James.galbraith

Barry Cole Poyner, an Elder at anti-LGBTQ Kirksville Church of Christ in Missouri and a professor at Truman State University, was arrested this week and charged with soliciting sexual favors from male college students on Grindr.

The Kirksville Daily Express reports that Poyner, who goes by the screenname ‘DILF’, was nabbed in a police sting as he attempted to meet one student at a gas station. ‘DILF’ had told the undercover officer that he wanted to have a “sugar daddy relationship” and asked for sexual favors in exchange for filling up the officer’s gas tank and giving him an Arby’s gift card. Upon meeting the officer at the gas station, Poyner tried to flee but pulled over soon after, claiming he was just “trying to help” kids out.

The Daily Express adds: “In addition to his position as a professor of communication at Truman State University, Poyner is a leader at the Kirksville Church of Christ. He’s listed as one of three church elders and over the years has coordinated numerous events from vacation bible schools to marriage counseling. Truman State University issued a statement Friday evening saying Poyner has been placed on suspension.”

Friendly Atheist reports that Poyner’s church denounces sex outside of marriage, particularly homosexuality.

The post Elder at Church That Condemns Homosexuality Arrested for Soliciting Sex from Male College Students on Grindr appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

On Monday, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a request that, during the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, the Senate hear from a limited number of witnesses. “In the trial of President Clinton,” said Schumer, “the House Managers were permitted to call witnesses, and it is clear that the Senate should hear testimony of witnesses in this trial as well.” Schumer specifically mentioned four potential witnesses, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who publicly confessed that military assistance to Ukraine had been withheld over Trump’s demands for investigations into a political rival, and former national security adviser John Bolton, who referred to the attempts to extort Ukraine as a “drug deal.”

But on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that he wasn’t taking any chances with witnesses. After all, witnesses could provide testimony. And testimony might contain … information. McConnell is not about to allow that. McConnell sneered at the idea of the Senate engaging in either “fact-finding” or “investigation.” And to make it clear that having anyone provide any information that Republicans senators would actually have to hear was beyond the pale, McConnell called the idea of witnesses “nightmarish.”

At almost the same time that McConnell was making it clear he wasn’t about to have witnesses, former Republican Congressman Bill McCollum, who served as a floor manager for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, was declaring that witnesses were a necessary part of the process. “Both sides should be able to select a certain number,” said McCollum, “and those key witnesses should be subpoenaed and come forward and testify.” Though McCollum continued to defend Trump in an ABC News interview, he also made it clear that witnesses are vital to a fair hearing, and live witnesses in the Senate are far better than reports prepared elsewhere.

As CNN points out, McConnell sang a very, very different tune at the time of Clinton’s impeachment. Back then, McConnell pointed out that, counting federal judges, there had been 15 impeachment trials in the U.S. Senate. Thirteen of those 15 included live witnesses, and the two that didn’t have witnesses ended when the person being impeached resigned before the witnesses could be called. 

What McConnell called “normal” then, he calls “nightmarish” now. Because he’s on the side of cover-up. Instead, he’ll have a trial like no other ever held in the Senate for any position. Just consider it another step in Mitch McConnell’s lifelong goal of destroying every rule, tradition, and function of the U.S. Senate.

The Trump-Republican tax law is having the intended effect—if you understand that enriching massively wealthy corporations was always the intended effect. Hundreds of profitable corporations paid an average corporate income tax of 11.3%, just over half of the greatly reduced corporate tax rate—and many paid zero, or got money back from the government.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) looked at Fortune 500 companies, identifying 379 of them “that were profitable in 2018 and that provided enough information to calculate effective federal income tax rates, which is the share of 2018 pretax profits they paid in federal income taxes in that year.” Those 379 big companies had an overall 11.3% average tax rate, but 91 paid nothing, and 56 paid less than 5%. We’ve heard a lot about how Amazon paid nothing—and in fact got a rebate—on $10.8 billion in profits, but it’s not the only one. Halliburton, Chevron, and IBM also paid no corporate income tax.

”Video game maker Activision Blizzard had $447 million in profits but received a tax rebate of $243 million, resulting in an effective tax rate of -54.4 percent,” The Washington Post reports. “The company went on to shed 800 jobs in the early weeks of 2019.”

ITEP notes that, in lowering the corporate tax rate, lawmakers could have also eliminated loopholes to ensure that companies did pay the reduced rate. But “Instead, the new law introduced many new breaks and loopholes, though it eliminated some old ones.” That’s how you lower the rate from 35% to 21% and end up with top corporations paying just 11.3% on average—the lowest rate ITEP has found since it started keeping track of this in 1984. This has a massive effect on the U.S. budget, with corporate taxes as a share of federal revenue plunging to just 1%.

This is the world the Republicans want. Democrats are running to make these enormously profitable companies pay their fair share.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The key to success in marriage is to make each other so weird that nobody else would accept you.

Today's News:

Kentucky’s largest transportation grant application under the Trump administration benefited from a process that the government’s top watchdog said lacked “the assurance of fairness,” raising questions about whether the Department of Transportation is making decisions based on project merits or political considerations.

The $67.4 million grant application for Boone County — a rapidly growing suburban district of political importance to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the husband of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao — was initially flagged by professional staff as incomplete. But after giving the state and local officials behind the application an extra opportunity to submit missing information, Chao chose it as one of 26 grant winners out of an initial pool of 258 applicants.

The Government Accountability Office faulted the department for failing to document why the Boone County project and 41 other applicants received this extra chance to fill in holes in their submissions when another 55 incomplete applications fell out of the running. Moreover, emails obtained by POLITICO show that Boone County officials were in contact with Chao’s aide Todd Inman, a former McConnell campaign staffer known to offer extra guidance to Kentuckians with business before the secretary.

“It really invites skepticism, and it raises questions about the integrity of the process and ultimately the decisions that are made,” Susan Fleming, director of GAO's physical infrastructure team, told POLITICO. “Are these decisions driven by merit? Or are they driven by other factors?”

Chao’s alleged favoritism toward Kentucky has become a focus of scrutiny following revelations that she had designated Inman as a special point-of-contact for Kentucky officials, according to emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. No other state enjoyed such access to the office of the secretary, which directly handled more than $3 billion of discretionary grants in fiscal 2019. House Democrats asked DOT’s inspector general to investigate the matter, and the office of the inspector general has confirmed to POLITICO that it has opened a review.

The arrangement raised ethical red flags because McConnell has touted his ability to deliver federal grants to his home state as a frequent refrain in his reelection campaign. With an approval rating well below 50 percent, the Republican senator is gearing up for a tough contest next year in normally red-state Kentucky. And as the leader of the Senate, he has significant control over the oversight of his wife’s department, an unusual concentration of power in one couple.

A DOT spokesperson denied that Inman served as a special liaison to Kentucky and said his involvement in the Boone County grant, including a phone call with the top county official the same day the applicants were granted a chance to revise the proposal, was coincidental.

The spokesperson also explained why the application for the Boone County project and others were singled out for special assistance by saying the department gave the proposals that were “best aligned” with the program’s criteria an extra opportunity to provide missing information. However, the department declined to provide POLITICO — or GAO — with evidence supporting that assertion.

The lack of clear standards for the grant applications led leaders in some states to complain to the GAO, a top government watchdog. After the yearlong probe ended, the office issued a report outlining what it called “recurrent and long-standing” concerns about the fairness of the procedures for awarding these discretionary grants.

