;)
February 24, 2023
Marie: This is another of those days on which the news reminds me that most people are either nitwits or criminals, though some are both nitwits and criminals.
Mark Walker & Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: "The crew of a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying toxic chemicals tried to slow the train moments before it derailed in the outskirts of East Palestine this month as an overheating wheel bearing set off an audible alarm on the train, an initial report from federal investigators found.... The crew then saw fire and smoke and reported a possible derailment to the dispatcher. Five of the derailed cars were carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride, a colorless hazardous gas. The report was released on Thursday as Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, visited East Palestine." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Sam Sweeney & Amanda Maile of ABC News: "Federal investigators on Thursday released a preliminary report into the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this month. Detailing the report at a Washington, D.C., news conference, chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said 'we know what derailed the train' and addressed the town's worried residents. 'I can tell you this much. This was 100% preventable. We call things accidents. There is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable. So, our hearts are with you know that the NTSB has one goal and that is safety. And ensuring that this never happens again,' she said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ The NTSB's preliminary report is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Carol Rosenberg of the New York Times: "The U.S. military released two brothers on Thursday who had been held as detainees in the war against terrorism for helping to operate safe houses where suspected operatives of Al Qaeda holed up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Pentagon said that Mohammed Ahmed Ghulam Rabbani, 53, and Abdul Rahim Ghulam Rabbani, 55, who were never charged with any crimes during 20 years in U.S. custody, were flown to Pakistan in an arrangement with authorities there. The brothers were captured by Pakistan's security services in Karachi in September 2002. They arrived at Guantánamo Bay in 2004 after being kept at a C.I.A.-run detention site in Afghanistan for about 550 days."
Alan Feuer & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to force former Vice President Mike Pence to testify fully in front of a grand jury investigating ... Donald J. Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, seeking to cut short any attempt by Mr. Trump to use executive privilege to shield Mr. Pence from answering questions, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The request -- amounting to a pre-emptive motion to compel Mr. Pence's testimony -- came before the former vice president had even appeared in front of the grand jury, and before any privilege claims had actually been raised in court.... Last week, people close to Mr. Pence previewed his attempt to fight the grand jury subpoena by saying that the former vice president planned to argue that his role as the president of the Senate meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch -- including the Justice Department -- under the Constitution's 'speech or debate' clause. That provision is intended to protect the separation of powers. But the special counsel's motion to compel Mr. Pence's testimony ... did not address ... [those arguments]. Rather, it focused on the issue of executive privilege...." The CBS News story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
(Dimwitted) Trump Aide Uploaded Classified Docs to Her Laptop During Height of Classified Docs Scandal. Hugo Lowell of the Guardian: "Donald Trump's lawyers found a box of White House schedules, including some that were marked classified, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in December because a junior aide to the former president had transported it from another office in Florida after the FBI completed its search of the property, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The former president does not appear to have played a direct role in the mishandling of the box, though he remains under investigation for the possible improper retention of national security documents and obstruction of justice.... The junior aide initially kept the box at a converted guest bungalow at Mar-a-Lago called the 'tennis cottage' after Trump left office, and she soon took it with her to a government-leased office in the Palm Beach area."
So then. DOJ was not satisfied it had retrieved all of the classified files in Trump's possession, so contractors conducted a third search at DOJ's request in early December 2022, during which they found the classified schedules. "A few weeks later, Trump's lawyers started exploring whether they could get a better understanding of the sensitivity of the small number of schedules marked as classified...." At that point, the aide helpfully piped up, :Why, sure, I have copies of all the documents right here on my laptop!: She said she downloaded them because former top Trump aide Molly Michael told her to do so. MB: You can't help but wonder just how dumb these Trump aides are.
