Still thinking

What It All Means? You know, the Grand Sweeping Conclusions?

Don't have any. But a few more thoughts are in order:

• Is the job of an Attorney General to be the president's wingman? Eric Holder thought so, as did Loretta Lynch and Janet Reno, and they all acted accordingly. That was okay then. Apparently things have changed.
• Eric Holder, you might remember, routinely ignored Congressional subpoenas. And apparently, that was okay, too. I'll be curious to see how that tactic goes over if the new Attorney General follows the same game plan next year.
• The single biggest thing the next AG should do is make sure that the Janus decision is actually implemented. Someone I know exceptionally well is in AFSCME and, as a result, I see a fair amount of AFSCME materials. At least in Minnesota, AFSCME wiped its butt with the Janus decision. That has to change.
• Generally speaking, Republicans in Minnesota have volunteers. The DFL has mercenaries. It's never going to be a fair fight under the current conditions.
• If self-regard were hard currency, Jim Acosta would be wealthiest man in the world. If the White House were to freeze out CNN entirely from asking questions, that would be an issue. But I don't have a problem if they put Acosta in time-out. Sam Donaldson used to be obnoxious, but he never got physical with White House staffers.
• Tony Evers is going to be a thoroughgoing train wreck. The key for Wisconsin Republicans will be to let him.

Meanwhile, back in Trumpland

Another shot across the bow at Jeff Sessions:

Maybe Waldo knows

It is quite possible that Ohr is still working at the Justice Department. It's been very quiet on this front lately, especially since Trump said he would declassify all the relevant documentation. I suspect we're going to see some action soon. Getcha popcorn.

It's a coup

Let's just call it what it is. There is no way in hell that Robert Mueller, or the Southern District of New York, or anyone else, should have any ability to raid the private attorney of the President of the United States, looking for something, anything.

If I were Donald Trump, I'd simply say the hell with it and do the following:

1. Fire Mueller
2. Fire Rosenstein
3. Fire Sessions
4. Fire the entire Justice Department, if that's what it takes to clean house
5. Declassify everything, and I mean everything
6. Release the IG report concerning what these shaved apes in bespoke have been doing to the country. All of it.
7. Dare Adam Schiff to do anything about any of it, since I suspect he's up to his eyeballs in a lot of this, too

They've come to kill the king*. Either the king fights back, or the king dies. There's no point in showing any deference to someone with a dagger in his hand.


*Yes, I know Trump isn't a king, nor would I want him to be king. But he was duly elected and what is happening now is outrageous beyond measure.

Get to it

Victor Davis Hanson, with a call to action. The whole piece is brilliant. Two excerpts:

The Republicans should announce far more forcefully to the media that Vladimir Putin may have been funneling via shady third-parties millions of dollars to anti-fracking groups. Such collusion, if proven through investigation, really is treasonous—given that the crashing price of oil, brought about solely due to North American frackers, is about the only check on Putin’s ambitions that the West enjoys. So, to take one example, did the San Francisco-based, family-controlled, and hedge-funded Sea Change Foundation receive laundered Russian money to help enhance its anti-fracking messaging? If so, when, how, and who?

Did you know that? It seems important. One more:

Fourthly, what an Orwellian world it is when progressives allege “obstruction of justice” (which  Mueller’s burgeoning team of lawyers is apparently investigating) in the case of Donald Trump’s sloppy, off-handed, and out-loud wishes to FBI Director James Comey that he hoped “good guy” Michael Flynn did not get ruined by a loose investigation.

Yet obstruction is not much pursued even when no one seems to deny that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch met stealthily for private discussions with the spouse of a suspect of a current Justice investigation (subsequently dropped), and when she unapologetically seems to have directed the self-described moralist, Director Comey again, to alter the nomenclature of his ongoing investigation of fellow Democrat and presidential candidate Clinton (and Comey shamelessly acceded to Lynch’s detailed requests).

All told, Hanson identifies six ripe scandals worthy of investigation and exposure. He doesn't even need to go back further, into the perfidy of Lois Lerner and the IRS, or Solyndra, or Fast and Furious, all of which were effectively buried earlier.

And Hanson also identifies the reason this perfidy isn't getting the full airing it deserves:

[I]n contemporary Republican La-La Land, the party in power with control over all three branches of government allows its minority-status opponents to dictate the rules of special investigations and inquiry—a Jeff Sessions recused, a Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) excused from his investigations of unmasking and leaking, a Robert Mueller appointed as special counsel, friend of to-be-investigated James Comey, and employer of partisan attorneys.

Is naiveté the cause of such laxity? Do Republicans unilaterally follow Munich rules because they hope such protocols will create a new “civility” and “bipartisan cooperation” in Washington?

Or is the culprit civil dissension among the ranks, as the congressional leadership secretly has no real incentive to help the despised outsider Trump? When Republicans get re-elected on repealing and replacing Obamacare during the assured Obama veto-presidency, and then flip in the age of surety that Trump would reify their campaign boasts, should we laugh or cry? Is the Republican establishment’s aim to see Trump’s agenda rendered null and void—or does intent even matter when the result is the same anyway?

Republicans told us they should govern. It's time they get to it. More, much more, at the link.

Dropping dimes in real time

I get up early in the morning so I have time to look at what's happening and write a blog post about it, if possible. As it happens, Donald Trump is simultaneously engaging in a Twitter storm in real time. As always, read 'em from the bottom up:

Naming names

So if you are reading this correctly, you see the Leader of the Free World dropping a dime on two of the most important officials in the Justice Department. So if you want a hot take, here ya go:

• It's blindingly obvious Trump has had enough of Sessions and wants him out. It's a horrible idea to turn the Attorney General into an attack dog, but it's also been done in the past. Eric Holder, who was Barack Obama's AG, was always on the attack. Based on the available evidence, Sessions is either unable or unwilling to serve in this role.
• It's not been widely reported, but it is a matter of public record that Andrew McCabe, who is still at the helm of the FBI, has a problem with his own financial disclosures. McCabe's wife, who ran for office in Virginia in 2015, received a total of $760,000 for her campaign from political action committees controlled by the Democrats, which Andrew McCabe did not initially disclose. To the extent that Hillary Clinton controlled the Democratic Party, Trump is correct.
• Some executives send out memoranda. Trump seems to Tweet. Not how I would do things, but I'm not the Leader of the Free World.

And while I've been writing this, three more Trump Tweets appear:

Carrots, sticks, and a pen

Dang. I thought Trump told us McCain wasn't so good last year. That was then, this is now. Oops, one more!

Are you not entertained?

It may not be the way to run a government, but it's a hell of a show.