Category: Politics

By Marjorie Cohn / TruthOut / March 27, 2019

The Mueller report is finally done. On March 23, Special Counsel Robert Mueller sent the confidential report of his 22-month investigation to Attorney General William Barr. Less than 48 hours later, Barr released a four-page letter outlining Mueller’s conclusions and jumping to one as well.

In response to Barr’s letter, Donald Trump claimed, “There was no obstruction, none whatsoever, and it was a complete and total exoneration.” But Mueller did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice.

The Mueller report contains three main findings.

Mueller may not have found coordination between Trump and his people and Russia, but Trump is still facing a whole raft of investigations that are still on-going. There are at least eight federal criminal cases continuing in this post-Mueller environment. And then there’s all those Congressional committees …

At least 15 investigations in all. It’s way too soon for any Trumpistas to be popping the corks. Trump and his people are not exonerated by anybody.

In general, there are 2 types of investigations: those from within the executive branch – including the Department of Justice and the various offices of federal prosecutors – and those Congressional investigations being launched over wide-ranging inquiries on multiple topics beyond the Russian interference issue.

These DOJ cases will likely continue:

Attorney General William Barr has released his “summary” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report – and it’s a doozy. I’ve just read the brief 4-page letter Barr sent to Congress today and since released to the public. (See letter below.)

First off, Mueller does not find any coordination or conspiracy between Trump and his people and Russia.

On the issue of obstruction of justice, however, Mueller punts, and while – according to Barr – does not exonerate Trump on other matters, left the decision of whether Trump did obstruct justice to Barr and Rob Rosenstein. And guess what? They – Barr and Rosenstein – have decided there’s not enough evidence for any obstruction of justice by Trump.

Editordude: The opinions expressed here are of the author’s and do not reflect those of the OB Rag.

Mayoral candidate Barbara Bry (BB)

By Norma Damashek/ NumbersRunner / March 21, 2019

Here’s a fact: San Diego is a big small town in which–at one time or another–most everyone gets into bed with most everyone else (figuratively speaking, of course, but literally sometimes). So when we question who’s got easy access to whom, we’re not just being nosy.

It’s not just Democrats that see the virtue in reforming presidential elections.

By Steven Rosenfeld / Voting Booth /March 14, 2019

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

There’s new momentum around the National Popular Vote movement, where states will award Electoral College votes to elect the president based on which candidate has won the most votes nationwide—instead of today’s state-by-state winner-take-all system.

“It does have new momentum, because there was a [recent] period starting with the second Obama election when Democrats bought into this blue-wall theory” that their political party had a lock on the White House, said John Koza, a former Stanford University scientist who co-founded the National Popular Vote project in 2006.

Mayoral candidate Todd Gloria (TG)

Editordude: The opinions expressed in the following post are of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the OB Rag.

The second of a 4-part series (Part 1) Part One was on Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

By Norma Damashek/ NumbersRunner / March 14, 2019

Origin stories are the rage nowadays, but do they make one person intrinsically more worthy than another? Do they reliably predict the abilities, values, ethical yardstick, or qualifications a person develops over the years?

Take Todd Gloria, for example. You may already have a mental image of him as a likable, winsome, up-and-coming kind of guy. He self-identifies as a gay person of color: ½ Alaskan tribal- native American, 1/4 Filipino, a tad Dutch, and a touch Latino (Puerto Rican), nestled in a home-grown man from an economically disadvantaged background.

In other words, our man for all seasons.

We haven’t posted anything today – Wednesday, Feb. 27 – as we’re watching the unprecedented testimony of former Trump lawyer,…

Most surveys show Trump would lose in a matchup against a democratic socialist named Bernie Sanders.

By John Nichols / The Nation / Feb. 6, 2019

Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address did not feature a musical soundtrack. But, if it had, surely the orchestral accompaniment would have soared when he got to the line: “We are born free, and we will stay safe. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

But, just as surely, the music would have quieted down as the camera shifted to the assured countenance of newly elected US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat who was elected last fall after campaigning as “an educator, organizer, Democratic Socialist, and born-and-raised New Yorker running to champion working families in Congress;

Washington — In the two years since he took office, President Trump racked up more than 1,400 conflicts of interest involving the government, those trying to influence it and the Trump Organization, according to a report released today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

President Trump used the presidency to enrich himself by repeatedly promoting his businesses as extensions of his administration. Political allies, wealthy donors, special interests and foreign governments adopted a key tactic of patronizing Trump’s businesses to curry favor with the Trump administration. Here are some of the key findings from CREW’s tracking of Trump’s conflicts of interest:

Members of President Donald Trump’s campaign and transition team had more than 100 contacts with Russia-linked operatives between September 2015 and January 2017, according to an updated report by the Center for American Progress’ Moscow Project.

These contacts reportedly included at least 28 meetings, both in person and over Skype, and involved several prominent members of Trump’s inner circle including the president’s children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr.; his former attorney Michael Cohen; and his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank based in D.C., said Wednesday that it had raised the number of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia-linked operatives to 101 following reports this week that Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian consultant who had links to Moscow’s intelligence agencies.

I had a moment a little while ago when I was thinking about the notion that democrats, in spite of recent political victories (Yes!!!) need to come up with a message or at least a snappy meme, that resonates with voters (and more and more people are becoming so designated).

In that same moment I happened to turn the TV on and a man on C-SPAN was discussing superheroes, how they are mostly about creating a better world, citing Superman’s pursuit of “Truth, Justice and the American Way.”

That triggered in my mind, right away, long ago days, when I was all caught up in the excitement of “Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!”

By Marjorie Cohn / Marjorie Cohn Blog

After forcing Jeff Sessions to resign as attorney general on November 7, President Trump appointed Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general, even though Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was next in line for the job. As a result, Whitaker assumed the functions of attorney general.

Whitaker’s appointment was an illegal and blatant end run around the Attorney General Succession Act and the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. Whitaker must be removed and Rosenstein should be appointed acting attorney general.