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| Porn Users Forum » WHY DOESN'T POTUS ARREST BILL CLINTON, HILARY CLINTON, AND OBAMA? |
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| 09-06-18 11:32am - 2256 days | #1051 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User  Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump releases bombshell news: I have 100 pics of Robert Mueller And James Comey 'Hugging And Kissing' Was there a secret love nest that Mueller and Comey shared? How long did this horrible, scumbag relationship last? And why did the President keep this secret so long? Trump should have let the public know the kinds of men Mueller and Comey were: unfaithful to their wives, unfaithful to the nation. Mueller and Comey should be arrested and shot for treason, and for deviant sexual acts. Clean the swamp in Washington, Mr. President. God save Donald Trump, the bestest, purest, most wonderful President the United States has ever had. ----------- ----------- Trump: I Have 100 Pics Of Robert Mueller And James Comey 'Hugging And Kissing' HuffPost Ed Mazza,HuffPost 10 hours ago President Donald Trump has complained that special counsel Robert Mueller is too close to former FBI Director James Comey to conduct a fair investigation. And now, he claims he has the pics to prove it. ″[Mueller’s] Comey’s best friend,” Trump told the Daily Caller. “And I could give you 100 pictures of him and Comey hugging and kissing each other.” Vox examined wire service photos and found no such images. A non-exhaustive HuffPost survey of images from Reuters and Getty also revealed no hugging and kissing. The pair has enjoyed a close professional relationship, which dates back to 2003 when Comey was deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush and Mueller was the director of the FBI. Both threatened to resign in opposition to a domestic surveillance program which was modified as a result, the Washington Post reported. While there do not appear to be “hugging and kissing” photos of the president and his former FBI chief, Trump did make a gesture toward Comey shortly after his inauguration that many observers believed was an air kiss. Comey claimed that Trump tried to pull him in for a hug as well, but he resisted and kept it to a handshake. “He was not going to get a hug without being a whole lot stronger than he looked,” Comey wrote in his book, A Higher Loyalty. “He wasn’t.” Months later, Trump would fire Comey, a move that ultimately led to the special counsel’s investigation. In the Daily Caller interview, Trump again called the Mueller probe an “illegal investigation” and claimed that the special counsel’s office had “tremendous conflicts.” Trump also said he had a “real business dispute” with Mueller, an apparent reference to 2011, when Mueller resigned from a Trump-owned golf club. According to the Washington Post: “Mueller had sent a letter requesting a dues refund in accordance with normal club practice and never heard back.” In July, Trump called it “a very nasty & contentious business relationship.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-06-18 11:50am - 2256 days | #1052 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is a lawyer who can lie with the best: When questioned on Roe v. Wade (abortion rights), Kavanaugh publicly states that Roe v. Wade is settled law. However, leaked emails by Kavanaugh show Kavanaugh arguing that Roe v. Wade could be overturned. So who are you going to believe: Kavanaugh, testisfying that Roe v. Wade is settled law? Or Kavanaugh, arguing in private that Roe v. Wade can be overturned? -------- -------- Kavanaugh's leaked emails seem to contradict testimony on abortion precedent David Knowles 2 hours 42 minutes ago Emails written by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh leaked late Wednesday to the New York Times seem to contradict what the judge told the Senate Judiciary Committee on whether he considered the Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling subject to being overturned. In an email written when he was a lawyer in the White House under President George W. Bush, Kavanaugh gave advice on how to amend a document that characterized Roe v. Wade as “the settled law of the land.” “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so,” Kavanaugh wrote in the email deemed “committee confidential” and withheld from the public record before being leaked to the Times by an anonymous source. But in an exchange with Sen. Dianne Feinstein at Wednesday’s confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh sounded a different tone. Feinstein repeatedly pressed Kavanaugh on whether the high court’s precedent meant that Roe could not be overturned. “As a general proposition I understand the importance of the precedent set forth in Roe v. Wade,” Kavanaugh said Wednesday, later adding, “I said that it’s settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court, entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis, and one of the important things to keep in mind about Roe v. Wade is that it has been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years, as you know.” Not satisfied that citing precedent meant that Kavanaugh would not join other conservative jurists to effectively overturn Roe, Feinstein tried a more direct tact. “What would you say your position is today on a woman’s right to choose?” Feinstein asked. “As a judge it is an important precedent of the Supreme Court,” Kavanaugh replied. “By ‘it,’ I mean Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, been affirmed many times. Casey is precedent on precedent.” Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee complained bitterly Thursday that thousands of documents deemed “committee confidential” were dumped on the committee at the last minute and were not made public. After being warned by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that he might face expulsion from the Senate after he made one of Kavanaugh’s email exchanges public, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., replied, “Bring it!” Edited on Sep 06, 2018, 11:59am | |
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| 09-06-18 03:49pm - 2256 days | #1053 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Writer admits that Senate confirmation hearings are rigged. That Senate rules make a mockery of democracy and that the public is screwed up the ass while the Senate preaches about the Democratic process being open and fair. Republicans are only part of the Washington cesspool that Trump promised to drain, instead, Trump is the leader of the Washington cesspool. -------------- -------------- Politics If I Didn't Know This Was All Rigged, I'd Think Brett Kavanaugh Is in Serious Trouble Esquire Charles P. Pierce,Esquire 7 hours ago From Esquire And Senator Kamala Harris said, "Be sure about your answer, sir." You know, if I didn't know that this whole thing is a rigged wheel, if I didn't know that all the wheels had been greased years ago, I'd think Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court was making a brief stop in Harriet Miersville on its way to G. Harold Carswelltown. Now into his second day of testimony, he was flummoxed and floundering. He was nowhere near as slick as was Neil Gorsuch, whose thickly armored arrogance carried him past his obvious partisan bona fides. However, Kavanaugh is under a great deal more pressure than was Gorsuch. Gorsuch was merely the penultimate step in the long march toward what would be an all-but-permanent conservative majority on there Supreme Court. Kavanaugh, as everybody knows, but pretends not to know, is the whole ballgame. He's probably the only reason that many Republicans have put up with the maniac in the White House. He's probably the reason that the now-famous Anonymous op-ed writer in The New York Times decided to be Anonymous instead of being a mensch and going over the side under his/her own name. That's a lot of pressure on a guy with what seems to be a terribly erratic memory, and who looked very much as though he thought Senator Harris might melt him with a glare right there in the chair. She was after him on how much of a bag job his nomination was, and she was basing her questions on "committee/confidential" documents that he knows she has, but that she is forbidden from using in her interrogation. (More on this fictitious bit of Senate hocus-pocus in a minute.) She knew and he knew she knew and there was flopsweat on every syllable. HARRIS: "You've been speaking for almost eight hours to this committee about all sorts of things you remember. How can you not remember whether or not you had a conversation about Robert Mueller or his investigation with anyone at that law firm?" KAVANAUGH: "I'm not remembering, but I'm happy to be refreshed or if you want to tell me who you're thinking of." HARRIS: "I think you are thinking of someone, and you don't want to tell us." We now move to Thursday morning, when all hell broke loose. The "committee/confidential" documents started to leak. A story in The New York Times based on some of those documents cited one of them that seemed to completely demolish Kavanaugh's tap-dancing on Roe v. Wade. Judge Kavanaugh was considering a draft opinion piece that supporters of one of Mr. Bush’s conservative appeals court nominees hoped they could persuade anti-abortion women to submit under their names. It stated that “it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.” Judge Kavanaugh proposed deleting that line, writing: “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.” Asked about this quote by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Kavanaugh caviled about who "legal scholars" were, and he went back to his original gambit about how Roe and its progeny are precedent-on-precedent, which he said was "quite important," but which, obviously, is not an answer to what Feinstein asked. Other leaked documents made it clear that, in his service in the Bush White House, on issues from privacy to whether or not native Hawaiians could be treated like other native peoples, Kavanaugh functioned as the political activist that he was for his entire career before he was elevated to the bench. More significantly, the leaked documents showed that Kavanaugh was far more involved in the failed nomination of Charles Pickering, Jr. than he led the committee to believe in 2006, when he was nominated to the seat on the federal appeals court that he now holds. And yet another showed him as designing for other nominees the very game plan he is obviously following in these hearings: “She should not talk about her views on specific policy or legal issues,” he wrote. “She should say that she has a commitment to follow Supreme Court precedent, that she understands and appreciates the role of a circuit judge, that she will adhere to statutory text, that she has no ideological agenda.” This confrontation escalated when Senators Cory Booker and Maizie Hirono told the committee that they intended to release other "committee/confidential" documents, including one allegedly dealing with racial profiling. Booker's announcement prompted an extended hooley in which John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, threatened Booker with disciplinary action up to and including expulsion from the Senate. "Bring it," Booker replied, and his Democratic colleagues took his back. Richard Durbin of Illinois pronounced himself fed up with the farce of having Bill Burck, a former Bush administration lawyer who numbers among his clients Reince Priebus, Don McGahn, and Steve Bannon (!), decide which documents can be released publicly. He told Booker: "I concur with what you're doing. Let's jump into this pit together. If there's going to be some retribution against [Booker], I want to be part of this process!" As I said, if I didn't know this whole thing wasn't a monumental bag job, I'd think Brett Kavanaugh was in a lot of trouble. | |
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| 09-07-18 09:40am - 2255 days | #1054 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
People don't understand Donald Trump. He is the greatest president the United States has ever had. Greater than Washington. Greater than Lincoln. Just listen to Donald Trump, and he will tell you the truth: I'm the greatest President the United States has ever had. ---------- ---------- Politics Donald Trump Gets Torched On Twitter Over Abraham Lincoln Comparison HuffPost Lee Moran,HuffPost 5 hours ago Folks on Twitter couldn’t resist poking fun at President Donald Trump after he claimed he would be remembered like Abraham Lincoln. “You know when Abraham Lincoln made the Gettysburg Address speech, great speech, you know he was ridiculed?” Trump said during a political rally speech in Billings, Montana, on Thursday. “He was excoriated by the fake news. They had fake news.” “Fifty years after his death they said it may have been the greatest speech ever made in America,” Trump added. “I have a feeling that’s going to happen with us. In different ways, that’s going to happen with us.” Many people on Twitter were astonished by the claim, and used the social media platform to explain why: This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-07-18 10:27am - 2255 days | #1055 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This story does not have a lot of details yet. But the story is a female cop shot and killed a man. The female cop accidentally entered the wrong apartment building, believing it was her own apartment. There was a man inside. She shot and killed him. Self defense, obviously. Because the man had no right or reason to be in an apartment the female cop believed to be her own. Questions: was the man armed with a weapon? Questions: whether the man was armed with a weapon or not, did he have the right to be in the cop's apartment? Answer: The man probably did not have the right to be inside the cop's apartment, if she did not give him permission. Therefore, the man was a threat. And the female cop shot the man in self defense. Even if the man was inside his own apartment. And it was not stated in the article if the man was inside his own apartment. He could have been a thief or burglar or murderer who was trying to kill the female cop. Case closed. Even if it is still under investigation: justified shooting. Support your local police. At the time of the shooting, the female cop was off duty, but she was still wearing her police uniform. Therefore, it was a justified shooting, because once a cop puts on his or her uniform, they are authorized to shoot to kill. Even if they do not have on their police uniform, they are still authorized to shoot to kill. Because the truth is: police are trained to shoot to kill. They are not trained to shoot to hurt or disable an opponent, but to shoot to kill. The old TV movies where heroes shot to disarm an opponent were total fiction: modern police are trained to shoot to kill. Good job, female police officer. She deserves a medal for shooting and killing her opponent. How many times did she fire? How many times did she hit the man who died? These details are not yet revealed, but it will impact the type of medal she should get: Because accuracy is important: and not wasting extra ammo on an opponent, unless you want to make sure the victim is truly dead and not faking it. Note: the police department will probably issue a statement saying they regret the death of the victim. But in private, they are probably given the female cop shooter high fives, in recognition of her shoot-to-kill skills. --------- --------- Officer fatally shoots man after entering wrong apartment 'believing that it was her own': Police Good Morning America MORGAN WINSOR,Good Morning America 2 hours 28 minutes ago Dallas police and the county district attorney's office are investigating after police said one of their officers shot and killed a 26-year-old man Thursday night upon returning home from her shift and entering the wrong apartment in her building. Preliminary information suggests the off-duty officer, who has not been publicly identified, was still wearing her police uniform and was returning home after working a full shift, the Dallas Police Department said in a statement Friday. The officer arrived just before 10 p.m. local time at the apartment complex where she lives south of downtown Dallas, according to the police department's statement. (MORE: Gunman in Cincinnati bank shooting that killed 3 identified as 29-year-old Ohio resident) She told responding officers that she "entered the victim's apartment believing that it was her own" and at some point "fired her weapon striking the victim," police said in the statement. The officer called police dispatch for help, and the responding officers administered aid to the man at the scene He was then taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said. (MORE: Officer allegedly kills wife, then himself) Authorities said they are awaiting family notification before releasing the victim's name. The officer involved was not injured in the incident and was placed on administrative leave while the police department conducts a joint investigation with the Dallas County District Attorney's Office. "This investigation is ongoing and we will release additional details as they become available and it is appropriate to do so," police said in the statement. The Dallas County District Attorney's Office said they do not have any additional information to release at this time, and the Dallas Police Department did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment. | |
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| 09-07-18 10:45am - 2255 days | #1056 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is a story about about a gunman who was not a cop. He shot and killed at least 3 people. If he was a cop, then the shooting might have been justified. But since he was not a cop, he is called a gunman. And the police shot and killed him--for shooting people without a license. Only cops (and maybe soldiers) have the right to shoot to kill--that is part of their license, part of their job. But normal civilians do not have the right to shoot to kill--then they are called gunmen or gunwomen or scumbag killers. Support your local police. Support all police, everywhere, because it's a terrible responsibility to shoot to kill, which cops everywhere are proud to hold. -------- -------- Gunman in Cincinnati bank shooting that killed 3 identified as 29-year-old Ohio resident ABC News MORGAN WINSOR and JULIA JACOBO,ABC News 19 hours Authorities have identified the gunman who allegedly killed three people and wounded two others at a bank in downtown Cincinnati as a 29-year-old Ohio resident. Omar Perez, 29, acted alone when he opened fire at the headquarters for the Fifth Third Bank near the Fountain Square, Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac said in a press conference Thursday afternoon. Officers responded to a 911 call around 9:10 a.m. local time about an "active shooter" at the bank, Isaac said. Perez. of Northbend, Ohio, is not a former or current employee of the bank, Isaac said. It is unclear how he got to Fountain Square, but he entered multiple businesses before going to the bank, according to the police chief. The suspect had opened fire in the building's loading dock before continuing into the lobby area and firing more shots, Isaac told reporters at a press conference Thursday morning. Multiple officers then "engaged" the suspect, who is now dead, Isaac said. He was shot multiple times, according to Isaac. Investigators believe that Perez legally purchased the 9mm semi-automatic pistol, which was recovered on the scene, Isaac said. Perez had multiple magazines and around 200 rounds of ammunition, Isaac said. Five people were shot, including three who died from their injuries, Isaac said. One person died at the scene, and two victims died at the hospital, police said. Some of the victims were shot multiple times, Isaac said. One victim was identified as 64-year-old Richard Newcomer, a superintendent with the Gilbane Building Company, a construction company based in Cincinnati. "He was a great employee," Wes Cotter, the director of communications for the Gilbane Building Company told ABC News. "We are absolutely grief stricken." Newcomer was doing work on the third floor of the building and "just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time," Cotter said. "We couldn't feel worse about it," Cotter said. The other two victims were identified by the Hamilton County Coroner's Office as Pruthvi Raj Kandepi, 25, and Luis Felipe Calderón, 48. The area was cordoned off as police responded to the incident and worked to evacuate people inside the bank. No officers were injured in the incident, and a weapon was recovered from the scene. PHOTO: A police officer comforts a woman outside UCMC ER following an active shooter situation in downtown Cincinnati, Sept. 6, 2018. (Kareem Elgazzar/Cincinnati Enquirer-USA TODAY NETWORK) UC Health in Cincinnati confirmed via Twitter that it received four of the victims -- three males and one female. Two have since died, while one remains in critical condition and the other is in serious condition, the hospital said. "Our physicians and staff are focused on caring for the patients and their families. We prepare for situations like these and hope they never happen," UC Health tweeted. Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley told reporters at the press conference that the suspect was "actively shooting innocent victims." "Random mass shootings, which plague our nation, are not normal and we as a country can't allow them to be normalized," Craley said in a statement posted on Twitter later Thursday. "Our hearts are broken today." The motive for the shooting was not immediately known. Fifth Third Bank, which is headquartered in Cincinnati but has locations across 10 states, described the deadly shooting as a "terrible event" in a statement posted on Twitter. "Earlier today, an active shooter entered our headquarters building in downtown Cincinnati. The situation is contained and the shooter is no longer a threat. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone caught up in this terrible event. We continue to work with law enforcement as we ensure the safety of our employees and customers. We are grateful for the support and concerns from our neighbors throughout Cincinnati and the country," the company tweeted. ABC News' Rachel Katz contributed to this report. | |
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| 09-07-18 02:04pm - 2255 days | #1057 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Although I can't vote to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, just looking at his handsome, smiling face makes me feel so good. I want to ignore his prejudicial beliefs against abortion, immigration, civil rights, worker rights. Kavanaugh is a family man, with a wife and children. I want to ignore that he is liar, who testifies to Congress with lies and evasions, because that is the way Republicans act in Washington. That is the way Trump, our Glorious Leader, acts, with lies and smiles to the public. --------- --------- Yahoo Politics For Susan Collins, A Vote For Kavanaugh Would Be Political Suicide HuffPost Opinion Robert Creamer,HuffPost Opinion 4 hours ago A vote for Kavanaugh would destroy Sen. Susan Collins’ independent, pro-health care, pro-women’s rights reputation. (Joshua Roberts / Reuters) Throughout her more than two decades in the Senate, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has positioned herself as an independent Republican who vigorously favors a woman’s right to reproductive choice. She cemented that reputation last year, when she cast a critical vote to stop the Trump administration from repealing the Affordable Care Act and stripping health care from thousands of her constituents. And, for her entire career, Collins has appeared to be truly committed to a pro-abortion rights position. Why, then, are there rumors that she is considering a vote to support the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court when there is clear evidence that he would provide the deciding vote to overturn or severely curtail women’s rights to an abortion, take away access to health care for millions, and has written that presidents shouldn’t be held accountable for criminal acts while in office? There are at least three potential reasons: 1.Perhapsshe is more gullible than an experienced senator has the right to be. Some have argued that Collins is buying Kavanaugh’s meaningless assurance that Roe vs. Wade is “settled law” and would be a balanced, mainstream jurist – ignoring the string of decisions and writings establishing clearly that he totally opposes a woman’s right to control her reproductive life. Maybe, the argument goes, his smile and his “I’m just a wonderful father and Little League coach” veneer have blinded her to his consistent record as a judicial radical who, if given the chance, would very likely declare the Affordable Care Act ― and its protection of people with pre-existing conditions ― unconstitutional. Maybe he didn’t really mean that presidents should not be held accountable for criminal acts while they are in office because it would create such a “distraction.” No. She’s too smart for that. 2. Maybe Collins has decided not to run again and doesn’t want to spoil her chances for a highly lucrative job with some big GOP donor. It wouldn’t be the first time a member of Congress sold his or her soul so they could cash in after leaving office. In 2003, when Medicare Part D was passed, then-Rep. Billy Tauzin, the GOP chair of the energy and commerce committee, insisted on a provision actually preventing Medicare from negotiating for the lowest prices with drug companies. The next year, he left Congress and was rewarded with a million-dollar-a-year job as head of PhRMA, the powerful pharmaceutical lobby. Maybe that’s what Collins has in mind when her current Senate term ends in 2020. The problem with that theory is that her history really suggests she likes to wake up in the morning, look herself in the mirror and see a decent person ― not the kind of senator who would sell out the interests of her constituents to make herself rich. 3. She and her aides have made a political calculation that a vote for Kavanaugh will help her re-election chances in 2020. They may figure that she is likely to face a stiffer challenge from the right in her Republican primary than she would in the general election. Best not to give the GOP base another reason to move against her. It is correct that Collins may face a right-wing primary challenge, but is it really more likely to succeed if she votes against Kavanaugh? Many hard core Trump voters will never trust Collins again because she voted to save the ACA, supports abortion