Josh Gerstein & Kyle Cheney of Politico: "A three-judge federal appeals court panel wrestled Thursday with tangled questions about Congress' immunity from criminal inquiries -- and whether it might apply to efforts by Rep. Scott Perry to aid Donald Trump's bid to subvert the 2020 election. Two of the three D.C. Circuit judges hearing the case appeared highly skeptical of the Justice Department's narrow view of the Constitution's 'speech or debate' protection for lawmakers, but it was unclear whether that disagreement would translate into a ruling that denies investigators access to the contents of a cell phone they seized from the Republican congressman in August. The complex dispute has enormous implications for Congress itself and the scope of protection that lawmakers enjoy from the speech or debate clause, which the framers intended to protect members of the House and Senate from coercion or intimidation by the executive branch." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "A federal judge on Thursday rejected requests from news organizations to unseal the scope of Donald Trump's legal efforts to prevent top aides from testifying before a grand jury as the Justice Department investigates efforts to overturn the 2020 election. While expected, the ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of D.C. upholding grand jury secrecy rules deals a blow to long-standing efforts by journalists and historians to open such proceedings citing public interest in cases of historic importance. Politico and the New York Times had sought to unseal proceedings into what they called 'urgent matters of national significance' concerning Trump's attempt to prevent cooperation with the investigation into efforts to unlawfully interfere with the transfer of power from him to Joe Biden after the 2020 election." Politico's report is here.
Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "A federal judge on Thursday ordered that ... Donald Trump and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray can be questioned under oath by attorneys for two former senior FBI employees who allege in separate lawsuits that they were illegally targeted for retribution after the FBI investigated Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. The decision by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington came in consolidated lawsuits against the FBI and Justice Department by former senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who exchanged politically charged text messages criticizing Trump while they were having an affair. Strzok seeks reinstatement and back pay over what he alleges was his unfair termination. Page alleges officials unlawfully released the trove of messages to reporters." Politico's report is here.
Richard Fausset & Danny Hakim of the New York Times: "Lawyers for ... Donald J. Trump said late Wednesday that details divulged this week by the forewoman of a special grand jury investigating election interference by Mr. Trump and his allies had 'poisoned' the Georgia inquiry. As of Thursday afternoon, however, the two lawyers had not filed any motions in court challenging the inquiry. Nor would they discuss what form such a challenge might take, saying only that they were weighing their options." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Barbara McQuade in an MSNBC opinion piece: "A blabbing grand jury threatens to upend the whole enterprise. At some point, impropriety by a grand jury could be grounds for a claim of violation of the due process rights of the accused. And a successful claim could taint anything that occurred afterward, requiring dismissal of any indictments and a complete do-over, so long as the statute of limitations has not yet run.... The rule in Georgia appears to be somewhat more lax [than federal rules of criminal procedure]. It requires only that grand jurors protect the secrecy of 'deliberations.' What's more, the judge overseeing the investigation did not prohibit members of the special grand jury from talking to the media so long as they did not reveal their deliberations.... But acknowledging that the grand jury had recommended indictments against more than a dozen people sounds awfully close to revealing deliberations." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: I wonder where Emily is today. After speaking to every media outlet with a telephone or a camera on Wednesday, there was not a peep out of her Thursday. I'm guessing some official told her to STFU.
Ivana Saric of Axios: "Right-wing extremists committed every ideologically driven mass killing identified in the U.S. in 2022, with an 'unusually high' proportion perpetrated by white supremacists, according to a new report published Thursday. The high number of killings linked to white supremacists was 'primarily due to mass shootings,' the report released by the Anti-Defamation League found.... The report noted that 60% of the deaths stemming from extremist mass killings in 2022 came from two incidents: the racist mass shooting in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York and a mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.... The number of mass killings linked to extremism in the U.S. in the past decade was at least three times higher than any decade since the 1970s, per the report."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Paul Farhi, et al., of the Washington Post: "The disclosure of emails and texts in which Fox News executives and personalities disparaged the same election conspiracies being floated on their shows has greatly increased the chances that a defamation case against the network will succeed, legal experts say. Dominion Voting Systems included dozens of messages sent internally by Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch and on-air stars such as Tucker Carlson in a brief made public last week in support of the voting technology company's $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network.... Some employees privately described [the false claims] as 'ludicrous' and 'mind blowingly nuts'-- but Fox kept airing them to keep its audience from changing channels.... Under New York Times v. Sullivan, a 1964 Supreme Court ruling that has guided libel and defamation claims for nearly 60 years, a plaintiff like Dominion must show that a defendant like Fox published false statements with 'actual malice' -- meaning that it was done 'with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.' Based on the messages revealed last week, 'I think that Dominion both will and should prevail,' said Laurence Tribe, a former Harvard law professor." