Sunday School 1/15/23: Extra Credit

Your Sunday School lesson, from the CNN SOTU classroom, was all about toeing the party line. 

For your Extra Credit this week, I chose to spend time in the MTP classroom, where What's-his-name talked with former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). We'll start with the senator. 

The Biden document issue was front and center. WHN asked if the White House, by not coming clean right away, puts Dems in a tough spot of "not knowing what to defend and what not to defend." Stabenow didn't have an issue here, and she made a distinction between what's happening now and what happened with former president Trump.

They take it very, very seriously. And they're talking to all of the right people. They're not going to defy subpoenas or require FBI raids to be able to get the documents. The president isn't saying that somehow magically when he thinks about classified documents that he can declassify them. I mean, it's totally different right now. Both serious in terms of having classified documents. But the president is doing the right thing.

Stabenow said it was "certainly embarrassing" that they found a "small number of documents, certainly not on purpose," but reiterated they're working with DOJ and the National Archives to correct it. And, she said, her concern is the "chaos" the Rs love to create.

Let's not talk about the fact that we have a manufacturing renaissance going on in this country. More jobs created, lower unemployment rate, higher wages. And what they're proposing to do that would interfere with that would really put us on the edge economically. They don't want to talk with us about how to move the country forward. And I can tell you people in Michigan, they want folks that are going together, get things done, that care about their families and aren't interested in all of this just chaos and investigations. Which is where the Republicans feel comfortable, unfortunately.

WHN wondered if there were any issues Stabenow wanted to work on, now that she's free from the political pressures of reelection. She said she'll continue working across the aisle, as she has "on issue after issue." She pointed to the upcoming five-year farm bill, which has bipartisan support, and said it's about more than just farms.

It's the largest investment we make in land and water conservation for the country. And so that's incredibly important. And frankly, we need workers. And one of the things we need to do is comprehensive immigration reform so that our farmers have access to a legal system for their workers.

The next question - whether Dems should support Kyrsten Sinema's reelection bid - seemed to come out of left field. Stabenow said she and Sinema have worked together, including on gun safety and mental health, but said "we'll let that play out a bit," and that "it's very, very early" to be talking about that.

Stabenow says she finds it interesting that so many people think that Washington DC and Congress are 'broken.' Even given "all the division and chaos and everything that's happening and trying to pull the country apart, (to) stop us from governing," 

we actually, in the last two years with a 50/50 Senate, you don't get closer than 50/50 in the United States Senate, Democratic House and President Biden got more done than at any time, literally in our lifetimes. And that's not an exaggeration.

She believes the reason the Dems gained a seat in the midterms, and why they'll keep the majority in 2024 "is because we are actually focusing on the things that people care about." 

Sunday School 4/7/19

Today's classroom adventure comes from CBS and Face the Nation, with Margaret Brennan talking with the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Let's see how it went.

On whether Congress and the public have the right to see all of the information in the actual Mueller report, Rudy would like all of the information to go to the House Intelligence Committee, and eventually to the public.

I would like him to get all of the information...everything... But I can't control that and I can't change the law. And the AG has a difficult job, and I didn't appreciate (Jerry Nadler's) suggestion the AG would be biased. I know Bill Barr for many many years. I think people in this town know him, He's a man of the highest integrity. Also everything he's doing is also being done by Rod Rosenstein. That (summary) was put out by Barr and Rosenstein. 

Brennan wondered if the president was waiving all executive privilege, noting that Trump has said he thinks the report should be made public. To answer, Rudy had to invoke the Ghost of Clintons past.

The - the president's cooperation with with investigation it was unprecedented. Bill Clinton fought every single subpoena. And - and it was a knock down drag out battle.

Brennan noted that Clinton did ultimately sit down and do an interview, and noted that Trump had not.

That's why the president didn't have to because they couldn't win in court. They had every piece of information. They couldn't suggest a question they didn't have the answer to because we supplied them with the answers to everything and the president did answer questions in writing.

Brennan asked if any information would be withheld. Giuliani seemed unsure.

I don't know, Margaret. I don't know. The AG has said he's going to put out the maximum amount of information possible. The only thing that will stop him will be legal barriers. I hop there are a few because I don't like what Jerry Nadler just did. Innuendo and there must be more -- look. Jerry Nadler prejudged this case a year ago. He was - he was talking about impeachment. He was overheard on Amtrak talking about impeachment well before the report came out. So when he talks about the AG being biased, my goodness - and on his committee he's got some of the most rabid people that hate Trump. This is - we're not going before a court here, We're going before a political body -- that is highly partisan and has made up its mind. 

There was more - much more.

Sunday School Extra - The Mueller Report, Concluded

Attorney General Bill Barr sent a short and sweet summary of the Mueller Report to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R- WH), Rep. Jerry Nadler (D- NY), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Rep Doug Collins (R-GA) letting them know the principal conclusions in the report.

First, some background: The investigation was exhaustive, involving 19 lawyer (including the 13 or 17 Angry Democrats, I would guess), 40 FBI agents, analysts, accountants, and staffers. In all, there were over 2800 subpoenas, some 500 or so search warrants, interviews with around 500 witnesses, and more.  No further recommendations for indictment were issued, and there are no sealed indictments waiting to be unfurled.

