Recent Comments

1. about 9 hours ago on Prickly City

   Seriously, why did he have those documents…

   It’s not like he was going to write a book about the W.H. goings on, that he couldn’t pay attention to, unless his name was written on the briefings…

   ~

   First he said that he was “working and cooperating with” government agents who he claimed had inappropriately entered his home. Then, when the government revealed that the F.B.I., during its search, had recovered nearly a dozen sets of documents that were marked classified, he suggested the agents had planted evidence.

   Finally, his aides claimed he had a “standing order” to declassify documents that left the Oval Office for his residence, and that some of the material was protected by attorney-client and executive privilege.

   Those are the ever-shifting explanations that former President Donald J. Trump and his aides have given regarding what F.B.I. agents found last week in a search of his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.

   ✁

   Among the 11 sets of documents taken were some marked as “classified/TS/SCI” — shorthand for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information,” according to an inventory of the materials seized in the search. Those types of documents are meant to be viewed only in secure facilities. The inventory of documents included other material, some described as “confidential.”

   ✁

   “What he doesn’t have the right to do is possess the documents; they are not his,” Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives for more than a decade, said. “There should be no presidential records at Mar-a-Lago, whether they are classified or unclassified or subject to executive privilege or subject to attorney-client privilege.”

   Documents covered by executive privilege are meant to be kept within the government.

   ~

   https:

   //www.nytimes.com/2022/08/14/us/politics/trump-documents-explanations.html

2. about 14 hours ago on Prickly City

   There’s a small detail that you really should be aware of…

   It doesn’t matter what TFG took, at all…

   The fact that he took it, and wouldn’t give it back, is all that is required for a conviction….

   ~

   By Renato Mariotti

   If you or I had some 21 boxes of potentially classified information in our home, the Feds wouldn’t ask for it politely or even issue a subpoena. They would have taken possession of that material right away, and we would face serious charges. ✁

   ✁

   Much of the initial reaction to the search warrant focused on the Espionage Act, which was cited in the search warrant. While the title of that over 100-year-old law sounds like it has to do with spying, it is possible to violate the Espionage Act just by improperly retaining national defense information and failing to return it to the United States government when it is demanded.

   That statute, along with one of the other statutes cited in the search warrant, require the prosecution to prove “willfulness.” In other words, they require the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to break the law.

   It is often difficult to meet this burden, and one strategy I used as a federal prosecutor was to have agents serve targets of investigations with a notice indicating that what they were doing was breaking the law. If the target continued to violate the law after receiving the notice, we had the proof we needed.

   DOJ’s repeated requests and demands to Trump and his team served the same purpose.

   It will be difficult for Trump to claim that he did not realize that the records he kept were national security secrets that rightfully belonged to the government, given that the government repeatedly told him so and demanded their return.

   Moreover, Trump was present when the DOJ visited Mar-a-Lago to meet with his lawyers and demand the records.

   ~

   https:

   //www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/08/14/trump-classified-documents-doj-opinion-00051584

3. 1 day ago on Prickly City

   So the ‘automatically’ declassified documents were ‘planted’ by the FBI?

   ~

   It’s not the case that a president can declassify documents with just verbal instructions. His instruction to declassify a given document would first be memorialized in a written memo, usually drafted by White House counsel, which he would then sign.

   Typically, the leadership of the agency or agencies with equities in the document would be consulted and given an opportunity to provide their views on the declassification decision. As the ultimate declassification authority, however, the president can decide to override any objections they raise.

   Once a final decision is made, and the relevant agency receives the president’s signed memo, the physical document in question would be marked — the old classification level would be crossed out — and the document would then be stamped, “Declassified on X date” by the agency in question.

   ✁

   It is also unclear how central a legal question the classification process and the president’s role in it could be.

   As the New York Times points out, none of the statutes cited in the warrant rely on whether the records were classified or not. The search warrant signed by the Florida magistrate judge entails items “illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. § § 793, 2071, or 1519.”

   That first code, Section 793, and more commonly known as the Espionage Act, applies to defense information. It applies, for instance, to material illegally removed “from its proper place of custody” or that is lost, stolen or destroyed.

   The next statute, Section 2071, bans concealing, removing, mutilating or destroying records filed with U.S. courts. And the final one, Section 1519, prohibits concealing, destroying or mutilating records to obstruct or influence an investigation.

   ~

   https:

   //www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-classified-records/

4. 5 days ago on Brewster Rockit

   Most likely, Randall Munroe would agree….

   ~

   https:

   //www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1170:_Bridge

5. 5 days ago on Prickly City

   “… haven’t shut the country down yet.”

   And it is unlikely that they will shut the country down for this.

   ~

   (Another source notes that skin to skin contact is required to transmit it.)

   https:

   //www.uclahealth.org/medical-services/infectious-diseases/monkeypox

   ~

   TA: How hazardous is monkeypox to human health? Is it fatal? Does it leave scars?

   Koci: There are a lot of diseases that are worse than monkeypox. From a public health perspective COVID-19 is still a much bigger issue, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore monkeypox.

   While monkeypox disease typically clears on its own in about 2 to 4 weeks, it’s going to put painful blisters in places the sun don’t shine for days to weeks.

   More severe illnesses that require hospitalization can happen, especially in kids and the immunocompromised.