Fleming, who oversaw the review, said the biggest takeaway was that DOT needs to change its processes so that grant applicants and government watchdogs alike can “follow the trail” documenting the department’s decisions.

“We quite frankly feel legislation is needed to compel DOT to address all the issues that we’ve raised that would really address the transparency, the accountability, the documentation,” said Fleming, adding that improvements to the process would reassure the public that the process is “consistent, transparent and merit-based.”

* * *

The discretionary grant-making process is overseen by DOT’s policy team, which in this case was headed up by Undersecretary for Policy Derek Kan, who had previously spent four years working as a senior adviser to McConnell.

In most of the discretionary grant processes GAO examined before Chao took office, DOT’s technical staff would weed out applications that didn’t meet basic eligibility criteria and give each project an overall score, after which a senior review team would make a list of recommended grantees that present the biggest return on the taxpayer investment, based on the department’s priorities, according to the GAO. Though complaints about political interference and a lack of transparency in the grant process have persisted across administrations, Fleming said in three of those five cases, the list was accepted by the secretary without change. In one case, the senior review team presented the secretary with two lists, and the secretary chose one of them.

But the process changed for the grant program that included the Boone County project, giving the secretary far more discretion — and disempowering both career and political staff. When that program started, Chao’s predecessor in the Obama administration decided to make his own selections from a much more expansive list than the senior review team usually provided. That process has continued under Chao.

“So this was very different,” Fleming said.

In a further change, Chao dispensed with the tradition of having technical teams give each project an overall rating, instead asking for scores only for seven categories, each with two to five subcategories, presenting the secretary with a sheaf of data rather than a conclusive list of projects that best meet the agency’s criteria. In effect, Chao ended the practice of letting DOT technical staff give each project an overall thumbs up or down, instead centralizing those decisions in her own inner circle.

A DOT spokesman said the change was necessary to allow for a more detailed consideration of the grant proposals.

“We are using more information, better information and all the information available rather than eliding some of it in a catch-all” rating that technical staff would give, said the spokesman.

The year Boone County received its grant, the secretary received a 25-page spreadsheet with 14 different lists assessing the merits of 118 small projects and 47 large ones, without a short list of recommended projects.

“In this case, unfortunately, the full list of statutorily eligible projects was sent to the secretary, regardless of merit scores,” Fleming said. “This method of presenting information on projects (and the volume of information presented) would make it challenging for any decision-maker to compare projects and readily see how 165 projects scored across all criteria.”

Under this process, the secretary herself consults in a limited way with a very small group of close advisers rather than relying on the judgment of professionals from the technical staff and the modal administrations. It also gives DOT a means to avoid charges of not following its own data-based procedures in favor of politically motivated grant decisions, as has been the case in the past when GAO found that the Obama administration was deviating from DOT’s “established procedures and recognized internal control practices.”

A DOT spokesman insisted that “GAO never said the secretary goes off and winnows down the list on her own or substitutes her preferred projects or processes, and the secretary does not,” and noted that “the grant-making process is driven by dedicated career staff and technical experts who spend thousands of hours analyzing project applications.”

Still, GAO did find that the process concentrated power in Chao’s hands and eliminated the ability of those technical experts to express their own judgments by giving high, medium or low overall ratings to the projects.

In the end, the GAO reported, more than half of the projects that Chao chose had been scored by professional staff as having a “high uncertainty” rating related to their cost-effectiveness — a technical deficiency that Fleming said “raises a red flag.” Only 38 percent of all submitted proposals were given this problematic rating.

A DOT spokesperson said the Boone County project was “a high-performing application that met and exceeded both the merit and statutory criteria.” But despite multiple requests, the department declined to say whether the Boone County application was among those rated as highly uncertain by the technical evaluation team, and the spokesperson downplayed the uncertainty rating as “only a small piece of the criteria.”

***

It was under this new process that Kentucky was awarded its largest grant yet under the Trump administration.

Boone County, Kentucky’s fourth-largest by population, is a fast-growing suburb across the Ohio border from Cincinnati, home to an estimated 131,000 residents. Once a reliable Republican stronghold, the county has recently become more of a battleground in statewide races — shifting 11 points toward the Democrat in the most recent governor’s race. The Republican still won the county by 14 points, but that represented a huge drop-off in a place that had delivered a 39-point margin for McConnell in 2014.

Preventing a similar suburban revolt will be a key task for McConnell’s campaign next November.

Much of the county’s growth has been driven by the nearby Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport’s rapid expansion as a shipping hub for companies including Amazon, FedEx and DHL. As that business grew, increasing congestion by delivery trucks spurred an effort by state and local officials to overhaul the county’s highway interchanges. But the Boone County project, which was submitted to DOT by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, was rejected by the Obama administration.

Almost immediately after the new president, Donald Trump, chose Chao as DOT secretary in 2017, Boone County’s top executive, Gary Moore, was in contact with DOT’s Todd Inman, according to emails obtained by POLITICO. Inman had no official role in the grant-review process, but frequently served as a semiofficial liaison for Kentucky interests that crossed the secretary’s desk, emails show.

In February 2017, during a visit to Washington, Moore asked Inman for a “personal meeting.” The following week, McConnell’s office emailed Inman requesting that Chao meet with Moore and other Kentucky officials. After the previously rejected application for $67.4 million was refiled under the DOT program known as INFRA — which covers freight improvements — Moore met with Chao in December 2017, according to calendar records.

Then, in May 2018, Moore emailed Inman asking whether he anticipated any “announcements in the near future.” Inman replied asking if they could talk on the phone instead.

Approximately one hour later, Kentucky officials received an email from DOT staff alerting them that the Boone County application was missing required information that they needed to send to DOT promptly.

The DOT spokesperson said Moore was “one of hundreds of local officials who contacted the department to ask for updates on their project” and that Inman simply told Moore that the evaluation process was ongoing. Moore told POLITICO that Inman did not offer him any particular advice — but when asked about Moore’s subsequent email thanking Inman for “the valuable advise [sic] along the way,” Moore declined to comment further.

According to the department, the message about the Boone County grant was one of 26 such emails sent out that day at the direction of the senior review team, a collection of high-level Chao staffers and senior DOT administrators, which met the previous day.

The problem facing the application was its private funding sources. By law, large multimillion dollar DOT grant requests are required to carefully document that all nonfederal sources of project funding are “stable, reliable, and available.” But the Boone County project’s application included a vague $500,000 private funding commitment secured through a “verbal agreement” with an unnamed “local developer.” That omission would have made the application as originally submitted ineligible per the grant program’s terms.

Moreover, according to Moore, the addition of these funds was key to the application’s resubmission — after failing in a previous grant round under the Obama administration, DOT career staff had advised Boone County to include matching local and private funds in the next application.

With little time remaining before the INFRA grant awards were decided, the department gave Boone County the opportunity to revise the application and provide a letter explaining that the county could rely on contributions from several companies with ties to the nearby airport shipping hub, such as FedEx and Kroger.

Once the grant award for the Boone County project was announced in June 2018, Moore reached back out to Inman to express his gratitude.

“Todd, the press roll out here in Kentucky has been outstanding,” Moore wrote to Inman on June 18. “Thank you again for everything. I am willing any time the secretary may be passing through our area to host her in anyway beneficial.”

***

Now, as construction crews continue work on overhauling the interchanges on Kentucky’s I-71-/I-75, a major freight corridor serving a brand-new Amazon shipping hub, the process by which the grant was made is under increasing scrutiny. Without intervention from DOT — the kind that 42 projects, including Boone County, received but that 55 others didn’t get — the project almost certainly would have been rejected yet again.