rights and periodically questions Trump. To them, her vote on Kavanaugh won’t make a dime’s worth of difference. And recall, as the Intercept reported, “There is no grassroots energy rallying for Kavanaugh. None.” You don’t see rallies like the ones the tea party mobilized to fight the ACA. You only see an extraordinary national movement to stop Kavanaugh. So, if that is Collins’ calculation, she is dead wrong. In fact, a vote to confirm Kavanaugh would be political suicide. Such a vote will not simply make it harder for her to be re-elected. If Collins votes to put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, she will unleash the elements of a political storm that will sweep her out of office. Collins ― and all Republicans in swing states ― already face stiff political headwinds in 2020. A blue wave is building for the 2018 midterms. It is likely to do nothing but intensify in the buildup to 2020, when Trump himself will be on the ballot. Every day brings new outrages from the White House that are repugnant to swing voters ― and especially the women ― of states like Maine. This year, Democratic turnout is setting records. By 2020, Democratic mobilization efforts will be at a fever pitch. A vote for Kavanaugh would destroy Collins’ independent, pro-health care, pro-women’s rights reputation. Collins’ best defense against that 2020 Democratic gale is her political brand as a pro-health care, pro-abortion rights independent, who will defend her constituents at all costs. That brand was clearly established by her heroic vote to save the Affordable Care Act and her consistent support of women’s rights. And all of the political polling in Maine makes it clear that Mainers don’t want anyone to take away a woman’s right to choose ― or their health care. Nearly two-thirds of Maine residents support a woman’s right to choose. And the ACA has overwhelming support. A PPP poll in late August found that if Collins votes to confirm Kavanaugh, “voters are far less likely to support her in her next election by 16 points ― with 47 percent saying they would be less likely to vote for her and 31 percent more likely.” What’s more, by 22 percentage points (56 to 34) Maine voters don’t believe Collins should vote to confirm Kavanaugh until his full record is made public, including 57 percent of Mainers over 65, and 53 percent of independents. Whether she likes it or not, Collins ― along with her political soulmate, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska ― are the two swing votes who will decide if Kavanaugh is placed on the Supreme Court. And, like it or not, Kavanaugh will be the swing vote on the Supreme Court. Collins will be held personally responsible for every anti-choice, anti-health care, pro-Trump, anti-immigrant ruling the Supreme Court makes over the next two years. And she’ll even be held responsible for the anti-choice, anti-health care, pro-Trump votes Kavanaugh takes, even if he’s not in the majority of the court. Is Collins really willing to risk her entire political legacy on Kavanaugh’s vague assurances that he will impartially judge all of the facts? A vote for Kavanaugh would make Collins the poster child for betrayal. The thing that will make a strong political wind into a perfect storm will be voters’ sense of betrayal. Collins’ vote against repeal of the ACA, her vocal support of abortion rights, and her willingness to stand up to the far right of the Republican Party have made her a hero to many Maine voters ― and people around the country. They have invested emotionally in her. If Collins becomes one of the deciding votes for Kavanaugh, many of these voters will feel betrayed. Already, a group of Maine voters has begun recruiting pledges to support Collins’ 2020 opponent if she votes for Kavanaugh. To date, thousands of people have pledged almost $500,000 ― a sum that will explode if she votes to confirm Kavanaugh. And, as we all know, hell hath no fury like a voter scorned. Robert Creamer is a longtime political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partners. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-07-18 02:08pm - 2255 days | #1058 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Duplicate post. Delete if possible. Edited on Sep 18, 2018, 03:28pm | |
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| 09-07-18 02:11pm - 2255 days | #1059 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Jurisprudence I Wrote Some of the Stolen Memos That Brett Kavanaugh Lied to the Senate About He should be impeached, not elevated. By Lisa Graves Sept 07, 201811:43 AM Brett Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearing. Judge Brett Kavanaugh prepares to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the third day of his Supreme Court confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill on Sept. 6. Photo edited by Slate. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. Much of Washington has spent the week focusing on whether Judge Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court. After the revelations of his confirmation hearings, the better question is whether he should be impeached from the federal judiciary. I do not raise that question lightly, but I am certain it must be raised. Newly released emails show that while he was working to move through President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees in the early 2000s, Kavanaugh received confidential memos, letters, and talking points of Democratic staffers stolen by GOP Senate aide Manuel Miranda. That includes research and talking points Miranda stole from the Senate server after I had written them for the Senate Judiciary Committee as the chief counsel for nominations for the minority. Receiving those memos and letters alone is not an impeachable offense. No, Kavanaugh should be removed because he was repeatedly asked under oath as part of his 2004 and 2006 confirmation hearings for his position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit about whether he had received such information from Miranda, and each time he falsely denied it. For example, in 2004, Sen. Orrin Hatch asked him directly if he received “any documents that appeared to you to have been drafted or prepared by Democratic staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.” Kavanaugh responded, unequivocally, “No.” In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy asked him if he had any regrets about how he treated documents he had received from Miranda that he later learned were stolen. Kavanaugh rejected the premise of the question, restating that he never even saw one of those documents. Back then the senators did not have the emails that they have now, showing that Miranda sent Kavanaugh numerous documents containing what was plainly research by Democrats. Some of those emails went so far as to warn Kavanaugh not to distribute the Democratic talking points he was being given. If these were documents shared from the Democratic side of the aisle as part of normal business, as Kavanaugh claimed to have believed in his most recent testimony, why would they be labeled “not [for] distribution”? And why would we share our precise strategy to fight controversial Republican nominations with the Republicans we were fighting? Another email chain included the subject line “spying.” It’s hard to imagine a more definitive clue than that. Another said “Senator Leahy’s staff has distributed a confidential letter to Dem Counsel” and then described for Kavanaugh that precise confidential information we had gathered about a nominee Kavanaugh was boosting. Again, it is illogical to think that we would have just given Miranda this “confidential” information for him to use against us. But this is precisely what Judge Kavanaugh suggested in his testimony on Wednesday. He is not that naïve. In the hearing this week, Sen. Leahy also noted that the previously hidden emails showed that Miranda asked to meet Kavanaugh in person to give him “paper” files with “useful info to map out [Sens. Joe] Biden and [Dianne] Feinstein, and others.” The promised information included “Biden-speak.” Again, this would not have been a normal information exchange. In response to Leahy’s questions this week, Kavanaugh made the outlandish claim that it was typical for him to be told what Democrats planned to ask at these combative hearings over controversial nominees, and that this was in fact the “coin of the realm.” As a Democrat who worked on those questions, I can say definitively that it was not typical at all. Kavanaugh knows this full well. At the time, Kavanaugh was working with Miranda and outside groups to try to force these nominees through the Senate over Democratic objections, and it would have been suicide to give them our research, talking points, strategies, or confidential letters. The GOP senators, their staff, the White House, and outside groups were working intensively to undermine the work of Democratic senators to block the most extreme of President Bush’s judicial nominees. Kavanaugh’s actions were dishonorable and dishonest. The Leahy talking points given to Kavanaugh were from my in-depth research into why the Senate had compelling historical precedent for examining Miguel Estrada’s Department of Justice records, which the White House counsel’s office was refusing to surrender. Other confidential materials Miranda shared with Kavanaugh related to investigations Democrats were pursuing over how Judge Priscilla Owen had handled an abortion case involving parental consent and about the overlap between her funders and groups with business before the courts of Texas. We would never have provided that information—key to our strategy to try to block what we considered extremist judicial nominations—to Miranda or to the White House. During his testimony, Kavanaugh conflated these adversarial proceedings with ones in which Democrats might have cooperated with the other side, like the Patriot Act and airline liability. But these weren’t hearings on some bill where senators would share their concerns across the aisle to try to get a bipartisan fix on problems in a piece of legislation. These were oppositional proceedings in committee and on the floor over controversial judicial nominees. Kavanaugh knew this just as intimately as I did—our sides fought over those nominations intensely. It was also an area where Kavanaugh’s judicial nominations alliance had taken a scorched-earth approach, attacking Democrats ruthlessly. The White House’s closest allies went so far as to call Leahy and other Democrats on the committee “anti-Catholic,” even running attack ads. Perhaps Kavanaugh was so blinded by his quest to get the most controversial Bush nominees confirmed in 2003 that he did not have any concerns about the bounty of secret memos and letters he was receiving—the full extent of which is not known because so many documents are still secret. But, surely, reasonable questions about what he had been party to would have been considered after the story of the theft exploded in the news, Miranda was forced to resign, and the U.S. Senate sergeant-at-arms began a bipartisan investigation into the files stolen from the Senate? As of November 2003, when the sergeant-at-arms seized the Judiciary Committee’s servers, Kavanaugh would have been on notice that any of the letters, talking points, or research described as being from Democrats that were provided to him by Miranda were suspect and probably stolen from the Senate’s server. But he did nothing. He did not come forward to the Senate to provide information about the confidential documents Miranda had given him, which were clearly from the Democrats. Kavanaugh also apparently did nothing when the Senate referred the case to the U.S. attorney’s office for criminal prosecution. (Miranda was never prosecuted.) Eventually, though, Kavanaugh went even further to help cover up the details of the theft. During the hearings on his nomination to the D.C. Circuit a few months after the Miranda news broke, Kavanaugh actively hid his own involvement, lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee by stating unequivocally that he not only knew nothing of the episode, but also never even received any stolen material. Even if Kavanaugh could claim that he didn’t have any hint at the time he received the emails that these documents were of suspect provenance—which I personally find implausible—there is no reasonable way for him to assert honestly that he had no idea what they were after the revelation of the theft. Any reasonable person would have realized they had been stolen, and certainly someone as smart as Kavanaugh would have too. But he lied. Under oath. And he did so repeatedly. Significantly, he did so even though a few years earlier he had helped spearhead the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for perjury in a private civil case. Back then Kavanaugh took lying under oath so seriously that he was determined to do everything he could to help remove a president from office. Now we know that he procured his own confirmation to the federal bench by committing the same offense. And he did so not in a private case but in the midst of public hearings for a position of trust, for a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary. His actions were dishonorable and dishonest. This week, as part of his efforts to be elevated to the highest court in the land, he has calmly continued to deceive, falsely claiming that it would have been perfectly normal for him to receive secret Democratic letters, talking points, and other materials. And if this absurd notion were somehow true, it would not even be consistent with what he testified to 12 and 14 years ago. Back then, he didn’t state it would have been normal for him to receive secret Democratic strategy materials. CONTINUED WITH NEXT POST: | |
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| 09-07-18 02:13pm - 2255 days | #1060 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST: Instead, he explicitly and repeatedly went out of his way to say he never had access to any such materials. These objectively false statements were offered under oath to convince the committee of something that was untrue. It was clearly intentional, with Kavanaugh going so far as to correct Sen. Kennedy when the senator described the document situation accurately. That’s why—without even getting into other reasonable objections to his nomination—he should not be confirmed. In fact, by his own standard, he should clearly be impeached. Lisa Graves is the co-founder of Documented, which investigates corporate influence on democracy. She is the former chief counsel for nominations for the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice. | |
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| 09-07-18 05:03pm - 2255 days | #1061 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is very suspicious. An off-duty female cop shot and killed a man. The police are seeking manslaughter charges against her. Why? -The name of the female cop has not been released. -Why charge a cop with manslaughter, when she shot and killed a man. Isn't that murder? -But she's a cop: cops have the right to shoot to kill: that's what they are trained to do. -Maybe there's a mixup, and the police will identify some other cop, that they don't like, as the shooter (and that's why they aren't releasing the name of the cop who did the shooting). Did the shooting cop have a history with the victim, and that's why she thought she was entering her own apartment? Because she had been to the victim's apartment before? And how did she get into the apartment? Did she have a key? Was a door unlocked? Or did she crawl through a window, because she couldn't find her key, or her key did not work, and that's why she crawled through the window? Enquiring minds want to know the truth! --------- --------- U.S. Police Seek Manslaughter Charge Against Officer Who Said She Entered Wrong Apartment and Shot Man People Chris Harris,People 3 hours ago Manslaughter Charge Sought Against Dallas Officer Who Shot Man Dallas police are seeking a manslaughter charge against the unnamed officer who shot and killed a 26-year-old man Thursday night after entering his apartment, which she said she mistakenly believed was her own, PEOPLE confirms. Officials have yet to release the exact circumstances surrounding the death of Botham Shem Jean. But Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall told reporters during a Friday news conference that authorities are seeking an arrest warrant for the officer on a charge of manslaughter, pending approval from prosecutors. Hall declined to identify the officer until charges are formally filed. Representatives of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office could not immediately be reached for comment. “This is a very unique situation,” Hall said at the afternoon news conference. “We have ceased handling it under our normal protocol as an officer-involved shooting.” The Texas Rangers have been asked to conduct an independent investigation into the shooting. Testing is also being done on the officer’s blood to check for alcohol and drugs, according to Hall. She said she spoke to Jean’s relatives and “we have reassured them that we are working diligently.” The shooting happened Thursday around 10 p.m., after the uniformed officer worked a full shift, according to a previous statement from Dallas police. The officer said she entered Jean’s apartment mistaking it for her own, according to police. Then, “at some point,” she shot Jean inside his apartment and called the incident into police dispatch. First aid was initially performed at the scene on Jean, who was rushed to the nearest hospital where doctors unsuccessfully attempted to revive him. Chief Hall said Friday that the shooting remains under investigation. She acknowledged that, at this stage in the investigation, “there are more questions than we have answers.” She declined to discuss a number of critical details about the altercation, including: how the officer came to enter an apartment that was not hers, how close the residence is to her actual apartment, how she came to mistake one for the other and what happened in the moments leading up to her opening fire. It is also unclear if the officer knows Jean, who is a native of Saint Lucia. He worked at a local branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers, according to the Dallas Morning News. The officer has been placed on leave, as is standard. A police spokesman said the officer has not yet been interviewed, the Morning News reports. PEOPLE’s attempts to reach Jean’s relatives were unsuccessful on Friday. His sister, in mourning, reportedly posted on Facebook: “Now I have to go pick out your casket. I love you with all of my heart. … Until we meet again my love.” | |
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| 09-07-18 05:18pm - 2255 days | #1062 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Kavanaugh is not only a liar, but has a hard time remembering what he's done. He says he will follow precendent of the Supreme Court, and not his own personal views. But in past rulings, he has ignored precedent set by the Supreme Court, and written his own personal views. So just like Trump, Kavanaugh's hero, Kavanaugh wants you to ignore what he has done, and listen instead to his lies about what he has done, his lies about what he will do. If confirmed, he will then be a member of the Supreme Court, a lifetime appointment, to freely vote his personal views. ---------- ---------- Immigration rulings raise questions about Kavanaugh's commitment to precedent Caitlin Dickson Thu, Sep 6 9:49 AM PDT Brett Kavanaugh answers questions from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on Wednesday. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images) If there was a theme to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s second day of confirmation hearings, it would be “precedent.” President Trump’s controversial pick for the seat previously held by longtime Justice Anthony Kennedy used the word repeatedly as he fielded questions from both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kavanaugh made the point that notwithstanding his previously expressed critiques of several key precedential rulings, his opinions as a judge are informed not by his personal views but by the legal principles established by the Supreme Court. Throughout these hearings, Democrats have been seeking to put Kavanaugh on the record about how he would vote on cases that might turn on Supreme Court precedents with which he’s publicly — and controversially — disagreed, notably Roe v. Wade. Though he said on Wednesday that the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion was “important precedent,” some Democrats are wary of what they suspect is his willingness to disregard past opinions. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., questioned Brett Kavanaugh about an abortion ruling in which she believes he ignored precedent. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP) For example, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein called out Kavanaugh’s dissent, as a member of the D.C. Circuit, in a case last year regarding whether a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant in federal custody should be allowed to obtain an abortion. “You argue that even though the young woman had complied with Texas parental notification law and secured an approval from a judge, she should nonetheless be barred,” said Feinstein, telling Kavanaugh that, in his dissent in the case known as Garza v. Hargan, “you ignored, and I believe mischaracterized, a Supreme Court precedent.” Feinstein took issue with Kavanaugh’s opinion, which would have required the young woman to wait for a government-approved “sponsor” to provide a “support network of friends and family,” running the risk, she said, that the process would extend past her 20th week of pregnancy, the legal limit in Texas, where she was being held. Feinstein asserted that Kavanaugh’s dissent amounted to rewriting a Supreme Court precedent that established the judicial bypass process for pregnant minors in need of an abortion who cannot obtain parental consent, “requiring courts to determine whether a young woman had a sufficient support network when making her decision.” “This reason, I believe, demonstrates that you are willing to disregard precedent,” Feinstein said. Though abortion is considered the central issue at play in the Garza case, it’s also just one example of a case involving immigrants in which Kavanaugh’s commitment to precedent and existing statutes has come under scrutiny. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., questioned Brett Kavanaugh about his respect for precedent in a case involving immigrant workers. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP) During a particularly pointed series of questions Wednesday afternoon, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin highlighted Kavanaugh’s 2008 dissent in a case concerning the rights of undocumented immigrant workers at a slaughterhouse to unionize. “The fact that you were a dissenter and everyone else saw it the other way should give us pause when you say you only follow precedent,” said Durbin. The majority of Kavanaugh’s colleagues on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the undocumented workers in this case, Agri Processor Co. Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, citing both the “plain language” of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which guarantees the basic rights of private sector employees to join unions and demand better wages and working conditions through collective bargaining, as well as the 1984 Supreme Court ruling in a case known as Sure-Tan Inc. v. NLRB, explicitly affirming that, “since undocumented aliens are not among the few groups of workers expressly exempted by Congress” under the National Labor Relations Act, “they plainly come within the broad statutory definition of ‘employee.’” Congress did not make it illegal for companies to knowingly employ undocumented immigrants until two years after the Sure-Tan decision, with the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986. In Agri Processor, the majority noted in its opinion that, “not only is there no clear indication that Congress intended IRCA implicitly to amend the NLRA, but all available evidence actually points in the opposite direction.” Despite his purported reverence for Supreme Court precedent, and his self-described “textualist” approach to interpreting legislation strictly by adhering to the plain text of a statute, Kavanaugh dissented sharply in Agri Processor. He went beyond the company’s claim that its undocumented workers could not unionize because they did not qualify as “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act, relying on a previously uncited passage of the Sure-Tan decision to make the point that it was actually the majority opinion that was inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent. The Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in a 2008 photo. (Photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP) After outlining the core reasoning for its determination that undocumented workers do qualify as “employees” under the NLRA, the court went on to offer a supplementary explanation in Sure-Tan for why there appeared to be no conflict between this finding and then-existing immigration law, which at that time, 1984, did not prohibit businesses from hiring undocumented workers. Kavanaugh hinged his dissent in Agri Processor on this secondary section, which wasn’t even cited in the majority opinion. He argued that it set a precedent for interpreting the definition of “employee” under the NLRA “in conjunction with the immigration laws.” According to that reasoning, he wrote, “I would hold that an illegal immigrant worker is not an ‘employee’ under the NLRA for the simple reason that, ever since [the passage of the IRCA in 1986, an illegal immigrant worker is not a lawful ‘employee’ in the United States.” In their response to Kavanaugh, his colleagues in the majority found that he had essentially sought to create a new rule, by inferring that the NLRA had been implicitly amended by the IRCA, based not on any guidance from Congress but an interpretation of part of a Supreme Court decision written two years prior to the IRCA’s passage. The rule, they warned, “would lead to the absurd result that the Supreme Court — or any court for that matter — could alter the plain meaning of future legislation simply by announcing what current legislation does not mean.” Durbin cited this warning from Kavanaugh’s fellow judges during Wednesday’s hearing, questioning how the judge could reconcile his opinion in this particular case given that “you claim over and over again to be a textualist to be carefully weighing every word of a statute.” “You bent over backwards to take the company’s side against these workers,” Durbin said, as Kavanaugh repeated his refrains that “it’s all about precedent” and “I have no agenda in any direction… I’m a judge.” “’I’m just a judge, I just follow precedent,’” Durbin interjected. “We’ve heard that so often, and I hope it’s the case.” In this case, he told Kavanaugh, “you failed to follow Supreme Court precedent.” Durbin’s questions about the Agri Processor dissent echoed concerns expressed by some immigration attorneys who’ve been closely mining Kavanaugh’s past opinions for signs of how he might approach the various immigration-related cases that are likely to come before the Supreme Court in the coming session. Lawsuits concerning such issues as the government’s ability to indefinitely detain immigrants without bond hearings, the role of local officials in federal immigration enforcement and the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, are already making their way toward the high court, while experts foresee potential challenges to things like the 1982 Supreme Court decision that guaranteed the right to public K-12 education for all children in the United States, regardless of immigration status, or the 1898 decision that affirmed that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen under the 14th Amendment. Hundreds protested after the 2008 federal immigration raid of the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, in which nearly 400 people were arrested. (Photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP) | |
