Historian Heather Cox Richardson pulls together the latest news about the continuing assault on our democracy. When the news first broke about the FBI call on Mar-A-Lago in search of sensitive documents, Republicans responded with rage, calling the FBI a Gestapo and assailing the raid as a partisan effort to smear Trump. Now that the Department of Justice has released the search warrant and the list of documents it retrieved, the furor has calmed a bit but not much. Leading Republicans continue to defend Trump, to say that he had declassified the documents he stored in his resort home, and that he had the unlimited power to declassify whatever he wanted. We will learn more as time goes by, but what puzzles me most is why Trump took any sensitive documents to his home. Why did he want them? He was famous for ignoring briefings about intelligence and security. What could he do with the documents?
Richardson writes:
Today, President Joe Biden congratulated the people of India on their 75th anniversary of independence, calling out the relationship between “our great democracies” and “our shared commitment to the rule of law and the promotion of human freedom and dignity.”
Yesterday, he lamented the recent knife attack on writer Salman Rushdie, calling out Rushdie’s “insight into humanity,…his unmatched sense for story,…his refusal to be intimidated or silenced,” and his support “for essential, universal ideals. Truth. Courage. Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear. These are the building blocks of any free and open society. And today, we reaffirm our commitment to those deeply American values in solidarity with Rushdie and all those who stand for freedom of expression.”
But the news today is full not of the defense of democracy, but of those trying to overthrow it.
Emma Brown, Jon Swaine, Aaron C. Davis, and Amy Gardner of the Washington Postbroke the story that after the 2020 election, as part of the effort to overturn the results, Trump’s lawyers paid computer experts to copy data from election systems in Georgia. The breach was successful and significant, although authorities maintain the machines can be secured before the next election. Led by Trump ally Sidney Powell, the group also sought security data from Michigan and Nevada, although the extent of the breaches there is unclear. They also appear to have worked on getting information from Arizona.
Georgia prosecutors have told Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that he is a target in the criminal investigation of the attempt to alter the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, letting him know it is possible he will be indicted.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has tried to quash a subpoena requiring his testimony before a Fulton County grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, but today a federal judge, U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May, said he must testify. She said that “the District Attorney’s office has shown ‘extraordinary circumstances and a special need for Senator Graham’s testimony on issues relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the lawful administration of Georgia’s 2020 elections.’”
And yet, the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election is still spreading. Amy Gardner in the Washington Post reports that 54 out of 87 Republican nominees in the states that were battlegrounds in 2020 are election deniers. Had they held power in 2020, they could have overturned the votes for Biden and given the election to Trump. In the 41 states that have already winnowed their candidates, more than half the Republicans—250 candidates in 469 contests—claim to believe the lie that Trump won in 2020.
In the issue of Trump’s theft of classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration when he left office, over the weekend, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush reported in the New York Times that last June, one of Trump’s lawyers signed a statement saying that all classified documents that had made it to Mar-a-Lago had been given back to the National Archives and Records Administration. But, of course, the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last Monday revealed that assertion to be incorrect.
The statement was made after Jay I. Bratt, the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence officer, visited Mar-a-Lago on June 3. The House and Senate intelligence committees have asked Director of National Intelligence Avril D. Haines to provide the committees with a damage assessment of how badly Trump’s retention of top secret classified documents in an insecure location has damaged national security.
Today, the Department of Justice has asked a judge not to unseal the affidavit behind the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, saying that it “implicates highly classified materials,” and that disclosing the affidavit right now would “cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation.” CNN, the Washington Post,NBC News, and Scripps all asked the judge to unseal all documents related to the Mar-a-Lago search. But, “[i]f disclosed,” the Justice Department wrote, “the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps.”
Legal analyst and Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe commented: “This suggests [the Department of Justice] wasn’t just repatriating top secret doc[ument]s to get them out of Trump’s unsafe clutches but is pursuing a path looking toward criminal indictment.”
