What goes through my my mind when I read the news with my morning coffee. …Or for the Simon's Rockers in the group, this is my response journal.
Trump’s campaign against undocumented immigrants has resulted in an almost 40 percent increase in immigration arrests across the board.
Arrests of Undocumented Immigrants Without Criminal Records Spikes 150%: Report – NBC News
How very 1938 Berlin of him.
Two former Obama Administration officials who served in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) criticized David Clarke, the Milwaukee County, Wis. sheriff who on Wednesday said he accepted a role in the government agency.
…Philip McNamara and Juliette Kayyem each served as the assistant secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at DHS during the Obama administration and railed against their apparent successor on Twitter.
“I’m being replaced @DHSgov by #SheriffClarke. My job was to work with state and local officials. Clarke says he wants to strangle #Democrats,” McNamara said after news broke that Clarke said he accepted the position.
“For those of you I’m just meeting, Clarke is taking my old position under Obama. I am floored. And feel for my career staff,” Kayyem tweeted
Previous Homeland Security officials condemn Sheriff David Clarke taking role | TheHill
hmmm
Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Russia investigation because Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions recused himself, did not inform either the White House or Sessions about the decision until after he had signed the order appointing Mueller, according to a Justice Department spokesperson who spoke on condition of anonymity.
About half an hour before the order was made public, a Justice Department official informed White House Counsel Don McGahn. Trump spokesman Sean Spicer abruptly left a scheduled meeting with reporters as White House aides huddled to draft a response.
Special counsel named to head Russia investigation; White House caught by surprise – LA Times
hmmmm
Donald Trump extends sanctions relief for Iran he once called the “worst deal ever”.
Iran nuclear: Trump extends Obama’s ‘worst deal ever’ – BBC News
What a douche.
In recent days, Mr. Trump has groused to several friends that he is not looking forward to leaving his new White House cocoon for high-profile, high-pressure meetings with dozens of world leaders in unfamiliar settings.
At one point, he barked at an aide that he thought his first tour abroad should be only about half as long. He will have to abandon his well-known preference for sleeping in his own bed (or in one at the hotels or golf resorts he owns) as he hops between Saudi Arabia, Israel, Belgium, Italy and the Vatican — all places without a Trump-branded property.
…Planning for the foreign trip has proceeded haltingly, with Mr. Trump resisting some of the pageantry that is usually a hallmark of a president’s travels. A visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, was cut short at his request.
…Mr. Trump’s advisers acknowledge that they are concerned about his off-script eruptions, his tendency to be swayed by flattery and the possibility that foreign leaders may present him with situations he does not know how to handle. They worry he will accidentally commit the United States to something unexpected, and they have tried to caution him about various scenarios.
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Sigh….
The president disclosed classified intelligence with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister last week, two US officials confirmed to BuzzFeed News.
Trump Revealed Highly Classified Information To Russians During White House Visit
hmmm
The Senate Intelligence Committee ― which is also probing connections between the Trump team and Russian officials ― does not necessarily need to have proof that the tapes exist in order to subpoena them, Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer, told HuffPost. Senate investigators could ask for “any recording devices or backup copies that were referenced in the post made by President Trump on the morning of May 12, with respect to recordings with President Trump and Director Comey,” said Moss.
Senate Intelligence Committee Exploring Ways To Obtain Trump’s Comey ‘Tapes’ | HuffPost
hmmm
In an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Trump said, “When I decided to [fire Comey], I said to myself, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.”
…Trump is acknowledging that the Russia investigation was the key factor in his decision to fire Comey. That’s a clear admission that the president of the United States actively sought to interfere in a criminal inquiry and thus obstruct justice.
…directly and unambiguously contradict his own White House staff, and even his vice president. For two days, Trump’s willing accomplices and professional enablers stood before the American people and lied. They claimed that Trump fired Comey because of a recommendation from the Department of Justice related to his handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation.
…Trump has taken to Twitter in order to intimidate a possible witness against him.
Trump admitted he obstructed justice. Now he needs to go – The Boston Globe
hmmm
: Guess Who Sessions’s War On Drugs Will Target | HuffPost
Um, Hillary Clinton?
Nah, just kidding. Black and brown people, of course!
The Strategic Campaign Group was sued for misappropriating campaign funds in 2014.
What We Know About the FBI Raid on a Republican Consultancy Firm
hmmm
We already know what happens when prosecutors focus on mandatory minimums and severe sentences: we end up in a nation with the highest incarceration rate and an ongoing drug crisis that belies the aggressiveness of the War on Drugs.
We already know that focusing on harm reduction, prevention, and treatment is more effective than focusing on long sentences and jail time. Yet, Sessions is intent on institutionalizing his obsession with incarceration, which will only sink us further into this crisis.
A recent study found that conservative Americans overwhelmingly support criminal justice reform and practices that focus on rehabilitation and prevention.
Why is Sessions doubling down on a failed drug war? | TheHill
hmmmm
The bold new strategy grew organically after the GOP House passed Trumpcare last week.
Democrats Are Shaming Republicans by Holding Town Halls in GOP Districts | New Republic
hmmm
In what was supposed to be a closed-door Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, pictures have emerged of meetings between President Trump, Mr Lavrov and Russian Envoy Sergey Kislyak via Russian media and Russian government social media accounts.
The Russian-sourced pictures are the only public record of the meetings as of this writing, largely because members of the White House press pool — who are charged to report on the president’s whereabouts and what happens inside the White House — were not allowed into the meeting Wednesday morning.