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Lauren Herstik of the New York Times: "Harvey Weinstein, the movie producer whose treatment of women propelled the #MeToo movement in 2017, was sentenced on Thursday to 16 years in prison for committing sex crimes in Los Angeles County. The sentence in Los Angeles adds to the 23 years Mr. Weinstein is serving in New York after his conviction there in 2020. In December, jurors in Los Angeles Superior Court found Mr. Weinstein guilty on three counts: forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object. All three counts were related to one woman, referred to as Jane Doe 1 in court...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Robert Chiarito & Julia Jacobs of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Thursday sentenced R. Kelly to 20 years in prison for child sex crimes, after a jury found that he had produced three videos of himself sexually abusing his 14-year-old goddaughter. In a victory for the defense, the judge ruled that all but one year of the prison sentence would be served at the same time as a previous 30-year sentence that Mr. Kelly received after a jury in Brooklyn convicted him of racketeering and sex trafficking charges." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race 2024. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post: "Apparently no one told Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that if you're going to wade into the deep waters of foreign policy, you should at least know how to dog paddle.... Appearing this week on that GOP-friendly morning show ['Fox and Friends'], DeSantis tried to take a Trumpist 'America First' position about the war -- questioning the level of U.S. military and economic aid President Biden and Congress have given to Ukraine while there are problems that need to be addressed here at home. He ended up sounding weak, ill-informed and incoherent.... While what is left of the Republican establishment praised [President] Biden's bold gesture [and while the President was in a war zone], the ascendant faux-populist wing of the party complained about Biden supposedly ... caring more about Ukraine's borders than he cares about our own.... Perhaps the dumbest thing DeSantis said, though, was to imply that the war was basically no big deal." ~~~
~~~ Marie: To be fair, all DeSantolini knows is what TuKKKer says, and TuKKKer is a Putin-loving traitor.
Beyond the Beltway
Florida. Jessica Schulberg of the Huffington Post: "Florida on Thursday executed 59-year-old Donald Dillbeck, who was sentenced to death 32 years ago by a non-unanimous jury under a death penalty statute that has since been found unconstitutional.... The timing of his execution appears to be part of a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to bring back death sentences by non-unanimous juries. DeSantis, who is expected to run for president, signed Dillbeck's death warrant last month on the same day that he floated changing state law to allow non-unanimous juries to impose death sentences. 'Maybe eight out of 12 have to agree or something,' DeSantis suggested at a Florida Sheriffs Association conference, just before ordering the execution of a man with that exact jury split.... Shortly after DeSantis' jury suggestion, Republican lawmakers filed a set of bills that would replace the unanimous jury requirement with an 8-4 threshold and allow a judge to overrule a jury to impose a death sentence. 'I'm not minimizing what [Dillbeck] did to people,' Florida capital defender Allison Miller told the Tallahassee Democrat, 'but he is most definitely a political pawn.'"
Minnesota. "Archie Bunker Without the Charm." David Moye of the Huffington Post: "A Minnesota state senator is getting criticized after a speech where he claimed the state's Republican Party isn't bigoted ― and included a slur against Polish people in the process. During a hearing about potential legislation that would allow undocumented immigrants to get ID cards and Class D driver's licenses, Sen. Mark Johnson (R), the Senate Minority Leader..., [said] 'We're not calling groups any names.... Doesn't matter what your race, your color, your creed, Norwegian, Polack, Somalian, you name it..., and yet when we bring those concerns up on this floor, tonight we were called white national racists.'..." MB: Can't imagine why.
South Carolina. Ben Brasch & Timothy Bella of the Washington Post: "Alex Murdaugh delivered emotional testimony in a South Carolina court on Thursday, with the disbarred lawyer saying he did not kill two family members as financial pressures mounted and his life unraveled... Murdaugh said in court that he suffered from 'paranoid thinking' when he admittedly lied to authorities ... about his whereabouts the night of the killings. When asked by his defense attorney why he continued to lie to authorities, Murdaugh claimed he had no other choice. 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave,' Murdaugh testified. 'Once I told a lie [that] I told my family, I had to keep lying.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Update. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of the New York Times: "... on Thursday, [Alex] Murdaugh talked for hours. Taking the witness stand in his own murder trial, Mr. Murdaugh acknowledged that he had stolen from his law clients. He conceded that he had pocketed a check he was supposed to hand over to his law firm. And he admitted that he had lied to the police about his whereabouts on the night of the killings. Still, Mr. Murdaugh, who at 54 has spent decades representing clients in courtrooms like the one where he has been on trial for the past four weeks, was adamant that he had never harmed his family.... His most formidable challenge was to explain why he had claimed to be at the family house when a video taken by his son actually showed that he was with his wife, Maggie, 52, and younger son, Paul, 22, at the family dog kennels nearby, minutes before the murder took place. He lied, he said, because he feared that putting himself at the scene in the period before the murders would make the police consider him a suspect." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Uh, yeah. That's why most criminals lie about being at the scene of the crime.
