Justice Department Appoints Former FBI Director Robert Mueller As Special Counsel For Russia Investigation (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The Justice Department has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russia's involvement in the U.S. election. Mueller, a former prosecutor who served a 12-year term at the helm of the bureau, has accepted the position, according to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. "In my capacity as acting attorney general I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a special counsel to assume responsibility for the matter," Rosenstein said in a statement. "My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination. What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command." UPDATE: President Trump has released a statement: "As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know -- there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly. In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country."
You're misinformed:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
He was chosen as G.W.B.'s attorney general on 09/04/2001, so he has a hot week in office before the WTC fell.
Director Mueller, along with Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, threatened to resign from office in March 2004 if the White House overruled a Department of Justice finding that domestic wiretapping without a court warrant was unconstitutional.
Obama kept him on for two years after he was elected, and Comey was not only his assistant, but his successor.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
it could be worse, it could be Hillary
Really? Worse? Really? She'd have allowed the massive amounts of pollution that the Liar-in-Chief already has via executive orders? She would've embarrassed all of us with brains? You're out of your fucking mind or dumb as a brick if you really think this.
I don't respond to AC's.
So you will ignore what the CIA says quite explicitly in their report:
"Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression
of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these
activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort
compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US
presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process,
denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess
Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We
have high confidence in these judgments."
From https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
If you are willing to put your head in the sand and ignore this by coming up with excuses like "it is being controlled by the liberals" or something of the same manner then you are unfit to argue politics.
even though there's no evidence that Russia had any influence in the way it turned out.
That's a lie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I don't respond to AC's.
I'd also like to say that the CIA has directly and explicitly stated that they have high confidence that Russia had both intent and success with interfering in the election. Here is the excerpt:
"Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression
of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these
activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort
compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US
presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process,
denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess
Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We
have high confidence in these judgments"
and here is the link to the report: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
If you can respond to this I'll be impressed
Actually WaPo committed slander. All the people at the meeting with Russians said nothing was leaked. The WaPo source is anonymous, I am claiming they made it up with the intention of hurting the reputation of Trump, the definition of slander.
Actually Putin reprimanded the Russian foreign minister for not passing on the secret information to him, publicly on the news. Putin has also offered a transscript of the meeting to prove to the Democrats that nothing was leaked.
Yes, that is right. Putin is making fun of you and your people for making this shit up. Putin. lol
Slashdot, news that matters for leftist echo chambers.
Per Order No. 3915-2017 (pdf), Mueller has been authorized to prosecute federal crimes, and given a fairly broad scope of investigation - any links between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and any matters arising from these investigations (such as obstruction of justice).
Forget power to investigate, this guy has powers to prosecute. He's going out loaded for bear.
Misinformed or minimizing the reality, yes.
From the article:
"Mueller’s authority under Rosenstein’s appointment is broad. Mueller is empowered to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” He may also prosecute federal crimes uncovered in this investigation."
https://thinkprogress.org/two-...
Winning
And this is not going to make anybody forget about Seth Rich, murdered by the DNC for releasing the Podesta emails to Wiki leaks.
Notice leftists, democrats will kill their own to cover up their crimes. Don't put yourself in a position to become a target.
People like you make a case for there being no intelligent design.
At any rate, for the people too lazy to google, here is the link
Yet another lie.....
Liberals, be careful what you wish for. Mike Pence is everything that Trump is not: bright, articulate, a polished politician who will not have to hold a well-thumbed copy of Presidenting For Dummies in one hand while tweeting with the other. And also an evangelical Christian who is pro-life and hates every letter in your gender preference string.
I'd say the report from The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is pretty clear:
https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
I don't respond to AC's.
Also remember, Obama spied on Trump campaign
False, based on all evidence save Trump's Twitter feed. No physical evidence has been produced - and you'd think there would be tons of evidence, since the whole purpose of spying is to gather information. The claims have been directly contradicted by members of the intelligence community. Barring a sudden release of proof, I can safely label this as a lie.
got Comey to drop charges against Hillary
False. She was never charged, and Obama did not influence Comey's decision to end the investigation with no charges. As proof, I point out that, once the Republicans took office, Comey would have been able to re-open the investigation and file charges with political support. He made no attempts to do so. Instead, he got fired, *supposedly* for his excessive pursuit of Clinton - in other words, Trump, the biggest Hillary-hater of them all, is claiming Comey was too tough on her.
Bill Clinton talked to Lynch days before FBI decided to drop charges
Non sequitur. I also ate a sandwich days before the FBI dropped the investigation.
Seth Rich was shot in DC and he was the one that gave the emails to Wikileaks not Russia.
Only the first six words of that are true. If you dig into that story, you find circles - Fox News claiming a private investigator uncovered evidence of a Wikileaks connection, and then when CNN calls that PI, he claims he never found evidence of it, but heard of the possibility of evidence from a Fox News report. It's literally made up - in other words, lies.
when mueller finds there is no crime or collusion (as is obvious to anyone with a brain, who has looked in vain for actual verifiable evidence for any of that),
Really? So Trump ADMITTING on camera that he fired the FBI director to stop the investigation into his possible collusion with Russia isn't "evidence"?
Trump explained openly how he committed obstruction of justice. We all heard it. How is that not evidence of wrongdoing? If that was you or me we'd already be in handcuffs, and you fucking know it. Your blind partisanship is mind boggling and disgusting in the extreme.
