Monday, June 12, 2017

Reading archive 2017-06-12

Trump is likely to get much, much worse. Here are a few big things to watch for.

When a liberal power lawyer represents the Trump family, things can get ugly

Why foreign aid is critical to U.S. national security: We can't solve every foreign crisis through military action, say two former military commanders.

The Trumps are complaining about the ‘viciousness’ of politics. Irony is dead. - "when you spend the better part of 17 months habitually breaking political norms with your unusually nasty campaign, you can't spend time during your presidency complaining about the nastiness of the political system that you will now oversee as president. That's trying to have it both ways, which happens to be one of the few things the Trump White House is consistent about."

Oliver Stone Rewrites History — Again - "'Always beware of books that describe themselves as the untold history of anything, because it’s usually been told before,' he said. 'It sets up this thing that there is some sort of mysterious force suppressing the true facts, right? Glenn Beck does this all the time. It’s the same thing here, except this is basically a very standard left-wing, C.P., fellow traveler, Wallace-ite vision of what happened in 1945-46.' It’s not, Wilentz continued, that the questions raised aren’t worth raising. 'Is there a legitimate argument to be made about the origins of our nuclear diplomacy or the decision to build the H-bomb?' he said. 'Of course there is. But it’s so overloaded with ideological distortion that this question doesn’t get raised in an intelligent way. And once a question gets raised in an unintelligent way, then you are off in cloud-cuckoo land.'"

Thursday, June 8, 2017

Reading archive 2017-06-08

Sandy Hook hoaxer gets prison time for threatening 6-year-old victim’s father

7 takeaways from Comey’s extraordinary testimony about what Trump told him to do

Sen. John McCain’s bizarre questioning of Comey

Comey just blew apart a leading GOP talking point about Trump and Russia

Initial Comments on James Comey’s Written Testimony - "It’s hard to express to people who are not steeped in federal law enforcement just how inappropriate these inquiries are, particularly when they involve an investigation in which the President has such deep and multifaceted personal stakes. No, they are not illegal. The President, after all, has constitutional authority to ask for whatever information he wants from his subordinates in the executive branch. But of course, the President also has the authority to give the State of the Union address in Latin and have it consist entirely of obscenities directed at the Speaker of the House. To people who know the norms of federal law enforcement, the conduct described here is closer to that end of the spectrum of presidential behavior than it is to the normal range.
...
"Let’s leave to another day whether anything the President did here amounts to any kind of obstruction of justice. It’s poisonous stuff to a rule of law society that requires that law enforcement not be simply an arm of political power.
...
"First, Comey is describing here conduct that a society committed to the rule of law simply cannot accept in a president. We have spent a lot of time on this site over seven years now debating the marginal exertions of presidential power and their capacity for abuse. Should the president have the authority to detain people at Guantanamo? Incinerate suspected terrorists with flying robots? Use robust intelligence authorities directed at overseas non-citizens? These questions are all important, but this document is about a far more important question to the preservation of liberty in a society based on legal norms and rules: the abuse of the core functions of the presidency. It’s about whether we can trust the President—not the President in the abstract, but the particular embodiment of the presidency in the person of Donald J. Trump—to supervise the law enforcement apparatus of the United States in fashion consistent with his oath of office. I challenge anyone to read this document and come away with a confidently affirmative answer to that question."

James Comey just made it clear: He is trying to expose President Trump

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Reading archive 2017-06-06

The real reason working-class whites continue to support Trump

Working-class whites can’t handle their status as ‘the new minority’

Trump is now raging at Jeff Sessions. This hints at a deeply unsettling pattern. - Trump expects independent officials “to behave according to personal loyalty, as opposed to following the rules,” added Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale University who wrote “On Tyranny,” a book of lessons from the 20th century. “For Trump, that is how the world is supposed to work. Trump doesn’t understand that in the world there might truly be laws and rules that constrain a leader.”

Trump launches infrastructure initiative with fake signing ceremony

The Lawless Presidency - Foreign governments speed up trademark applications from Trump businesses. Foreign officials curry favor by staying at his hotel. A senior administration official urges people to buy Ivanka Trump’s clothing. The president violates bipartisan tradition by refusing to release his tax returns, thus shrouding his conflicts. The behavior has no precedent. “Trump and his administration are flagrantly violating ethics laws,” the former top ethics advisers to George W. Bush and Barack Obama have written.

Just Give It 7 Seconds

US suspects Russia planted fake news in Qatar: report

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Reading archive 2017-06-03

Hell Is Empty And All the Hedge Fund Managers Are At The Bellagio

Are You Proud to Be an American Today?: The Rose Garden's dumbest moment on record.

Nunes-led House Intelligence Committee asked for ‘unmaskings’ of Americans

I can’t stop laughing at the Trump administration. That’s not a good thing. - It’s hard to overstate just how badly Trump has navigated the global stage. The Chinese and Saudis have figured out how to buy him off with a couple billion dollars and some flattery. There is zero evidence of any appreciable policy gains. U.S. leadership is being constantly questioned. Whatever soft power resided in the United States has dissipated. Outside of the Persian Gulf, Trump’s approach has done nothing but alienate allies and bolster potential rivals.