DOT’s inability to explain why some projects got selected for follow-up to fix mistakes or inadequacies in their applications while others didn’t is of particular concern to the GAO officials who performed the investigation into the program. They repeatedly asked DOT officials for any documentation or explanation of their methods and DOT was unable to provide any, according to GAO’s report.

DOT officials told POLITICO that they followed up with those grant applicants who “were best aligned with the required criteria.” But GAO officials said they were unable to unearth any objective criteria for follow-up, making the INFRA grants program “vulnerable to criticism [about] the integrity of the process and ultimately the decisions that are made,” according to Fleming.

The Obama administration got dinged for lack of transparency in its grant-making process, too. In fact, GAO praised the Trump DOT for improving some elements of the grant process. But in many ways, the process is still a black box, with DOT unable to provide explanations for many of the decisions it makes, like which applicants get second chances, and decision-making is still concentrated at the very top.

The lack of clear standards in the DOT selection process for discretionary grants angered political leaders in some states whose applications were rejected. Recently, nine of the 10 members of the Minnesota delegation wrote to Chao asking her to “provide insight into the grant selection process,” as Minnesota wasn’t one of the 35 states awarded funds under the BUILD program — for surface and water transportation — in the latest round. They asked her to share “the determination behind the merits” of the winning projects and provide “clarity” so Minnesota applicants could refine their solicitations.

Democrats in charge of the House transportation panel have said that they’re looking to tighten up the criteria for discretionary grants in response to the GAO report. Earlier this month, Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Highway and Transit Subcommittee Chairwoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) wrote to Chao reminding her that they’re still waiting on a document they’d requested in July — an April 2019 memo, referenced in the GAO report, in which Chao had reportedly ordered all of the department’s offices to update their procedures in accordance with the GAO’s recommendations.

In addition to that memo, the two lawmakers now also want to see documentation on how DOT made its grant awards for the 2017/2018 and 2019 rounds of INFRA funding — including how and why they decided to contact some applicants and not others to fill in holes in their proposals.

Meanwhile, McConnell continues to campaign for reelection on his ability to deliver for Kentucky from his high perch in Washington.

When a major spending bill passed the Senate in late October, McConnell claimed credit for a windfall of federal grants in Kentucky — explicitly mentioning support for his constituents’ applications to the Transportation Department’s INFRA and BUILD grant programs.

“I’m proud to use my position as Senate Majority Leader to deliver for Kentucky,” McConnell wrote in the news release.

But his leadership position can also be a vulnerability — congressional leaders can become the face of unpopular compromises or Washington gridlock.

Democratic strategists argue that McConnell’s insider reputation is a poor fit for a place like Boone County, which they say responds better to “Tea Party” Republicans with libertarian streaks like Sen. Rand Paul or Rep. Thomas Massie. Taking a lesson from the recent governor’s race, which unseated an unpopular GOP incumbent, they hope to focus the race on McConnell’s personal unpopularity in a long-shot bid to upend the state’s politics.

“Normally, what you see is people who don’t really like Mitch McConnell very much and are skeptical of him have chosen to pull the lever for him anyway,” said Marisa McNee, a deputy executive director for Kentucky Democrats. “I think what we’re seeing in northern Kentucky is a willingness to walk away from that Republican label that we haven’t seen in a long time.”

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

The GOP spin is just laughable at this point, and we should all say so.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stockpiled $100 billion in donations collected for charitable purposes, according to a whistleblower complaint to the IRS.

The Washington Post reports: “The confidential document, received by the IRS on Nov. 21, accuses church leaders of misleading members — and possibly breaching federal tax rules — by stockpiling their surplus donations instead of using them for charitable works. It also accuses church leaders of using the tax-exempt donations to prop up a pair of businesses.”

David A. Nielsen, a 41-year-old Mormon and former portfolio manager at the church’s investment division, filed the complaint. The LDS Church has not responded to the complaint.

The post Mormon Church Held on to $100 Billion in Donations Intended for Charitable Purposes: Whistleblower appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

iFixit has shared its full teardown of the new Mac Pro, calling it "beautiful, amazingly well put together, and a masterclass in repairability."

Given its modular design, the new Mac Pro unsurprisingly earned a nearly perfect repairability score of 9/10, with iFixit noting that basic repairs and upgrades can be performed with standard tools or even no tools at all. Major components also use industry-standard sockets and interfaces.


From a repair standpoint, the only downside is that while the SSDs are modular, they are not user replaceable since they are tied to the Apple T2 security chip. If you need to remove and replace the SSD modules, a support document says to contact Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider instead.

iFixit also has a service manual for the new Mac Pro.


This article, "iFixit Shares 2019 Mac Pro Teardown: 'A Masterclass in Repairability'" first appeared on MacRumors.com

Discuss this article in our forums

Giuliani during a Fox Business appearance in September. | Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

Trump’s lawyer is remarkably oblivious about the fact that he’s not supposed to be driving foreign policy.

Rudy Giuliani is not a State Department employee. He has not been appointed by the president for some sort of special diplomatic role. He is ostensibly serving as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.

And yet, he has — with Trump’s blessing — become a central figure in US foreign policy in Ukraine, promoting the “need” for an investigation into nonexistent Ukrainian election meddling; taking trips to advance an investigation into the Biden family; and, by his own admission, exerting control over US diplomatic staffing in that country to serve the interests of his client, even if they are at odds with those of the US government.

On Monday’s edition of Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle, Giuliani admitted he played a leading role in last spring’s ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch’s removal set the stage for the Trump administration’s efforts over the summer to leverage Ukrainian diplomacy into investigations of Joe and Hunter Biden that stood to benefit the president.

“I forced her out because she’s corrupt,” Giuliani said, before alluding to sketchily sourced information he dredged up during his just-completed trip to Ukraine and adding, “I came back with a document that will show unequivocally that she committed perjury when she said that she turned down the visa for [Viktor] Shokin because of corruption .... there’s no question that she was acting corruptly in that position, and had to be removed. She should have been fired, if the State Department weren’t part of the deep state.”

Put succinctly, Giuliani’s allegation is that Yovanovitch acted “corruptly” by refusing to grant visas to travel to the United States to Ukrainians who wanted to come here to share information they purportedly have about corruption involving the Bidens and Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that Hunter Biden served on the board of.

But Yovanovitch recently testified that the visa application of Viktor Shokin, the disgraced former top prosecutor of Ukraine, was denied because he lied on it by claiming he wanted to come to America to visit family when his real purpose was to meet with Giuliani.

Even Republicans acknowledge that Yovanovitch’s explanation of what happened with Shokin’s visa application is more accurate than Giuliani’s. As Will Saletan of Slate pointed out in response to a tweet in which Giuliani made the same claim, the House Republicans’ impeachment report characterizes Giuliani’s effort to obtain a visa for Shokin, as “potential impropriety” that the Trump White House “shut down.”

Shokin was pushed out as the country’s top prosecutor in May 2016 after then-Vice President Biden and other world leaders urged the Ukrainian government to do so, citing Shokin’s failure to curb corruption in the country.

Shokin has since claimed, without evidence, that Biden’s real motivation was curbing an investigation into Burisma at a time in which his son was serving as a board member. As flimsy as they may be, Giuliani is now broadcasting Shokin’s allegations to make it seem as though Trump had good reason to try and cajole the new Ukrainian government into investigating the Bidens.