Trump could rape and murder a 5 year-old boy on live TV and people like you would argue that "the kid had it coming".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Nope, sorry, Bartles, but what argued was that they don't have to prove anything about the order, Trump's own words moved the burden onto him to prove he wasn't trying to do what he said he wanted to do, which would make his intentions illegal, forever tainting his actions.
The rule that applies to Trump is that you get judged by your words and your deeds. Any number of lawyers and political consultants could have spotted the problem. Yet he kept proclaiming he was going to do it, and thus the courts will take him at his word.
Perhaps you misunderstand. The order is on trial. Trump's order. Trump has demonstrated intent, and that intent is admissible as evidence. Sorry that's so difficult for you to understand. Hope it clears up some of your confusion.
No, it says you can't discriminate based on religion. Donald Trump can't shut up about his Muslim Ban, so the courts have no trouble discerning discriminatory intent.
Play Command HQ online
I keep reading articles how the Russians hacked this or that and then a few paragraphs down; "we have no evidence the Russians are involved.".
If you can't discern fact from fiction, then read primary sources and quit listening to biased news. Here is a link to the report released by the intelligence agencies:
https://www.dni.gov/files/docu...
Here's a spoiler:
We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.
Enigma
The problem for them is that they go to court to argue that it's not a Muslim ban, and the other side plays a supercut video of Trump and his advisers saying it /is/ is a Muslim ban, and then follow up with a pile of tweets and memos saying it's a Muslim ban.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What the hell are you talking about? Name one thing that couldn't be said or written while net neutrality is active? Companies may not be allowed to implement a business plan that amounts to "shove a large rod up our customers' rear ends" under net neutrality, but they could still write it if they wanted with or without net neutrality.
Maybe you should try again with the 2nd or maybe the 18th amendment? I mean you're not even bothering to justify that claim never mind doing so in any sort of logical sense, so why not insist that net neutrality is inhibiting the sale of alcohol? It makes just as much sense.
ISP could make access slashdot extremely slow to impossible to access if they didn't like its content without neutrality. Same goes for the FCC comment section on net nutrality. They could fastlane Britbart and FoxNews and basically cripple access to liberal sites. Or, perhaps more to your horror, they could do the reverse. Net neutrality stops free speech by curtailing access to a tiny rotting pipe if the ISP so chooses.
Please explain, with relevant citations, how any of the Bill of Rights applies to the Executive's authority over immigration restrictions.
First of all, the Executive doesn't make laws. That's the job of the Legislative branch. The Executive has the discretion on how laws may be enforced, but that's not the same thing as being able to enact laws. Most of Trump's work to date has been in changing the Executive's policies and the change on immigration enforcement is one such. I know it can be hard to realize it, since Trump has a CEO mindset that makes him expect that he can just issue orders and the Congress and the Courts should do what he says or be fired, but that's not how the US Government was designed and implemented.
Secondly, the US was founded notably by a number of groups of people who fled to the Americas because they were unable to practice their chosen religion in the way that they wanted. The Pilgrims and the Quakers are the most famous, perhaps, but French Huguenots and other lesser-known groups also established colonies as well. Since a lot of the discrimination that they had faced in the old world had been governmentally-sanctioned - the Protestant/Catholic see-saw in England, persecution of the Anabaptists and Albigenses, etc., etc., etc.
However, no single breakaway group established dominance in the colonies, and to minimise the risk that some group, sect, or denomination might do so, the establishment of Freedom of Religion was made part of the very bedrock layer of the US principles of government and has been vigorously defended ever since, even as it allowed a lot of groups that many would dearly love to see suppressed, from the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses to Scientologists and beyond. Realize that, in fact some of these groups are illegal in other countries, but if you claim to be a religion in the USA you have to do seriously criminal things before the government will get involved.
The official government position on religion has always been carefully silent on what is a "true" religion. While many in this country assert that any "religion" that doesn't worship Jesus is false (and let's not get into nuances like how to baptize or doctrinal differences), the Jewish faith got a free pass, and actually, the USA recognized Islam from Tripoli on, even if mostly as something that existed outside its own borders.
So any form of discrimination against a religion in the USA is anathema to both US philosophy and law, no matter how weird or repugnant individuals might find that religion. Take away our guns (which some might argue amounts to a religion in itself), and you might more or less survive, but start running religious tests and you haven't merely touched the Third Rail, you've tapped into the whole power station.
If I start declared "John Smith should die", "Someone should really kill John Smith", and "I'd love to just kill John Smith" and then I'm found with a hammer in my hand over John Smith's lifeless body, it would be perfectly reasonable to admit my statements as evidence of intent. Likewise, Trump's repeated statements that he wanted to enact a "Muslim Ban" are being used as statements of intent. It shows how he intended the immigration ban to function and is perfectly reasonable to admit as evidence.
It's literally the first thing that's recited to you when you're read your Miranda Rights: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." Trump said things and they are being used against him. This isn't "liberal vs. conservative." This is just how the law works.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
In the United States most of the areas that have access to high-speed internet have one choice, sometimes two, for internet service. So if you have no alternatives, the company that provides your internet service could choose to reduce access to sites that don't cater to the regulatory environment that they prefer, or they can use poor access to their customers as a method of extorting money from content providers, or use it to privilege competing services that they own. The last two aren't hypothetical, American ISPs have already done both.
Fanatically anti-fanatical