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| 09-07-18 05:22pm - 2255 days | #1063 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
CONTINUED: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Kavanaugh has served as a judge since 2006, is not exactly a magnet for immigration cases, making his record on the issue relatively limited. Still, attorneys and advocates on both sides of the immigration debate have pinpointed a handful of specific opinions, including Agri Processor, which they suggest offer important insight into how he might approach such cases if confirmed to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh’s view that undocumented workers do not qualify as “employees,” and therefore don’t have basic rights, is obviously a red flag for immigration advocates at a time when workplace immigration raids are becoming common. For immigration hard-liners and restrictionists, Kavanaugh’s opinion on undocumented workers is seen as a sign that Trump’s Supreme Court nominee is on their side. In July, Breitbart News deemed Kavanaugh to be the “America First” Supreme Court pick, pointing to the judge’s opinions in the Agri Processor case among others, as evidence that “Kavanaugh applies Trump’s economic patriotism to the law.” Days later, Jesse Merriam echoed Breitbart’s view in an op-ed for Real Clear Politics, writing that “The best publicly available data indicate that, of all the judges under consideration, Judge Brett Kavanaugh is most likely to advance President Trump’s America First constitutional vision.” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an influential Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for reducing all types of immigration to the U.S., called Kavanaugh a “superb choice” for the Supreme Court. “President Trump should be commended for choosing a candidate who clearly understands the nation’s patchwork of immigration laws and how they are intended to protect both American workers and the overarching national interest,” Stein said in a press release. Dale Wilcox, executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, or IRLI, FAIR’s legal arm, echoed similar sentiments in an interview with NRA-TV. It likely won’t receive much, if any, airtime during this week’s confirmation hearings, but Kavanaugh’s 2014 dissent in a case concerning the ability of a Brazilian steakhouse chain to obtain temporary work visas for Brazilian gaucho chefs at its restaurants in the U.S. has also drawn attention from immigration advocates and opponents alike. Fogo De Chao, a Brazilian restaurant in Washington, in a March photo. (Photo: Evy Mages/The Washington Post/Getty Images) The meat of the case is this: Originally founded in the Rio Grande do Sul region of Southern Brazil in 1979, Fogo de Chao first introduced its chain of churrascarias, traditional Brazilian barbecue steakhouses, to the United States in 1997. Between then and 2006, the federal government granted the company more than 200 temporary work visas, known as L-1B’s, for its Brazilian gaucho chefs, or churrasqueiros, who grew up in Rio Grande do Sul and have been trained to both cook and entertain in the region’s unique barbecue tradition. Since 1970, L-1B visas have allowed qualifying multinational businesses to bring foreign employees with “specialized knowledge” to work temporarily in the United States, and Fogo de Chao attributes much of its success to the employment of authentic gaucho chefs in each of its restaurants. However, in 2010, the Department of Homeland Security’s Administrative Appeals Office denied Fogo de Chao’s request to transfer another churrasqueiro chef to the U.S. on an L-1B visa, concluding that the chef’s cultural background, training and extensive experience in cooking and serving food in the churrasco tradition did not constitute a “special knowledge” of his employer’s product. Fogo de Chao sued, and the majority of judges on the D.C. Circuit Court found that DHS’s decision to categorically dismiss culturally acquired skills in its denial of the Fogo de Chao chef’s visa application was “legally erroneous” and “devoid of any reasoned explanation as to why training and skills-acquisition can qualify as specialized if obtained from a corporate instructor, but categorically cannot just because they are learned from family or community members.” The court ordered that the earlier decision be vacated and remanded back to the Appeals Office for further review, clarifying that the office could not simply impose a new bar on culturally acquired skills without some sort of regulatory guidance, statute or reasoned analysis to back it up. Once again, Kavanaugh was the lone dissenter, authoring an opinion that elicited “puzzlement” from his fellow judges on the bench. While the court records pretty clearly demonstrate that the agency’s bar on culturally acquired skills had emerged as part of its decision to deny Fogo de Chao’s request for an L-1B visa, Kavanaugh declared that he “fully agree[s] with “the agency’s longstanding position” that “one’s country of origin, or cultural background, does not constitute specialized knowledge.” He went onto disregard a number of other key details outlined in the case, including the 200-plus L-1B visas previously granted to Fogo de Chao’s churrasqueiros, and the fact that the company largely employs American chefs at its restaurants, relying on the Brazilian churrasqueiros to train them. Discarding Fogo de Chao’s rather complicated claim about the nuances of its business model and the crucial role authentic churrasqueiros play in the company’s profitability, Kavanaugh instead interpreted the company’s argument to be simply that “American chefs either can’t learn to cook or won’t cook Brazilian steaks.” He went on to accuse the company of simply seeking to “import experienced Brazilian chefs rather than hiring and training only American chefs” in an effort to save money, arguing that this case is, at least in part, “Fogo’s desire to cut labor costs masquerading as specialized knowledge.” Then, citing an unspecified “provision of the immigration laws,” he concluded that “mere economic expediency does not authorize an employer to displace American workers for foreign workers.” Inside Washington’s Fogo de Chao in 2011. (Photo: Evy Mages/The Washington Post/Getty Images) “It’s really remarkable,” Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at American Progress, said of Kavanaugh’s dissent in the Fogo de Chao case. “There’s no reference to statute, there’s no reference to regulation and there’s no reference even to the memoranda that for decades have guided the government’s decision making around the L-1B visas that were at issue there,” said Jawetz, who previously served as chief counsel on the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. “Instead he kind of makes this MAGA cultural argument.” (Indeed, Breitbart, FAIR and others have praised Kavanaugh’s take on Fogo de Chao as more proof of his alignment with the “America First” agenda.) “To reject the concept that knowledge is acquired through your cultural upbringing and life experiences … is to reject the very concept of diversity as our strength, the very notion that we can stand to learn from people who are different than us and had a different life experience than us,” said Jawetz. “That, to me, is a reflection of a closed mind that I fear more than anything else will infect his ability to make fair and honest judgments about cases addressing immigrants and communities of color more broadly going forward.” Like the Agri Processor case, however, Kavenaugh’s rationale in his Fogo dissent raises concerns about more than his attitude toward immigrants. A protester is removed from the hearing room as Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. (Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP) Diane Butler, a Seattle-based immigration attorney and board member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she couldn’t help but recall the Fogo de Chao dissent when she heard Kavanaugh state firmly during his confirmation hearing this week that he would uphold the law as written. “In that case it seemed to me that he tried to rewrite the law,” said Butler. Not only was Kavanaugh’s claim of a longstanding cultural knowledge bar unsubstantiated — “He was essentially making that up” — but, she said, “he fabricated his argument that the restaurant was using these workers to displace Americans. That evidence did not exist. In fact, he ignored the evidence that the restaurant predominantly hired American chefs and brought” Brazilians over to train them. “His focus was almost entirely on nonexistent evidence that the employer just wanted to hire cheap foreign labor in their U.S. restaurants,” she said. Butler predicts that, based on Kavanaugh’s dissent in that case, if confirmed to the Supreme Court he might be inclined to go beyond the current immigration laws and statutes to enforce Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” executive order. “That is concerning, because it leads to a high level of unpredictability in business immigration,” she said. “The way he tried to sideswipe the law is concerning not only in immigration but other fields as well,” she continued. “We don’t want judges trying to rewrite the law, we want them to do what he said he would do, which is apply the law as written.” | |
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| 09-07-18 05:41pm - 2255 days | #1064 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is the kind of judge we all need if we are found guilty of breaking the law: George Papadopoulos, found guilty of lying to federal investigators, was sentenced to 14 days in prison. He could have been charged with crimes of up to 20 years in prison. The prosecutors argued for a much longer time in prison. But the judge ruled that 14 days in prison was a hard enough sentence. What a warm heart the judge must have. Of course, Papadopoulos is white, which helps. And he has an attractive wife. That also helps. The US criminal justice system shows what a fair and impartial should be. If Trump is ever found guilty of any crimes, he will want this judge at his trial. Justice is served!!!! -------- -------- What does 14 days prison mean to the Papadopoulos puzzle? Luppe B. Luppen 1 hour 37 minutes ago George Papadopoulos with his wife Simona Mangiante Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, with his wife Simona Mangiante, after his sentencing hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington. (Photo: Yuri Gripas/Reuters) WASHINGTON — George Papadopoulos, long considered a key cooperating witness in Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and possible collusion with Donald Trump and his associates, was sentenced today to just 14 days in prison for lying to federal investigators. The two-week sentence falls far short of the possible five years he could have faced, but reflects what the judge called Papadopoulos’s “genuine remorse.” “Just the process of having to go to prison will leave a strong impression on him for the rest of his life,” Judge Randolph Moss said, in imposing the sentence Friday afternoon. The sentence was likely a disappointment for Mueller’s office. Andrew Goldstein, one of Mueller’s prosecutors, argued in court that Papadopoulos didn’t come close to the standard of “substantial assistance,” and he made “at best, begrudging efforts to cooperate” in the investigation. Goldstein called the Papadopoulos case “more serious” than that of Alex van der Zwaan, who was sentenced to 30 days for lying to the FBI. The judge would later point out that van der Zwaan, in contrast to Papadopoulos, had not shown remorse at his sentencing hearing. However, Trump, who had repeatedly called the Mueller probe a “witch hunt,” greeted the verdict as a victory. “14 days for $28 million – $2 MILLION a day, No Collusion, A great day for America!” Trump tweeted following announcement of the verdict. Photo: Susan Walsh/AP The financial numbers are presumably a reference to the costs of the Mueller investigation. Ever since his plea agreement, Papadopoulos has been portrayed as a key cooperating witness in the special counsel’s investigation, yet plea documents show, and have been confirmed by later revelations, that Mueller’s team did not expect much from him. When his plea deal was announced, Papadopoulos appeared to be an important witness for the special counsel’s investigation. Papadopoulos’s plea to a single count of false statements to the FBI was secured under seal in early October of 2017 and unveiled at the end of that month at the same time Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted. Many commentators took the simultaneous revelations as a deliberate contrast presented by the special counsel’s office to other interested parties. On one hand, Manafort and Gates initially both refused to help the investigation (Gates later cooperated), while Papadopoulos seemingly worked hand in glove with the special counsel, pleaded guilty, and got a nice and easy deal — a single count, carrying an estimated sentence of zero to six months, based on federal sentencing guidelines. He would be away from his new wife for a hockey season, at most. Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, is the man who provided the impetus for the counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election in the first place. He had reportedly opened up to an Australian diplomat about the Russians offering him dirt on Hillary Clinton during a tipsy encounter at a wine bar in London in May 2017. The information about that encounter was passed to the United States and that became the Mueller investigation shortly after Jim Comey was fired in the summer of 2017. In one sense, the picture of Papadopoulos as helping the special counsel’s investigation has some truth to it, particularly in contrast to Manafort. By signing his name to his “Statement of the Offense,” Papadopoulos publicly advanced the special counsel’s main investigation significantly. This narrative is the most substantial direct evidence that the Mueller investigation has made public of links and coordination between the Russian state and an individual associated with Trump’s campaign, and it is closely related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Papadopoulos admitted under oath that he lied to the FBI about his dealings with a shady London-based professor (Joseph Mifsud) who took great interest in Papadopoulos only after learning he was a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos admitted Mifsud introduced him to a Russian woman whom Mifsud represented (falsely) was Vladimir Putin’s niece and to an individual in Moscow with connections to the Russian foreign ministry, both of whom assiduously sought to set up meetings between the Russian government and the candidate or the campaign through Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos admitted Mifsud later told him that, based on Mifsud’s conversations with high-level Russian government officials, the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, including “thousands of emails.” These admissions are powerful public evidence establishing the Mueller investigation’s credibility. Since his guilty plea became public, Trump, the White House, and their Republican allies have sought to minimize Papadopoulos’s role in the campaign. Given how central Papadopoulos’s evidence appears to be to Mueller’s investigation, it’s reasonable to assume that prosecutors valued him as an important witness and sought to secure his cooperation when he pleaded guilty. However, from the first revelation of his involvement with the investigation, there were clues in his unusual plea agreement that showed this was not the case. Four of the five defendants who have pleaded guilty so far, including Papadopoulos, have plea agreements that mention cooperation. (Alexander van der Zwaan, the well-connected London lawyer who admitted to lying and withholding evidence from the government in their investigation of Manafort and Gates, is the only one who doesn’t.) In all but Papadopoulos’s case, these men agreed to cooperate with the government and their plea agreements go into great detail about the scope of their expected cooperation; for instance, the other cooperators agree that they’ll participate in “undercover activities” or “covert law enforcement activities” as well as attending debriefings and producing documents. In return for these binding promises, the government agreed to not only inform the judge at sentencing about each defendant’s cooperation, but if it was determined that they had “provided substantial assistance in the prosecution of another person who has committed an offense,” then the government would file a formal motion under the sentencing guidelines allowing the defendant to argue for a reduced sentence. The cooperation provision of Papadopoulos’s agreement is different in a telling way. Papadopoulos never expressly agrees to cooperate, and all the detailed provisions about what his cooperation might entail, such as undercover activities, are not included; moreover, the government does not agree to make the formal motion allowing for a reduced sentence if Papadopoulos provides substantial assistance to the investigation. In lieu of the standard provisions, the prosecutors agree to “bring to the court’s attention at sentencing the defendant’s efforts to cooperate,” and reserve the right to delay sentencing until Papadopoulos’s “efforts to cooperate have been completed.” These limited terms are a subtle signal that, even at the time when Papadopoulos’s plea agreement was being negotiated, Mueller’s team did not expect much from him. Prosecutors did not secure his promise to cooperate and they did not promise him the standard reward under the sentencing guidelines for any cooperation he gave voluntarily. Although few observers made much of it at the time, the limited cooperation provisions imply that the relationship between Mueller’s team and Papadopoulos had soured by the time the plea agreement was signed, and the government was not prepared to offer him anything concrete for whatever he might in the future decide to tell them. In a sentencing memorandum filed in mid-August, the special counsel’s prosecution team confirmed that implication and explained all that had gone wrong between them and Papadopoulos. (Papadopoulos’s reply memorandum can be found here.) First, Mueller’s prosecutors wrote, his initial lies to investigators at his FBI interview in January 2017 “caused damage to the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.” In minute detail, the prosecutors describe how Papadopoulos voluntarily went into an FBI office in Chicago and lied repeatedly over the course of two hours to obfuscate the truth of his interactions with Mifsud and the Russians. Papadopoulos lied, they wrote, “in order to conceal his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries during the campaign … early in the investigation, when key investigative decisions, including who to interview and when, were being made.” | |
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| 09-07-18 05:43pm - 2255 days | #1065 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
CONTINUED: In a remarkable footnote rebutting claims Papadopoulos’s wife has made in several media interviews, Mueller’s team provided a blow by blow account of how they learned that Mifsud, whom they refer to as “the Professor,” had told Papadopoulos that the Russians had Clinton-related emails and how Papadopoulos, whom they refer to as “the defendant,” resisted their inquiries all the way and misled them about the sequence of events. Papadopoulos, for example, falsely claimed he met Mifsud before he worked on the Trump campaign. In this May photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, leaves the Federal District Court after a hearing, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) After the January 2017 interview, Papadopoulos retained an attorney and returned for a second FBI interview in February, but even then he did not correct the record, Mueller’s prosecutors point out. Instead, around that time, he deleted his Facebook account, which contained communications from Mifsud. Papadopoulos’s lies had a material impact, the prosecutors wrote, because they “substantially hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question [Mifsud] when the FBI located him in Washington, D.C. approximately two weeks after [Papadopoulos’s] January 27, 2017 interview.” Mifsud left the United States on February 11, 2017 and has not come back, according to the memorandum. It’s unclear what the FBI was able to learn from him before he departed. Second, Papadopoulos failed to be helpful to the special counsel’s office even after they arrested him and confronted him with his false statements in late July 2017. At that time, he agreed to four days of meetings to discuss cooperation in preparation for a potential plea deal over four days in August and September 2017. These sessions turned into a disaster. Papadopoulos was recalcitrant and provided information “only after the government confronted him with his own emails, text messages, internet search history, and other information it had obtained via search warrants and subpoenas,” Mueller’s team wrote. The prosecutors’ frustration with Papadopoulos’s behavior explains the stunted cooperation deal included in Papadopoulos’s plea agreement, but it raises questions about Papadopoulos’s plea deal itself. Why was a man who had caused material damage to the investigation and offered no “substantial assistance,” by prosecutors’ own description, allowed to plead guilty to only the least serious charge indicated in his Statement of the Offense? Why didn’t Mueller’s team throw the book at him? Papadopoulos admits to repeatedly lying to the FBI about three discrete subjects, yet he was only charged with one count of that crime. He also admits to destroying evidence by deleting his Facebook account. Destruction of evidence is a more serious offense than false statements; it carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years, compared to 5 years for deceiving the FBI. However, Papadopoulos was not required to plead guilty to destruction of evidence. When Papadopoulos’s seemingly lenient plea was first announced, explanations of it tended to focus on his potential value to future prosecutions as a cooperator; that value doesn’t appear to exist. One potential answer is that Papadopoulos’s plea was efficient. It allowed prosecutors to conserve resources and move on, rather than facing the expense and difficulties of a trial for a low-level player. Another potential answer is that prosecutors, managing an unusual investigation in the face of an adversarial White House, chose to strategically limit the amount of information disclosed about Papadopoulos’s involvement. | |
