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.
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"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.
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"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