It was a marked evolution from a statement Giuliani gave to the New Yorker in November. Then, he was even more explicit about why he wanted Yovanovitch gone: She was getting in the way of his pursuit of conspiracy theories.

“I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way,” he said. “She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.”

Giuliani closed out his latest interview with Ingraham by pushing Infowars-style conspiracy theories about non-governmental organizations working in Ukraine, characterizing them as “Soros-like — they were left of left.”

But as strange as it might be for the president’s personal lawyer to go on national TV and push unfounded conspiracy theories, that’s nothing new for Giuliani. What was new was his frank admission that he played a leading role in the ouster of Yovanovitch, a widely respected diplomat who served the country for more than three decades.

“Rudy Giuliani is going on television and admitting one of the central allegations of the abuse of power article of impeachment against the President,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) wrote on Twitter, in response to Giuliani’s latest TV hit. “Republicans cannot explain or defend this. The President’s actions were a corrupt abuse of power for personal gain.”

“He does this out of love”

While House Republicans try to distance the White House from Giuliani, Trump continues to embrace him. During a White House event on Monday, Trump deflected a question about how much Giuliani has shared with him about his recent trip to Ukraine by effusively praising Giuliani and his motivations for traveling to a number of European countries to investigate “corruption.”

“He’s a very great crime fighter,” Trump said. “He was probably the greatest crime fighter over the last 50 years. Very smart. He was the best mayor in the history of the city of New York. He’s a great person who loves our country, and he does this out of love ... he sees all of the hoax that happens, when they talk about impeachment hoax, or the Russian collusion delusion.”

But while Trump wants you to believe his lawyer has altruistic motives for his European travels, Giuliani himself gave up his game in tweets he posted from somewhere in Kyiv earlier this month that explicitly acknowledged a link between ongoing US assistance to Ukraine and investigations into the Biden family — the very “quid pro quo” at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

Hours after Giuliani went on Fox News and admitted that he’s a decisive player in the Trump administration’s foreign policy, Marc Short, chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence, went on MSNBC and tried to distance the administration from him.

“Rudy Giuliani is representing the president well as his personal attorney,” Short said. “He’s not a part of this administration.”

Short’s comments illustrate a dynamic that’s at play in the Trump administration’s relationship with Giuliani: The president’s lawyer has clearly played a key role in the Trump administration’s Ukraine policy and is leading Trump’s impeachment defense. But because he’s ostensibly nothing more than the president’s lawyer, administration officials can conveniently distance themselves from him when he says problematic things. That’s particularly useful as the administration and its congressional allies fight the impeachment process by trying to minimize the very presidential actions Giuliani insists on highlighting.

---

The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

Proving the axiom that even a broken clock tells the time correctly twice a day, neoconservative political analyst Bill Kristol posted an old video of Sen. Lindsey Graham, talking President Bill Clinton’s then-ongoing impeachment brouhaha. In the video, Graham is speaking with reporters and explaining how accusations from Democratic officials and the White House that this is a partisan bit of hackery by the GOP will not stand the test of time. In fact, Graham explains that if the shoe were on the other foot, the Republican Party could show how ethically solid they are.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: And somebody mentioned if a Republican president would have done this, let me just say this, it would be a good test for us. If a Republican president had done these things, would a Republican delegation going to tell him [sic] to get out of town? I hope so. I would like to think that we would have done that. Only time will tell, what happens here.

x

Lindsey Graham. "If a Republican president would have done this, let me just say this, it would be a good test for us..."h/t @LGsConscience, @barubin pic.twitter.com/NfJGobgvvL

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 13, 2019

Well, surprise surprise: Time told, and Sen. Lindsey Graham is full of shit.

The sad part of all of this is that the Republican Party is now doing what it did then: Attacking the basic foundations of the country’s checks-and-balances system. In that way, the GOP is indeed passing its own internal test of craven corruption and win-by-any-means-necessary power grabbing.

These days, Sen. Graham has been making headlines by sticking his fingers in his ears while talking to reporters about how he promises to break his oath to look at the evidence against Donald Trump impartially, while threatening to impeach anyone with a “D” in front of their name.

A quick history for those who do not remember: Impeachment proceedings were brought against President Bill Clinton, initially over an investigation into real estate dealings. Then, under a Republican-controlled House, that investigation turned into thousands of pages of impeachment findings surrounding whether or not Clinton obstructed justice by willfully misleading investigators about an extramarital affair he had while serving as president.

I know: It sounds quaint by today’s standards.

Firmly adopting Republican spin as the best way to view the House impeachment of Donald Trump, The New York Times in recent days appears to have forfeited much of its news coverage to the GOP. Adopting Republican talking points that impeachment is "a political plus" for Trump; "risky" for Democrats; that the White House’s impeachment war room is humming on all cylinders; Democrats are in danger of devaluing impeachment; and that nobody can really tell which party has the facts on their side, the Times is doing the GOP an incalculable favor by refusing to be aggressively honest with readers about the historic events that are unfolding.

Over and over during the past week, Times reporters have defaulted to a clearly Republican perspective, framing the impeachment as a looming political loss for Democrats, who have been largely outmaneuvered by their more savvy counterparts across the isle. This, despite the fact that half of Americans support the extraordinary action of removing a sitting Republican president from office.

The sad truth is that Times impeachment coverage has collapsed into a newsroom marveling at how Democrats haven’t been able to convince the GOP to support the congressional oversight, and therefore it represents a political loss for Democrats. Do you notice the calculation there? By simply opposing Democrats, Republicans are declared the winners.

The case of impeachment is even more incendiary because not only are Republicans stuck in obstruction mode, but they've dived headfirst into the swamp of conspiracy and lies and refuse to engage in a public debate on the facts. Remember, Trump has admitted to pressuring the Ukraine government to launch a bogus investigation into Trump's political rival at home, yet Republicans now routinely parade in front of microphones categorically denying Trump ever made any such public admission. Given that behavior, you'd think the dominant media narrative would be about how radical and detached from reality Republicans have become, and what the deep and lasting implications are for our democracy.

Instead, the press is playing along and suggesting it's Democrats who are faltering.

Wallowing in Both Sides journalism, the Times recently insisted impeachment is playing out against a backdrop where "conspiracy theories are everywhere and conspiracy theorists are in the White House and Congress." But of course, the Times cannot point to a single "conspiracy theory" at the heart of the Democrats' fact-based impeachment claim against Trump. Indeed, most of the wrongdoings that Democrats claim are things that have happened in plain sight, or have been reported by officials in Trump's own administration. By contrast, the entire so-called Republican impeachment defense is built on a completely debunked lie about how Ukraine worked on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016.

Yet the Times continues to feign confusion as to which party is telling the truth regarding the impeachment allegations. "Throughout the committee’s debate, the lawmakers from the two parties could not even agree on a basic set of facts in front of them," the Times marveled, making little or no effort to determine which party was dealing with facts and which party was dealing with fantasy. "They called each other liars and demagogues and accused each other of being desperate and unfair."

It's the news equivalent of the Both Sides Olympics, as the Times noted "the different impeachment realities that the two parties are living in." Once again, Republicans abandoned all pretense of facts and truth telling during impeachment. But the Times doesn’t want to dwell on that, so instead the paper tsk-tsks about how messy and angry the process was—a "sideshow atmosphere," as one print headline read.

In a front-page piece comparing and contrasting the Trump impeachment with the Bill Clinton trial of 1998 and how the Trump affair today seems less pressing, the Times completely omitted the fact that twice as many Americans today want Trump impeached than ever wanted Clinton driven from office. Meaning, only when all context is stripped away can the Times argue that Trump's impeachment has failed to strike a chord nationally.