—
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/15/politics/lindsey-graham-georgia-investigation/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/15/politics/justice-department-mar-a-lago-search-affidavit/index.html
Neal Katyal @neal_katyalDOJ is appropriately resisting disclosure of the Mar A Lago search affidavit because it will compromise their ongoing investigation. This is very standard and right. That said, what they said — especially about witnesses — will invariably drive Trump to be even more worried August 15th 20222,266 Retweets9,400 Likes
Laurence Tribe @tribelawThis suggests DOJ wasn’t just repatriating top secret docs to get them out of Trump’s unsafe clutches but is pursuing a path looking toward criminal indictment https://t.co/9uLeJkc7yvScott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNewsALERT: Justice Dept asks court to keep Mar-a-lago search warrant affidavit UNDER SEAL. “Disclosure at this juncture of the affidavit supporting probable cause would, by contrast, cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation”August 15th 20221,161 Retweets4,709 Likes
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Look for tiny greasy fingerprints on any document valuable to Russia or Saudi Arabia.
Yes, indeed!
YUP
And look for Rudy’s ugly, oily face print..
You know , fromclosee reading
That dumpster works for Putin, his Rubles bag.
Rubely Giuliani
The lawyer, Robert Barnes, and what a person could speculate about the convergence of segments- Raw Story reports Barnes is drafting new rules for the Rumble platform’s governance of hate group material. Wikipedia describes Barnes as an attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, Amy Cooper (Central Park birdwatching incident), Dustin Hice and, Covington Catholic high school students (the incident involved a boys group who had attended an anti-abortion gathering in D.C.)
Btw- Rumble was platform host for Russia Today.
It would likely be quite dangerous to any investigation to reveal the underlying affidavit. It cannot be allowed to happen.
The Republican claim that “We are a republic, not a democracy” has been around for decades, but became much more widespread during and since Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign when, for just one example, Utah Senator Mike Lee declared that “We’re not a democracy! Democracy isn’t the goal — liberty, peace, and prosperity are. Rank democracy can thwart that.”
“Rank”? That word means something that literally stinks with a foul odor. That’s what today’s Republicans think of Democracy.
The Republicans can get away with confusing people into thinking that a republic and a democracy are not the same thing because ever since standardized testing polluted education, subjects like Civics have been short-changed in schools — Civics and History aren’t included in the standardized tests to which school funding is tied, so teachers are told not to “waste time” teaching them too much and to concentrate on the money-making subjects. The result is generations of Americans who can’t even name the three branches of government, let alone know what Democracy is.
Had they been taught the critical subject of Civics, they would know that Democracy is any form of government in which the People hold the ultimate political power, as in the United States. They would know that there are two forms of Democracy:
A Direct Democracy in which all the People directly vote on every law. That form of Democracy is impractical for a nation as large as America and with more than 325,000,000 citizens.
A Representative Democracy, known as a “Republic”, in which the People elect representatives to represent large groups of them and to vote on the laws. That is the form of Democracy that America has. A Republic is in fact a Democracy.
Democracy — the idea that ordinary people have the ultimate political power — has always been an idea that has been hated by the elites of society…and that is why Republicans who represent the elites today are trying to convince We the People that Democracy is “rank” and that America is not a Democracy. The Republicans want We the People to give up the idea that ordinary people have the ultimate political power…just give all the power to the elites, and everything will be fine.
The idea that “too much democracy” is a bad thing is not confined to right-wing circles.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/does-america-have-too-muc_b_7763802
??? Are you saying today’s moderate Republicans also don’t like democracy?
I wonder how many Americans already understand the distinction that you describe above, Quikwrit. I am not sanguine about its being a large number. The success of Donald Trump and the blatant nature of the lies commonly told by Republican leaders both suggest to me that kids aren’t learning much Civics. This is in spite of the fact that civics is widely taught. A 2018 study by the Centers for American Progress found that 30 states require a half year of high-school Civics, 9 require a year, and only 11 have no separate Civics requirement but roll Civics into other Social Studies classes.
So, most kids get a Civics class, but most don’t walk away having learned much.