   Looking at previous outbreaks, case fatality rates have been as high as 3-6%, but so far during this outbreak while there have been a few deaths globally, the case fatality rate is well under 0.1%, and none have been reported in the U.S.

   ~

   https:

   //news.ncsu.edu/2022/08/should-i-be-worried-about-monkeypox/

6. 6 days ago on Barney & Clyde

   Many years ago, I used to have my “dress shoes” resoled. Yes, it is cheaper, and the shoe is (mostly) already broken in.

7. 6 days ago on Rip Haywire

   Pirates (reputedly) used an eye patch for going from bright light to dark, since it can take up to 25 minutes for the eye to adjust. Her eye patch might be for the same reason.

8. 6 days ago on Prickly City

   Republican administrations have vastly more corruption than Democratic administrations. We provide new research on the numbers to make the case.

   We compared 28 years each of Democratic and Republican administrations, 1961-2016, five Presidents from each party.

   During that period Republicans scored eighteen times more individuals and entities indicted, thirty-eight times more convictions, and thirty-nine times more individuals who had prison time.

   Given the at least multiple active investigations plaguing President Trump, he is on a path to exceeding previous administrations, though the effects of White House obstruction, potential pardons, and the as-yet unknown impact of the GOP’s selection of judges may limit investigations, subpoenas, prosecutions, etc.

   Of course, as we are comparing equal numbers of Presidents and years in office from the Democratic and Republican parties, the current President is ( I.e. Trump was) not included.

   Democrats: 28 years; 7 indictments; 3 convictions; 1 prison time

   Republicans: 28 years; 126 indictments; 113 convictions; 39 prison time

   ~

   https:

   //rantt.com/gop-admins-had-38-times-more-criminal-convictions-than-democrats-1961-2016

9. 12 days ago on Prickly City

   The major­ity opin­ion in Dobbs asserts that women need not worry about the impact of the decision on repro­duct­ive autonomy because they can turn to the polit­ical process and vote out lawmakers who pass abor­tion restric­tions and bans.

   But the real­ity is that by fail­ing to rein in partisan gerry­man­der­ing and consist­ently gutting voting rights protec­tions, the Supreme Court has rendered that impossible.

   Consider Texas, home to one of the nation’s most restrict­ive and contro­ver­sial abor­tion laws. Partis­ans there aggress­ively redrew legis­lat­ive maps during last year’s redis­trict­ing to trans­form a once compet­it­ive state legis­lature into a safely Repub­lican one.

   Before, Demo­crats only needed to win a little more than half the vote to be favored to win control of the Texas House. After brazen redraw­ing of the maps, they now need to win more than 56.2 percent of the vote to be favored to win even a bare major­ity.

   Mean­while, Repub­lic­ans only need 43.9 percent for a major­ity.

   Such game rigging to create unac­count­able endur­ing partisan major­it­ies — green­lit by the Supreme Court in 2019 in Rucho v. Common Cause — stands in stark contrast with maps drawn by more neut­ral bodies.

   ✁

   Unfor­tu­nately, the Supreme Court has abdic­ated respons­ib­il­ity for making sure that the checks and balances in our demo­cratic system work. It is now up to voters to fight for reforms — at both the state and federal level — to ensure voters can, in fact, make their voices heard when politi­cians get it wrong.

   ~

   https:

   //www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supreme-courts-abortion-ruling-shows-what-happens-when-democracy-thwarted

10. 12 days ago on Prickly City

    The Supreme Court has dealt a crit­ical blow to both bodily and polit­ical autonomy. Recog­niz­ing the over­whelm­ing popular­ity of abor­tion rights and public support for the preced­ent of Roe v. Wade, the Court’s major­ity offers the fran­chise as a rotten olive branch of sorts:

    …the opin­ion para­dox­ic­ally suggests citizens in each state can vote about the legal­ity of abor­tion while simul­tan­eously ignor­ing the Court’s own role in dismant­ling crucial voting protec­tions and making people’s full citizen­ship condi­tional on their repro­duct­ive status.

    Among a host of damaging decisions, two stand out. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court hollowed out Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, dramat­ic­ally weak­en­ing the federal govern­ment’s abil­ity to prevent discrim­in­at­ory laws from going into effect. Then in Brnovich v. DNC, the Court gutted Section 2, hinder­ing voters from chal­len­ging these laws in court after enact­ment.

    The Supreme Court’s open hostil­ity toward voting rights and abor­tion rights has enabled a surge of laws under­min­ing both. Last year, for instance, 18 states passed 34 laws making it harder to vote, account­ing for over one-third of all restrict­ive voting laws passed in more than a decade.

    These state laws are curtail­ing the polit­ical parti­cip­a­tion of people of color. And at least 16 states have passed laws banning abor­tion before viab­il­ity, inten­tion­ally defy­ing the consti­tu­tional stand­ard espoused in Roe.

    Perversely, communit­ies of color are dispro­por­tion­ately harmed by both forms of restric­tions. And the consequences are troub­lingly connec­ted. As the Supreme Court once recog­nized — and as data has since borne out — abor­tion is essen­tial to “the abil­ity of women to parti­cip­ate equally in the economic and social life of the nation.”

    ~

    https:

    //www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supreme-courts-abortion-ruling-shows-what-happens-when-democracy-thwarted