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A New Report Adds Evidence That Trump Was a Russian Asset
He helped Putin manipulate the U.S. election in 2020, as he did in 2016.
By William Saletan March 18, 2021 12:07 PM
Donald Trump was a tool in a long-running Russian campaign to weaken the United States. That's been documented in Republican-led investigative reports, and now it has been updated with new evidence, thanks to the U.S. Intelligence Community's assessment of the 2020 election. The report, drafted by the CIA, the FBI, and several other agencies, was released in unclassified form on Tuesday, but it was presented in classified form on Jan. 7. In other words, it was compiled, written, and edited during Trump's administration. It destroys his lies about the election, and it exposes him as a Russian asset.
The report debunks conspiracy theories, promoted by Trump and his lawyers, that hackers in other countries robbed him of victory. "We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020 US elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process,” including "ballot casting, vote tabulation, or reporting results,” says the document. A separate analysis released by the Department of Justice reaches the same conclusion. The IC report adds that evidence of such operations, if they existed, would have shown up in U.S. surveillance or in "post-election audits of electronic results and paper backups.” The report implicitly mocks insinuations from Trump's lawyers that former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, somehow rigged Trump's defeat. "We have no information," it notes drily, that "current or former Venezuelan regimes were involved in attempts to compromise US election infrastructure."
https://web.archive.org/web/20210318165850/https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2021/03/trump-russian-asset-election-intelligence-community-report.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch Supports an Originalist Theory That Would Destroy Modern Governance
On Thursday, the Columbia Law Review published one of the most important and topical scholarly articles in recent memory, Delegation at the Founding.
https://columbialawreview.org/content/delegation-at-the-founding/
https://columbialawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Mortenson-Bag
ley-Delegation_at_the_Founding.pdf
Its authors, Julian Davis Mortenson and Nicholas Bagley, assert that a legal theory championed by conservative originalists has no actual basis in history.
That theory, called the Nondelegation Doctrine, holds that the Constitution puts strict limits on Congress’ ability to let the executive branch set rules and regulations. Congress, for instance, could not direct the Environmental Protection Agency to set air quality standards that “protect public health,” and delegate to the agency what limits on pollution are necessary to meet that goal. Nondelegation Doctrine has enormous consequences for the federal government’s ability to function, since Congress typically sets broad goals and directs agencies to figure out how to achieve them. The Nondelegation Doctrine is supported by a majority of the current Supreme Court; in 2019, Justice Neil Gorsuch signaled his eagerness to apply the doctrine, and at least four other conservative justices have joined his crusade.
Gorsuch and his allies in academia insist that the men who wrote the Constitution believed in the Nondelegation Doctrine, giving the theory an originalist pedigree. Yet Mortenson and Bagley, both law professors at the University of Michigan and former Supreme Court clerks, have painstakingly debunked originalists' claims of historical support for the doctrine. The publication of their article presents a grave challenge to conservative originalists like Gorsuch who purport to follow the evidence even when it leads to an outcome that clashes with their political preferences. As Mortenson and Bagley put it: "You can be an originalist or you can be committed to the nondelegation doctrine. But you can't be both."
What is the Nondelegation Doctrine?
Nondelegation is a judicially created doctrine that has had exactly one year of actual existence, 1935. It says, in essence, that only Congress can make rules that govern private conduct, and all administrative agencies can do is apply the rules and maybe fill in some small details about the rules in the course of doing their work.
What happened in 1935?
The Supreme Court was very hostile to the New Deal, to economic interventionism. And it issued two opinions concluding that Congress had given the president too much discretion without giving him enough guidance.