And that's the point the paper has hammered over and over in recent days: Impeachment has been a nonstarter and people just can't figure out which side is telling the truth. Like when the paper worried impeachment has become "weaponized" by Democrats and will now become commonplace in American politics:  

With the House poised to impeach President Trump on a mainly party-line vote and Republicans already threatening retribution, fears are mounting that presidential impeachment might, like the filibuster, become a regular feature of America’s weaponized politics, with members of the party out of the White House but in control of the House routinely trying to oust a president they find objectionable.

That's literally a Republican talking point—Democrats are “normalizing” impeachment—which the Times typed up in the form of analysis.

Elsewhere, the paper has leaned hard on the idea that Trump's impeachment just didn't seem to matter. "Three years of intensity, nonstop ... conflict in Washington and this just feels like yet another chapter in that, rather than something unique," Times White House correspondent Peter Baker stressed on Meet The Press. In other words, half the country wants our sitting president removed from office, and the Times' D.C. bureau signals that it's all ho-hum.

Over and over, Times reporters have lamented the lack of impeachment civility (i.e. a deliberate GOP strategy) and decried that as being perhaps the most important take-away from the historic proceedings. That, plus the fact the hearings were boring, apparently: "The session soon fell into a going-through-the-motions rhythm. The words came loud and fast and were also tired with inevitability—like a cruise-controlled drive to a familiar destination."

As for the White House during impeachment, the newspaper recently suggested the GOP War Room communications effort was running exactly as planned. And who told the Times that? "White House officials" who agreed to talk to the Times to tell them how great the War Room effort is going. Elsewhere, the Times announced Trump himself appeared "more energized" in recent days. As proof, the newspaper pointed to the 123 tweets he posted in a single day last week. Some journalists might look at that mind-bending figure and conclude Trump is not well mentally, and that the Democratic inquiry was driving him to distraction. The Times though, concluded it meant Trump has been "energized" by impeachment.

Far being being energized, the Times’ impeachment coverage feels like it has essentially given in to GOP spin.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.

This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.

If you’re concerned about the current state of editorial cartooning, consider supporting my work on my Patreon Page for as little as $1 a month. You can also buy some merchandise like T-shirts with my cartoons on them here, including some of my most famous cartoons ever.

Also, check out the time-lapse video of how I created this cartoon:

x x YouTube Video

A federal judge is allowing Georgia’s plan to purge 4% of registered voters to go forward. Early Monday, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled that Georgia should “maintain the status quo,” only to decide later in the day in an emergency hearing that the purge could go ahead, though he will consider it further on Thursday. 

Jones was responding to an emergency request from Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams. Despite allowing the purge to go forward, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Jones said in court that registrations could conceivably be reinstated after Thursday’s hearing. But the fact that he didn’t bother to stop the purge for three days suggests that’s a slim chance.

Georgia’s Republican secretary of state is purging about 300,000 inactive voters. Fair Fight went to court to protect the registrations of 120,000 of those who are being removed for not having voted, responded to mail from elections officials, or otherwise contacted elections officials, for seven years. A new Georgia law extends the inactive period to nine years before registrations can be purged, and Fair Fight argues that should apply retroactively.

“Georgians should not lose their right to vote simply because they have not expressed that right in recent elections,” said Fair Fight Action’s Lauren Groh-Wargo.

The health-care industry gets whatever it wants from Congress.

Trump's tax cut has led to a large drop in the effective corporate tax rate.

If you’re going to run or walk on a treadmill, the best-case scenario is that the machine serves up minimal distractions: You don’t forget you’re on a treadmill, but it shouldn’t remind you at every step, either. After walking and running more than 50 miles on 16 treadmills, we think the ProForm 505 CST is the best choice for people who are looking for a sturdy, no-frills treadmill. Its interface is the easiest to navigate of all the treadmills we tested. Its belt is 55 inches long—enough space for all but the tallest runners. It has speed and incline functions that are comparable to those of treadmills twice the price, and it offers 18 workout programs, features that a treadmill that costs any less usually lacks.

People protest against the Citizenship Amendment Bill — which allows Hindus from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan to get citizenship and exclude Muslims from the same countries — in New Delhi on December 7, 2019. | Javed Sultan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

At one university in New Delhi, police fired tear gas on students hiding in the library.

Protests — and violent police crackdowns on them — are in full swing in cities throughout India, set off by the passage of a controversial new citizenship law. The law, which will fast-track citizenship for migrants from many religious minorities, but not for Muslims, is the latest measure the Indian government has taken to marginalize Muslims.

Police officers swept through a university campus in New Delhi on Sunday, injuring hundreds of student protesters and firing tear gas on those who had run into the library for safety. Videos show police beating students with batons. Some students have been shot, and dozens are hospitalized, though so far none of them have been reported killed.

Observers say the protest at Jamia Millia Islamia University, which has a majority-Muslim student body, began peacefully. But as police officers entered campus by force, some protesters reportedly threw stones at them. Buses and motorcycles were set on fire. Law enforcement stormed past the chaos and into buildings where other students were hiding.

“The police barged into the girls’ hostel, they barged into the boys’ hostel,” said one young woman. “Students were running around to save their lives. Is this democracy? Where are we living?”

Another young woman said police — yelling “sluts” and “traitors” — chased her and others as they ran to the library for shelter.

Amnesty International India is calling on the government to investigate allegations that police officers sexually harassed female students at the university.

Delhi, the nation’s capital, hadn’t seen anything quite like this in recent memory. In the wake of the unrest there, students in other parts of India also took to the streets in solidarity. At Aligarh Muslim University, southeast of Delhi, young demonstrators were also met with police violence. More than 60 were injured.

Protests have erupted in at least 17 cities, including Mumbai, Bhopal, Jaipur, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Lucknow.

In the northeastern state of Assam, where all residents recently had to provide documents proving they are legal citizens or face the possibility of detention and deportation, police shot four people dead during demonstrations over the past few days.

This wave of protests represents one of the biggest challenges ever to confront Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has sought to steer India toward a Hindu-nationalist (and anti-Muslim) course. Passing the new legislation, known as the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), has been one of Modi’s main priorities. He claims its purpose is to protect persecuted minorities.

The CAB turns religion into a means of deciding whom to treat as an illegal immigrant — and whom to fast-track for citizenship. It says Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who came to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan won’t be treated as illegal. They’ll have a clear path to citizenship.

But one major group has been left out: Muslims, who number 200 million, or 14 percent of the Hindu-majority country. Under Modi, they are facing mounting threats to their status and safety.

Indian Muslims face the threat of detention camps and deportation

The CAB has many Muslims frightened in part because it’s closely linked with another contentious document: India’s National Register of Citizens (NRC).

The NRC is part of the government’s effort to identify and weed out people it claims are illegal immigrants in the northeastern state of Assam. India says many Muslims whose families originally came from neighboring Bangladesh are not rightful citizens, even though they’ve lived in Assam for decades.

When the NRC was published in August, around 2 million people — many of them Muslims, some of them Hindus — found that their names were not on it. They were told they had a limited time in which to prove that they are, in fact, citizens. Otherwise, they can be rounded up into massive new detention camps and, ultimately, deported.

So far, this measure affects potentially 2 million people, not all 200 million Muslims in India. However, Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said it plans to extend the NRC process across the country.

