Tuesday, January 24, 2023

A Medical Procedure…

...when the fetus is not viable or the health of the mother is at risk should be unthinkable because…women. Amirite?

Alternatively, viability and health of the mother should be determined 2-3 years after the fact by a random collection of citizens who couldn’t get out of jury duty.
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NYT: How The Pence Classified Documents Hurt Joe Biden

Even though the cases are markedly different, we must erase those differences in the interest of being “objective.”

Although being truly objective would emphasize those differences, rather than create a story about Biden in order to appear “fair and balanced” towards Trump.

Because that’s all that’s going on: so many pundits and Twitterers proving they are “objective.”
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😹😹😹😹

Because of course they do.
It was announced on Tuesday that unknown to Pence, among the items taken from his time in the White House were a few documents that were marked classified. Pence, like President Joe Biden, immediately contacted the FBI and handed over the information. 
The Trump team thinks that it will make it difficult for prosecutors to justify bringing charges against the former president without charging Pence and Biden.
I want to see them use the "But Mikey got to do it!" defense in court. I really do. Cruz has jumped the shark. By the time of the first criminal trial, Trump will just be a whimpering blob of protoplasm.
I don’t much care that Pence didn’t immediately run to the press to announce the documents, but it is the kind of thing that journalists who are good at horse race coverage, unaware of many of the thus-far distinguishing details about the Trump documents, and ill-equipped to cover classified documents stories latched onto with Biden. 
Until we have answers about some of the details that currently distinguish Biden and Pence from Trump — like whether they knew of the documents (both claim they did not), whether they ever accessed the documents after leaving office, whether we have reason to believe they’re harboring more — this should not be a story. 
And the key difference, one that should be included in every story that tries to make such a comparison, is that Trump refused to give documents back, whereas Biden and Pence freely offered them up. 
The reason that’s important, aside from the both sides drama of it, is that it is an element of the offense that would be most likely to be used if DOJ took the unprecedented step of charging a former Original Classification Authority with harboring classified documents. 
As we can now see, it happens that men who have aides pack them up at the end of their tenure go home with documents they didn’t know they had. It happens. (By the time Kamala Harris leaves, there’s likely to be a new protocol in place, so Harris can set a perfect record as the first woman being packed up.) What matters — what distinguishes a mistake from a potential crime — is what you do with the documents when you become aware you have them.
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Clearly This Is The Most Important Thing Our Leaders Can Apologize For

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This Is Bad News For Biden

Oh, dear, what can the matter be?
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IMHLO

And then he went on from there:
With many people on the line on what was a PERFECT call protesting the Rigged Georgia Election, which I have a clear right to do, and in fact an obligation to do since I made the call as President, how come not one person said, while on the call, that I acted inappropriately, or made a statement of protest at what I said, & then slammed down the phone," said Trump. "Not one, even with so many opposing people, lawyers, and others on the line. NO ADMONISHMENT at all. We nicely agreed to speak again…" 
"That was the call to Georgia," he continued. "It was PERFECT, nothing done or said wrong. We agreed to continue our conversation at a later date. The other call, that was probably taped by them illegally, was so good that when the Washington Post heard it, they did a retraction and apology because they were fed false information, perhaps by the Secretary of State’s office, and they were angry about it! The Election in Georgia was RIGGED AND STOLLEN. We have all the evidence needed. That is the CRIME!"
The Georgia election was rigged AND a delicious German Christmas bread! I’m guessing we’ll find out it was a floor wax and a dessert topping, too!

I really want to see this case go to court and Trump to flop around like a landed fish or throw a tantrum like a small child.

I do like the idea that, because no one on the call demurred (except Raffensperger said he wouldn’t do it), there was nothing wrong! Trump had better be intensely grateful for the 5th Amendment. His testimony would bury him under the jail.  OTOH, nothing in the Constitution prevents the prosecution from bringing these statements to court.

And there’s also the tape:
Perfect. Almost textbook criminality, IMHLO.
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Good-bye Pork Pie Hat

Yeah, this guy’s appeal has already failed.
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Monday, January 23, 2023

Or…

It may look like the system for maintaining classified documents is pretty much shit.

