I’ve been trying to find a reliable source with numbers of how many federal and state law enforcement officers were mobilized in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation and stand off. I think over time it must have been hundreds when you consider the FBI, Oregon State police and law enforcement personnel from numerous municipalities in Oregon. There’s plenty of numbers for what the whole thing cost – many millions of dollars. But I’m interested in the numbers of people. The Hammonds were going to jail for having committed repeated acts of arson. They were behind a stand off in which dozens or hundreds of law enforcement officers were repeatedly threatened with violence and toward the end had to very directly endanger their lives. To put it mildly, pardoning these men as upstanding symbols of American virtue shows a pretty clear indifference to law breaking and the safety of federal law enforcement agents if you’re a certain kind of person and if your crime is tied to right wing political extremism. If you know where I can find those numbers – the total number of law enforcement officers deployed – please drop me a line.
Here’s a tweet from the US President, en route to Europe for the NATO summit.
Many countries in NATO, which we are expected to defend, are not only short of their current commitment of 2% (which is low), but are also delinquent for many years in payments that have not been made. Will they reimburse the U.S.?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2018
This is a straight up lie. None NATO member states are behind on any payments to NATO. The entire NATO unified budget is under $2 billion. The US pays 21% of that total. I explain some of these details here. Read More
There’s now a ninth accuser for Rep. Jim Jordan. He says he told Jordan about a specific case of the now-deceased team doctor fondling his testicles. Jordan snickered and took no action. “I remember coming up and saying, ‘Strauss held my balls longer than normal.’ He just snickered.”
As outrageous as the Dinesh D’Souza pardon was, I’m not terribly concerned that there’s going to be a ramp up in middle-aged racist charlatans using their mistresses as straw donors in federal campaigns. But President Trump’s pardon of the militia types who inspired the Bundy militia standoff back in early 2016 really is like announcing open season on federal law enforcement. It will also dramatically increase an existing problem: which is that far-right, white militias in the West can commit acts of terrorism and violate federal law more or less with impunity. As I wrote at the time, the whole exercise amounted to a kind of white privilege performance art. President Trump really is instituting factional government. If you support Trump, he’ll have your back against the law.
President doubles down on family separation as deterrent (from pool) …
Q: Reaction to latest deadline missed on child reunions?
“Well, I have a solution. Tell people not to come to our country illegally. That’s the solution. Don’t come to our country illegally. Come like other people do. Come legally.
I’m skeptical that Democrats can defeat Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court. But I’m not skeptical about trying. Kavanaugh has been a reliable ideologue and partisan for most of his Washington career. Since 2006 he’s served on the DC Court of Appeals as a Supreme Court nominee in waiting. Elite universities, Federalist Society, prestige clerkships, the 90s-era anti-Clinton DC cabal, top Bush aide, cue-up circuit court judge — if you were cooking up youngish Republican judicial ideologues for Supreme Court service it’s hard to see how they’d look any different than Brett Kavanaugh. This is why I had little doubt he’d eventually get the nod. President Trump outsources Supreme Court picks and the whole inertial force of the institutional Republican party exists to put guys like Brett Kavanaugh on the Court.
Here are a few things that we should start scrutinizing now. Read More
As we move toward the NATO Summit and the Putin-Trump summit, I thought it made sense to review some of the details behind the President’s demands that NATO member countries pay up and stop doing what he regards as freeloading on the U.S. taxpayer’s dime. Most people have a general sense that Trump doesn’t seem to grasp how an alliance works, that it’s not meant to function as a protection racket. But the actual details are both sillier and more significant than it may seem on the surface. Read More
The British government seems to be falling apart over Brexit. Boris Johnson has resigned as Foreign Secretary. This comes after the overnight resignation of the Brexit minister. Prime Minister May is already running a minority government with a so-called “confidence and supply” agreement with the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionists.
One of the issues we’re going to cover in our Voting Rights and Democracy series is the issue of felon disenfranchisement. The Florida Phoenix recently published an article which reported that in mid-June an African-American, Erwin Jones, appeared before Governor Rick Scott’s cabinet to petition to have his voting rights restored. (The cabinet in this case sits as the Executive Clemency Board.) When Jones appeared before the Board, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis pressed him on how many children he had and “how many different mothers to those children?”
Patronis pressed another petitioner about his church attendance. Each of these men had committed felonies and at least five years had passed since their imprisonment and parole had ended. Read More
Rep. Jim Jordan (R), hit with multiple accusations that he knew about but failed to take action against a sexual abuser, just gave a hyper-aggressive interview to Fox News’ Bret Baier. First, this wasn’t your standard Hannity/Tucker-style Fox interview. Baier wasn’t antagonistic but he was deliberate and focused and pressed Jordan on the key points. Jordan attacked his accusers, particularly the first one who came forward, Mike DiSabato. But what was most revealing is that Jordan repeatedly fell back on the distinction between ‘locker room talk’ and formal accusations. “Conversations in a locker room are a lot different than allegations of abuse or reported abuse to us,” Jordan told Baier. Read More