These facts present us with a problem to solve. How do we do a better job of communicating Civics knowledge to kids? Clearly, what we are doing isn’t working very well,
I have often raised the same issue with regard to mathematics education in K-12 schools. Every student in the US who completes high school has had AT LEAST 11 years of compulsory mathematics education, yet most American adults report that they a) hate math, b) aren’t “good at” math, and c) 60 percent of them can’t calculate a 10 percent tip even though this just requires moving the decimal point.
That’s failure. The system ROUTINELY fails for most people. Given that this is the case, given ROUTINE FAILURE, perhaps we should be thinking about what we might be doing wrong.
“That’s failure. The system ROUTINELY fails for most people.”
No, no, no!!!!!
Public schools actually work quite well for the majority of students. Do some not take advantage of the opportunities that public schools offer? No doubt, but the blame lies not in “the system” (and that is a very weak edudeformer meme) but with the students and their parents/guardians along with the schools which do not have the adequate resources to give the kind of personalized attention that some students need.
I’ve seen many “success” stories over the years involved with students who did need that kind of help.
You are wrong to blame “the system”. It’s a lazy way to address this quite complex issue. It is also the edudeformers’ dream to have those of us who cherish public education to spout such horse manure.
I’m not talking, Duane, about public schools generally. I am talking about our pedagogical approach to mathematics instruction, which is a clear failure because so many of the adult products of that education are innumerate. If almost all graduates say that they HATE mathematics, and they do, and 60 percent can’t do even very basic math, which is so, then the normal curricular and pedagogical approach isn’t working.
Thanks for the clarification. That is not how I read your statement.
If any other product had a 60 percent or higher failure rate, you would not conclude that this is a good product. I fervently believe that we are not teaching math in a sane way in K-12, typically, and I’m shocked that given the level of failure of our methods, so few people question them.
How do you define that “60% or higher failure rate”? What does that mean? What are the parameters and data that you are using to make that claim?
I beleive that it was a study by the National Endowment of the Arts some 15-20 years ago that found that 60 percent of American adults could not calculate a 10 percent tip. I’ll leave you to look up, yourself, the stats on math phobia among American adults, almost all of whom have had many, many years of math instruction. That’s the source of my “and higher.” If MOST adults are saying a) I hate math and b) I’m no good at it, then I would say that that is failure.
Ask the adults around you, Duane. How many of them say they don’t like math, never practice it, never read or do math for pleasure, and so on. Most, right? This is everyone’s common experience. It’s the rare few adults, products of our system, who love math and practice it throughout their lives.
I was an English major but I loved math too. I liked a variety of ways to engage my mind. As a retiree, I still read books, but I also do puzzles. Sometimes I even do some math.
That’s awesome. I still enjoy these myself, though I find that I am considerably slower with the logic problems and math problems than I was. I know a LOT more, but I’m not as quick.
I also tire a lot more quickly these days. My days of all-nighters are long, long gone.
I’ve lived a long time. I’ve met a lot of people. Most were math phobic, many extremely so. They got that somewhere.
Click to access LockhartsLament.pdf
Interesting read. Some good things some pie in the sky and some outrageous.
“Even putting aside the fact that statewide curricula and standardized tests virtually eliminate teacher autonomy, I doubt that most teachers even want to have such an intense relationship with their students. It requires too much vulnerability and too much responsibility— in short, it’s too much work!”
First thouught spot on, the rest horse manure!
The most valuable part of this famous essay, I think, is that it makes quite clear, by analogy, why mathematics as currently taught is excruciating for most students. He does not treat my suggestion that math instruction per se should begin AFTER students have the cognitive maturity to be able to do abstract reasoning. As I suggested above, I believe that before then, students should do a lot of play with patterns (this is in keeping with Lockhart’s suggestions, but a clearer description of what I’m talking about can be found in the Nisbett book). This play would have a purposeful end–to speed along, to hasten the development of abstract reasoning ability (almost all young children are very concrete thinkers). So, the Common Core, by pushing more abstract thinking to earlier grades (e.g., having third graders learn “the concept of the variable”) goes in precisely the wrong direction, which isn’t in keeping with what we know about child developmental psychology. At any rate, I am pretty certain that if we followed my suggestion, kids would learn more math in four years of high school than they now do in 12 years of schooling, would retain more, would enjoy it more, and would carry this love for it into their adult lives. Exactly what doesn’t happen now.
