The #116thCongress has introduced #HR1, a comprehensive democracy reform package that would transform American democracy for the better. https://t.co/IpoeyeRTIt
— Brennan Center (@BrennanCenter) January 3, 2019
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By Marianne Levine @ Politico.com, Jan. 2
The Senate Judiciary Committee has set a date for the confirmation hearings for William Barr, President Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general.
The hearing will take place on Jan. 15 and Jan 16, according to a statement from outgoing Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and incoming Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) [....]
This is the result of the FBI raid that happened the same day Michael Cohen pled guilty
By Jason Meisner @ ChicagoTribune.com, Jan. 3
Longtime Ald. Edward Burke, one of Chicago’s most powerful figures and a vestige of the city’s old Democratic machine, has been charged with attempted extortion for allegedly using his position as alderman to try to steer business to his private law firm from a company seeking to renovate a fast-food restaurant in his ward.
The criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court comes five weeks after the FBI carried out a stunning raid on Burke’s City Hall office, working for hours behind windows covered with brown butcher paper before leaving down a back staircase with computers and files [....]
The children fell ill, one by one, with cancers that few families in this suburban Indianapolis community had ever heard of. as cases mounted, parents started to ask: Could it be something in the air or water?Their questions led them to an old industrial site in Franklin, the Johnson County seat, that the federal government had ordered cleaned up decades ago. Recent tests have identified a carcinogenic plume spreading underground, releasing vapors into homes. Now, families in a county that voted overwhelmingly for President Trump are making demands of his administration that collide directly with one of his main agendas: the rolling back of health and environmental regulations.
A VETERAN national security journalist with NBC News and MSNBC reveals the obvious.
Related Twitter thread here - surprised he's not locked up & suspended, except he's American.
I offer this just in the spirit of keeping up with the new memes that sell to a large targeted audience (I think it important to note that the chyron writer makes clear this audience does not consider itself "the ruling class") and the advertisers who court the same:
Notice that glowing ball... Da Vinci or Harry Potter? (or Homer)
Just to watch Lulu's head explode, including a Kaplan apoligia for Iraq 2003
Guest op-ed by the new Senator from Utah @ WashingtonPost.com, published Jan. 1, 8:00 pm
The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a “sucker” in world affairs all defined his presidency down.
It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not. When he won the election, I hoped he would rise to the occasion. His early appointments of Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Nikki Haley, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster, Kelly and Mattis were encouraging. But, on balance, his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions this month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office [....]
I have attended dozens of Christian nationalist conferences and events over the past 2 years.... the gist of the proceedings almost always comes down to the belief that he is a miracle sent straight from heaven to bring the nation back to the Lord. I have also learned that resistance to Mr. Trump is tantamount to resistance to God.
This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg & Emily Cochrane @ NYTimes.com, Dec. 31
WASHINGTON — House Democrats are putting forward a proposal to reopen the federal government by severing funding for the Department of Homeland Security and border security from other spending bills that enjoy bipartisan support — a gambit aimed at forcing President Trump to negotiate or to shoulder the blame for a protracted shutdown.
The Democrats’ plan, which will come up for a vote on Thursday when they take control of the House, consists of two bills. The first includes six bipartisan spending measures that would fully fund agencies like the Interior Department and the Internal Revenue Service through the end of the fiscal year in September.
The second would extend homeland security funding at current levels through Feb. 8, including $1.3 billion for fencing but no funding for Mr. Trump’s border wall — a provision that renders it dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate.
By splitting off the homeland security bill, Democrats are opening the door to a month of negotiations. But they are also essentially daring Mr. Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell [....]
By Uri Friedman @ TheAtlantic.com, Jan.1
With no military experience and just a year and a half in government, the former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan has yet to develop a foreign-policy vision of his own.