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| 09-07-18 05:57pm - 2255 days | #1066 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Lock him up. Lock him up. Put Brett Kavanaugh in jail, where he belongs, for perjury. Then ask if Kavanaugh is qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. But under the Trump administration, that might be positive thing: Only Crooks are fit to serve the Trump government. ---------- ---------- Sen. Patrick Leahy Sets ‘Memogate’ Trap for Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Censored emails show that Judge Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath about receiving stolen Democrat memos in 2003, Leahy says. If true, the consequences could be explosive. Jay Michaelson 09.06.18 4:56 AM ET Zach Gibson/Getty In a surprise move, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) challenged Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, over “Memogate,” an obscure 2003 scandal that could engulf Kavanaugh’s nomination, during Wednesday’s marathon confirmation hearing. The scandal, largely forgotten today, involved two Republican congressional staffers stealing confidential memoranda from Senate Judiciary Committee computers and turning them over to GOP interest groups. It remains unknown whether the White House—where Kavanaugh was deputy White House counsel—also received the memos. In his 2006 confirmation hearing, and again this week, Kavanaugh swore that he did not. But on Wednesday, Leahy suggested that the Senate Judiciary Committee has in its possession six emails that directly contradict Kavanaugh’s sworn testimony—which would mean he twice committed perjury. If true, that would surely imperil the Kavanaugh nomination, which has been coasting through the Senate Judiciary Committee despite fierce (and impotent) Democratic opposition. It’s one thing for Democrats to complain about improper vetting procedures—quite another if the nominee is caught blatantly lying under oath. Committee Chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has promised to release the censored emails Thursday. Memogate, as it was called at the time, involved the judicial confirmation process of Judge Priscilla Owen in 2003. Democrats objected that her views were outside the judicial mainstream, and successfully stalled the nomination until it was pushed through two years later as part of a bipartisan compromise. As the White House official responsible for judicial nominations, Kavanaugh was at the center of that battle, as he affirmed in his testimony. On Nov. 14, 2003, The Wall Street Journal published documents it described as Democratic “staff strategy memos.” An investigation by the senate sergeant at arms, published on March 4, 2004, revealed that a clerk for the committee, Jason Lundell, had accessed Democratic files from the committee’s server and provided them to Manuel Miranda, who had been a fellow clerk on the committee from 2001-03, but in 2003 was an aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Files of aides to Sens. Ted Kennedy, Richard Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden, Russ Feingold, and, perhaps most important, Leahy himself, had been leaked first to Miranda and then to conservative advocacy groups and the press. (Miranda at first protested his innocence, then resigned and confessed, but said, among other things, “My parents never taught me not to read other people’s mail. They always read my mail.” The Bush administration chose not to prosecute him, and he went on to a career as a Republican activist, most notably in the opposition to the nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.) In a series of leading questions, Sen. Leahy attempted to trap Judge Kavanaugh into explicitly denying that he ever saw the memos—a trap Kavanaugh, whose job used to include prepping judicial nominees for adversarial hearings, deftly avoided. First, Leahy implied that the committee also possessed evidence of an off-site meeting (“maybe at a bar or restaurant”) between Kavanaugh and Miranda, asking Kavanaugh if he recalled ever having such a meeting. “I can’t deny that,” Kavanaugh replied. Next, Leahy pressed and asked if there were such a meeting, did Miranda “ever hand you material separately from what would be emailed back and forth?” “I don’t know the answer to that, Senator,” said Kavanaugh. Finally, Kavanaugh asked Leahy what specific evidence he was referring to, and Leahy replied, “we’d have to ask the chairman what he has in the confidential material.” A visibly angry Sen. Grassley replied that 80 percent of the material had been released to the public. Finally, Leahy laid his cards out on the table. “I am concerned,” he said, “because there is evidence that Mr. Miranda provided you with materials that were stolen from me. And that would contradict your prior testimony. It is also clear from public emails—and I’m refraining from going into non-public ones—that you had reason to believe materials were obtained inappropriately at the time.” Then, turning to Sen. Grassley, he said, “Mr. Chairman, there are at least six documents that you consider committee confidential that are directly related to this, [in addition to] three documents that are already public. These other six contain no personal information. No presidential-act-restricted material. There is simply no reason they won’t be made public.” The game of chess, between a 40-year veteran of the Senate and an intelligent nominee whose job used to be coaching judicial nominees, was riveting to watch. But is there any substance behind it? We’ll have to wait for the release of the documents. Perhaps Sen. Leahy is bluffing—or perhaps the once-certain Kavanaugh nomination is now in jeopardy. If Kavanaugh is shown to have received the memos, he will have to fall back on his claim that there was nothing untoward about them and they escaped his notice (and memory). “It would have not have been unusual,” Kavanaugh said, for aides to say “the Leahy people are looking into this and the Hatch people are looking into that.’” But one of the seven aides whose memos were hacked, who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, said that claim was absurd. “Any Republican would know that they’re not supposed to be seeing internal Democratic staff memos,” the aide said. At the very least, the mere fact that the documents have been withheld lends credence to one of the Democrats’ primary objections to the Kavanaugh nomination: that with more than 100,000 pages of his records being concealed by the White House, and many more released to the committee but not to the public, it is impossible to conduct a thorough evaluation of Judge Kavanaugh’s candidacy. Thus far, the Judiciary Committee has only received about 7 percent of the documents from Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush administration (457,000 documents), and Sen. Grassley has marked 189,000 of them as confidential. Republicans were the ones chanting “But Her Emails” only two years ago, but Democrats have now learned the tune. Jay Michaelson @jaymichaelson | |
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| 09-07-18 07:02pm - 2255 days | #1067 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Brett Kavanaugh, man of his word, who will only interpret the law by precedent. Except that he referred to birth control as "Abortion-Inducing Drugs" during his confirmation hearings. Kind of letting loose lips sink ships: letting your words show what you are thinking, instead of smooth-talking patter that hides your real thoughts and lets you lie convincingly. Roe vs Wade is safe by precedent of the Supreme Court. And Kavanaugh pledges he will follow precendent. Except, if he is confirmed to the Supreme Court, then he will be free to set his own precedents. Roe vs Wade. Historical error. Abortions are murder. As a right-thinking Christian, Kavanaugh will stand firmly for the rights of unborn fetuses, and fight fearlessly for women to be charged as criminals if they want an abortion--unless they were raped by a scummy-dog Mexican, in which case the baby can be given to an adoption agency. Kavanaugh, fighting for the White Moral Majority and Moral Christians in the United States of America. ---------------- ---------------- Politics Brett Kavanaugh Referred to Birth Control as 'Abortion-Inducing Drugs' During Confirmation Hearings Glamour Julyssa Lopez,Glamour 10 hours ago The simple phrase could signal where the Supreme Court nominee stands on Roe vs Wade. On the third day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Democratic senators continued their probe to get the conservative judge's stance on women's reproductive rights—and a clue in one of his answers may say it all. In an exchange with Senator Ted Cruz (D-Tex.), Kavanaugh referred to birth control as "abortion-inducing drugs," a term many women's rights advocates say is dog-whistle politics and a clear nod to pro-lifers who oppose abortion. Kavanaugh's calculated answer came when Cruz asked the judge about his dissent in the case Priests for Life v. the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which involved an Affordable Care Act mandate that required employers to cover contraception for workers. Kavanaugh explained why he ultimately sided with the plaintiffs, who are an anti-abortion Catholic group. “The question was first, was this a substantial burden on their religious exercise? And it seemed to me, quite clearly, it was,” Kavanaugh said. “They said filling out the form would make them complicit in the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objected to.” For pro-choice supporters, the phrase "abortion-inducing drugs" is an alarm bell. Organizations such as the Center for Reproductive Rights pointed out that the verbiage is what many anti-abortion groups use to talk about contraception. "Saying 'abortion-inducing drugs' to describe contraception is straight out of the anti-choice, anti-science phrase book used to restrict women’s access to essential health care," the Center for Reproductive Rights wrote on Twitter. The wording is also just plain wrong. Contraception, which includes birth control and Plan B, does not cause abortions, despite the assertion of some organizations. Using contraceptive methods like birth control and IUDs can prevent fertilization from occurring, but it does not end existing pregnancies. But despite the facts, the concepts are often conflated among anti-abortion groups. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) reminded the public of the misconception by tweeting, "Newsflash, Brett Kavanaugh: Contraception is NOT abortion. Anyone who says so is peddling extremist ideology—not science—and has no business sitting on the Supreme Court." Kavanaugh's stance on reproductive rights has been questioned by many pro-choice supporters since President Donald Trump announced his nomination. Although Kavanaugh has stated he will abide by precedent set in Roe v. Wade, his record suggests anti-choice leanings. In addition to his defense in Priests for Life v. the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kavanaugh also dissented in Garza v. Hargan and argued that an undocumented minor in U.S. detention could not receive an abortion. More evidence mounted late Wednesday, when leaked emails showed that while serving as a lawyer in the Bush administration, Kavanaugh had offered advice about changing a description that said Roe v. Wade was "the settled law of the land." On Thursday Kavanaugh was also grilled by Senator Kamala Harris (D–Calif.), who asked him about the reproductive freedom of men compared with women. Kavanaugh stumbled while answering some of the questions—marking just another example of why Kavanaugh may be a threat to Roe v. Wade and other important principles of women's rights. | |
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| 09-08-18 06:48am - 2255 days | #1068 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Stormy Daniels, Hero of the Year. Fighting to clear her good name, she shames Neo-Nazi Scumbag Donald Trump and his sleazoid fixer lawyer Michael Cohen for harassment and degradation. What porn star would stand up to the President of the United States? Stormy Daniels, that's who. Because Trump is a piece of shit who degrades the office of President of the United States. And Michael Cohen is no better: Cohen enabled Trump to fuck people over. --------- --------- Michael Cohen seeks to tear up Stormy Daniels deal, get hush money back HuffPost US Mary Papenfuss Sep 8th 2018 6:54AM President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen is hoping to scuttle a nondisclosure agreement with adult film star Stormy Daniels and get his money back. Cohen and his shell company, Essential Consultants, are seeking to avoid further litigation over the deal, which Cohen said was negotiated on Trump’s behalf so Daniels wouldn’t disclose their alleged affair during the presidential election, CNN was the first to report. But Daniel’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, blasted the move as part of a strategy to keep Trump and Cohen from being disposed in the case and possibly be forced to reveal other stealth payments to quiet other damaging information. “What they’re trying to do is they don’t want me to get a chance to depose Michael Cohen and Donald Trump,” Avenatti said on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” Friday night. He called it a “Hail Mary to try and avoid that, that’s my first guess.” A lawyer for Cohen stated in a legal status report filed Friday in Los Angeles federal court that his client “seeks the rescission of the Confidential Settlement Agreement dated October 28, 2016,” The Washington Post reported. The filing included Cohen’s promise not to sue Daniels for any contract breach. He also reserved the right to seek the return of the money. Attorney Brent Blakely said in statement to CNN that the filing “effectively put an end to the lawsuits,” adding that the “rescission ... will result in Ms. Clifford returning to Essential Consultants the $130,000 she received in consideration, as required by California law.” Daniels had sued for defamation and to void the contract. Cohen had sued Daniels for $20 million for allegedly breaching the contract, NBC reported. Avenatti tweeted that he and his client will “never” settle their pending cases against Cohen and his company “absent full disclosure.” He accused Cohen of still trying to protect Trump. He also told The Washington Post that the offer is “going nowhere” because Trump “hasn’t offered anything. He would have to agree for the NDA to be void,” he claimed. Let me be clear - my client and I will never settle the cases absent full disclosure and accountability. We are committed to the truth. And we are committed to delivering it to the American people. #Basta — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 8, 2018 Michael Cohen is back to playing games and trying to protect Donald Trump. He is now pulling a legal stunt to try and “fix it” so that we can’t depose Trump and present evidence to the American people about what happened. He is not a hero nor a patriot. He deserves what he gets. — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 8, 2018 Both sides are scheduled to be in a Los Angeles court Monday for a conference on the case. Cohen pleaded guilty last month to eight felonies, including illegally interfering in the 2016 election. He said he followed Trump’s orders to arrange hush-money payments before the 2016 election to quiet two women about their relationship with Trump. Supporters for Daniels turned out for her on Friday before an appearance at a “gentlemen’s club” in Salisbury, Massachusetts. “She’s an unlikely hero, but a super hero to me” for speaking out, said one fan. Check out the video above. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-08-18 01:44pm - 2254 days | #1069 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Our President, the greatest President who ever was, the greatest President who ever will be, is being attacked by a fake letter. Only because the President is a man of the warmest heart, and the forgiveness of Christ, does the President allow Bob Woodward to stay out of prison. The President could sent his Kill Squad to execute Bob Woodward. That would eliminate one dangerous member of the Fake News. But the President is not only forgiving, but also kind: he allows his enemies to attack him, while turning his other cheek. God save Trump, the leader of the Moral Majority for White Christians everywhere. ------- ------- Politics CNN Publishes Letter Reportedly Stolen From President Trump's Desk Natasha Bach Natasha Bach Fri, Sep 7 6:32 AM PDT As President Trump continues to try to discredit Bob Woodward’s new book, CNN is taking a different approach. On Thursday, the broadcaster published a letter that was reportedly stolen from Trump’s desk last September. CNN reports that they received an advance copy of Woodward’s book, which included a reproduction of the letter. Earlier excerpts of the book suggested that top Trump administration officials have actively sought to prevent the president from making decisions that could hurt the country. According to the network, Woodward writes that in one such instance then-National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn stole a letter from Trump’s desk that would have led to the termination of the free trade agreement between the U.S. and South Korea. The letter, which CNN printed in full, is addressed to the South Korean president and trade minister. It reads: The United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (Agreement), in its current form, is not in the overall bests interests of the United States Economy. Thus, in accordance with Article 24.5 of the Agreement, the United States hereby provide notice that it wishes to terminate the Agreement. Woodward wrote in his book that Cohn was “appalled” that Trump might sign the letter, and reportedly said, “I stole it off his desk. I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.” Cohn and other staffers reportedly worried that ending the trade agreement could jeopardize a program that is used to detect North Korean missile launches. For his part, Trump has continued to refute the content of the book. He took to Twitter on Friday morning, writing, “The Woodward book is a scam. I don’t talk the way I am quoted. If I did I would not have been elected President. These quotes were made up. The author uses every trick in the book to demean and belittle. I wish the people could see the real facts – and our country is doing GREAT!” Associated Press | |
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| 09-08-18 01:54pm - 2254 days | #1070 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Friends of Gary Cohn are on a suicide watch to prevent Gary Cohn from committing suicide. Gary Cohn deeply depressed after learning that President Trump might never speak to him again. Is life worth living if Trump drops one of his dearest friends and allies? Possibly Gary Cohn can still live if he reads Trump's tweets on a daily basis. ---------- ---------- Bloomberg Trump Says If Gary Cohn Stole Papers, He’ll Never Speak to Him Again By Shannon Pettypiece President Donald Trump said he would never speak again to Gary Cohn if the former top White House adviser stole paperwork from his desk. “If he did that, I would never speak to him again, I would never speak to him again,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday. A new book on the Trump presidency by journalist Bob Woodward includes details of how then-economic adviser Cohn stopped the president from ordering an exit from Nafta and a trade deal with South Korea. Trump told reporters Friday he thinks the account is a “phony story.” The former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive resigned as head of Trump’s National Economic Council earlier this year after failing to block new tariffs on steel and aluminum. But according to Woodward, he quietly saved the South Korea-U.S. trade agreement, known as Korus, when in 2017 he removed a “letter off Trump’s desk” that the president planned to sign that would have ordered a U.S. withdrawal. Cohn told a colleague that he stole the letter to protect national security, the Washington Post reported citing a copy of the book it obtained in advance of its public release, which is scheduled for Tuesday. He also did something similar in the spring of 2017 when Trump was eager to pull out of Nafta. According to the book, then-Staff Secretary Rob Porter advised Cohn that Trump had ordered him to draft paperwork withdrawing from Nafta. Cohn told Porter, according to Woodward: “I can stop this. I’ll just take the paper off his desk.” — With assistance by Shawn Donnan | |
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| 09-08-18 01:59pm - 2254 days | #1071 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Actually, the news that Gary Cohn is on a death watch is great news for Donald Trump. Trump can send his secret Death Squad to eliminate Gary Cohn, and then shed tears at his funeral while crying what a wonderful friend and ally Gary Cohn was, and that Cohn's death was the direct result of slimeball Democrat attacks on his dear friend. Trump is a tactical genius, and he must put his plan into operation at once, before the opposition Democrats come up with a counter-attack on the Trump forces. God save the President, the glorious leader of a free, White democracy. | |
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| 09-08-18 02:48pm - 2254 days | #1072 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump's friends. The are friends of Trump for a reason: they have lots of money. But that doesn't mean they don't want even more money. Phillip Frost is charged in stock fraud. Will President Trump give Frost a pardon: stay tuned for developments. -------- -------- Billionaire Phillip Frost charged in $27 million fraud plot NBC News Phil McCausland Sep 8th 2018 1:43PM Miami billionaire Phillip Frost is one of 10 people the Securities and Exchange Commission charged on Friday, accused of participating in a fraud plot that generated more than $27 million in what the SEC is calling a series of "classic pump-and-dump schemes." The SEC alleges that from 2013 to 2018, Frost — who founded pharmaceutical company OPKO Health and is a primary benefactor of the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami — and nine other investors manipulated three companies' stock share prices for their own gain. The SEC did not share the names of the three companies. The investors would promote the companies without disclosing that they owned a stake, wait for their stock prices to rise and then sell their shares. Retail investors, meanwhile, "were left holding virtually worthless stock," according to the SEC statement. "[The group charged] engaged in brazen market manipulation that advanced their financial interests while fleecing innocent investors and undermining the integrity of our securities markets," said Sanjay Wadhwa, senior associate director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. "They failed to appreciate, however, the SEC's resolve to relentlessly pursue and punish participants in microcap fraud schemes." OPKO Health and Frost are both named in the suit, though the SEC only believes Frost participated in two of the three schemes and earned approximately $1.1 million. The longtime health care investor is believed to have a net worth of $2.6 billion, according to Forbes. Frost's pharmaceutical company said in a statement that the SEC did not notify them of their plan to file suit and claimed the complaint contained "serious factual inaccuracies." "Had the SEC followed its own standard procedures, OPKO and Dr. Frost would gladly have provided information that would have answered a number of the SEC's apparent questions, and filing of this lawsuit against them could have been avoided," the company said. "OPKO and Dr. Frost have always prided themselves on adhering to the highest standards of financial disclosure, and they are confident that once a proper investigation is completed and the facts of the case have been fully disclosed, the matter will be resolved favorably for them." The scheme was allegedly led by South Florida businessman Barry Honig, one of the largest shareholders in Riot Blockchain Inc., a cryptocurrency company that saw its stock dovetail by 24.3 percent after the news broke. Riot Blockchain, in which Honig is heavily invested, was subpoenaed in April as part of a formal SEC investigation, CNBC reported earlier this year. "Honig was the primary strategist, calling upon other Defendants to buy or sell stock, arrange for the issuance of shares, negotiate transactions, or engage in promotional activity," the SEC complaint said. Honig, who allegedly made more than $3.4 million via the scheme, could not be reached for comment. | |
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| 09-09-18 11:58am - 2253 days | #1073 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Words of wisdom from one of the sons of the Greatest President Who Ever Was: "Hatred makes people blind to facts." These are words that everyone should take into their hearts. They show that President Trump is not only the Greatest President we've ever had, but the father of a brave and loyal son who will almost certainly become President and make his father even prouder of the Trump legacy. Hail Donald Trump, leader of the Moral Majority of White Americans who will lead the Neo-Nazis to everlasting glory. ----- ------ Politics Eric Trump's Tweet About Hatred Is Just Too Ironic For Folks Online HuffPost Lee Moran,HuffPost Sat, Sep 8 12:18 AM Eric Trump got himself into yet another Twitter pickle on Friday, when he mused that “hatred makes people blind to facts.” Tweeters were quick to note the ironic nature of President Donald Trump’s son’s post and reacted in much the same way as they did to his previous tweets about “snakes” and “disloyal people.