As far as math is concerned – I have lived through numerous techniques for teaching math – as a student, a parent, a grandparent, and as a teacher. My conclusion is that some children will learn math no matter what methodology is employed and others will just never grasp any but the most basic concepts. I had two children that did well on Chicago math (both with central auditory processing issues) and two grandsons who are doing great on CC. We won’t discuss my grand daughter.
There are a few children who are born with exceptional mathematics ability. Their brains are built to grok high-level abstraction from Day 1. These folks are extremely rare, this little Fermats and Gausses and Ramanujans and von Neumanns and should be identified early on and given very specialized and separate instruction because they are extremely important to the human race generally and its progress. But the simple fact is that most children think extremely concretely (though their brains do all kinds of automatic stuff that involves generalization and conceptualization). In other words, they are incapable of explicit abstract reasoning. The prefrontal cortex, where a lot of abstract reasoning takes place, doesn’t go through its major growth spurt until beginning at about age 16 and isn’t done with this until about the age of 26. I think, based on the work of psychologist Richard Nisbett and others, that the ability to reason abstractly can be jump started by programs of play involving patterns–think of the kinds of activities that appear on IQ tests. But in general, by starting formal mathematics instruction so early, we are asking kids to do this BEFORE THEY HAVE THE COGNITIVE TOOLS THAT ARE NECESSARY FOR THE TASK. It’s like asking them to turn a tiny Philips screw with a chunky butter knife. It just doesn’t work. It’s frustrating and tiring. And people hate it. And that’s precisely what we see. Most adult products of our math instruction are math phobic and really hate it.
Allow me to share a story. My ex wife was extremely math phobic. One time, years ago, my son was doing math homework. He was learning the foil method for checking the factoring of polynomials. I was extremely busy, against a deadline on which a lot of money depended. So, she grabbed his textbook, read the lesson, and showed him how to do this. Then she said to me, “I could no more have done that when I was his age than I could have flapped my wings and flown.” Now, she was and is an extremely bright and knowledgeable person with two Master’s degrees. I think that what she was reporting was exactly correct. When she was his age, she had not yet developed the necessary tools to do highly abstract reasoning, and once she had done that, then what had once seemed impossible was pretty easy.
For me it made sense, for some of my friends – they never got the concept. My husband, a math teacher, says “some peoples brains are wired for math and some peoples brains are not”. Yet we can live full, productive lives without figuring out how much to give as a tip – especially now that they tell you the amount when you pay the bill.
I’m sure your wife had a good feeling when she could explain the foil method to your son. Better late than never.
She really did. It was an epiphany for her. I was so happy to see it!
So, I think that the big problem with math instruction is one that no one, to my knowledge, has hit upon before–that we are starting it before kids are developmentally ready for it. Yes, I understand that some people have made this criticism of the CC$$ math “standards”–that they aren’t developmentally appropriate, but I don’t think that they have grokked how HUGE a problem this is for our entire approach to K-12 math. We start it before people are capable of doing abstract reasoning, before they have the mental tools for this. Just as we start language instruction at the very time when the internal mechanism for automatically intuiting linguistic structures is slowing way, way down. We have these precisely backward. As Hamlet put it, “The readiness is all.” I wish that a LOT more people understood this. I’ve been saying if for decades, and it always falls on deaf ears, but I think I’m right about this, and there’s neurological science (longitudinal fMRI studies) to back me up on it.
I don’t disagree and with CC it has become even more problematic. Still, there will always be those who will learn to read and/or be successful in math at an early age. The problem is they are the exception but are held up as an example of the rule.