The one-two punch of the NRC followed by the CAB could result in millions of newly stateless Muslims becoming refugees. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom have all warned that this could soon turn into a humanitarian disaster of horrifying proportions.

Some among the opposition parties to BJP and human rights advocates in India have called the CAB discriminatory and unconstitutional.

India’s Constitution guarantees everyone equality under the law. Religion is not a criterion for citizenship eligibility, a decision that goes all the way back to the 1940s, when India was founded as a secular state with special protections for minorities like Muslims.

Modi insists the CAB and NRC are not intended to target Muslims. On Monday, he implored Indians via Twitter to “maintain peace” and “stay away from any sort of rumor-mongering and falsehoods.” Yet at a rally the previous day, he noted that protesters “can be identified by their clothes,” which many interpreted as a dog whistle referring to Muslims.

Harsh Mander, a human rights advocate with Sikh heritage, wrote that the CAB represents “the gravest threat to India’s secular democratic Constitution since India became a republic.” He said he plans to register as a Muslim out of solidarity, and called on Indians to fight the CAB with a nationwide civil disobedience movement.

If the past few days of protests are any indication, that movement may be underway.

Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter. Twice a week, you’ll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges: improving public health, decreasing human and animal suffering, easing catastrophic risks, and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good.

[Count Two's charges against the President are both more serious in their long-term implications for the constitutional separation of powers, and less defensible on Trump's part, than Count One's.]

[UPDATED 12/16 AT END]

Although public attention appears to be focused, understandably enough, on Count One of the Articles of Impeachment – the Abuse of Power—I think that Count Two, Obstruction of Congress, presents the far stronger case for impeachment.

Let's put aside—just for the moment, and just for argument's sake—whatever opinions we might have about the Count One allegations. I happen to think that the evidence produced thus far is sufficient to prove that Trump abused his presidential power in his dealings with the Ukrainians, but I can at least understand that there is a contrary argument: that whatever his subordinates were doing, or thought they were doing, there is no direct, first-hand evidence that Trump himself was acting with an improper motive—exchanging military aid for damaging information on a political opponent.

So I'll accept, for now, that a Member of Congress could, acting in good faith and weighing the evidence fairly and unbiasedly, vote "No" on Count One.

But Count Two? I am having a hard time coming up with any reasonable argument that could support a "No" vote on Count Two.

The facts are clear and not in dispute. The President publicly directed his subordinates in the Executive Branch not to "participate" in the House's "partisan and unconstitutional" impeachment inquiry, because that inquiry "lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections."

The argument that this violates the President 's oath to "take care" that the Laws and the Constitution be "faithfully executed" strikes me as clear and straightforward and, as far as I am aware, unrebutted.

Article I Sec. 2 gives the House the "sole power of impeachment." If, in the exercise of that power, it demands that Executive Branch officials provide it with testimonial or documentary evidence, who decides whether those officials must comply with the demands?

Although the Constitution doesn't answer that question explicitly, it cannot seriously be maintained that it gives the president himself the power to decide that question. "No man shall be judge in his own cause."  The Framers were not stupid men.  They realized the obvious: if you lodge that decision with the president, he will decide it—surprise!—in his favor. The whole point of the impeachment process, recall, is to uncover, and punish, presidential wrongdoing, and it is precisely in those cases where there actually is presidential wrongdoing that the president is especially likely to decide that question in his own favor—to make his own determination that the inquiry is "unconstitutional" and "baseless," etc. and to act accordingly.

The President's position is not only a failure to "faithfully execute" the Constitution's impeachment provisions, it poses a substantial threat to the very existence of the impeachment power and its effectiveness as a constitutional check on the president.  Without the power to get evidence of a future president's wrongdoing from those within the Executive Branch—the very people with whom the president interacts most closely, on a daily basis, and who are responsible for carrying out his orders—makes the impeachment power a bit of a joke, though its implications for the conduct of future presidents are far from funny.

What possible constitutional argument can be mustered for the proposition that the Constitution gives the president the power to make this decision? That because the president has determined that the House inquiry is "unconstitutional" and "baseless," members of the Executive Branch need not comply with House subpoenas? Even if you agree (as I most emphatically do not) with the White House position—that the impeachment inquiry is unconstitutional, baseless, a deprivation of due process, etc.—it does not follow that the president is constitutionally empowered to make that determination. Does it?

It is not enough, it seems to me, to say that the President would direct subordinates to comply when (and only when) there has been a court determination that the request was lawful and proper.  That stands the constitutional scheme on its head.  The Constitution gives the House the "sole power of impeachment."  The House, by issuing its requests and subpoenas, has made its decisions about what information it needs to exercise that power. The President is of course free to fight those in court. But until he obtains a court order saying that the House's requests are not within the scope of the impeachment power, he (and the members of the Executive Branch) have to comply; he can't arrogate the decision about compliance to himself.

Because I can't conjure up a reasonable counter-argument, I therefore can't understand how on Count Two a Member of Congress, acting in good faith and weighing the evidence fairly and unbiasedly, could vote "No." I'm sure ever-alert VC readers will let me know what I'm missing.

*********  [UPDATE 12/16]  *********

Many Commenters took me up on my request to provide some reasonable justification for a "No" vote on Count Two.  Some of the proffered justifications strike me as deeply unpersuasive:  various versions of the argument that "It's really not that big a deal" (to which my response is "Wreaking substantial damage on a constitutionally-sanctioned procedure is a big deal"), or "Other presidents have done this or worse and were not impeached" (to which my response is "That's neither true nor relevant").

But one line of argument deserves a more detailed response.  The argument goes something like this:  It's true that the judiciary is, ultimately, the arbiter of the question at issue here (whether Executive Branch officials can be compelled to give evidence to a House Committee conducting an impeachment inquiry).  But because the Democrats chose not to go to court to enforce their subpoenas, we don't have an authoritative judicial determination on the question. And in the absence of any authoritative judicial determination that compliance with Congress' demands is required, the president is entirely within his rights to implement his particular view of the matter (that compliance is not required).

It's not an unreasonable argument, in the abstract. Questions about the boundaries between Congressional and Presidential power come up all the time, and the president is certainly entitled, as a general rule, to act in accordance with his views of the location of those boundaries, at least so long as those views are reasonable and held in good faith.

While that is true enough in the abstract, I don't believe it justifies a "No" vote on Count 2, largely because I believe that the president's position here is not merely incorrect but unreasonable. Read White House Counsel's letter for yourself. Try, if possible, to separate the constitutional arguments from the irrelevant and nonsensical hand-waving ("partisan bias," and "the dire implications of impeachment for the Nation," and the Democrats' desire to "reverse the outcome of the 2016 election," and what a naughty boy Adam Schiff has been, etc.) and see if you find those arguments remotely convincing.

Indeed, I challenge you to see if you can even find them at all. No court in the land has ever held, and it is inconceivable to me that any court in the land would ever hold, that members of the Executive Branch are categorically immune from compulsion to testify at any proceeding, let alone an impeachment proceeding. The President may believe such an immunity exists.  But the Constitution, by specifically placing the "sole power of Impeachment" in the House's hands, has given the House the upper hand in the matter; in the absence of a judicial determination on the question, it is the House's view, not the President's, that must prevail.

Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images for The Salvation Army

The organization does a lot to help underserved people, including members of the LGBTQ community. Still, it has a long history of alleged discrimination.