Kremlin tweets during closed-door Oval Office meeting with Trump – CBS News
Oy.
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe Thursday rejected assertions by the White House that FBI employees had lost faith in James Comey and that the bureau’s probe into Russian election meddling was one of its most minor concerns.
…He said Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, enjoyed “broad support within the FBI and still does to this day.” He added, “The majority, the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep, positive connection to Director Comey.”
…McCabe also contradicted another statement by Sanders in Wednesday’s White House briefing when she said that the Russia investigation was “probably one of the smallest things” on the FBI’s plate.
“We consider it to be a highly significant investigation,” McCabe said, but declined to give details of the manpower involved in the probe.
The acting FBI director also said there has been no effort to impede the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the election, but vowed to inform a Senate panel if the White House tried to intervene.
Acting FBI director contradicts White House on Comey – CNNPolitics.com
hmmm
The Senate intelligence committee Wednesday issued a subpoena to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for documents regarding his interactions with Russian officials.
The subpoena comes after Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, alerted the panel that he would not provide documents in response to their April 28 request.
Senate intelligence committee subpoenas Michael Flynn – CNNPolitics.com
hmmmm
Democratic Rep. Al Green said Tuesday evening that President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey would be an impeachable offense if it was done to stop the investigation into alleged ties between Russian and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Al Green: ‘Impeachable’ if Trump fired Comey to stop Russia investigation – CNNPolitics.com
hmmmm
…“Three weeks ago, we began the process of removing statues erected to honor the ‘Lost Cause of the Confederacy,’ ” said Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D). “This morning, we continue our march to reconciliation by removing the Jefferson Davis Confederate statue from its pedestal of reverence.”
…[Some supporters of the statues’ removal] marched in a second-line parade to the traffic circle where Lee’s statue stands …to protest the monument’s place in the circle. …They were met by Confederate-flag wavers keeping vigil there, some wearing riot gear.
…At Lee Circle, there was some yelling between the pro-monument and anti-monument crowds and some icy stares. Much of the fury and the verbal challenges came from the monument defenders, who appeared to be outnumbered by the second-line participants by at least two to one.
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…Davis was captured in the waning days of the war by Union soldiers after he fled the Confederate capital in Richmond.
“His cause went down in disastrous defeat and left the South impoverished for generations,” Smithsonian Magazine noted, adding: “Many Americans in Davis’s own time and in later generations considered him an incompetent leader, if not a traitor.”
…As the Davis statue came down, a group of proponents for removal who had been largely absent from the area around the Davis memorial since a series of verbal clashes and minor skirmishes with monument defenders, chanted “Na-na, na, Naa-na, goodbye,” according to people at the scene.
The group stood behind police metal barricades, near the corner of Canal St. and Jefferson Davis Parkway, on an expansive grassy median known in New Orleans as “the neutral ground,” a reference to the way that the space once served as a conflict-free zone where the Spanish and French settlers who once battled for political, economic and social for control of this city engaged in trade.
Across the intersection, monument defenders watched in a state of sad disbelief.
…Hours after the statue was removed by crane, the Times-Picayune reported that crews were still at the site, “attempting to [re]move the pedestal on the statue sat. … It appears [getting rid of] the pedestal is turning out to be a difficult task.” [emphasis: mine]
hmmmm
As workers slung a strap around the statue’s waist and lifted it off its pedestal, “at least 100 people cheered from across the street, outnumbering the few dozen protesters, some waving Confederate flags.”
…”We would have preferred it to be in the daytime,” monument opponent Malcolm Suber told Kaplan-Levenson, “so everybody could see it in the light of day. But we’ll take this.”
Like an earlier removal, this one was performed in the dark because, …of “death threats against city officials and contractors.”
Before the monument could be removed, police had to clear the immediate area of demonstrators — both supporters of the monuments and those who want them taken away. [In a perhaps uniquely New Orleans fashion,] barricades [creating a “neutral zone”] were used to keep the sides separated.
Jefferson Davis Statue Gone From Its Pedestal In New Orleans : The Two-Way : NPR
Go, go gadget, good citizens of New Orleans.
Incendiary words flew back and forth across the divide, but basically peace reigned.
Go, go gadget, New Orleans.
In contrast to Mr. Sessions’s views on drug crimes, the Obama administration pushed for more lenient and flexible sentencing laws and presided over the first decline in the federal prison population in a generation.
…Mr. Holder has said his policies were intended to reduce taxpayer spending on prisons and other public safety costs and to ease inequities in the justice system by scrutinizing the circumstances of each case rather than applying one-size-fits-all punishments of the toughest variety.
Mr. Sessions has argued that the Obama administration’s less aggressive approach toward prosecuting drug cases has inspired other crimes.
…Should Mr. Sessions push for a uniformly strict posture in prosecuting drug crimes, it would mark a significant shift in tone.
“Many advocates think there are too many mandatory minimums, and that federal charging in general is still too harsh, even after the shift in policy under Holder,” Ms. Starr said. “But this isn’t especially surprising given what we know about the attorney general and the president and their view on criminal justice.”
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Meh, a lot of totally-not-at-all-rooted-in-fact bullshit justifying his actions when Sessions just wants to put more black people in jail.
There is an acting FBI director in place, but the president is seeking to appoint an interim director. The attorney general was conducting interviews for that replacement already.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions Interviewing Interim FBI Director Candidates : NPR
hmmm
Some prosecutors do offer alternative sentences or pleas, but say that’s not unequal treatment.
Fact-check: Sessions omits info on prosecuting noncitizens
hmmm
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