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The Anniversary of an Atrocity
The New York Times' live updates of developments Friday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates for Friday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live briefing for Friday is here: "Ukraine on Friday marks one year since Russia launched its punishing invasion, with leaders in Kyiv defiant against Moscow's push to overpower their nation. The full-scale attack, which started in the early hours of Feb. 24, 2022, violently ended decades of relative stability in Europe. Its ripple effects upended energy markets, increased global hunger and reinvigorated the NATO military alliance to face the Russian threat. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, hardened by a year in the trenches, has framed the conflict as a morally charged battle between autocracy and freedom, pledging that Ukrainian forces will fight on with the help of billions of dollars worth of Western arms."
AP: "China called for a cease-fire between Ukraine and Moscow and the opening of peace talks in a 12-point proposal to end the fighting that started one year ago. Beijing claims to have a neutral stance in the war, but China has also said it has a 'no limits friendship' with Russia and has refused to criticize its invasion of Ukraine, or even refer to it as an invasion. It has accused the West of provoking the conflict and 'fanning the flames' by providing Ukraine with defensive arms. The U.S. has also said China may be preparing to provide Russia with military aid, something Beijing says lacks evidence. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin has called the allegation 'nothing more than slander and smears.'" ~~~
~~~ Der Spiegel: "... the Russian military is engaged in negotiations with Chinese drone manufacturer Xi'an Bingo Intelligent Aviation Technology over the mass production of kamikaze drones for Russia. The revelations create a new urgency in the debate over possible Chinese military support for Russia. Bingo has reportedly agreed to manufacture and test 100 ZT-180 prototype drones before delivering them to the Russian Defense Ministry by April 2023. Military experts believe the ZT-180 is capable of carrying a 35- to 50 kilogram warhead. Sources believe that the design of the unmanned aerial vehicle could be similar to that of Iran's Shaheed 136 kamikaze drone. The Russian army has deployed hundreds of them in its attacks on Ukraine, where they used the Iranian drones to target residential buildings, power plants and district heating facilities, often resulting in civilian casualties."
News Lede
New York Times: "A prolonged winter storm that led to the death of at least one person and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of customers in the Upper Midwest was continuing its assault on the region on Thursday, forecasters said. More than 900,000 customers were without power Thursday evening across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, according to PowerOutage.us, which compiles data from utilities. More than 815,000 of those outages were in Michigan, where significant ice had accumulated on trees and power lines. Wind gusts between 30 and 40 miles per hour were expected in the state on Thursday night, according to the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids."
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Reader Comments (9)
https://news.yahoo.com/toxic-wastewater-ohio-train-derailment-
144643636.html
About 500,000 gallons of wastewater is being trucked, 50 truck a day,
to a Houston suburb. Another 1.5 million may also be trucked there.
Seems there's a company there that specializes in disposal. Actually,
I wouldn't call it disposal. I'd call it hiding it underground.
They pump hazardous waste from all over the country into the
ground down to about 5,000 feet.
I should send a few cases of bottled water to my friends who moved
to Houston a couple of years ago, just in case there's an earthquake or
something and toxic waste leaks into the aquifer there.
Some people are saying that there are habitable planets not too far
away. My passport is up to date.
Consequences of cupidity and narcissism.
Regarding that Trump dolt who downloaded stacks of classified documents onto her laptop, upon orders from a higher up Trump dolt…
This is what happens when a greedy, needy narcissistic thug gets help from an antagonistic foreign power, an equally narcissistic FBI boss, and millions of drooling idiots (but not enough to win the popular vote) in slithering his way into the White House.
Aides and staff members are selected for their propensity for appeasing his overwhelming greedy and needy desires, not for experience, competence, appreciation for little things like the law and long standing protocol, or smarts.