It’s been a somewhat tough holiday season for the Salvation Army. First, Ellie Goulding threatened to cancel her performance at the NFL’s Thanksgiving Day halftime show — intended to coincide with the beginning of this year’s Red Kettle Campaign — because of allegations over the Salvation Army’s history of discriminating against the LGBTQ community. Then, Chick-fil-A announced it was changing its philanthropic structure and would no longer donate to organizations that have been linked with anti-LGBTQ causes (at least for now), cutting the Salvation Army off from hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential contributions.

Goulding ended up performing at the halftime show after all, and Chick-fil-A later clarified that it hadn’t entirely ruled out donating to faith-based groups in the future, but the reputational damage was already done.

In late November, David Hudson, national commander of the Salvation Army, wrote an op-ed for USA Today in which he essentially dismissed the allegations of discrimination as fake news. (The organization uses military terms like “commander” to refer to its leadership; its members are called Salvationists.)

“Why take the time to read, research, and rebut when we can simply scan and swipe?” wrote Hudson, the organization’s highest-ranking US official. “Assumptions are regularly presented as foregone conclusions, and facts are drowned out by fiction.”

Hudson listed examples of the many good things the Salvation Army does for people in need, including members of the LGBTQ community, who are more likely to experience homelessness. Among those examples:

• The organization serves more than 23 million people each year, some of whom it presumes are LGBTQ.
• It operates “a dorm in Las Vegas exclusively for transgender individuals.”
• Roughly 20 percent of the people who sleep at the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light shelter in Minneapolis are LGBTQ.
• In Baltimore, the charity works with city officials “to combat trafficking among transgender individuals, a growing need there.”

“[W]hile we can’t claim an exact number, we believe by sheer size and access that we are the largest provider of poverty relief for people in the LGBTQ community,” Hudson wrote, adding that the organization’s critics are hurting the very community for which they claim to advocate. He continued:

[B]ecause our organization is rooted in faith, a chorus repeatedly rises that insists we are anti-LGBTQ. And that refrain is dangerous to the very community we are wrongly accused of rejecting. At minimum, perpetuating rhetoric that vilifies an organization with the reach, housing, programming, and resources that we have in place to lift them up is counterintuitive and inefficient. But when that organization depends on the generosity of donors to provide much-needed assistance to so many across all walks of life, it’s devastating.

Hudson didn’t exactly tell the whole truth about the history of the Salvation Army, which has previously come under fire for discriminating against LGBTQ people. Time and time again, the organization denies having anti-gay bias, even though the paper trail documenting anti-gay stances goes back decades. (The organization did not respond to The Goods’ request for comment.)

The Salvation Army’s surprisingly radical origins

The Salvation Army’s origins date back to mid-19th century England. Founded by minister William Booth in 1852, the organization initially focused on preaching to marginalized people, including the poor and homeless. Although it’s since evolved into a massive international organization known more for its charitable work than for its ministering, the Salvation Army has never really strayed from its religious roots — or from its use of military allusions.

“From the very start, Booth was ready and willing to go with the army metaphor,” Diane Winston, the author of Red Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army, told NPR in 2009. “Initially, Booth did not want to start a church. He saw himself as an evangelical organization who would bring the poor and un-churched to other churches,” she added, but it quickly became one, since many churches at the time “were not receptive to having poor people in them.”

According to Winston, the Salvation Army expanded to the US in 1880 after a few of Booth’s “soldiers” moved to Philadelphia. Its now-ubiquitous Red Kettle Campaign — for which bell-ringers collect donations outside stores and shopping malls every holiday season — didn’t start until the 1890s, and it didn’t begin as a well-planned fundraising campaign either. Instead, according to Winston, one Salvation Army member in San Francisco came up with the idea on the fly when he needed to raise funds for a Christmas banquet.

“He was on the docks and he saw the fishermen in their kettles, and he had a great idea,” Winston said on NPR. “He grabbed a kettle, he put it on a tripod, and he started ringing a bell and saying, keep the pot boiling, keep the pot boiling. And the idea just took off.”

Today, the money collected through the Salvation Army’s annual bell-ringing fundraiser helps provide services for more than 25 million people in the US each year, according to the organization’s website.

A brief history of the Salvation Army’s alleged anti-gay crusading

Each year, the Salvation Army’s bell-ringers post up on sidewalks and outside storefronts to collect donations, marking the unofficial start of the holiday season. And each year, the Red Kettle Campaign ignites a fresh wave of controversy over the organization’s longstanding anti-LGBTQ practices, which the Salvation Army says it’s been trying to reform.

In 2013, transgender activist and writer Zinnia Jones compiled a timeline of the Salvation Army’s history of discrimination against LGBTQ people, both passively and actively. A few highlights:

• In 1998, the Salvation Army refused to comply with San Francisco’s laws regarding domestic-partner benefits, costing it $3.5 million in city contracts and leading to the closure of certain programs for homeless people and the elderly.
• In 2001, the organization tried to strike a deal with the Bush administration, which would have allowed religious charities that receive federal funding to circumvent local ordinances against anti-LGBTQ discrimination. (The organization also threatened to stop all of its New York City operations in 2004.)
• In 2012, a Salvation Army branch in Vermont was accused of firing a case worker after learning she was bisexual.
• Also in 2012, Salvation Army spokesperson George Hood said the organization views same-sex relationships as sinful. “A relationship between same-sex individuals is a personal choice that people have the right to make,” Hood said at the time. “But from a church viewpoint, we see that going against the will of God.”

In 2011, the New York Times interviewed a man who claimed the Salvation Army denied him and his boyfriend shelter in the ‘90s “unless we broke up and then left the ‘sinful homosexual lifestyle’ behind,” the man, Bill Browning, said. “We slept on the street, and they didn’t help when we declined to break up at their insistence.”

The Times also published the Salvation Army’s “Position Statement” on homosexuality, which has since been deleted from the organization’s website:

The Salvation Army does not consider same-sex orientation blameworthy in itself. Homosexual conduct, like heterosexual conduct, requires individual responsibility and must be guided by the light of scriptural teaching. Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life.

In 2017, ThinkProgress reported that the Salvation Army’s substance abuse center in New York City had engaged in discriminatory behavior against transgender people. The center was one of four New York-based facilities that was found to engage in violations of city laws, including refusing to accept transgender people as patients, assigning rooms to transgender people based on their assigned sex at birth, and requiring transgender patients to undergo physical exams to determine whether they were on hormone therapy or had undergone surgery.

The organization’s apparent stance isn’t limited to the US: Salvation Army centers in New Zealand and Scotland have lobbied against the repeal of anti-LGBTQ laws.

Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images

The Salvation Army is quick to go on the defense whenever the backlash against it reignites.

“Most of the information fueling these concerns is based on outright false or incomplete information,” Ralph Bukiewicz, commander of the Salvation Army’s Chicago Metropolitan Division, told the Chicago Tribune in 2012. “But every year it seems to resurface and recirculate.”

More recently, communications director David Jolley told Out the organization has reformed its policies, adding that any discriminatory practices weren’t top-down directives, but rather stand-alone instances.

“If anyone needs help, they can find it through our doors,” said Jolley. “Unfortunately, as a large organization, there have been isolated incidents that do not represent our values and service to all people who are in need.”

Critics maintain that such instances of discrimination aren’t isolated, but instead point to the contradiction at the heart of the Salvation Army’s work: The organization provides services to people experiencing poverty and homelessness, many of whom are LGBTQ, while also espousing beliefs that contribute to discrimination against LGBTQ people.

Jacob Meister, board chair of the Chicago-based LGBTQ advocacy group the Civil Rights Agenda, said the organization needs to align its values with the work of its shelters.