Yes, as I said, there are rare individuals who are capable of doing quite advanced mathematics at very early ages. These prodigies are extremely important to our species, and they are very, very rare. On this point, note that a student can go through 12 years of schooling in the U.S. today with perfect pitch but have no one ever discover that he or she has this amazing ability.
When I was in the board of NAEP, I frequently reviewed question on the exams of reading, history, and civics. I could not understand the 8th grade math questions. I’d like to see state legislators take 8th grade math NAEP tests and publish their scores.
Yes, that would be really funny. I would also love to see Billy Gates take the new Common Cored version of the SAT, which Coleman should have called the SCCAT.
Duane E Swacker
Exactly: Perhaps it is only after life experience that one can relate to what one was taught in school. As Zinn stated “in America they have invented the most ingenious system to prevent change . They give just enough to just as many as necessary to prevent it ” (or close enough). The Welfare State is a victim of its own success., Social Security ,Medicare , Unemployment insurance , prevailing wages ,Unions ,even ACA … That’s “Whats the Matter With Kansas ”
Therefore the Great Depression prior to that welfare state heralded in a 40-50 year period of progress when the Working Classes ; most Americans are Working Class, not a managerial or professional class , they were devastated. . Even Racial progress was made . As the belly got full it became easy to divide the working class by pointing to other workers as “trying to steal your cookie ” as the Empire Stuck Back ‘ in a massive transfer of wealth to the top.
Those parents do not see themselves as members of an oppressed class . They are all on their way to being Bezos ,Gates or Musk . If minorities, the poor , women , Unions Democrats …. would get out of the way .
And as for civics classes this Facebook meme struck me. “The Grandparents who threw rocks at Ruby Bridges don’t want there Grandchildren to learn what they did. Well at least they only threw rocks. The previous generation of “good people ” in much of America cheered at a lynching.
The civics that penetrates for many Americans was taught at home. Saying we are a Republic allows those who feel privileged (whether they are or not) ,to separate themselves from the mass below them who would have more if we were a truly representative democracy.
As usual x out there, replace with their .
I wonder about the state of civics knowledge among recent high-school grads nationwide. I would love to see a truly definitive study of this. I suspect that it’s better today than in the past. I am much encouraged when I look at polls of young people’s views on a range of political and economic issues. They don’t seem like a bunch of dummies to me. Unlike their Trumpy elders.
Bob Shepherd
Gee Bob I wish I shared your optimism. I know you remember “never trust anyone over thirty” . Well how did my generation turn out once the Vietnam War was over. And the draft ended. In fact I will date that a bit further back to when the Draft Lottery was instituted and the 2/3 of those who felt the safety of a high number in 1969 became apathetic or like the Orange buffoon started waving the flag for a war they would never be called on to fight.
Most people are under an illusion that the young were the ones opposed to the war back then. A few were, and they made headlines. But most young people supported the war. It was the elderly who were overwhelmingly against it. So it wasn’t surprising when those young people, supporters of the war, grew up and voted for the racist Ronnie Rayguns.
Hi Bob,
In the 70s when I was in elementary school, my father had a big problem with the math textbooks that were coming out. He went repeatedly to my teachers to say that the textbooks were teaching math incorrectly. (He was a chemistry major at Cornell University and was a doctor. And very gifted in math. ) If it hadn’t been for him teaching me math (and I’m pretty bad at math), I wouldn’t know anything. He also told the teachers that he refused to buy me a calculator until I could do math without it. In some ways he was a horrible teacher by our standards (lacked patience, yelled a lot…)but in other ways, he was great. He drew pictures and always taught me to think in terms of money when possible. He knew his stuff and I learned it by God.