Which has pretty much nothing to do with any potential legal case. But more and more it appears the pundits are “more Catholic than the Pope” and that the system must be defended at all costs.

Because if the people lose faith in the system… 🙀
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Tell Me Again The “Fight” Is Not To Control Women

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The Bubble Is Real

And while we’re on the subject of speaking to the press incoherently: Yeah, that’s not even vaguely correct in the law. Which already tells you how the appeal will go.
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Sunday, January 22, 2023

The Four-Cylinder Of His Mind Is Missing A Sparkplug

Or two.
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Four: The Importance Of The Classification System Is Highly Overrated

Watch the donut, not the hole.

(I know, I’m repeating myself. I’m getting tired of this story. I’m ready for the record to change.)
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Paying The Piper

Tl:dr here is Trump and some of his attorneys are jointly and severally liable for the sanctions recently imposed in federal court. Trump took that seriously enough to drop the other frivolous suit he had before the same judge.

Jointly and severally means if he doesn’t pay the lawyer(s) pay(s) everything.  I'm a little unclear (it's been too long) who moves the court to enforce these sanctions. I presume the defendants jointly and severally can do so.  Trump will duck that like they were ugly women wanting a selfie.  I do remember doing collections work.  It's a bitch unless you have a corporation or an insurance company on the line.  They may exhaust legal resources, but they will pay.  Individuals?  Good effin' luck. Lawyers, on the other hand, have more to lose if they defy court orders.

Will Trump appeal this?  The lawyers might want to, but they might not want to represent Trump while doing it, unless he pays upfront for their services.  Myself, I'd insist on a bond or $500,000 in escrow just to keep him from skipping out when the appellate courts don't reduce the fines (they might) or throw out the fines altogether (they might not).  I seriously wouldn't represent the guy further knowing he might (will) leave me holding the bag.

Then again, how much has Trump paid Habba already?  Probably not what he owes, and he's most likely not happy to discuss her bill now.  But that's the price you pay for representing a guy known to stiff his suppliers and contractors (which is how he sees lawyers, I'm sure).
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“Hang It All, Robert Browning!”

“There can be but one ‘religious liberty!’/But religious liberty, and my religious liberty?"

After ol’ Ez.
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Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

And yeah, this is pretty much a Beltway bubble story: Which brings me back to Leslie Jones: who is controlling these documents?
Historian Matthew Connelly says government records are marked as "classified" three times every second — and many of them will never be declassified. We talk about what that means for the public and how this might change. His new book is The Declassification Engine.
I think that gets us a little closer to an answer.
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Fools Rushing In

Yeah, “apparently” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. It’s also covering a lot of assumptions which may, or may not, be borne out by the DOJ investigation. But why wait and let inconvenient facts get in the way? 

One begins to see how Trump “got away with it” for so long.

But more to the point, again we see the frailty of the system. No, not because Biden is in any way like Trump, but because we rely on “the system” to do the work for us, and when it can’t, we still hold that it cannot fail but can only be failed. So the blame is laid entirely on Biden, when this situation now calls into question the system itself.

After all, if it’s this easy to misplace/remove/keep classified documents (some reportedly go back to Biden’s days as a senator.  That was over 14 years ago.), who’s keeping track of these things? Or, more accurately, not keeping track of them.

It seems if Trump had been smarter or more careful, we might still not know he had any classified documents at all. As it stands we still don’t know if he has, or doesn’t have, any other classified documents. And there’s no real way of knowing.

Is Biden’s mishandling of classified documents a “disaster”? I truly don’t think so. I think it’s the system of protecting and controlling those documents that’s broken and, along with the sweet dreams and flying machines, is in pieces on the ground. The real disaster is if we don’t use these situations to critically examine a clearly broken system.

Signs point to that not happening.
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Saturday, January 21, 2023

“WHY ISN’T BIDEN BEING MORE TRANSPARENT????!!!???

