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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."
I don't believe there is any "Deep State" but if there is any this is evidence that it is composed primarily of people who care more about the rule of law than partisan politics. I for one welcome our globalist overlords.
when mueller finds there is no crime or collusion
My guess is it goes something like this. Trump absolutely colluded with Russia, but never in a formal way. He noticed, or more likely someone on his staff noticed that Hillary had made an enemy, and that Putin if given the opportunity might help him out. So he opportunistically developed pro Russian positions and titled towards their side, in the hope of getting some help. The one time he publicly asked for help arguably titled that to formal collusion, but that is for a jury to decide. Now there is a lot of crap going on, so it may be that they can prove formal collusion for at least one or more of his advisors. There has got to be some reason that Trump is bending himself in pretzels to defend Flyn (sp?). It is even possible that Trump himself did so, though I doubt he intentionally broke laws. He shows too great a track record of staying just inside the lines, or close enough not to get in trouble anyway. Personally, I still find him guilty of treason, since he as a leading politician welcomed and praised a foreign attack from a state enemy on the integrity of our political process. Unfortunately that is not the definition the constitution uses....
As far as actual crimes, obstruction of justice is where it is at..
1. Firing Comey.
2. Suggesting that Comey should be loyal to him and not the law.
3. Suggesting that Comey end the Flynn investigation.
4. Trying to halt the investigation by basically calling everyone liars, and that every voice that doesn't support trump is fake news.
5. Supporting the above by promoting actual fake news.
6. Threatening comey over twitter
Other disturbing actions that attack directly the separations of powers and our government at its core.
1. Suggesting that judges that are just doing their jobs are endangering us all, and likely putting targets on them all.
2. Threatening to primary any lawmaker that doesn't support his agenda.
3. Just lying about everything. Seriously it weakens the office of the president and our ability as a country to get anything done.
4. Never forget the Obama birth certificate crap. That was trying to destroy Obama, presumably to gain political advantage. As a side effect he weakened the ability of that government to get things done. Had their been truth to it, it would be fine, but the purpose was not truth. The purpose was basically A1 grade evil.
5. Just blatant fact free appeals to emotion. It was, well very sad.
6. Giving away Top Secret code word based intelligence to Putin as some sort of twisted ego trip. Seriously, this guy was the guy bitching about emails for ages. Can you see Hillary posing in those photos? You may not be able to prosecute _him_ for it, but anyone else, other than the vice president would be seeing 10 years jail time. He may have the power to do it, but it was stupid beyond all measures of stupidity. It's like he was put on Earth to make Sarah Palin look smart.
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(as is obvious to anyone with a brain, who has looked in vain for actual verifiable evidence for any of that), at around middle of 2018, just in time for midterms, it would indeed be so much "winning".
trump's opponents are overplaying their hand on this. they should focus on opposing him on his polices that hurt voters, on his breaking election promises, and in promoting policy alternatives that benefit voters(all of them, instead of playing identity politics).
crying "russians!", "impeachment!" , "resistance!",etc, etc, while supporting illegal immigrants, open trade and borders, support for more wars in support of "allies", politically correct suppression of free speech, etc etc. will not help.
This is the point that causes me the most uncertainty in what I hope for. (Not that my hopes have any causal efficacy, but still).
Trump is possibly the first president in my lifetime who I've felt really viscerally disgusted by, however much I may have disagreed with others' policies. For that reason, it's kind of enjoyable to watch him failing so spectacularly. Until I remember that his failures are our failures as he represents the whole American nation. Then I want something done about it. But the only thing I can really see possibly being done about it is removing him from office, which only puts Pence into the same seat. That replaces the incompetent buffoon pushing all the wrong policies with... a (presumably) more competent professional pushing no better policies. Maybe it makes America more respectable and restores some sense of trust in our political process that Trump may be undermining. But is it a good thing to have someone every bit as despicable when it comes to the actual dry concrete policy content, who merely looks more respectable and is more trusted? Mightn't it be better if the villain were obviously evil than able to pretend to be good? I just don't know.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." -- Gerald Ford in 1970
What, the constitution says the government can pick and choose which law to enforce and which law to ignore? Where does it say that?
The job of the executive is to enforce all the laws without fear or favour. In general there are finite resources so some discretion is expected, but when the executive starts ignoring laws, that is generally not a good thing, though if the laws are bad enough, you could argue about least bad options and such. It would still not be a good thing.
The job of the legislative is to make AND repeal laws to create an optimal set so as to produce a nice place to live. They tend to fail at the repeal parts. You get more and more laws, and then you have the excuses the executive uses to justify selective enforcement. They can also act as a check on the executive. The worst bit I saw from them lately was McConnell's theft of a supreme court seat. Not doing his job there was bad. Of course presenting crap bills as if they actually help something is not a good thing either.
Judicial is a check on both. It is the judicial branch that has a right to say which laws can be ignored because they somehow violate the constitution or the power granted to a state, county, or city.
So basically the constitution gave the judiciary the right to review laws, but only in a limited sense. The executive has the right to choose where resources are directed, but only in a limited way, and I believe congress can specify what money must be spent on. So in the end there is some flexibility there, but longer term bad laws should be fixed or repealed. The executive ignoring enforcement may be better than the alternative, but it is hardly a good thing.
Either way, the topic is mostly the wrong issue to address. Gerrymandering needs to go, and we need some form of ranked voting, or just another election if a majority isn't achieved. In short our democracy needs to adapt to filter out the extremist nut cases on both sides and focus on putting in place people with actual competency.
Trump one-ups your conversation-documenter with a 30 year history of actually recording conversations. There have been at least two cases where he has called bullshit on testimony against him, given in court, and under oath, by producing a recording that contradicted the testimony.
I guess we'll see who the moron is soon enough.
See that "Preview" button?
People with 6 month old accounts or Anonymous Coward = "this is nothing"
People with actual accounts who have been around for awhile = "we should at least look into this".