “Impeachment: A Handbook,” by Charles L. Black, Jr. and Philip Bobbitt, forthcoming from Yale Press in September. Here I simply want to speculate as to why thoughtful lawyers might have concluded otherwise despite the fact that the conventional determinants of constitutionality are so consistent (and so consistent with the public’s expectations). There seem to be two reasons for this confusion. www.lawfareblog.com/self-pardons-president-cant-pardon-himself-so-why-do-people-think-he-can
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SSHoya
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 22, 2018 8:03:12 GMT -5
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 25, 2018 10:22:32 GMT -5
I'll take money laundering for 1,000 Alex.... It's really starting to become clear why 1) Trump refused to release his taxes and goes ape anytime someone looks into his finances and what exactly that "thing" Russia has over him. Not even a week ago....
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SSHoya
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Post by SSHoya on Jun 26, 2018 17:38:15 GMT -5
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