Funny. One of my daughters attended a public high school in Beverly, Massachusetts. One year, this small school system spent a lot of money to buy the leading discovery math program. Here’s how my daughter explained it to me: Every day, they gave us a problem to go home and try to figure out how to solve on our own. No one ever did. Then we went into class and the teacher showed us how to do it, and we learned what failures we were. My own strong belief is that kids before the age of about 14 don’t, most of them, have the cognitive equipment for very abstract reasoning and that those who attribute it to them are engaged in Clever Hans-style attribution of abilities that don’t exist and that for this reason, our abstract approach to math instruction loses most people and turns them off early on and that this persists for the lifetime. I think we should delay the beginning of formal math instruction for many years and substitute play with patterns as discussed by Lockhart AND detailed in Nisbett’s book Intelligence and How to Get It. If we did, I think our large failure rates in math instruction would become history. For different developmental. reasons, we should begin foreign language instruction in preschool and make it full time up until about the age of 14. So, we have things backward. We begin one far too early and the other far too late. That’s because like Ed Deformers generally, people understand too little of developmental cognitive psychology, which Daedalus doesn’t even think is a science, oddly.
As one who has taught both math and social studies, I would suggest there is truth to all the comments here. I criticize many of our math methods on the basis of our experience, but I recognize that starving the system of money has h as Mortesen our ability to minister to the needs of our students. As one who ended the career teaching the
Principles of representative government as an aspect of studying its historical and social development, I would suggest that the expectation of the development of a responsible citizenry through high school education is a find dream. The best we can do is to use debate and consideration of ideas to put our students on a road. Where they take that road is their own doing. Leaders who use this reality to guide people in the wrong direction well know they are not leading the learned. There will always be danger.
For truth to win, we should teach respect for truth as the first principle.
For truth to win, we should teach respect for truth as the first principle.
Yes!!!
Hi Bob,
I agree about learning foreign languages at an earlier age – starting in preschool really. Interestingly, when very young children learn multiple languages, they can keep them separate. The older people get when learning languages, the more difficulty they have keeping them separate. But in general, learning foreign languages in the US is not a priority.
It’s a great shame. We generally start language instruction (and not immersive instruction, which is necessary) at around the very age when the internal automatic language-learning mechanism starts breaking down. Totally bizarre. Millions of people involved in this, doing it every day, and doing it wrong, and almost all the linguists know this. The disconnect there between what is known and what is practiced is severe and really, really weird. We are such creatures of habit. Often of bad habit.
Perhaps you know the great scholar George Steiner. He grew up in a family where four languages were continually spoken, often switching among them. He learned German, Russian, French, and English as a small child.
“h as Mortesen” Was supposed to read “hampered.” I am constantly amazed at autocorrect. As a matter of fact, I am starting a new project: the autocorrect version of scripture. WE may soon have cults believing that they were shaved by the scarf of Jesus. And what would autocorrect do to the Q’ran?
Have you read A Canticle for Leibowitz, by any chance, Roy? Post-apocalyptic fiction in which a Ford repair manual is, centuries later, considered a sacred scripture. Another wonderful piece: John Steinbeck’s “Saint Katy the Virgin,” about a man and his pig. Both similar to your scenario.
Much as I’d like to believe this will lead to Trump’s conviction, I don’t believe it will ever pass muster with the Supreme Court majority, who will almost certainly have the final say.
And unfortunately, thst filing need not have anything st all to do eith the law or Go situation, which makes the assessment of Constitutional experts like Tribe all but irrelevant.
And to make things worse, the issue of declassification of documents by the President is not even settled among Constitutional scholars, some of whom claim the President has absolute authority to declassify at will. Whetger Thst is true matters not because it gives the Supreme Court majority a convenient excuse for ruling in Trump’s favor.
I think that everyone agrees that declassification has to be done in writing, that documents are then declassified FOR EVERYBODY (not just for the president in his residence), and that the documents have to be marked as declassified in order for them to be declassified. And documents containing nuclear secrets are not declassifiable BY ANYONE, including the president, and some of the documents at Mar-a-lago, according to a Washington Post story, we Top Secret documents dealing the nukes.
Given his general ignorance, incompetence, and disregard for others’ expertise, Trump could have mishandled this material without nefarious intent. But ignorance of the law is no defense.
Suppose the documents included a list of American spies in Russia? That would be very valuable to someone.
Exactly, Diane! It’s just that kind of thing that is designated SCI.
I bet that Trump’s handlers in Moscow were quite interested in this material. Interestingly, state TV in Russia has been joking about how what was in Trump’s possession is now theirs.