As to Barr's reading of the principle conclusions of the report (we leaned in advance what Rep. Nadler thinks of those):

1. The report outlines how Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential election; documents crimes committed by people "associated with the Russian government" in the influence effort; explains that a "primary consideration" of the investigation was to determine whether any Americans "joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election" and noted that would be a federal crime had it occurred. And, "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
2. Mueller's investigation found there were two main efforts by the Russians to mess with the election. First, the Internet Research Agency's social media disinformation campaign "designed to so social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election." Even though there was no involvement of Americans in that efforts, there were criminal charges against Russian people and companies. 
3. Second, there was the hacking stuff, with Russians successfully hacking Clinton campaign and DNC emails and then sharing the info (remember Podesta's recipes?) through "intermediaries, including Wiki Leaks." This led to additional indictments against Russian military guys, but that no one from the Trump campaign fell for multiple overtures of assistance. 
4. The part of the report that addressed obstruction of justice by the president spoke of a "thorough factual investigation" which did not lead to "a conclusion - one way or the other - as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction." Rather, Mueller and his team maid the case both for prosecution on the obstruction charges, and for not prosecuting on them, "leaving unresolved what the Special Counsel views as 'difficult issues' of law and fact." Importantly, and contrary to what the president and his minions are saying,  the report "does not conclude that the president committed a crime, (and) it also does not exonerate him." 
5. Barr and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein (another target of the president) determined that Mueller's evidence is "not sufficient to establish" that the president committed a crime, and noted that they didn't take into consideration the constitutional issues around indicting and prosecuting a sitting president. Instead, they relied on Mueller's own information, including that "the evidence does not establish" that Trump was involved in any underlying crime tied to Russian interference, which makes proving obstruction much harder.  So, basically, Barr and Rosenstein did the same thing that James Comey did when he determined that not prosecutor would charge anyone who did what Hillary Clinton did.

Barr had said, in the hearing on his nomination that it was his intention all along to release as much information as he could of Mueller's report, within the confines of the law and Justice Department policies. That's going to take some time, as there's a lot of stuff that needs to be reviewed so as not to violate the confidentiality of grand jury matters, for example, or anything related to the spin-off investigations in New York and Virginia. Mueller is going to assist to make that happen as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we wait, and watch as the House and Senate majorities go their different different ways on all of this. The one thing we know for sure is that there will be investigations, with different targets, unless the leadership in both the House and the Senate can wrangle their respective folks in.

The larger issue, for me at least, is this: at what point do the majority Dems in the House turn their attention to governing, to legislating, to working on the things that have a direct impact on us? You know, taxes and social security and Medicare and voting rights and redistricting and not completely crashing the US and global economies with their Green New Deal, or wiping out the sixth of the economy that is health care and health insurance, and so on.

Those are things that we are just as entitled to as we are the Mueller report. 

TGIF 7/27/18

What kind of week did you have? Was it better or worse than these folks?

How about that Michael Cohen, the president's 'fixer', the deal maker's deal maker?  It seems like just a short while ago that Rudy Giuliani was saying Michael Cohen was an honest, honorable lawyer and yet, last night during an interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN, the messer-upper (Rudy) was now contending that Cohen has been a liar from the beginning, lies all the time, which lie can you believe, and so on. And I thought, wow - when the lying president's lying lawyer calls you a liar, that's a pretty bad week, right?

Who else had a bad week?  Mark Zuckerberg and anyone who owns Facebook stock, and anyone who owns Twitter stock, and maybe anyone who owns any other social media stock  Yesterday, Facebook took a huge hit, and in two days its stock has dropped around 20%. Today, Twitter took a huge hit as well, dropping in similar fashion. Both companies have been trying to address bad actors, purging fake accounts, and the like, and also dropping 'real' or 'active' users or at least not growing as fast as investors would like. Facebook faced some particular wrath lately due to its decision not to ban holocaust deniers from the platform. Sure, they're wrong and history deniers and all that, but we have to learn from them and teach them what's right and we can't do that if we shut them down or something. Infowars was another beneficiary of that thinking.

On the good week side of things, there was happy baby news from the Animal Adventure Park, outside of Binghamton, NY: Internet star April the Giraffe and her zoo mate Oliver are expecting another baby in the spring!. Folks will recall the frenzy when the park streamed live footage of April pretty much doing nothing except eating, and sleeping, and eating, and sleeping, for what seemed like weeks on end last spring, with all of the excitement culminating in the birth of baby Tajiri. We're set to go through all of that again early next spring, although owner Jordan Patch noted that while the average or normal gestation period for giraffes is around 15 months, April likes to go longer.

Rod Rosenstein could have ended up on the short end of the stick this week, after the House Freedom Caucus decided to file a resolution of impeachment against him - but that was foiled when lame duck House Speaker Paul Ryan indicated he was not supportive of their shenanigans. The HFC gang decided to table their request and instead will maybe give Rosenstein a contempt of Congress citation if he doesn't start playing better in the sandbox with them.

TGIF, everyone.