This search was yesterday. These reports are coming today. And they are incomplete and fragmentary, answering all possible questions in more than one statement!  Where’s the transparency? Why weren’t these statements released before midnight Friday? Why was the search conducted under cover of darkness? Why did Biden cooperate? What is he up to? Who planned and consented to this search? Why don’t we know yet? Yeah, what’s that all about? VERY peculiar behavior! More transparency is definitely required! Biden is still not being forthcoming enough! Six more documents? That Biden didn’t know he had? 12 more hours of silence gives the NYT even more to Whitewater about.

And where is Rob Hur when we need him?
But…but…but…transparency! This cooperation is bad for Biden. And back to his Senate days? Is anybody keeping track of classified documents? Or is everything in government that isn’t in the Federal Register a classified document? Legal exposure? Who cares about that? What matters is what the pundits have to “harumph” about now! SEE???!!!???

But I’m still wondering about this “system” of classification. It clearly doesn’t work to keep track of covered documents.  Besides, now it can’t be an accident!

Though I’m damned if I understand why….
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Bottle Of Scorpions

Quelle surprise:

In an interview with the Times, one court staffer complained, "They weren’t subjected to the same level of scrutiny. It’s hard to imagine any of them suffering meaningful consequences even if they were implicated in the leak.”

Attorney Mark Zaid agreed, saying failure to adequately press the justices, "just completely undermines the court’s credibility. It sends a message of superiority that does not exist under the eyes of the law.”

True, but as I said, there are only three ways off the Supreme Court bench, and none of the three were going to be exercised by anybody fingered for the leak.  Roberts knew this. 

"In interviews, some employees said the leak and investigation further tainted the atmosphere inside a court that had already grown tense with disagreement. The leak spurred finger pointing, they said, with many conservatives convinced that a liberal had engineered the breach and vice versa. Just as the justices have grown more divided, so has their staff, eroding trust. Voices are more hushed now, the employees said, and doors that used to be open are closed," she wrote before adding, "In recent months, as the court has completed its report, new clerks have taken their places inside the chambers. Security is tightening. Further protocol changes are promised. And with the release of the report, a growing recognition has taken hold, some employees say: The best chance of understanding who leaked the most consequential decision in generations, and what that person was trying to achieve, is fading away."

Somebody shit in the punch bowl, but nobody's going to own it.  As for the chances of "understanding who leaked the most consequential decision in generations, and what that person was trying to achieve": that was never a live option.

The Roberts Court is going to go down in Supreme Court history, alright.  Way, way down.

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I Do Remember This Language In The ’60’s

Hoover was still alive. That was also pre-Church Committee and exposure of COINTELPRO.

Which, despite the efforts of Elmo and his ragtag army of twitterers (you’d think the formerly richest man in the world could have bought more influence when he was the richest man in the world), was far more revelatory than the Twitter files. The FBI slowly but surely got better after Hoover died.

Twitter is not likely to survive Musk, although the FBI certainly will (and survive Gym Jordan, too). I’m not on Team FBI, but man are their enemies a clown 🤡 car 🚗.
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"History" Is Such A Fluid Concept, And Other Reportorial Challenges

Like, this is the first time that the Boston Globe can remember. Or maybe the first time an incumbent President is under federal investigation. Or the first time the investigations both involve documents. Or the first time Biden is being investigated (Trump investigations are already old news. That whole January 6th thing? Pfft! Fishwrap!)

In other news:
Nah. The "investigation" did what it was meant to do: paper over a truly embarassing incident (somebody PLEASE cite me the criminal statute that was violated) and hoping it would go away.  "Righting the institution" is not within the power of anyone on the bench, because the problem is the people on the bench.  Which is to say, the problem is the institution.  It ain't gonna fix itself, is it?

I'm sure Congress will "fix" the Supreme Court right after it fixes the nation's immigration policy which, like the deficit, is only a problem when Presidents with "D" after their titles, are in the White House.

Meanwhile, back in that investigation the Globe is so (un)concerned with:
"Crossfire Hurricane" was the investigation into Trump's Russia ties in the 2016 election, which pissed Trump off so much he set John Durham loose, a spree of "special prosecution" which yielded exactly: nothing. Trump, reports are, was convinced the truth was hidden in the documents, which is why he took some with him. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't. But the irony would be delicious.

Now, what did Biden do that was remotely similar?  Except, I mean, for "documents."
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