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-09-18 09:09pm - 2253 days | #1074 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Russia and China are having large military exercises together. But Trump wants to cancel US exercises with South Korea because they are a provocation to North Korea. Go figure. Is Trump a Russian agent, working to undermine US influence in Asia? Or just a military moron, who doesn't understand the power of the military (he avoided the Vietnam War by successive draft deferments). ----- ----- Russia and China’s Growing Military Interaction; Surprised? The National Interest Peter Zwack,The National Interest 3 hours ago Peter Zwack Security, Eurasia Why does Russia place such emphasis and media attention on incredibly large military exercises with China? Russia and China’s Growing Military Interaction; Surprised? The drums are already rolling for the upcoming Russian “Vostok” (east) wargames commencing on September 11. With its focal point in the Trans-Baikal region of eastern Siberia adjoining Chinese Manchuria and Mongolia, this is a nationwide Russian military and societal event. Touted by Russian minister of defense Sergei Shoigu as “unprecedented in scale, both in terms of area of operations and numbers of military command structure, troops, and forces involved,” Russian state press is declaring that up to three hundred thousand troops and one thousand aircraft will be involved, with the majority from the Eastern and Central Military Districts. This would be even larger than the near-legendary Zapad-81 maneuvers held in the western USSR during the depths of the Cold War. Announcements about this type of event are not new to me. I’ve been to several of them. In July 2014, just before I departed Moscow as the U.S. defense attaché to Russia, news began to buzz concerning the upcoming Vostok 2014 wargames in the Far East. It was a tense time. Heralding new gray zone applications of so-called hybrid war, Ukraine’s Crimea had just been illegally annexed by Russia and battles raged between unattributed Russian regulars and beleaguered Ukrainian defenders across eastern Ukraine. At that time the upcoming Asian exercise was also billed as Russia’s largest military exercise since Soviet times, though its declared numbers turned out lower than proclaimed. One important wrinkle this year is that reportedly up to 3,200 Chinese personal with ninety vehicles, including tanks and thirty fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, will participate. Most are coming from China’s Northern Command. This will be the first time the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will take part in this formerly purely Russian quadrennial Asia-oriented exercise. The bulk of participating Chinese personal have already transited from Manchuria into Russia, escorted by Russian military police to the Tsugol training range near Chita. The Mongolians have also sent a small contingent. “From such it’s quite evident that the trajectory of Chinese-Russian relations have certainly improved since I encountered in 1997 a former Soviet T-54 tank gunner in Spassk, an old garrison town north of Vladivostok located on the eastern shore of sizable Lake Khanka. Besotted with vodka drunk from coffee cups in a gritty railway bar, the gnarled veteran spoke of the fierce Ussuri River border clashes in 1969 near Khabarovsk where he claimed his tank destroyed several Chinese vehicles – three men in his company also died. Other citizens in a familiar refrain complained of a major cross-border influx of Chinese traders and settlers, illegal Chinese logging, illicit fishing in Lake Khanka’s fresh waters where both nations share a common aquatic border, and poaching of the region’s revered Siberian Tigers. Despite local concerns of this nature, this was a period of improving diplomatic relations between the two nations, with China on a slow upward trajectory after the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and Boris Yeltsin’s diminished Russia still struggling to regain its footing after the USSR’s break-up in 1991.” It is important to note that Russia has no territorial claims in Asia. Rather, she is a status quo power in the Far East. With substantially fewer conventional forces along the Sino-Russian border than the Cold War, she is essentially in a strategic defensive posture. Her nuclear deterrent is her regional guarantor while a sophisticated anti-access, aerial denial network centered on the nuclear ballistic missile submarine bastion in and around the Sea of Okhotsk makes attacking the overall region a thorny proposition. Russia’s burgeoning “strategic partner” Beijing, however, is distinctly revisionist in its behavior in Asia and the Pacific, much as Russia aggressively conducts its business in the West. A key generational question is how Russia manages the rising, resource-hungry hegemon that is looming China—one that has far-reaching aspirations throughout Asia, including its announced Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that runs in part though former Soviet Central Asian regions. China, the only “great power” with a seemingly long-term national vision, has also declared its interest in a Polar Silk Road as well. The Russia-China military relationship continues to evolve and is a logical progression following deepening political and economic ties. Pragmaticallym the Amur-Ussuri territorial disputes were diplomatically resolved in 2004–5, enabling enhanced military cooperation though long-term generational issues remain. While Chinese-Russian military activities have in the past been mostly symbolic and representational, they appear increasingly interactive. The PLA, not blooded since its brusque 1979 defeat by Vietnam, likely hopes to learn from Russia’s newly gained fighting expertise derived since 2014 in eastern Ukraine and Syria. What is key to determine is if their interaction evolves more ominously into interoperability exercises where substantial and varied forces can operate in tandem and jointly in coordinated operations. Dating back to 2005, Russia and China have exercised modest forces together in a mostly “counterterrorist” role in Central Asia and in Russia as part of the Chinese-driven Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Notably, SCO Exercise Peace Mission 2018, involving China, Russia and six other nations, including newly added India and Pakistan, is currently underway in Chelyabinsk (just east of the Ural Mountains). Bilaterally, they have participated in several small scale naval exercises in the Baltics (2017), South China Sea (2016) and eastern Mediterranean (2015), where they have been mostly “show the flag” operations designed more to convey sharp signals abroad and show partner support. Presaging Vostok-18, Russian air transport and elite airborne units conducted a snap readiness exercise in August in likely preparation of deployment east for the exercise. Additionally, a widely publicized Russian naval exercise in the Mediterranean to support Syria operations will be ongoing with twenty-five vessels of various sizes and likely will be included in the overall Vostok-18 personnel count. It is important to understand that the Russians have a declared four-year cycle with long-planned exercises rotating annually between four Military Districts: Zapad (Western), Vostok (Eastern), Kavkaz (Southern) and Tsentr (Center). They are widely advertised, command major media attention domestically and abroad, and numerous international military attaches are invited as observers as I was to Kavkaz (Black Sea region) in 2012 and Zapad (Kaliningrad) in 2013. These are much different than the potentially more dangerous and destabilizing unannounced “snap” readiness exercise that have proliferated in recent years. The newly established Northern Fleet Military District focused on Russia’s “High North” also sorties assets during these exercises. The ramp-up for these major “Cecil B. DeMille” type extravaganzas are widely choreographed and involve much more than just conducting maneuvers and a big concluding firepower demonstration. They are in fact, major Russian national endeavors involving many thousands of civilians and support personnel, such as railway troops that figure into the exercise’s overall numbers. They include marshalling and moving forces and supplies over Russia’s vast railway, air and immature road networks, mobilizing reserves, organizing logistics including medical facilities, laying tactical fuel pipelines, sortieing ships and even exercising nuclear command and control as occurred in last year’s Zapad 2018. Quarterbacking the effort will be senior leaders and general staff operating within Moscow’s new National Military Command Center. Amidst heavy media coverage, President Vladimir Putin will also assuredly visit the exercise. In sum, these are society-wide efforts in which the full civil-military go-to-war apparatus of the Russian state is exercised. This does not mean Russia wants war, but is preparing for such in a way that is difficult for our more liberal-democratic societies to comprehend. Why does Russia place such emphasis and media attention on these large set-piece exercises? Why this expensive, resource burning annual effort that unnerves Russia’s neighbors while both motivating and unsettling Russian citizenry? | |
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| 09-09-18 09:11pm - 2253 days | #1075 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
CONTINUED: One way to tackle this dichotomy is to go back to fundamentals regarding a Russia that lives through a prism of real, perceived . . . and contrived . . . existential threats. When wondering what drives the Russians to their seemingly counterintuitive and even self-defeating xenophobic behaviors, we must remember to review their geography, history and demography from which flow the nature of their regime and resultant social system and economy. Today’s resource-rich Russia, with its relatively small, western-weighted population, is set within a gigantic eleven-time zone Eurasian landmass that was mostly cut from the hide of nations and civilizations by former Czarist and Soviet rulers over the past five hundred years or so. As such, Russia has immensely long terrestrial borders . . . think of them as exposed flanks . . . with the melting Arctic widening into a northern flank as well. Its approximately 145 million citizens are about 40 percent of the population of the United States (320 million), one-third of the European Union (500 million) and about one-ninth of China (1.3 billion). China’s ground border with Russia alone runs over 2,300 miles, and while not an issue today, much of Moscow’s Far East was annexed from a weak Qing dynasty in the mid-1800s. This demographic imbalance between Russia and China is starkly apparent in the Russian Far East and Siberia, and as domestic Chinese natural resources inexorably diminish could be a major factor in the years ahead. Again, to remind, Russia—in part due to its own imperial and Soviet expansion—has throughout its millennia of history been at war along its borders with massive loss of life. She barely survived several bouts of near annihilation including the Mongols from which some Russians organically still retain a visceral phobia of the East. Bookending this medieval horror, within the lifetime of today’s older grandparents, came the merciless Nazis from the West, from whom a staggering twenty million to twenty-six million Soviets perished. These factors clearly play in how the Russian people view external threats and how the regime leverages these perceptions to help mobilize the population. They should not, however, be used, or accepted as a pretext for aggressive revisionist actions. Challenges regarding its smaller population and sanctions hobbled finances mean that Russia is hard-pressed to field in peace-time a one-million active duty military force. Additionally, over 30 percent of its personnel consist of difficult to manage one-year conscripts. This main force competes with robust security services and an approximately 250,000-strong National Guard. While a considerable force, Russia’s vastness, and widespread military commitments in places like Syria, Eastern Ukraine, Transnistria, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan rapidly diffuse it’s standing force, requiring major mobilization and training exercises such as this year’s Vostok-18 that will entail rapid shunting of forces across Russia’s colossal Eurasian landmass. This is a major reason Russia regularly drills as it does for potential war in a nationwide effort and why so much emphasis is put on territorial mobilization and defense. All these factors reveal why it was absolute prudent, transactional foreign policy for China and Russia to resolve the border disputes that plagued their relations. While vulnerable to potential future problems including an increasing resource imbalance especially with oil and natural gas, both nations have bigger fish to fry, whether Russia’s issues to the west and south, and in China’s case, in the southeast Pacific, and with India to a lesser extent. Both needed calm borders and a more insulated trading relationship such as their massive $400 billion natural gas deal signed in 2014. Making increased military interaction more attractive is also the shared perception that the United States and its allies are squarely blocking their more autocratic aspirations and directly threatening their regimes. Neither have major allies or are part of a well-organized security alliance as is NATO. They are loath about being internationally isolated or contained, which explains why both, even while pursuing different agenda, are usually lockstep with each other on major security issues in the UN and other international fora. Therefore, U.S. and allied policy regarding both Russia and China should continue to be strong and predictable focused on the specific issues that both challenge and benefit relations. Allies must be firmly defended and partners supported. Legal international boundaries and protocols must be respected and if need be enforced. What we should not do, however, is default toward treating both nuclear-tipped Russia and China as a conjoined threat thereby creating a future potential “self-fulfilling prophecy” where they could—especially if they perceive being isolated—temporally ally in some type of powerful, transactional pact. We should watch and learn from these military exercises, assure allies and partners, but not overreact to their actions and rhetoric nor appear to try to drive a wedge between them. The wedges are already there, those of the vast regions history, geography demography and resources which will inevitably play out in the generations ahead. Brig. Gen. (retired) Peter Zwack writes from the Institute for National Security Studies within the National Defense University. He served as the United States Senior Defense Official and Attaché to Russia during contentious 2012-2014. Dating back to 1997, 2000 and 2012 he has traveled extensively throughout Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. These are his personal views and perspectives. | |
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| 09-10-18 10:52am - 2252 days | #1076 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Lock him up. Lock him up (chanted alongside the Lord's prayer). Trump needs to be in prison, where he can reflect on the evil deeds he's done. And maybe to find forgiveness for suing Stormy Daniels. Brett Kavanaugh argues that a sitting President should be shielded from all criminal actions while in office. So why is Donald Trump spending so much time on the Stormy Daniels suit? Shouldn't a President be working on national matters of importance? Or maybe Trump has fond memories of the time he spent with Daniels, and wants to keep those times out of the public eye, because President Trump is a private man, and does not want to be interviewed on his sex life: Remember, Brett Kavanaugh wanted President Clinton to be forced to testify about all the details of his sex life with Monica Lewinsky, and I do mean all the salacious details. And that was while Clinton was president. You have to admire those wily Republican lawyers, who can apply one set of rules to Democrats, and a different set of rules to fellow Republicans. The law is the same for everyone. Except for when it's different. Which happens a lot, when you are rich and powerful. --------------- --------------- Trump Moves To Extricate Himself From Stormy Daniels Deal, Lawsuit HuffPost Mary Papenfuss,HuffPost Sun, Sep 9 12:13 AM PDT A lawyer for President Donald Trump filed a court document on Saturday arguing that the hush-money agreement with adult film actress Stormy Daniels over an alleged affair between the two is not valid and that Trump should be removed from a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the deal. Removing him from the suit would mean he wouldn’t have to give a deposition to lawyers as part of it. The filing in Los Angeles federal court by Trump attorney Charles Harder said that “Mr. Trump hereby stipulates that he does not, and will not, contest Ms. Clifford’s assertion that the Settlement Agreement was never formed, or in the alternative, should be rescinded,” The Wall Street Journal reported. The filing came a day after New York-based lawyer Michael Cohen moved to rescind the nondisclosure deal. Cohen said he arranged, at Trump’s instruction, to pay Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Trump before the 2016 presidential election. Trump, however, never signed the deal. Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, slammed the moves by Trump and Cohen, insisting they’re part of a strategy to block depositions of the two men about any other possible payoffs that aimed to keep information hidden. Avenatti tweeted that he has never before seen a “defendant so frightened to be deposed as Donald Trump.” Cohen and Trump’s attorney said in their filings that they will not sue Daniels for any breach of the nondisclosure deal with her. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal felonies last month, including illegally interfering in the presidential election with the payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Daniels sued Cohen and the president to dissolve the agreement. She’s also suing Cohen and Trump for defamation. The Stormy Daniels deal was important in the federal campaign violation case against Cohen. If the deal is deemed invalid or rescinded, Daniels will be free to tell her story. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-10-18 11:14am - 2252 days | #1077 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Trump is accepting nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and the Humanitarian of the Year due to his strong commitment to helping Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and the death toll of only 64 people, which was the official report for many months, until Puerto Rico recently revised the death toll to 2,975. Remember, the aid of the United States government to Puerto Rico was stupendious. Trump says Puerto Rico is an island, so it was hard to help them. Not sure if Trump knows that Puerto Rico is part of the United States. But Trump is strong and brave, and he knows in his heart that he did everything possible to help the people of Puerto Rico, even if they are living on an island far from the United States of America. | |
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| 09-10-18 01:02pm - 2252 days | #1078 | |
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biker (0)
Active User  Posts: 632 Registered: May 03, '08 Location: milwaukee, wi |
Maybe Puerto Rico should think seriously about not being part of the U.S. What have they got to lose by being independent. Apparently The U.S. has forgotten they are a part of us. Did you watch the YouTube where a drunk walked up to a woman wearing a Puerto Rico shirt and start raging on her like she was some immigrant. She told the guy that Puerto Rico is part of the U.S., but he was to drunk to think it through. I had to explain to people in the YouTube discussion that there is more to the U.S. then the 50 states. Even the city of Washington is not in a state. We literally are in a nation of ignorant people. I get the impression that all you have to do to get a passing grade in school is show up. No wonder a fool like Trump can win an election. My personal rant for this week. Warning Will Robinson | |
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| 09-10-18 05:45pm - 2252 days | #1079 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Very short rant. I will give you a B+ for effort.  | |
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| 09-10-18 06:02pm - 2252 days | #1080 | |
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biker (0)
Active User Posts: 632 Registered: May 03, '08 Location: milwaukee, wi |
LOL Yea I have to hold back or I will explode. That would mean spending an entire day cleaning my keyboard. At least this gives me an excuse to use the emoticons I like, even if they don't fit what I typed or not.  You will see the dancing banana a lot. Warning Will Robinson | |
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| 09-11-18 05:37pm - 2251 days | #1081 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Enquiring minds want to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In that case, why not believe that a female cop who shot a man inside his own apartment would think she can get away with murder? First, the female cop is not currently being charged with murder. She is being charged with manslaughter. Second, the story the female cop gives to explain why she shot the man is strange: The female cop says she entered an apartment she thought was her own apartment. And that before she entered the apartment, the front door to the apartment was slightly ajar. The cop says "She inserted a unique door key, with an electronic chip, into the door keyhole," and opened the door. "Independent witnesses have already come forward to say that they heard this officer pounding on the door and demanding to be let in," Lee Merritt, one of the attorneys representing the Jean family, told ABC News. "The contradictions begin to build from there." Once inside the apartment, the cop says the apartment was dark, she saw a figure, thought it was a burglar, gave commands to the figure, and shot him twice, because the figure did not follow her commands. (If you read news stories about cops shooting suspects, the cops standard story is the cops gave commands to the suspect that the suspect did not obey, and that is part of the reason the cops shoot the suspect. Except I often suspect that it doesn't matter what the suspect does, he is going to get shot, even if he is trying to obey the different commands he's being given.) Anyway, the story the cop gave is suspicious. Because independent witnessnes say the cop pounded on the door, demanding entry. Which is different from the story the cop gives. Also, calling 911 and requesting police and EMS, the EMS operator asked the cop her location. So the cop goes to the front door (after shooting the man), to look at the address at the front door. If she thought she was in her own apartment, why did she have to go to the front door to look at the address? Was she drunk? Or on drugs? If neither drunk or on drugs, why go to the front door to check address, when she thought she was in her own apartment? Mistakes can be made. Her police union thinks a mistake may have been made because a black man died after being shot by a cop. But the police union thinks she is a fine, dedicated cop, who needs a fair and unbiased hearing in a court of law, and not a political witch hunt (shades of Donald Trump, a wonderful and honest President who is being hounded by a political witch hunt). The police union thinks the black man who was killed was a fine man, a church-going man, but punishing a wonderful cop is not the right thing to do. ------ ------ U.S. Lawyers for family of man killed in wrong-apartment incident cast doubt on story of Dallas officer who killed him Good Morning America BILL HUTCHINSON and MARCUS MOORE,Good Morning America 2 hours 8 minutes ago Lawyers for family of man killed in wrong-apartment incident cast doubt on story of Dallas officer who killed him originally appeared on abcnews.go.com The arrest warrant affidavit for a Dallas police officer who shot a man after she says she mistakenly entered his apartment has prompted more questions than answers for the victim's family, whose lawyers called the officer's scenario "highly implausible." The narrative that Officer Amber Guyger gave to investigators has been contradicted by at least two independent witnesses and flies in the face of facts they've gathered of the Thursday night killing at the South Side Flats apartment complex in Dallas, attorneys for the family of Botham Jean say, as they push for a murder charge. "Independent witnesses have already come forward to say that they heard this officer pounding on the door and demanding to be let in," Lee Merritt, one of the attorneys representing the Jean family, told ABC News. "The contradictions begin to build from there." But Guyger's police union president said the Texas Rangers division has interviewed at least one of the witnesses mentioned by attorneys for the Jean family and still concluded after an independent investigation that the evidence amounted to a manslaughter charge, not murder. "Don't get me wrong. She's going to have to answer in a court of law," Sgt. Mike Mata, president of the Dallas Police Association, said Tuesday. "But it needs to be fair and unbiased and right now it's not unbiased. It's beginning to turn into a political hunt." From his reading of the arrest warrant affidavit, Mata said, "you can understand how a mistake can be made." Guyger, 30, a four-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, was arrested and charged with manslaughter three days after killing Jean, 26. A grand jury will ultimately decide what charges Guyger will face and Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson said on Monday that she has not rule out a murder indictment. Guyger said she arrived home from work about 10 p.m. and parked her car on the fourth floor of the building instead of the third floor, which corresponded to her apartment, according to the arrest warrant affidavit by investigators from the Texas Rangers, a division of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Guyger's apartment is directly beneath Jean's fourth-floor unit. "Guyger entered the building and walked down the fourth-floor hallway to what she thought was her apartment," according to the arrest warrant made public Monday afternoon. "She inserted a unique door key, with an electronic chip, into the door keyhole. The door, which was slightly ajar prior to Guyger's arrival, fully opened under the force of the key insertion." When the door opened, she saw a "large silhouette" in the nearly completely dark apartment and believed it was a burglar, according to the warrant. Guyger, while still in uniform, no longer had her bodycam, which had been left at the station, per police protocol, according to the district attorney. "Guyger drew her firearm, gave verbal commands that were ignored by ... Jean," according to the warrant. "Guyger fired her handgun two times striking [Jean] in the torso. Guyger entered the apartment, immediately called 911, requesting police and EMS, and provided first aid to ... Jean. "Due to the interior darkness of the apartment, Guyger turned on the interior lights while on the phone with 911. Upon being asked where she was located by emergency dispatchers, Guyger returned to the front door to observe the address and discovered she was at the wrong apartment," according to the arrest warrant. Jean was taken by ambulance to Baylor Hospital, where he died. "That just seems highly implausible," lawyer Merritt said of Guyger's narrative. It would have been "uncharacteristic" for Jean to leave his door ajar, Merritt added. "He’s a very meticulous young man," Merritt said. "He paid attention to detail and his security was something that was always forefront on his mind. So when he went into a room he closed the door behind him. He locked the door; he put his keys in a specific place.” Benjamin Crump, another attorney for the Jean family, said it was also "troubling" that Guyger says she fired into the apartment after seeing a "large silhouette" inside and believing it was a burglar. "She gives verbal commands and then she shoots into the dark apartment. Not knowing anything about who this individual is or anything, she shoots into a dark apartment," Crump told ABC News. "So it's going to have to be determined is this the actions of a prudent well-trained police officer who at this time now has assumed that she is investigating a burglary and that she then must comply with her training, her experience, her education that she got from DPD [the Dallas Police Department]. It seems to be contradictory of a well-trained police officer." Attorney Daryl Washington, who is also representing the Jean family, said Guyger's purported actions after shooting Jean was suspect and full of "inconsistencies." "From the fact that when you look at an affidavit and I'm thinking that I'm at my house and I call 911 because someone was just shot," he said. "Well, the very first thing that I'm going to do is I'm not going to go outside and look at my address? I'm going to give them my address right there on the phone. I’m going to say I'm on the phone. My address is this. Why did she have to go outside to verify the address? It makes no sense whatsoever." The independent witnesses who heard the officer banging on Jean's door prior to the shooting also say they heard a male voice cry out from the apartment after the gunfire, Crump said. He said the witnesses "hear a male voice say, 'Oh, my God, why did you do this?' We believe that is the last words from Botham Jean alive." Merritt said he is "optimistic that at the end of the day" if prosecutors conduct the thorough investigation that District Attorney Johnson promised Monday, they will reject Guyger's narrative and pursue a murder charge. "We believe that the appropriate charges would be the charges of murder," Merritt said. Guyger has been released on $300,000 bail. A court date for her yet to be set. Attempts by ABC News to reach Guyger were unsuccessful. Mata, the police union president, told ABC News that the Texas Rangers conducted a thorough investigation independent of the Dallas Police Department and that lawyers for the Jean family, who had initially applauded such a probe, "don't like what's in the affidavit because it's the facts." "They're framing it as something different," he said. | |