If the boss says something is his, then it must be. If he needs idiots to kowtow before him, tell him he’s great, cut out only stuff that acknowledges his wonderfulness, so he won’t pound his tiny infant hands on his high chair tray reading the truth about his historically horrible administration, if he needs his pants steamed, let’s hire a pretty sycophant for the job and pay her wads of taxpayer money, such requirements don’t exactly guarantee fastidious adherence to applicable law and the Constitution.
Idiots, dolts, simpering sycophants, and of course, grifters, crooks, and con artists. The Trump Way.
Forrest,
That must have been what was in those water bottles Fatty passed out in Ohio where a train derailed because of rules for safe transportation that he did away with. “Here ya go! Trump Water, direct from a Houston aquifer. Drink up!”
"Right-wing extremists committed every ideologically driven mass killing identified in the U.S. in 2022, with an 'unusually high' proportion perpetrated by white supremacists, according to a new report published Thursday.”
But wait!! Unfair to right-wing extremists and white supremacists! What about Both Sides?!?
Surely some BLM supporter ran a red light somewhere at 3:00am! How ‘bout that, huh? Call TuKKKer! We need a three part documentary on that scofflaw.
Both Sides!
I ain’t no konstitushunal skolar like mikey pence or Scott Perry, but since when does the Speech and Debate clause protect criminal activity? Not even attorney-client privilege works if both parties are playing fast and loose with the law, cooking up some criming, or election theft (just sayin’). The same should be true for scoundrels and weasels trying to cover up crimes with the S&D clause.
But if some Trump appeals court judge decides that to be the case, then we need a new name for it: the Speech and Debate and Cover-up clause.
A little truth in advertising.
Miss Margie was over at the Fox fiends complaining to liar- in- chief Tucker about Biden's trip to Poland when oh, gee, we gots so many problems here. She called the war Ukraine's War with Russia. Margie and her ilk have, in the past, praised Putin for his manly way of running (ruining) his country. The twitter tweekers took her to task but one has to ask: Why the adoration? Fatty, of course, paved the way.
". The key to understanding right-wingers’ growing Ukraine rage is that Russia’s failures don’t just show that a leader they idolized has feet of clay. They also show that their whole tough-guy view about the nature of power is wrong. And they’re having a hard time coping." Krugman's point of view.
@Akhilleus: The speech & debate clause reads, "They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."
As a layman, that reads to me that while MOCs can't get away with committing felonies, etc., while their branch of Congress is in session, they might be able to, say, park illegally, or commit any other misdemeanors while they're in D.C. or traveling to & fro. (Which means MOCs have a great deal of latitude to commit petty crimes.)
However, the way the clause reads to me, their speech is protected only when they are physically in their House or Senate chamber. A generous reading would suggest to me that that would include phone calls they make while they're sitting in the chamber, but not phone calls they make while they're any place else, including in their Congressional offices or harassing the help in the Senate dining room.
Since the phone metadata probably can locate Scott Perry for every call (tho perhaps not whether or not he's in his office or the House floor or roaming the halls of the Capitol), it seems to me DOJ cannot question Perry for anything he said (or texts he wrote) where the data cannot prove he wasn't on the House floor. I doubt them learned Harvard & Yale Law judges will agree with my plain reading of the the clause. Just like they don't agree with my plain reading of the Second Amendment.
Marie,
Quite right, about the fact that a plain language reading of the S&D clause does not protect members once they leave the House or Senate floor. Also correct that nose-in-the-air judges, contemptuous of anyone without black robes hanging in their closet trying to upend their ability to turn plain language readings into absurd exercises in recondite high priest(ess) jiggery-pokery will ignore the plain and get right to the pain.
Aunt Pittypat already tried that “S&D clause protects me even if I’m sitting in a diner hatching election stealing plans” bullshit, and a court told him to tell his story walkin’, then drag his ass off the fainting couch and come to Georgia ready to answer questions, fuckwad.
The right is always quick to say stuff like “If you haven’t been doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” if the cops or the FBI come knocking. But when it applies to their snowflake, treason fomenting asses, it’s a different story. Then it’s “Oh no! My freeeedoms!!! They’re taking away my freeeedoms!”
So, if ROTUS is the receptionist for the United States White House, does that mean that the receptionist of the US Supreme Court is SCROTUS, depending on one's gender identity?