I very much hope that what this search and the refusal to divulge the affidavit mean is that FINALLY the US intelligence and law enforcement services are onto and will bring to justice this traitor to his country. I suspect that his being an asset of the Soviet Union and then of Russia goes all the way back to his first trip to Moscow (at the behest of the Russian Ambassador to the United States) back in 1987. Decades of money laundering for Russian mobsters. A billion-dollar-loan WHEN HE WAS BANKRUPT from Putin’s German bankers, a couple of whom, with connections to both Putin and Trump, have recently “committed suicide.” His bald-faced, blatant, open call upon Russia to commit espionage against his opponent. The billions of rubles and untold manpower committed by Russian intelligence to getting Trump elected. Trump’s divulging top secret information to the Russian ambassador. Trump’s withdrawal from the Open Skies and INF treaties at a time when Putin was fielding hypersonic nuclear missiles in violation of those treaties and wanted to hide his activities. Trump’s many calls for the US to get out of NATO, doubtless at Putin’s behest. His insistence that he believed Putin about the election interference. His surrounding himself with Russian mobsters and with high-level officials (Flynn, Manafort) with Russian ties. His withholding military aid to Ukraine. All this long, long, long history, practically out in the open. This obscenity went on for far too long. Trump and the other Russian dogs around him made fools of US intelligence and law enforcement for far, far too long. I hope that finally, finally, they have the goods on The Teflon Don. The law enforcement officials who FINALLY bring him to justice will win eternal fame and the gratitude of the free world. Lord knows how much this evil, ignorant, criminal, unpatriotic creep, Trump, has compromised our country. I hope that in time the story if as fully known as is compatible with our security.
Actually, you might be surprised that the whole declassification thing with regard to the President is not universally agreed upon.
Bitt my poi t was that the law and Constitution won’t matter.
All that will matter is what the Supreme Court majority rules.
And that is not at all reassuring given what we have just witnessed from thst Majority.
And even if there is just one Constitutional scholar who claims that the President can declassify at will with no documentation required, if the Supremes are looking for that outcome, they wil use that argument as justification.
If you believe otherwise, you have far more faith in them then I do.
Than not then
The autocorrect on The chrome browser sucks.
This highlights the basic problem in a democracy of giving just 5 individuals the power to decide what the law and
Constitution mean.
It makes a mockery not only of democracy but also of the law.
I hear you, SomeDAM. This court has no interest in the law, only in its raw power to effect the will of the rightwing.
I should not have said “no interest.” They have an interest in using sophistry to twist the law to support their extremist, sexist, white supremacist, nationalist, market fundamentalist, classist, homophobic, rightwing prejudices.
WAPO writes that DJT lawyers asked the Forensic data firm Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler to access election systems in more than 3 key states. SullivanStrickler complied even though they KNEW it was a dirty deal. Probably got paid handsomely.
“The breach is way beyond what we thought. The scope of it is mind-blowing.”
MI/CO/GA/PA/OH. No Probable Cause Cops appeared in the offices of multi-state election officials.
These individuals Claimed that microchips in voting machines were programmed for DEMS. Operated with absolutely no authority to do so.
A Nasty right wing group called “Constitutional Sheriff Association” accused, seized and breached scanner/tabulators offsite and away from prying eyes in a series of rented rooms/spaces. Hacked machines were rendered inoperable. This is quite simply Nationwide Organized Sedition.
It’s possible that the threat we face has been underestimated because it’s psychologically scary to go there. The plan may include the forced birth of White babies. After Roe, the plan is easily achieved by red state legislatures. Punishment for rape has always rested on the willingness of prosecutors and police to bring charges and arrest, respectively. Legislatures can facilitate the right wing by eliminating or severely reducing punishments for rape. MSNBC wrote about the evident signs today in an article. MSNBC ties together Great Replacement Theory and, “The End of Roe Could Enable a Horrifying Neo-Nazi Plot.”
The value that SCOTUS has assigned women is that of baby factory.