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| 09-11-18 05:39pm - 2251 days | #1082 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST: On the day of the shooting, Mata said, Officer Guyger had completed a 15-hour shift as part of a team that arrested several individuals wanted for 30-plus robberies in the Dallas area. "I've met her on several occasions," Mata said of Guyger. "She has an impeccable reputation. She is a hard-charging, go-getting officer, who has put a lot of bad people in jail." He said it was "very disheartening" to hear Johnson say during the news conference Monday that her office will consider pursuing a murder charge against Guyger. "You could tell by her language, her attitude that she doesn't accept the impartial investigation by the Texas Rangers," Mata said of Johnson. "But don't get up there and say you're looking to up a charge and you haven't even done anything, you haven't even done your own investigation yet. "I'm going be honest with you, Mr. Jean was what all us parents hope our kids turn out to be," he said of the church-going native of Saint Lucia, who worked at the prestigious accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dallas. "He was an amazing individual, who had an amazing life ahead of him, who had done great things in his life. His loss is a loss to the city. But hanging out this officer, that's not the right thing to do." | |
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| 09-11-18 06:19pm - 2251 days | #1083 | |
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Loki (0)
Active User  Posts: 395 Registered: Jun 13, '07 Location: California |
So Sgt. Mike Mata, president of the Dallas Police Association, thinks that though Mr. Jean was an exemplary person, the woman who killed him through some combination of stupidity and carelessness should not be hung out to dry? Maybe the Dallas Police Association should look in the Texas Criminal Code and find the definition of "Manslaughter." Or is it too much to ask that innocent citizens be safe in their own homes from killer cops? "A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself." | |
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| 09-14-18 04:26am - 2249 days | #1084 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
In the interests of fairness, Dallas police are searching for evidence that Botham Jean, the black man shot dead in his own apartment by an off-duty female police officer, was a possible criminal. This would justify the off-duty female cop shooting the black man, because even though the Dallas police said Botham Jean was a wonderful man, maybe, just maybe, he was still a criminal, and the shooting was justified, even though there are questions about why the shooting happened. The female cop who shot Botham Jean said Jean did not obey her commands, so she was forced to fire her weapon in self-defense. Police are in constant fear of their own lives, it's part of the job, so if Jean did not follow the cop's orders, and he was also a possible criminal (the off-duty female cop thought he was a burglar in her apartment), the shooting was justified. ------- ------- U.S. The Latest: Family's lawyer: Police tried to smear Jean Associated Press Associated Press 11 hours ago DALLAS (AP) — The Latest on a deadly shooting in Dallas involving an off-duty police officer (all times local): 6:20 p.m. An attorney for the family of a man shot dead by a police officer in the man's own apartment says a police affidavit shows investigators immediately sought evidence to discredit the victim. Lee Merritt represents the family of Botham Jean, who was shot dead in his own Dallas apartment on Sept. 6. Officer Amber Guyger, who shot him, said she mistook his apartment for her own and thought he was an intruder. A police affidavit shows that officers seized, among other items, 10.4 grams of marijuana and a marijuana grinder from Jean's apartment. Merritt said that showed investigators were immediately looking for drug paraphernalia. In his words, "They immediately began looking to smear him." Guyger is charged with manslaughter and remains free on $300,000 bond. ___ 5:15 p.m. A Dallas police affidavit says officers recovered two bullet casings, a police backpack and vest and 10.4 grams of marijuana from the apartment of a man killed by an officer who said she mistook his apartment for her own. A search warrant affidavit says a lunch box, laptop computer, metal marijuana grinder, two electronic keys and two used packages of medical aid also were recovered from Botham Jean's Dallas apartment. Dallas police conducted the search after the Sept. 6 shooting before turning the investigation over to the Texas Rangers Officer Amber Guyger has been charged with manslaughter in the shooting. She remains on administrative leave from the Dallas Police Department. ___ 3:50 p.m. Religious leaders from the Dallas area say they are outraged and saddened by the death of a 26-year-old man killed in his apartment by an off-duty police officer last week. A group of Dallas-area church leaders gathered for a press conference Thursday afternoon immediately following the funeral of Botham Jean, who was shot and killed by off-duty officer Amber Guyger last week. She has been arrested for manslaughter and is out of jail on bond. Sammie Berry, an elder and pulpit minister at Jean's church, says the family cannot rest until justice is served and Guyger is punished "to the fullest extent of the law." He described Jean's death as an avoidable tragedy and said the group wants to know why Guyger has not been fired. He says they "cannot let Bo become another statistic." ___ 2:30 p.m. The uncle of a 26-year-old man killed in his apartment by a Dallas police officer who said she mistook his apartment for her own says that word of his death was like "a nuke" being unleashed on their family. Botham Jean's uncle, Ignatius Jean, said at the Thursday funeral, "Our prince royal was snatched from us by the quick-to-trigger finger of one trained to protect and serve." He also said his nephew told him he would like to enter politics one day, maybe even becoming prime minister of his home country of St. Lucia. Off-duty police officer Amber Guyger has been charged with manslaughter and has since been released on bond. Others speaking at the funeral talked about Botham Jean's willingness to always help anyone and the devout Christian's love of singing. ___ 12:45 p.m. The funeral has begun for a 26-year-old man killed in his apartment by a Dallas police officer who said she mistook his apartment for her own. There were packed pews at a suburban Dallas church for the funeral for Botham Jean. He was killed last week by an off-duty police officer, Amber Guyger, who says she was returning from work when the shooting occurred. She is charged with manslaughter and has since been released on bond. Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings and Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall are in attendance at the funeral. Jean's death has since become a flashpoint in the national debate over police killings of black men. Following his death, friends and family remembered Jean as a talented singer and devout Christian. ___ 12:05 a.m. A funeral is scheduled Thursday for a black man killed in his home by a Dallas police officer who says she mistook his residence for her own. The service for 26-year-old Botham Jean will start at noon at a church in suburban Dallas following a public viewing. The funeral will also be streamed live. Jean was fatally shot last week by off-duty officer Amber Guyger. Court documents say Guyger thought she had encountered a burglar. She has been charged with manslaughter. Family and friends described Jean as a devout Christian and a caring individual. His mother, Allison Jean, recalled her son's commitment to his faith at a prayer vigil last weekend. Jean says her son "did everything with passion" and was a meticulous person. | |
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| 09-14-18 04:44am - 2249 days | #1085 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
These are dangerous times. Donald Trump, the President of the greatest nation on earth, reveals that the Puerto Rican death toll of 3,000 is fake news. The slime-ball Democrats are posting fake news to attack our glorious leader for life, Donald Trump, a messenger that God Himself sent from heaven to lead our nation. We must unite and stand behind Trump, and ignore the lies and smears of the slime-ball Democrats. Vote in the November elections, so Republicans can retain control of Congress, fill the Supreme Court with Conservative justices like Brett Kavanaugh, who can overturn Roe vs Wade and make abortions illegal, so we can save the lives of unborn babies. Even the governor of Puerto Rico has admitted that Puerto Rico's population are second-class citizens of the United States, so why should the US be giving them extra money when the money can be given to the first-class citizens of the United States? Go, Republicans, the party of the White Moral Majority for a Greater America. ------ ------ HuffPost Donald Trump Denies That 3,000 People Died In Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria HuffPost Hayley Miller,HuffPost 22 hours ago President Donald Trump on Thursday denied back-to-back hurricanes last fall resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths in Puerto Rico, as estimated by a government-commissioned study last month. In a pair of tweets, the president accused Democrats of making up “really large numbers” of deaths to make him “look as bad as possible.” There is no evidence to support his claim. “When I left the island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths,” Trump tweeted about his first and only visit to Puerto Rico after hurricanes Irma and Maria pummeled the island in September 2017. During his visit to the island, Trump had suggested Puerto Ricans were lucky Hurricane Maria wasn’t a “real catastrophe” like 2005′s Hurricane Katrina. The Puerto Rican government revised Hurricane Maria’s official death toll from 64 to 2,975 last month following the study, which was conducted by researchers at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. Prior to the GWU study, independent investigations conducted separately by The New York Times, Penn State University and Harvard University also estimated Maria’s death toll to be in the thousands. The Milken Institute defended its study in a statement Thursday. “We stand by the science underlying our study,” the statement said. “This study, commissioned by the Government of Puerto Rico, was carried out with complete independence and freedom from any kind of interference.” “Our results show that Hurricane Maria was a very deadly storm, one that affected the entire island but hit the poor and the elderly the hardest,” the statement continued. “We are confident that the number — 2,975 — is the most accurate and unbiased estimate of excess mortality to date.” Still, as Hurricane Florence bears down on the Carolinas, Trump has called the federal government’s response to the storms in Puerto Rico an “unsung success.” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who pleaded with Trump to send additional aid in the aftermath of the historic storms, hit back at the president’s death toll denial on Thursday. “People died on your watch,” Cruz tweeted. “YOUR LACK OF RESPECT IS APPALLING!” Puerto Rican officials have said they always expected the death toll to be higher than 64, which they initially estimated using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention methodology, according to a statement released by Puerto Rico’s Department of Public Safety in August. “We always anticipated that this number would increase as more official studies were conducted,” Héctor Pesquera, the department’s secretary, said in the statement. Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló ordered an independent study of the death toll in January because he said that “CDC guidelines proved insufficient to account for mortality in the worst natural disaster Puerto Rico has ever seen.” Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) on Thursday tweeted that he “disagreed” with Trump’s eyebrow-raising denial of the death toll. “An independent study said thousands were lost and Gov. Rosselló agreed,” Scott tweeted. “I’ve been to Puerto Rico 7 times & saw devastation firsthand. The loss of any life is tragic; the extent of lives lost as a result of Maria is heart wrenching.” In a statement Thursday, Rosselló slammed Trump’s death toll denial and condemned “anyone who would use this disaster or question our suffering for political purposes.” “The people of Puerto Rico deserve a full accounting of the impact of the storm, and they deserve recognition of that impact by our president,” Rosselló said. “I asked the president to recognize the magnitude of Hurricane Maria ... Good government means a commitment to transparency and rectifying mistakes made.” Rosselló, during an appearance earlier Thursday on CBS News, blasted the federal government for providing more resources to Floridians and Texans affected by hurricanes than to Puerto Ricans. “We are second-class U.S. citizens,” Rosselló said. “We live in a colonial territory. It is time to eliminate that. I implore all of the elected officials, particularly now with midterm elections, to have a firm stance: You’re either for colonial territories or against it. You’re either for giving equal rights to the U.S. citizens that live in Puerto Rico or you’re against it.” Erika Larose and Julie Piñero contributed reporting. This article has been updated to include Rosselló’s statement. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-14-18 05:28am - 2249 days | #1086 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
HuffPost Search Of Botham Jean's Apartment Ignites Outrage Over Victim’s ‘Character Assassination’ HuffPost Carla Herreria,HuffPost 5 hours ago The lawyer for the family of the Dallas man fatally shot by a police officer in his own apartment says police are trying to discredit the victim. Botham Shem Jean, 26, died on Sept. 6 after off-duty officer Amber Guyger walked into his apartment, allegedly thinking she was in hers (which is located one floor below) and shot him twice. The casket carrying Botham Shem Jean arrived at the Greenville Avenue Church of Christ in Richardson, Texas on Thursday. (Stewart F. House via Getty Images) Attorney Lee Merritt, who represents Jean’s family, criticized the police’s search warrant, which was obtained in the hours following the shooting, as an attempt to discredit Jean after his death. “They immediately began to smear him,” Merritt told The Associated Press. According to a search warrant affidavit released on Thursday, police seized two fired cartridge casings, one laptop, a ballistic police vest, a backpack with police equipment and paperwork, two radio frequency identification keys, 10.4 grams of marijuana (equal to less than half an ounce) and a marijuana grinder, among other things, from Jean’s apartment. The affidavit didn’t identify who owned which items, according to a copy obtained by NBC Dallas-Fort Worth. Attorney Benjamin Crump, who is also representing Jean’s family, told NBC DFW that Jean’s family does not know who the marijuana belongs to. Still, Crump maintained that the seized drugs were “nothing but a disgusting attempt to assassinate his character now that they have assassinated his person.” Cornell William Brooks, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, agreed: Although the search warrant affidavit for Jean’s apartment was made public on Thursday, the same the day as Jean’s funeral, one for Guyger’s apartment wasn’t. The Dallas Police Department and Texas Rangers did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on whether her apartment was searched during the investigation. David Menschel, an Oregon-based criminal defense attorney and activist, called the release of the search warrant “propaganda.” “An off-duty cop goes into the wrong apartment and shoots the man who lives there dead, and so, as we’ve come to expect, local law enforcement is doing what it can to cast aspersions at the innocent victim — to suggest he was ‘no angel’ — and therefore apparently deserved to be shot dead in his own home,” Menschel told HuffPost. “And much of the media plays along, amplifying law enforcement’s propaganda.” After the affidavit was released, Fox 4 News published a story about the search of Jean’s home. The headline, which has since been changed, highlighted the marijuana in the search warrant affidavit without mentioning any other items that were seized from Jean’s apartment. People on Twitter called Fox 4′s headline irresponsible and reckless, noting that the marijuana discovery was irrelevant to Jean’s death. Tom Angell, a marijuana activist and publisher of the news site Marijuana Moment, said that Fox 4 News’ headline wrongly suggested that Jean was at fault for his death. “For Fox 4 to frame and play up this finding in the way that it did — implying that cannabis use might have justified his murder — is irresponsible reporting,” Angell told HuffPost. It “demonstrates how people of color, even in death, suffer disproportionate and discriminatory treatment for something many white people do with impunity.” Matt Schweich, deputy director of the policy reform group Marijuana Policy Project, questioned why officials haven’t released a search warrant for Guyger’s apartment. “A small amount of personal marijuana is irrelevant to this tragedy. It’s as relevant as a six-pack of beer,” Schweich told HuffPost. “If an innocent victim’s privacy is to be invaded through the release of a search warrant, then at the very least the perpetrator’s privacy should be invaded in the same manner,” Schweich added. The search warrant also contradicted Guygers’ arrest affidavit, which was released on Monday. In the affidavit, Guyger claimed that Jean was across the room in her apartment at the time of the shooting. The search warrant, which was signed by a Dallas police officer, said that Jean confronted Guyger at the front door. In the arrest affidavit, Guyger also said she was able to enter Jean’s apartment because the door was slightly ajar, and claimed she fired at Jean after he ignored her “verbal commands.” Guyger was arrested and charged with manslaughter on Sunday. She was later released on a $300,000 bond, per CBS News. Matt Ferner contributed to this report. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-14-18 05:30am - 2249 days | #1087 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Politics The GOP Rode The Trump Train, And Now It's Derailing HuffPost Michelangelo Signorile,HuffPost 19 hours ago Susan Collins must be freaking out. The Republican senator from Maine, who positions herself as a pro-abortion rights moderate, signaled early support of Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. According to a HuffPost source, Collins allegedly green lit Trump’s nominee before the president even chose Kavanaugh, though she strenuously denies this. The senator now faces activists who have so far raised $1.3 million and counting via crowdfunding for any opponent to run against her in 2020. A rattled Collins has resorted to calling this “bribery” in an “exclusive statement” to right-wing website Newsmax, which tells us exactly which audience she’s attempting to shore up and gain sympathy from. This claim is just plain silly since no one is planning on actually paying her the money. She should look up Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission for a definition of bribery, a ruling handed down by several justices for whom she voted, and a ruling which she’s benefited from in the form of corporate donations. Collins has also complained about “vulgar” phone calls to her office from people opposed to Kavanaugh, the least popular Supreme Court nominee in decades, who, in opinion polls, is doing slightly worse or even with the ill-fated Harriet Miers and Robert Bork. (Of course, for a definition of “vulgar,” Collins really should just look up “Donald Trump.”) Perhaps Collins, who seems to have lived in that cocoon in which senators who’ve been in office for decades often find themselves, is suddenly realizing that we’re in a different time and that she’s sealed her fate. Who knows what Trump may have promised Collins or what she’s afraid he might do to her if she were now to go back on any assurances she may have given on Kavanaugh. Perhaps Collins is worried about a primary challenge from the right in 2020. I would be. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), meanwhile, is begging for help from the same GOP leaders he’s attacked in the past (like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whom Cruz called a “liar” a few years back) as he tries to fend off a serious challenge from Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who is galvanizing support across Texas and coming up even with Cruz in polls. It appears grassroots fundraising has slowed for Cruz and exploded for O’Rourke. Perhaps Collins is worried about a primary challenge from the right in 2020. I would be. Ironically, Cruz is also turning to the same man who helped turn the GOP radioactive: Trump, who announced he’s heading to Texas to stump for Cruz next month. The same Cruz whom Trump called “Lyin’ Ted.” The same Trump whom Cruz called a “sniveling coward” and “serial philanderer.” And now McConnell is openly fretting about losing Republican control of the Senate. While the House has been in play for Democrats for months, their chances only grow by the day to take control of the chamber, as new polls show further momentum. But control of the Senate, seen as a long shot just weeks ago, is also now a realistic, less-daunting possibility. McConnell even told reporters this week, “I hope when the smoke clears, we’ll still have a majority.” GOP leaders mused in the recent past about taking seats from Democrats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan ― all states Trump won. But those efforts have largely evaporated. Now McConnell and GOP leaders are diverting precious time and money to states where McConnell sees a “knife fight in an alley” to retain or take seats: Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Montana, North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia and Florida. Fighting to keep Senate seats in Texas and Tennessee was never in the GOP’s game plan (nor in anyone else’s wildest imagination). Republicans can only blame themselves for this state of affairs. After first occasionally standing up to Trump post-election, they’ve completely thrown their lot in with him, fearful of their shrinking party’s Trump-loving base. (The GOP now represents only about one-fourth of voters, according to recent surveys, declining since the 2016 election.) Now, Trump is all they’ve got. Their tax law, benefiting the wealthy and corporations, went nowhere in galvanizing voters for the midterms (many having likely seen it for the scam that it is). According to a recent Fox News poll, it’s now more unpopular (40 percent) than Obamacare (51 percent). Vicious anti-immigrant rhetoric, always a desperate last resort, only hurt the GOP in Virginia’s 2017 gubernatorial and legislative races and in special elections across the country. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from deploying racist attacks this election season in full force. As Frank Sharry of the immigration group America’s Voice notes, we can expect “an ugly midterm election strategy: smear immigrants as criminals and attack Democrats for defending them.” For McConnell and GOP Senate candidates, at least, the plan, from a while back, has been to grab onto Trump and back all of his ugly, racist rhetoric, hoping he’ll keep them afloat. Fighting to keep Senate seats in Texas and Tennessee was never in the GOP’s game plan (nor in anyone else’s wildest imagination). But Trump’s approval is quite suddenly sinking into the mid-30s in a slew of new polls ― tanking among independents and in the Midwest ― while, in that same recent Fox News poll, special counsel Robert Mueller, leading the Russia investigation, has a soaring 59 percent approval rating. There are now few states the GOP can send Trump ― who, on his own, is deciding where he wants to go anyway ― because even if he may help in a statewide race, he will hurt GOP House candidates in suburban districts in that same state who are running as far away from him as they can. As has been said many times, anything Trump touches, he destroys. None of this, of course, is certain, underscoring why progressives must double down their energy. With voter suppression, possible Russian electorial interference and the usual GOP arsenal of dirty tricks, Republicans may be able to cling to power in both chambers. Gerrymandering has helped to rig the system, too. And even if Republicans are hurt by embracing Trump, much of it is cold comfort for progressives and all who care about the future of America. Collins may pay a price in 2020 for voting to confirm Kavanaugh, but we’ll still be stuck with Kavanaugh and a radical shift of the Supreme Court for decades. The country will experience profound change, from the gutting of Roe v. Wade and threatening LGBTQ rights to an expansion of presidential power and further assaults on the environment. A lot of the damage that Trump has caused unilaterally or with the help of the GOP Congress will be difficult or even impossible to undo, even if Democrats were to take both the Senate and the House, keep control of each chamber for several years, and even win the presidency in 2020. But we must start somewhere at turning things around as we face the most devastating and harrowing political reality of our lifetimes. That’s only going to happen when the GOP hits rock bottom as progressive momentum surges. And it’s appearing that may happen this November. Michelangelo Signorile is an editor-at-large for HuffPost. Follow him on Twitter at @msignorile. