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blue peacock • 5 years ago
"...more important to the foundation of the country are questions such as search and seizure, detention without trial, disclosure of government documents and information to the public (without the new trend of "redactions"), jury trials, and uses and limits on the police power (the use of force domestically by a government)."

Robert, Dead on right!! Constitutional rule of law is dying on the vine before our very eyes. The judiciary is backing the authoritarian turn and with mass surveillance and now the weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence for political purposes, it is only a matter of time when we will be living in a totalitarian state for all intents & purposes.

Sid Finster • 5 years ago

The Constitution has been a dead letter in this country for a long time.

Pat Lang • 5 years ago

Rubbish. Ah, yes you are the character who thinks the US government ignores the law!

Sid Finster • 5 years ago

Believe we, I wish it were otherwise, but we do ignore the law and the Constitution whenever convenient.

You're a friend of Ron Paul, IIRC, does he not provide plentiful examples of both?

Pat Lang • 5 years ago

If you mean Senator Paul, he provides resistance to many abuses. The desire of many to ignore the law and constitution does not prove the ineffectiveness of these documants.

Pat Lang • 5 years ago

I have met Dr. Paul once. I have never met his son. I agree with most of his son's views.

blue peacock • 5 years ago

This Congress has shown themselves to be toothless. They keep making deadlines and issuing subpoenas and threatening contempt & impeachment and the DOJ keeps giving them the middle finger. This is a good example of kabuki.

The continuous postponement of the sentencing of Gen. Flynn is baffling. But what is even more baffling is why Trump keeps tweeting "witch hunt" but does not declassify the critical documents like the actual FISA application on Carter Page which Devin Nunes claims is fraudulent. What does he gain by tweeting "witch hunt" all the time?

The Rigged Witch Hunt, originally headed by FBI lover boy Peter S (for one year) & now, 13 Angry Democrats, should look into the missing DNC Server, Crooked Hillary’s illegally deleted Emails, the Pakistani Fraudster, Uranium One, Podesta & so much more. It’s a Democrat Con Job!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2018

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Public opinion has turned strongly against the Rigged Witch Hunt and the “Special” Counsel because the public understands that there was no Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous), that the two FBI lovers were a fraud against our Nation & that the only Collusion was with the Dems!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2018

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Bálint Somkuti • 5 years ago

"For more than a year, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee has been trying to get
documents from the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ)."

I mean is this serious, or some weird joke? I was living under the pretext that the US of A is a working liberal democracy and not a 3rd world banana republic or a weimarian
republic where different state branches fight for supremacy over each other.

Has anybody already been dishonorably discharged (if this term applies at all for public servants) from anywhere?

Good luck President Trump to make America great again! You have a lot to do! If you accept a good advice start with your own backyard!

LeaNder • 5 years ago

Robert, it feels I should leave this more personal snippet:

Quote: In making that argument, however, the defendants elide both the distinction described above and the difference between GPS tracking and the far less precise locational information that the government obtained here.

Triggered memories. thus thank you. ...

jdledell • 5 years ago

If Trump really wanted those documents to be released, he could so order and keep firing tthose people who refused to make the documents available until he found someone to lead the DOJ and FBI to do his biding. The question is why isn't Trump ordering Executive branch employees to give the congressional Republicans the documents they want??? What is in those documents that the entire Executive Branch, including Trump, want to hide?

Pat Lang • 5 years ago

I don't think it is that. IMO he is listening to a lot of pusillanimous swamp creatures.

David Schuler • 5 years ago

In my view the House should direct the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest the Director of the FBI, bring him before the House where he would be tried, and, if found guilty, incarcerated until the materials are produced. This process should continue until the subpoenaed materials have been produced or they run out of people in the FBI.

ex-PFC Chuck • 5 years ago

With regard to the Gen. Flynn affair, Marcy Wheeler, the proprietor of the Empty Wheel blog, put up a explosive post last week in which she discusses how and why she burned a source who had blatantly lied to her. You may recall that Wheeler was instrumental in exposing the details of the Bush 43 administration's intentional blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Yesterday one of her regular readers, Peterr, posted regarding the response to Wheeler's post in the journalism community and elsewhere. The discussion in the comments section to the latter post was especially thoughtful.
Like TTG here, Wheeler is of the view that there definitely was intentional election meddling on the part of Russia.
https://www.emptywheel.net/...
https://www.emptywheel.net/...

Pat Lang • 5 years ago

As I understand TTG's position, he thinks the Russians probed the electoral system but neither attempted to change the results, nor succeeded in doing so except by influencing the opinions of the feeble minded.

TTG • 5 years ago

Colonel Lang characterized my view correctly. The Russians did not change any vote count and I doubt they ever intended to do that. I regard the Russian effort as a well designed and vigorously implemented information operation. The IO exploited cracks that were already present in our society and politics, often pushing both sides of the issue. It was a lot more than a few Facebook ads. A good example was the TEN_GOP twitter account run by the IRA in Saint Petersburg. That one, single account was quite influential. None of that matters unless you think advertising and campaigning produces results.

Richard Steven Hack • 5 years ago

"...often pushing both sides of the issue."

Which is precisely why it was a money-making scheme and not any attempt to "fracture American democracy" or any other nonsense like that.

It's quite obvious that you sell to both sides to make money from both sides. There is no chance that the IRA had enough influence to actually cause enhanced factionalism in the US political spectrum.

Which is why the Russian government had nothing to do with this because they would know that.

All this "Putin wants to undermine American democracy" is so much tea-leaf and mind reading of Russian motivations. The only thing Putin wants to undermine is the US ability to interfere with legitimate Russian national interests like Ukraine, Crimea and Syria.

There's no chance Russia can influence the US political process more than the US government, media and electorate can do and he knows that.

ex-PFC Chuck • 5 years ago

Thank you for the clarification.

Barbara Ann • 5 years ago

Explosive because a well-regarded journalist 'burnt' a source to the FBI, or explosive because of the allegation of a unidentified person alleged to have had unspecified involvement in the "Russian election attack" whose understanding it was that Trump wanted to work with the Russians to end the Syrian war? Not seeing the detonation here.

LeaNder • 5 years ago

Yes, been puzzled by that too. And strictly I found Sullivan's article not as bad as Peterr claims, but maybe I do not understand. As Marcy admits this is all a bit obscure, must be for Sullivan too. And it feels theory based on a small evidence base: The Note. At least that is all we know about her contact with the person.

https://www.emptywheel.net/...

All that said, it and some related comments inform why I have argued, since May 2017, that the “Russia” story is actually as much about Jared’s “Peace” “Plan” as it is about payoff to Russia in the form of sanctions relief. ...

What I hoped to add to this story by revealing that text is the evidence that the grand bargain tied closely, in the person that I discussed with the FBI, with the election attack.

Fred S • 5 years ago

To quote Yoda, "There is another."

Immigration.