This is quite simply Nationwide Organized Sedition.
Yes. This was. So was the fake electors scheme. So was the attempt to get Secretaries of State to change or ignore ballots. So was the pressure on Mike Pence not to certify the results. So was the attempt to get Senators and Representatives to vote against certifying the legitimate votes in an attempt to throw the election to state legislatures.
Seditious conspiracy, led by Trump, Guiliani, Powell, Eastman, Perry, Bannon, and others.
It’s ironic that this actually demonstrates the problem with digging.its too easy for people who have no right to access the inner workings of the system to do so.
The old fashioned paper ballots are the most secure system by far.
Problem with evoting
I feel the same way about ebooks. I will use them when I have to, but I do not find them convenient, and they are tiring.
St least we don’t have to worry about someone changing the words and story in an eBook.
As a former software developer. I simply don’t trust shooting. Luckily, my voting place used paper ballots marked with a pen and inserted into a locked box by the voter.
Don’t trust evotimg
Evotes do not emote!
Have you ever worked an election? A polling place? Have you been there to count the votes after the precinct’s closed?
“Old fashioned paper ballots” are terrible. Human error is way more common than computer tabulation error.
“computer tabulation error”?
That makes it crystal clear that you don’t understand the main problems with evoting.
It isn’t just an assault on democracy in the US, the fascist RINOs taking over the Republican Party are waging an all-out war against the US Constitution that was written by our Founding Fathers to protect our republic and its democratic elements against dangerously dumber-than-dumb people like them.
I’ll go one step further. It’s about assaults on all democracies today to ensure they will not exist tomorrow. The U.S. is just the most important player. Totalitarian attitudes are not just among governments, but millions upon millions of people throughout the world who would kill and persecute to protect their perceived superiority.
Bingo ! for lack of a like button .
“In my administration, I am going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”
Donald J. Trump, August 2016
I think it important that we respect his wishes on this.
Trump 2024
20 for conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation; 24 for violation of the Espionage Act
Fortunately, people will be spared Trump’s orange tan-from-a-can when he is in prison. Orange on orange is just too matchy-matchy.
I know, I know. A fellow can dream, can’t he?
Why did he take home national security information? It’s got to be the same reason Congresspersons like Richard Burr, Kelly Loeffler, Jim Inhofe, Dianne Feinstein, David Perdue, and John Hoeven were accused of violating the STOCK Act in 2020, to profit from having national security information. Surely, the ex-president wants to know where to invest and where to divest. Making money is solely what these people care about, and the ex-president is king of the swamp.
I think he took it to sell it.
He sees only dollar signs.
Is anyone surprised? We knew he had documents he didn’t return and the odds they were classified was over 90%. When after two years the National Archives wasn’t making any headway in retrieving them, the FBI took care of the matter.
No one was shot or injured. We wouldn’t even have known anything happened if Trump hadn’t opened his big mouth. Now everybody knows, but what we don’t know is what happens next.
“No one was shot or injured.”
Yep, the tRump isn’t black. . . or a suspected immigrant. . . or . . . !
Biden is oblivious to the fact that today’s leader in India is a neofascist. Why would Biden support a person that was known and castigated by Roy? Why would he support someone who displaces poor people in order to create big corporate projects / Oh! Wait! It’s Biden.
Politics makes strange bedfellows
“Democrats…fracture the conservative coalition” (Huffpo 8-19-2022)
Finally, national writers are peeling back and exposing the Pat Buchanan -driven political wins for his Church’s ideology (and economics). Some writers are stepping away from the previously used cover, “Christian,” which the public understands as protestant.
Eventually, public school advocates will tell the public that the attacks against the common good were initiated and achieved by well-funded operatives of Amy Coney Barrett’s Church. And, following that admission, public school defenders will connect for the public, the goal- to take away women’s livelihoods earned by teaching -, which aligns with the devaluation of women, a prominent bigotry in Leonard Leo’s Church.
And, the willingness do that will expand to include the public’s understanding that their tax dollars are growing the coffers of the Church.