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-14-18 07:52am - 2249 days | #1088 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is terribly wrong. Please tell me it's a lie spread by slime-ball Democrats who want to drag down Trump's good name. There is a rumor that Trump will pay Mexico millons of dollars to help the US deport undocumented immigrants. Trump pledged many times that Mexico will pay billions to pay for our border wall. And now it seems that Trump is going to pay Mexico to get rid of Mexicans in the US. That is criminal. It will destroy the US budget, that the Republican party has pledged to protect. Can we no longer believe in the pledges and promises of our leaders? Although Trump is one of the finest humanitarians, and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just line up the illegal immigrants and shoot them down? Bullets cost less than $1 each. Bus fare or plane fare is much more expensive. So it's the economic and utilitarian choice to solve the immigration problem. ------- ------- U.S. Trump Plans To Pay Millions To Mexico So It'll Deport Undocumented Immigrants HuffPost Dominique Mosbergen,HuffPost Thu, Sep 13 3:35 AM PDT The Trump administration is reportedly planning on diverting $20 million in foreign assistance funds to help Mexico deport up to 17,000 undocumented immigrants from the country. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) Remember President Donald Trump’s insistence that Mexico would pay for his border wall? Well, it seems it’s the U.S. that’ll be shelling out millions to its southern neighbor in exchange for helping Trump in his crusade against immigration. The Trump administration recently sent a notice to Congress saying it plans to divert $20 million allocated for foreign assistance to help Mexico deport up to 17,000 undocumented immigrants from the country, according to a New York Times report published late Wednesday. The money would reportedly help Mexico pay for the plane and bus fares of deportees. Central Americans attempting to flee to the U.S. via Mexico will be the main target of the initiative. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman confirmed the plan to the Times, saying the administration was “working closely with our Mexican counterparts to confront rising border apprehension numbers.” U.S. Border Patrol said this week that the number of families arrested for illegally entering the U.S. increased 38 percent in August ― a rise Trump officials described as a crisis. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lambasted Trump’s new $20 million plan, saying the foreign assistance funds had been earmarked by Congress to “lift up communities dealing with crime, corruption and so many other challenges” ― and not to bankroll an immigration crackdown. “I want answers about why the State Department thinks it can ignore Congress and dump more cash into deportation efforts,” Engel told the Times. “Until then, I’ll do whatever I can to stop this,” The Trump administration also is being blasted this week for redirecting millions of dollars into efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. Documents released Tuesday by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) revealed the administration quietly transferred $200 million earlier this year from other government agencies ― including almost $10 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency ― to fatten the budget of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “This is a scandal,” Merkley said in a statement to HuffPost. “At the start of hurricane season — when American citizens in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are still suffering from FEMA’s inadequate recovery efforts — the administration transferred millions of dollars away from FEMA ... And for what? To implement their profoundly misguided ‘zero tolerance’ policy.” Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and his baseless claim that Mexico would pay for it became a rallying cry during his 2016 campaign. He frequently repeats the claim, though his budget proposals have included funding for the wall with money from American taxpayers, not Mexico, which has repeatedly insisted that it won’t pay. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-14-18 11:31am - 2248 days | #1089 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Is Brett Kavanaugh a rapist or would-be rapist who is following in the steps of Donald Trump? Except that Trump is proud of his sexual conquests, and boasts that all you need to do is grab a woman by the pussy to get what you want. Whereas Brett Kavanaugh seems to be a watered-down version of Trump. Kavanaugh does not seem to be boasting of his past sexual conquests. But this incident below supposedly took place in the 1980s, so the statue of limitations seems to rule out any legal responsibility. But Republicans are fighting back anyway: First, Kavanaugh denies the attempted rape accusation. Second, after The New Yorker published its report, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Chairman of the Judiciary, released a letter sent to him by 65 women who say they knew Kavanaugh in high school. “We are women who have known Brett Kavanaugh for 35 years, and knew him while he attended high school between 1979 and 1983,” they write. “For the entire time we have known Brett Kavanaugh, he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect.” Why would the Republican Chairman of the Judiciary have such a special letter? Because, evidently, he knew about the attempted rape accusation, even though the accusation was kept secret from the public, from most Democrats on the committee, and from all the Republicans on the committee. So, again, how did Republican Senator Chuck Grassley find out about the confidential letter? And why did they get 65 women to state they knew Kavanaugh in high school, back in the 1980s, and Kavanaugh is such a swell guy. I'm just glad the Republican party is so smart they can find out secrets that the public does not know, and fight back against secret knowledge some Democrats have, that turns out to not be so secret after all. Getting the names of 65 women who knew Kavanaugh in the early 1980s, and are willing to swear that Kavanaugh is a really nice guy. Can't they do the same for Donald Trump: get 65 women to say they knew Trump in the early 1980s, and Trump was such a wonderful and respectful boy back then, who would never sleep with any woman who was not his wife? --------- --------- Politics Woman Says Brett Kavanaugh ‘Attempted to Force Himself on Her’ in High School The Cut Madeleine Aggeler,The Cut 1 hour 26 minutes ago Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Senator Dianne Feinstein had received a secret letter containing allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. A new report from Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer at The New Yorker sheds light on what that allegation was: The accuser, who asked to remain anonymous, claims that during a high-school party in the early ’80s, Kavanaugh and a friend trapped her in a room, where Kavanaugh “held her down, and … attempted to force himself on her.” Per The New Yorker: She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself. After President Trump named Kavanaugh as his nominee to fill Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court back in July, the woman sent letters detailing her allegations against Kavanaugh to her congressperson, Anna Eshoo, as well as Senator Feinstein, the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who was preparing to question Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. But they did not do much with it. Indeed, Feinstein withheld the letter from her fellow Democrats on the Judiciary Committee until this Wednesday, reportedly telling her fellow members the event took place too long ago warrant public discussion, and that she had “taken care of it.” On Thursday, she announced she had referred the matter to the FBI. As a source close to the woman told The New Yorker she felt discouraged by these responses. “She had repeatedly reported the allegation to members of Congress and, watching Kavanaugh move toward what looked like an increasingly assured confirmation, she decided to end her effort to come forward,” per Farrow and Meyer. Kavanaugh said he “categorically and unequivocally” denies these allegations. After The New Yorker published its report, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Chairman of the Judiciary, released a letter sent to him by 65 women who say they knew Kavanaugh in high school. “We are women who have known Brett Kavanaugh for 35 years, and knew him while he attended high school between 1979 and 1983,” they write. “For the entire time we have known Brett Kavanaugh, he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect.” | |
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| 09-14-18 03:12pm - 2248 days | #1090 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Judd Apatow, Whitney Cummings Slam Logic of Kavanaugh’s 65 Women: ‘Confusing to People?’ Woman accused Supreme Court nominee of sexual misconduct when they were in high school Linda Xu | September 14, 2018 @ 2:22 PM Last Updated: September 14, 2018 @ 2:56 PM People have expressed their outrage over a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in which 65 women testify that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is a “good person.” The letter, released Friday, came after a women, who remained unidentified, accused Kavanaugh of forcing himself on her sexually while he was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School, an all-boys school in Bethesda, Maryland. Hollywood figures, including Whitney Cummings and Judd Apatow, argued that the letter from 65 women defied logic. Cummings wrote, “You can treat 65 women with respect and still sexually assault a woman who wasn’t one of those 65 women.” The comedian and creator of CBS’ “2 Broke Girls” added, “Is this actually confusing to people?” Apatow used fewer words to make his point: “Cosby was really nice to Oprah. So ?” he added to his retweet of Cummings’ post. Comedian Matt Oswalt, younger brother of Patton Oswalt, penned a hypothetical situation in which Kavanaugh reaches out to the women who signed the letter: Other observers expressed similar sentiments on Twitter about the letter. Many emphasized the coincidence of Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who released the letter, having it at the ready and publishing it after the news of the accusation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh broke. Some suspected that Grassley knew of the accusation and prepared for its fallout. “Who among us does not have a ready-made list of 65 women to say you did not rape them in high school,” writer Kate Aronoff said. “Will and Grace” star Debra Messing echoed the thought: The letter begins with the women stating that they have known Kavanaugh for more than 35 years and that “he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect” the entire time. Addressed to Grassley and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, it was released just after a New Yorker story was published detailing the accusation against Kavanaugh. The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow reported that the letter made its way to Feinstein’s office in July, but that the senator did not notify Senate Democratic colleagues about it, stating that “the incident was too distant in the past to merit public discussion.” | |
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| 09-15-18 12:04am - 2248 days | #1091 | |
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Loki (0)
Active User Posts: 395 Registered: Jun 13, '07 Location: California |
Even a person convicted of rape can accurately say "There are billions of women I've never raped." You can't prove a negative. "A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself." | |
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| 09-15-18 10:05pm - 2247 days | #1092 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Can we impeach Dianne Feinstein along with Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump? Liars, incompetents, bullshit artists. Clear the swamp in Washington by getting rid of the President, his cabinet, Brett Kavanaugh, and Congress. ------ ------ Dianne Feinstein, What in the Hell Were You Thinking? Brett Kavanaugh stands accused of sexually assaulting a high school classmate. And Feinstein seems to have concluded that the public didn’t need to know this. Michael Tomasky Michael Tomasky 09.14.18 1:59 PM ET First of all, what in blazes was Dianne Feinstein thinking? It was late July when she got that letter from a female constituent alleging that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school. And only this week did she bother to share it with her Democratic Judiciary Committee colleagues? And not only that. According to Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer’s explosive New Yorker piece posted Friday morning, those colleagues got wind of the letter’s existence and had been asking her to share it with them “for several days”? What did she say? My dog ate it? ADVERTISING inRead invented by Teads Mind-boggling. Here we were, in late July, two weeks after Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Mitch McConnell had yet to announce the confirmation hearing dates, which he announced on Aug. 9. But obviously, in late July, the Democrats were well aware that they had the fight of their lives on their hands; that they were outnumbered and would need something huge. And here is Feinstein, the ranking member of the committee, holding that something in her hands. And she kept it secret. From her colleagues. According to the New Yorker, her staff even told other Democrats on the committee that the incident was “taken care of” and that it was too far in the past to be worth discussing in public. She had no right to keep it from them. For that matter, she had no right to keep it from us, the public, who also live with the consequences of a new Supreme Court. Maybe Feinstein feared that if she shared the letter, the woman’s name would leak out. Maybe she felt it wasn’t her story to tell. A reasonable concern. But okay—share the letter while redacting the woman’s name. It took me four seconds to think of that. Maybe she feared being attacked for bringing in something this controversial and ancient. Okay. But what did she think was going to happen? Did she think she’d be able to sit on this letter forever and not even refer it to the FBI? Hot documents have a way of getting out in this town. At the very least, when her colleagues started asking her about it, she should have owned up and told them the truth and shared it with them and asked their advice. And now where are we? She’s made an absolute disaster of things. It got out anyway. If anything, by holding it so long, she has helped facilitate the discrediting of the woman who is accusing Kavanaugh here, because it looks desperate and eleventh-hour, whereas if she’d made this public before, people would have had time to process it and Republicans couldn’t have made that accusation. Oh, and this: Up to now, the Democrats were getting points from liberals (for the most part) because they’d handled the hearings pretty well. They were tough. They stood up. They asked good questions. They pinned Kavanaugh down on lie after lie. They don’t have the votes, and if you don’t have the votes, you don’t have the votes. But for once they didn’t run up the white flag before the battle was over. They weren’t like those dogs in the learned helplessness experiments, so accustomed to defeat and punishment that they just sat in the corner. But now, single-handedly, she has returned things to the Incompetent Democrats narrative. Well, no. Not Incompetent Democrats. Incompetent Democrat, singular. Beyond belief. She’s running for reelection, and under California’s jungle primary, her general-election opponent is a fellow Democrat, Kevin De Leon, who’s challenging her from the left. De Leon is no Bernie bro; he endorsed Clinton. Feinstein has been 20 to 25 points ahead, and De Leon hasn’t made the best case for himself. Well, Feinstein just made the best possible case for him. She might still win, but next year, the Democrats should absolutely kick her off the committee for this. Especially if they retake the Senate—there is no way after this cock-up she should be anywhere near that gavel. So now, conservatives are rallying to Kavanaugh’s defense, arguing that he has denied it, calling forth character witnesses. But the denial could be a lie, and the character witnesses certainly weren’t in the room that night. Surely senators will also soon begin to say ‘Ah, it was high school, it’s too long ago.’ This argument can be easily pre-butted. First of all, just because it was 36 years ago, that doesn’t mean it’s automatically irrelevant. Suppose a Supreme Court nominee committed murder 36 years ago? I’d say, liberal or conservative, that murder was relevant. So some old crimes can be relevant. It just depends on their nature and severity. On top of that, we have the fact that this man, if confirmed, is going to spend the next 30 or 35 years of his life deciding whether 16-year-old girls like the one he allegedly attacked have any rights to control their own reproductive fates. We all know, his “open mind” notwithstanding, that he is going to spend 30 or 35 years saying they have none. If he is permitted to spend three decades doing this even though he may have been a sexual aggressor, that is a disgrace. There’s already one credibly accused sexual aggressor on the Supreme Court who’s cast vote after vote denying women the right to control their biological destiny. Are we to have another? There are only nine of them, in the whole United States. And the Republican Party can’t find ones who aren’t accused of disturbing sexual misadventure? These all are fair questions, and questions we as a society might have spent the last few weeks exploring. But Dianne Feinstein decided we shouldn’t. Do I still have time to move to California and vote? | |
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| 09-15-18 11:08pm - 2247 days | #1093 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The shameful truth revealed: Justin Bieber is not an American citizen. He snuck into the US as a child, has been living in the US since he was 13. But he was born in Canada, and is a Canadian citizen. Now, all of a sudden, because he married an American, he wants to claim US citizenship. Ship him back to Canada, where all Bieberites belong. Keep America white for White Americans. (Does Bieber have any blood in him from shithole countries? Is Canada part of the shithole countries our dearest President was talking about?) Bieber's bride revealed in a tweet that she is not married yet. So can Bieber be arrested for a fraudulent marriage ceremony? Enquiring minds want to know. ------- ------- Justin Bieber Is Applying to Become an American Citizen After Hailey Baldwin Wedding: Report [People] Dave Quinn ,People•September 15, 2018 Hot on the heels of news that Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin tied the knot, a new report says the “Love Yourself” singer is working to become a U.S. citizen. Bieber, who was born and raised in Ontario, Canada, has applied for dual citizenship, TMZ reports, citing multiple sources. The 24-year-old star has lived in the states since he was 13, when he move with his family to Atlanta. He currently splits his time between Los Angeles, New York City, and Ontario, where he owns a $5 million estate, according to TMZ. In order to gain citizenship, the United States government requires that an applicant has had a Permanent Resident (Green) Card for at least five years. One must be at least 18 years old, be able to “read, write, and speak basic English,” and be “a person of good moral character,” USA.gov states. A 10-step naturalization process is then put forward to determine eligibility. That includes preparing and submitting an N-400 form, the application for naturalization, as well as having a personal interview and taking the U.S. Naturalization Test. Multiple sources confirmed to PEOPLE on Friday that Beiber and Baldwin, 21, got married in a civil ceremony on Thursday at a New York City courthouse. “They went ahead and did it without listening to anyone,” a source close to the couple told PEOPLE. A religious source spoke to the family and confirmed to PEOPLE that they were legally married at the courthouse, but are going to have a religious ceremony and celebration with family and friends soon. “They’re going to have a big blowout, in front of God and everyone they love,” the religious source told PEOPLE. On Thursday, Bieber and Baldwin were seen walking into a courthouse where marriage licenses are issued, according to a photo obtained by TMZ. The outlet also reported the couple appeared to be extremely emotional, with Bieber telling Baldwin, “I can’t wait to marry you, baby.” According to the outlet, Justin told a court official, “Thanks for keeping it on the DL.” Despite PEOPLE’s confirmation of the courthouse ceremony, Baldwin said on Friday that she doesn’t count herself a married woman — yet. “I understand where the speculation is coming from, but I’m not married yet!” the model wrote in a since-deleted tweet. A friend of the couple told PEOPLE Baldwin “feels a civil ceremony and their ‘real’ wedding are two separate things.” Added a religious source: “What happened at the courthouse is a courthouse thing — a legal thing. But marriage is two people making a vow before God and the people they love.” Meanwhile, the duo’s whirlwind wedding comes as no surprise, as a source close to Bieber revealed to PEOPLE in July that the pop star and his then-fiancée preferred quick and quiet nuptials. “They don’t want a long engagement and are already planning their wedding,” the source said. “As of now, they want a small ceremony with their families. They are not planning a huge, celebrity wedding. They are getting married for love and don’t want a flashy wedding.” | |
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| 09-16-18 05:12pm - 2246 days | #1094 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Donald Trump needs to look into this matter. A Border Patrol agent has been charged with killing 4 women. Should Trump issue a presidential pardon? Trump wants illegal immigrants moved out of the US. The Border Patrol agent was doing his best to follow Trump's wishes. And maybe the Border Patrol agent was getting some kicks from his job. A win-win for both the Border Patrol agent and Donald Trump. So a pardon might be in order: and instead of prison, the Border Patrol agent might be given a promotion, for doing a great job. -------- -------- U.S. Border Patrol agent charged with killing 4 women after 5th escapes, alerts police Good Morning America MARK OSBORNE,Good Morning America 14 hours ago Border Patrol agent charged with killing 4 women after 5th escapes, alerts police (ABC News) Border Patrol agent charged with killing 4 women after 5th escapes, alerts police originally appeared on abcnews.go.com A longtime U.S. Border Patrol agent is being called a "serial killer" after he was arrested and charged with the murder of four women in southern Texas on Saturday. Juan David Ortiz, 35, was arrested on Saturday in Laredo, Texas, after he allegedly attempted to abduct a fifth woman, the Webb County Sheriff's Office said. He has been charged with the murder of four women over the past two weeks, as well as unlawful restraint, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and evading arrest. The sheriff's office said all four bodies have been found, and no other victims are expected. Two of the women have not been fully identified, officials said. None of the women's names have been released, pending notification of family members. "We do consider this to be a serial killer," Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said. "It meets the qualifications or definition of being a serial killer -- in this case we have four people murdered." PHOTO: Law enforcement officers gather near the scene where the body of a woman was found near Interstate 35 north of Laredo, Texas on Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018. (AP) The first murder took place Sept. 3, authorities said. Ortiz has worked for the Border Patrol for 10 years, according to the sheriff's office. (MORE: Border patrol agent kills woman attempting to cross Texas border) The police got their break overnight Saturday when Ortiz allegedly tried to abduct another woman. However, when the suspect pulled a gun on the woman inside his vehicle, she fled and was able to contact police. "Apparently the suspect pulled out a gun on her and she was able to escape," Webb County Sheriff Martin Cueller said. PHOTO: Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar briefs reporters following the discovery of a body tied to a string of four murders in two weeks in the area. (Webb County Sheriff's Office) Ortiz was approached by police at approximately 2 a.m. Saturday and initially fled troopers. He ran to a nearby hotel where he was arrested on the third floor of a parking garage hiding in a truck, authorities said. "This case broke open yesterday with an aggravated kidnapping that led to a lookout for a suspect, in this case Ortiz, so he will be looking at charges of aggravated kidnapping," Alaniz said. "The evidence then collected by the law enforcement investigators indicates that there was probable cause to indicate that this individual was responsible for this series of murders, which I would qualify as a serial murder that we have." Alaniz said it is believed all four women were sex workers. PHOTO: Law enforcement officers gather near the scene where the body of a woman was found near Interstate 35 north of Laredo, Texas on Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018. (AP) "Our sincerest condolences go out to the victims' family and friends," the U.S. Border Patrol said in a statement. "While it is CBP policy to not comment on the details of an ongoing investigation, criminal action by our employees is not, and will not be tolerated." Laredo, which has a population of about 250,000, according to the 2010 census, is located directly on the U.S.-Mexican border. (MORE: Texas woman accuses Border Patrol agent of demanding ID, stopping her for speaking Spanish) "Laredo is not the sleepy town that we grew up in," Alaniz said. "This is crime that is consistent with bigger cities. Laredo is a bigger city. We're seeing more and more serious crimes. It can happen. People need to be careful." Cueller thanked the Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers and the district attorney’s office for their assistance in the investigation. Ortiz is being held on $2.56 million bond. | |