It’s pretty much dormant until the 1980s and 1990s, when the conservative legal establishment starts to poke around for doctrines that might be able to restrain the federal government at a time when they felt it was too big, too powerful, and doing too much at the states’ expense. Conservative scholars glom onto nondelegation and start pushing for its reinvigoration in the courts. The Supreme Court slapped that down in 2001 in a unanimous decision written by none other than Justice Antonin Scalia. He said: Look, we’re not going to play this game. There’s no principled way for a court to draw these distinctions. We’re going to trust Congress to take care of protecting its own prerogatives.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210319153418/https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2021/03/neil-gorsuch-nondelegation-bagley-mortenson.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Joe Biden Wiped Out Big Time on the Air Force One Stairs
• Right-wing media is already all over Biden’s fall; the best reaction yet was probably given by Greg Kelly, an anchor for the pro-MAGA conspiracy channel Newsmax, who posted a picture of the president’s stumble on Twitter and wrote with grave concern that “Resignation should be considered.” After years of enabling right wing by giving oxygen to contrived, bad-faith claims like “Obama was born in Kenya” and “Hillary has Parkinson’s” even in the course of debunking them, the more mainstream press has become justifiedly cautious about giving out free ammunition. And yet:
• The president fell down a bunch. That is, at the least, something that the public probably would like to know about, even if only to be able to discuss the video of his experience, which, assuming his sprightly finishing move at the top of the stairs means he was not seriously injured, admittedly has a certain comic timing to it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210319200841/https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2021/03/joe-biden-falls-on-air-force-one-stairs-paralyzing-the-punditry.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Joe Biden Is Not the Next FDR
Is Joe Biden the most progressive president ever? Is he maybe even the second coming of FDR? Will he permanently change the face of the nation?
These are all actual questions that I've seen highlighted in recent articles or op-eds. I say: settle down, folks. So far Biden has passed a big stimulus bill and hired a fairly progressive bunch of folks to run the government. That's it. And he's had the good fortune to face no new crises during his first couple of months, which has kept his approval level high.
But the hard stuff comes next. Republicans aren't going to allow any further legislation to pass, and there's a limit to what Biden can do via executive order. Anybody's who's expecting the dawn of a new age really needs to think again.
Historically, there's one thing that determines how effective a Democratic president is: the size of his majority in Congress. Wilson, FDR, and LBJ all had huge majorities and got a lot done. Obama had a big majority and got a few things done. Biden, by contrast, has a 50-50 tie in the Senate and a bare majority in the House. Filibuster or no, this is just not the makings of a progressive revolution.
It's remarkable to me how quickly people can overreact to political news. Is it because they're bored and feel like they need to write something exciting? Or do they really believe this stuff? Either way, take it with a huge shaker of salt. Biden may turn out to be a pleasant surprise for progressives, but he's not the leader of a revolution.
https://jabberwocking.com/joe-biden-is-not-the-next-fdr/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Biden* is a walking corpse that's selling out our country to foreign interests.
Worst president ever.
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" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher 
PSA: Don't click on any links in Second's posts. He's trying to fish your private information out of you.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Biden* is a walking corpse that's selling out our country to foreign interests.
Worst president ever.
I suppose you have something beyond your unsupported assertion?NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Neoliberalism Doesn’t Care
'Neoliberalism is a relentless and shameless assault on the commons: the planet, public health, community, public spaces, rich conversation, trust, love, history, clean air and clean water.'
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/03/20/neoliberalism-doesnt-car
e?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
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Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Biden* is a walking corpse that's selling out our country to foreign interests.
Worst president ever.
Yup. Every time he opens his mouth or signs a paper it's clear as day to anybody with half a brain who isn't in a cult.
--------------------------------------------------
" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher
PSA: Don't click on any links in Second's posts. He's trying to fish your private information out of you.
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Quote:Says the trumptard cultist. So, you obviously can't provide any facts to support your baseless assertion, but facts never matter to trumptards. They can't tell fact from fiction. Everything for you is based on your feelings, and nothing else. You're as dim as it gets. Pathetic.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Biden* is a walking corpse that's selling out our country to foreign interests.
Worst president ever.
Yup. Every time he opens his mouth or signs a paper it's clear as day to anybody with half a brain who isn't in a cult.
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