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| 09-16-18 05:32pm - 2246 days | #1095 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Politics Jeff Flake Suggests Delaying Kavanaugh Vote Amid Sexual Assault Allegations [HuffPost] Doha Madani ,HuffPost•September 16, 2018 Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) became the first Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to suggest it delay moving forward with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation amid allegations the judge sexually assaulted a woman as a teenager. The Senate Judiciary Committee may be unable to move ahead with a Thursday vote that would send Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the full Senate after the judge’s previously unnamed accuser came forward Sunday. Flake, a member of the committee, said Sunday that he would not be “comfortable” moving forward now that Christine Blasey Ford has revealed herself as the woman behind a letter detailing the allegations. “If they push forward without any attempt with hearing what she’s had to say, I’m not comfortable voting yes ... we need to hear from her,” Flake told Politico Sunday. “And I don’t think I’m alone in this.” Republican members of the committee initially released a statement Sunday calling Ford’s motive into question and seemed ready to continue with Kavanaugh’s nomination as scheduled. Flake’s statement is significant and could potentially throw Kavanaugh’s bid for the high court in jeopardy considering the GOP holds a slim 11-10 advantage on the Judiciary Commitee. Moreover, his voice is likely to weigh heavily on the minds of GOP moderates such as Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who have not yet said how they intend to vote on Kavanaugh. Asked if the committee should proceed to vote this week as scheduled, Collins told CNN Sunday, “I’m going to be talking with my colleagues,” and declined further comment. Ford revealed her identity on Sunday in The Washington Post after Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) confirmed on Thursday that she was in possession of a letter accusing Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting a woman in his high school years. Ford alleges that Kavanaugh was “stumbling drunk” at a party in the 1980s when he pinned her to a bed, groped her, grinded his body against hers and attempted to pull off her clothing. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Sunday he was working on setting up bipartisan calls to keep Kavanaugh’s confirmation on track. Grassley’s office said it was working to hold calls alongside Feinstein, the top Democrat on the committee, to speak with Kavanaugh and Ford. “The Chairman and Ranking Member routinely hold bipartisan staff calls with nominees when updates are made to nominees’ background files,” Grassley’s office said in a statement. “Given the late addendum to the background file and revelations of Dr. Ford’s identity, Chairman Grassley is actively working to set up such follow-up calls with Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford ahead of Thursday’s scheduled vote.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), also on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he shared Grassley’s concerns about the timing of the accusations, but noted that he would be willing to listen to Ford if she “wished to provide information to the committee.” Igor Bobic contributed to this report. | |
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| 09-16-18 05:55pm - 2246 days | #1096 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Sen. Susan Collins calls grassroots anti-Kavanaugh efforts ‘bribery,’ ‘extortion’ Volunteers asking people to urge Collins to oppose Kavanaugh also asked for money to fight Collins’ re-election in 2020 if she didn’t. Susan Collins says she is pro-choice, a supporter of Roe vs Wade. But she also says she believes Brett Kavanaugh when he says that Roe vs Wade is settled law. Ignoring the fact that he wrote an opinion (not sure if that is the correct legal term) arguing the Roe vs Wade could be overturned by the Supreme Court, and that settled law can be challenged and changed. Lawyers can be tricky. Especially a lawyer like Kavanaugh, who taught lawyers how to answer deceptively when questioned about their beliefs in the nomination process. So if Collins votes for Kavanaugh, it proves she is a hypocrite. Or else she is a liar or mush-brained idiot who can't process the facts. --------- --------- By E.J. Dionne Jr. | The Washington Post September 16, 2018 at 7:30 am PORTLAND, Maine — Exceptional dangers require exceptional and sometimes unusual responses. This was the spirit animating the volunteers at a phone bank Tuesday night in Portland. They were asking citizens to urge their state’s popular Republican senator, Susan Collins, to oppose the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. And if they found a sympathizer, they took an additional and, for some, a controversial step: Asking for a commitment to contribute to a fund that would be activated against Collins’ re-election, whose term is up in 2020, if she voted for Kavanaugh. The campaign is spearheaded by Mainers for Accountable Leadership and Maine People’s Alliance, and it has outraged Collins, a consensus seeker who issued an unusually sharp retort: “Attempts at bribery or extortion will not influence my vote at all.” The organizers were unapologetic. “The idea of Susan Collins attacking an effort by 35,000 small-dollar donors as bribery is politics at its worse,” Marie Follayttar Smith, the Accountable Leadership group’s co-director, said in a statement. “We absolutely have the right to prepare to unseat her given everything Judge Kavanaugh would do on the Supreme Court to make life worse for Maine women.” For those who might be understandably troubled about money’s electoral power being wielded so openly, there is this irony: Kavanaugh himself is, as the legal scholar Richard Hasen wrote recently in Slate, “deeply skeptical of even the most basic campaign-finance limits.” It is one of a host of ways in which Kavanaugh would likely push the Supreme Court well to the right of where it is since he would replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, a more moderate conservative. That is a central reason why his nomination has generated such passionate resistance. Nan Aron, the president of the Alliance for Justice and a liberal veteran of confirmation battles, echoed the view of many on her side. “The level of engagement is the greatest I have seen since the Bork nomination,” she said, referring to the successful derailing of Robert Bork’s 1987 appointment to the court. For the activists here and many around the country, the fears around Kavanaugh’s nomination begin with abortion rights. But the catalogue is much more extensive, reflecting the broad array of concerns of the activists mobilizing against him. Ben Gaines worried that Kavanaugh would look for ways to side with President Trump in a dispute over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Dini Merz has the same apprehension, and also mentioned Kavanaugh’s views on “corporate power” and “religion and its role” in American life. Follayttar Smith spoke of the likelihood Kavanaugh would roll back environmental regulations and the Affordable Care Act. Susie Crimmins saw him as “dismantling government in its role of protecting the marginalized.” Louise Lora Somlyo felt that Kavanaugh had not been candid in his testimony before the Senate. More broadly, there is a belief that the would-be justice is primarily a partisan and an ideologue. “He’s a political animal to the core — and I say that as a political animal,” said Gaines, who worked for many Democrats around the country. Collins is an unusual Republican who has, by turns, gratified and infuriated liberals in her state. Alicia Barnes, a Navy veteran, said Collins “had our backs” during the campaign by LGBTQ groups to end the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy; Follayttar Smith spoke of the appreciation across the state for Collins’ vote to defend the Affordable Care Act. But Collins’ later vote for the Republican tax cut was a reminder of how often she has been loyal to her party’s leadership, and Bill Nemitz, a veteran columnist for the Portland Press-Herald, wrote a passionate column last weekend suggesting a vote for Kavanaugh would be a breaking point. With Senate Democrats now sharply questioning whether Kavanaugh has been misleading (or worse) in his testimony, Collins would have a path to oppose him, and she has said that if he had not been “truthful, then obviously that would be a major problem for me.” But there is a larger issue of hypocrisy that incites aversion to Kavanaugh. Repeatedly, Republican presidential candidates promise (usually indirectly, but, in Trump’s case, directly) that they will nominate justices who would challenge Roe v. Wade and, more generally, toe a conservative line. Once they are nominated however, these would-be justices pretend not to hold the views they hold. And when skeptics point out their obvious evasions, defenders denounce these objections as purely partisan. | |
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| 09-17-18 09:18am - 2245 days | #1097 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Chip off the old block. Donald Trump taught his kids well. Rape a woman, then tell everyone she's a slut not worth fucking. Deny, deny, deny. President Trump's cronies in his administration (does he have any independents he placed in the administration, or did they all pass the blind-loyalty-to-Trump litmus test) chime in with support of Trump Jr. for mocking the woman who claimed she was raped. Trump is crap. His family is crap. No matter how wealthy they might be. They are symbols of the corrupt, abusive and smug wealthy 1%. ------- ------- Donald Trump Jr. Posts Meme Mocking Woman Accusing Brett Kavanaugh Of Sexual Assault [HuffPost] Jenna Amatulli ,HuffPost•September 17, 2018 Donald Trump Jr. posted a meme on Instagram making fun of the woman who alleges that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were high school students. “Judge Kavanaugh’s sexual assault letter found by Dems,” reads the caption at the top of an image, which features a crayon letter in what looks like a child’s handwriting. The letter’s scrawl reads: “Will you be my girlfriend” alongside boxes marked with “yes” and “no.” “The Dems and their usual nonsense games really have him on the ropes now,” the president’s eldest son wrote in apparent sarcasm in his caption. “Finestein had the letter in July and saved it for the eve of his vote ... honorable as always. I believe this is a copy for full transparency.” “Finestein” appears to be a reference to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She said she reported the accuser’s letter to the FBI last week. The woman, Christine Blasey Ford, identified herself in a Washington Post interview published on Sunday as the author of the confidential letter sent in late July to Feinstein. Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh pinned her down and groped her while another male teenager watched when she was 15 in suburban Maryland around 1982. Ford, now 51, also said she “thought he might inadvertently kill me.” Kavanaugh, in a statement issued by the White House, denied the incident took place. Kavanaugh’s classmate, Mark Judge, said in a statement to The Weekly Standard that he has “no recollection of any of the events described in today’s Post article or attributed to her letter.” Ford would agree to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, her lawyer, Debra Katz, said Monday on the “Today” show. Trump Jr.’s Instagram post drew a comment from Lynne Patton, who heads the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s New York and New Jersey regional office for the Trump administration. She posted emojis of a laughing face and hands raised in agreement. Trump Jr. took a further swipe at the sexual assault allegation in a response to a person who commented on his Instagram post, writing: “you joke about it, but it’s important to find the truth regardless of the outcome.” Replied Trump: “An anonymous letter from an anonymous source that a senator sat on for over 2 months that’s talks about a very public figure who has been scrutinized for decades that the FBI refused to even look at conveniently appears right as he’s finishing confirmation? “Yea that’s credible... you can’t really buy that crap can you?” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-17-18 10:00am - 2245 days | #1098 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Kavanaugh High School Pal Writes In 1997 Memoir Of Being Wild Drunk With Girls. The 1997 memoir by Mark Judge claims that he would get wasted, wildly drunk, then try to hook up with girls. But in reports today, 2018, he has no recollection of him or his friend, Brett Kavanaugh, ever trying to force a girl to have sex. Blind drunk, and he has no recollection of forcing a girl to have sex. So: if you are blind drunk, does that improve your memory or your recollections? So: can you legally claim that what happened while you were blind drunk did not happen, because your brain does not have a memory of what you did? So: can Mark Judge produce a diary, written in the 1980s, that states he never got drunk enough to rape a girl? Or can he produce a dairy, written in 2018, but falsely dated in the 1980s, that he never got drunk enough to rape a girl, and that none of his friends ever tried to rape a girl? He admits he was often blind drunk at teenage parties in the 1980s. So is he a credible witness for Brett Kavanaugh, to deny that Kavanaugh never tried to rape a girl? Enquiring minds want to know the truth: Did Brett Kavanugh, the All-American-Boy-Turned-Man, the best person to deny women the right to have an abortion, because his moral conscience tells him so? After all, Kavanaugh is a proper Catholic, he might have confessed his sins to his priest and been forgiven by God, but he is not stupid enough to confess his sins to the public. Note: In the memoir, he writes that he often became so blind drunk he would pass out and wake up with no memory of where he was. In the memoir, he writes: A girl at a party, wrote Judge, asked him: “Do you know Bart O’Kavanaugh? I heard he puked in someone’s car the other night.” Judge responds: “Yeah he passed out on his way back from a party.” Does Brett Kavanaugh wish to testify what happened back in the 1980s when he was a wild drunk? Or does he deny being a wild drunk. Maybe he only tasted alcohol to see what it tasted like, but he is a good Catholic who would not rape a girl. Just the kind of man who deserves, under Donald Trump, to serve on the Supreme Court. Rapists who respect women and love women so much they will deny them abortions because that is against God's will.  -------- -------- Kavanaugh High School Pal Writes In Memoir Of Being Wild Drunk With Girls HuffPost Mary Papenfuss,HuffPost 2 hours 39 minutes ago Brett Kavanaugh’s former high school pal who a woman says was in the room when the now-Supreme Court nominee sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers has called the accusation “absolutely nuts.” “I never saw Brett act that way,” Mark Judge, now a writer and filmmaker, told The Weekly Standard last week before the identity of the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, had been revealed. Judge restated his denial on Sunday, after Ford came forward in a Washington Post interview. “I repeat my earlier statement that I have no recollection of any of the events described in today’s Post article or attributed to her letter,” he said in a statement to The Weekly Standard. Judge, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at the all-male Georgetown Prep the time of the alleged assault, tells stories in his 1997 memoir, Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk, of binge drinking at teen parties and trying to “hook up” with girls. It was at one such gathering, Ford told the Post, that Kavanaugh and Judge, both drunk, shoved her into a bedroom. She said that Kavanaugh locked the door, pushed her onto a bed, fumbled with her clothing, held her down and attempted to force himself on her. Ford said she managed to escape when Judge jumped on top of both of them. Kavanaugh has “categorically” denied the accusations. Judge recalls in his book how his life changed when he first got drunk at the age of 14 and later battled alcoholism. His “immersion” into alcohol began the end of his sophomore year during a typical annual “beach week,” when Catholic high school students headed to the shore after school was out. “Now I had an opportunity to make some headway [with girls]. Most of the time everyone, including the girls, was drunk. If you could breathe and walk at the same time, you could hook up,” he wrote. His drinking became so extreme that he had blackout episodes, and woke up on the floor of a restaurant bathroom with no memory of how he got there. Once “I had the first beer, I found it impossible to stop until I was completely annihilated,” he wrote. (Amazon) Kavanaugh is not specifically mentioned in the book. The name Kavanaugh surfaces in passing, when Judge recites some Irish Catholic surnames at his elementary school — “O’Neal, Murphy, Kavanaugh.” Judge’s book changes the name of his high school to “Loyola Prep,” and makes a glancing reference at a character he calls “Bart O’Kavanaugh.” A girl at a party, wrote Judge, asked him: “Do you know Bart O’Kavanaugh? I heard he puked in someone’s car the other night.” Judge responds: “Yeah he passed out on his way back from a party.” In his 2005 book God and Man at Georgetown Prep, Judge slammed his high school and the “insane liberalism” of Catholicism in the 1960s. He said the school was “overrun” by gay priests — part of the church’s “lavender mafia,” he later wrote in The Daily Caller — and was infused with alcohol. “Only a person in denial still claims that something did not go terribly wrong in the Church after the 1960s, and that more often than not that thing was homosexual priests molesting teenage boys,“Judge wrote in the The Daily Caller in 2011. “My own take is that it had less to do with homosexuality than with the feverish libertinism of the 60s. Liberals have no interest in connecting the dots from liberalism to sexual abuse.” Judge also noted in his essay: “I’m guilty as well, at least of the bouts of dehumanizing lust that is part of the fallen world and being human ... we all have that monster to some extent.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-17-18 10:31am - 2245 days | #1099 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Democrats launch a vicious attack on Brett Kavanaugh to smear him with lies. The attack tool is Christine Blasey Ford. Read the article, and you will learn that the woman has a history of trying to smear Brett Kavanaugh. She has hired an attorney, and she will need one, because the Republicans are going all-out to destroy the woman. Even the president's son, Don Trump Jr, says the woman is a stupid fool for trying to attack a man President Trump has nominated to the Supreme Court. You can't find a better man than someone our President has picked. --------- --------- Who is Christine Blasey Ford, the professor who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct? Kaitlyn Schallhorn By Kaitlyn Schallhorn | Fox News Just days before the Senate Judiciary Committee was set to vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, Christine Blasey Ford publicly came forward to accuse the federal appeals judge of sexual assault decades ago. The sexual assault allegation first came to light in the form of a letter obtained by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who sent shockwaves through Washington when she announced last week she forwarded it to the FBI. Feinstein is the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, which is tasked with deciding whether to formally recommend a Supreme Court nominee to the full Senate for a vote. But Ford publicly came forward in an interview with The Washington Post over the weekend, saying her “civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.” She has accused Kavanaugh of pinning her to a bed during a house party in Maryland in the early 1980s, attempting to remove her clothes and putting his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream. At the time of the alleged incident, Ford was 15 and Kavanaugh was 17, she said, adding that Kavanaugh was drunk. –– ADVERTISEMENT –– “I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford said. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.” Christine Ford researchgate net Christine Blasey Ford, a California psychology professor, has publicly accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct from an incident more than 30 years ago. (researchgate.net) She said she was able to escape when Mark Judge – a friend of Kavanaugh’s who has come to his defense after the allegations became public – jumped on top of them. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations, saying, “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.” Judge has said he has no recollection of the alleged events. Read on for a look at four things to know about Ford. Ford is a college professor Ford is a clinical psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California. A biostatistician, she “specializes in the design and analysis of clinical trials and other forms of intervention evaluation,” according to the university. Her work has also been published in several academic journals, covering topics such as 9/11 and child abuse. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's sexual assault accuser Christine Ford should not be ignored or insulted, counselor to President Trump Kellyanne Conway tells 'Fox & Friends.' Video Kellyanne Conway: Judge Kavanaugh's accuser will be heard KAVANAUGH ACCUSER MAY TESTIFY ‘UNDER OATH,’ KELLYANNE CONWAY SAYS, AS LAWYER OPENS DOOR Ford has also taught and worked at Stanford University since 1988, according to a Holton-Arms’ alumni magazine, the Bethesda, Maryland, school from where she graduated, The Wall Street Journal reported. She teaches at both schools in consortium, according to the newspaper. The magazine also noted she is an “avid surfer, and she and her family spend a great deal of time surfing in the Santa Cruz and San Francisco areas.” Her husband has backed her allegations Russell Ford, her husband, also told The Washington Post that his wife detailed the alleged assault during a couple’s therapy session in 2012. During therapy, he said his wife talked about a time when she was trapped in a room with two drunken boys, and one of them had pinned her to a bed, molested her and tried to prevent her from screaming. He said he remembered his wife specifically using Kavanaugh’s name. She said during the session, Russell Ford recalled, she was scared he would one day be nominated to the Supreme Court. KAVANAUGH FACES UNCERTAIN FUTURE AFTER ACCUSER BREAKS SILENCE, REPUBLICANS WORRY IN PRIVATE ABOUT MIDTERMS Ford provided a copy of the therapist’s notes to The Washington Post, which detailed her recollection of being assaulted by young men “from an elitist boys’ school” who would become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.” Additional notes from a later therapy session said she discussed a “rape attempt” that occurred when she was a teenager, The Washington Post reported. She’s a registered Democrat Ford is a registered Democrat who has given small monetary donations to political causes, according to The Washington Post. Rich Edson has the details. Video Dems demand delay in Kavanaugh hearings She has donated to ActBlue, a nonprofit group that aims to help Democrats and progressive candidates, The Wall Street Journal reported. KAVANAUGH STAUNCH GUN-RIGHTS DEFENSE AMONG HUNDREDS OF DECISIONS IN SPOTLIGHT She is also among the thousands of medical professionals who signed onto a Physicians for Human Rights letter in June decrying the practice of separating children from their parents at the border and urging the Trump administration to stop it. Ford already took a polygraph test Once it was clear that Kavanaugh was President Trump’s pick to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, Ford contacted The Washington Post’s tip line, according to the newspaper. She also contacted her representative in Congress, Democrat Anna Eshoo. She sent a letter to Eshoo’s office about the allegations that was passed onto Feinstein. After she retained the services of Debra Katz, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney, she took a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent. According to the results shared with The Washington Post, the test concluded that Ford was being honest. Fox News’ Gregg Re and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Kaitlyn Schallhorn is a Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter: @K_Schallhorn. | |
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| 09-17-18 10:44am - 2245 days | #1100 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Donald Trump admits to the public there is massive corruption in the US government. He has boldly admitted this to the public, taking the news from the highest top-secret files to show the public that government officials are corrupt. And that the US public has been watching and listening to lies from the Fake News for many years. Trump pledged during his campaign that he would clear the swamp in Washington. But the swamp is trying to drown him with evil, vicious lies. Stand up for the truth, and send your donations to the President-for-Life-Trump-Foundation to make sure that Trump has the money to fight the evil slime-ball Democrats who infest Congress and other parts of the US government. -------- -------- President Donald Trump Tweetstorm – The Sunday Edition Deadline Bruce Haring,Deadline Sun, Sep 16 9:43 AM PDT It’s Sunday morning, time for coffee, a bagel, and the morning news. President Donald Trump may not be partaking of the first two, but he’s definitely watching the news. The Commander-in-Tweet gave a shout-out to Maria Bartiromo of Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures show on Fox for backing up his earlier tweet on the Robert Mueller witch hunt. “This show is MANDATORY watching if you want to understand the massive governmental corruption and the Russian hoax,” tweeted the president. He later retweeted another Fox News interview with Congressman Devin Nunes, who wants to declassify interviews on what led to the Mueller/Russia probe. So far, the Sunday Twitter output has been light from the normally voluble President, perhaps owing to some late output on Saturday. We’ll keep you updated as the pace picks up. | |
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