“The Salvation Army needs to be open and affirming of all LGBTQ rights,” Meister told The Goods, “and come out and publicly take a stand in favor of marriage equality, trans rights, and be open and accepting of gender identity, and break free of those antiquated stereotypes that they help to perpetuate.”

Many Salvation Army shelters do help LGBTQ people — but critics say harm-reduction services don’t make up for anti-gay lobbying

In his recent op-ed, Hudson explained that even if some Salvation Army leaders are themselves anti-gay, their personal beliefs are outweighed by the services the organization provides to at-risk LGBTQ people.

“It’s true,” Hudson wrote, “that the Salvation Army’s pastoral leaders, who subscribe to the international tenets of the church on which we are founded, do themselves adhere to a traditional biblical definition of marriage — that’s also true of the leaders of most churches around the world.”

In other words, the Salvation Army does provide lifesaving services, including food and shelter, to LGBTQ people facing homelessness, but it also appears to have no problem with its leadership potentially expressing homophobic views that help contribute to broader discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“The Salvation Army speaks out of both sides of its mouth,” Meister said. “They’ll deliver services to LGBTQ folks, but on the other side, they are very actively, as a religious organization, opposing marriage rights and a lot of other rights. Transgender issues have been one, particularly, that they have had problems with.”

LGBTQ youth are disproportionately vulnerable to homelessness. A 2017 report by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago found that LGBTQ young adults were 120 percent more likely to experience homelessness than straight, cisgender people in the same age range. The high rates of homelessness among LGBTQ youth are often due to homophobia in their families or in their communities.

“It helps perpetuate discrimination, particularly among youth, particularly among the trans population. It is particularly insidious,” Meister added. “With youth in the transgender population, we already have a very high suicide rate, and the doctrine that they espouse helps contribute to that.”

Sign up for The Goods newsletter. Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.

66-year-old Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy reveals what they'll do after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Kennedy says that streaming "is a really important transition... What we've been focused on these last five or six years is finishing that family saga around the Skywalkers. Now is the time to start thinking about how to segue into something new and different." Kennedy also blames the poor box office of the 2018 movie Solo on the release of too many Star Wars movies too quickly, and remembers getting Disney's okay on a "pause" before future films. "We're literally making this up from whole cloth and bringing in filmmakers to find what these stories might be," Kennedy said. "It can take a while before you find what direction you might want to go. We need the time to do that." The next "Star Wars" film is expected to arrive in 2022, and that's essentially all that's known about it. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has an idea for a "Star Wars" movie, but it's in the early stages, according to Kennedy. Rian Johnson, who wrote and directed "The Last Jedi," is also developing more "Star Wars" films. Kennedy said she plans to make key decisions about the direction of the franchise in the coming weeks. But some things she already knows. While the "Skywalker" saga is ending, the company won't abandon the characters created in the most recent trilogy. Additionally, she said, the plan is to move beyond trilogies, which can be restricting. "I think it gives us a more open-ended view of storytelling and doesn't lock us into this three-act structure," she said. "We're not going to have some finite number and fit it into a box. We're really going to let the story dictate that." The article also notes that George Lucas complained there was "nothing new" in The Force Awakens, according to Bob Iger's recent book The Ride of a Lifetime. And though that film was a commercial and critical success, the Times also writes that "Debates over the franchise persisted." "The Last Jedi," for example, was criticized in some circles for going too far in subverting "Star Wars" tropes. Kennedy says the company heeds feedback from "Star Wars" fans. For example, Lucasfilm decided to revive "The Clone Wars" TV series for Disney+ following a prolonged campaign by viewers. "It does matter what they say and what they care about," Kennedy said. "All of those things play a role in our decision making." Aside from films, Lucasfilm has ample "Star Wars" material in the works, especially for Disney+. The studio is working on shows starring Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Diego Luna as his rebel spy character from "Rogue One." Additionally, the company is experimenting with new formats. Lucasfilm's ILMxLab, a virtual reality and augmented reality unit founded in 2015, this year released a VR series called "Vader Immortal" that puts users face-to-face with Darth Vader and trains headset users to wield a lightsaber.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes the Wall Street Journal: Boeing Co. is considering either suspending or cutting back production of the 737 MAX amid growing uncertainty over the troubled plane's return to service and could disclose a decision as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter. Boeing management increasingly sees pausing production as the most viable among difficult options as the plane maker's board began a meeting Sunday in Chicago, these people said. Support for halting production comes days after U.S. regulators warned the aerospace giant it had been setting unrealistic expectations for when the jet would be allowed to fly again, these people said. Boeing has already "signaled to U.S. aviation officials last week that it anticipates a production-related announcement this week amounting to at least a significant rollback of MAX output," the Journal reports, citing a source "familiar with the matter."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Five senior aides to Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey resigned on Sunday as the lawmaker formally prepared to switch parties, stating they were “deeply saddened and disappointed by his decision.”

The aides in Van Drew’s Washington office wrote in a joint letter to his chief of staff that Van Drew’s decision to become a Republican after winning his seat last year as a Democrat “does not align with the values we brought to this job.”

“Sadly, Congressman Van Drew’s decision to join the ranks of the Republican party led by Donald Trump does not align with the values we brought to this job when we joined his office,” according to the letter, which was obtained by POLITICO. It also states that “Trump Republicans” have worked to “aid and abet Trump as he shreds the Constitution and tear the country apart.”

The chief of staff — Allison Murphy, who began working for Van Drew when he served in the New Jersey State Senate — is not expected to leave. But there could be additional staffers who decide to leave this week.

Some in his office, including Murphy, had sought to persuade some staffers to stay, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

The staffers who resigned were legislative director Javier Gamboa, deputy chief Edward Kaczmarski, deputy chief Justin O’Leary, communications director Mackenzie Lucas and legislative staff assistant Caroline Wood.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairwoman Cheri Bustos later said the committee would hire any staffer who quit Van Drew's office.

"We'll bring them and others who leave on with the DCCC unitl they land new jobs that align with their values," Bustos (D-Ill.) tweeted Sunday night.

Van Drew, who was his party’s most vocal opponent of impeaching Trump, made the decision to leave the Democrats after a personal meeting with Trump on Friday. The congressman had begun informing some of his staff later that day, but didn’t want it to be public until the following week. But by Saturday, the news had leaked.

There had been rumors for several days that the New Jersey freshman could switch parties after Democratic leaders announced they were moving ahead with articles of impeachment, but Van Drew repeatedly denied the claims publicly.

Multiple senior Democrats tried to reach out to the New Jersey freshman on Saturday but were unsuccessful.

Van Drew flipped his GOP district in southern New Jersey, helping deliver Democrats the House majority. The district, which still leans Republican, voted for Trump in 2016.

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

The debate over whether the Iowa caucus should be the first test for presidential hopefuls is not new, as the issue bubbles up every election cycle. What has been a bit different this time around is that candidates who are seeking to win in Iowa are also willing to step up and say: Maybe something is wrong. In the past, this issue was danced around by editorial boards, party insiders, and voting rights advocates. To have presidential candidates themselves, including front runners, debate whether or not Iowa should be first signals a change in the calculation of how important the Iowa caucus is to these campaigns.

Since the 1970s, Iowa has been first. But since the 1970s, many things have changed. Once viewed as a state small enough for campaigns to start and grow in, the attention and tourism Iowa receives, as well as the airtime and candidate resources, dwarf the state’s comparative size in electoral votes. Do candidates spend this much money, generate this much tourism revenue, or buy this much airtime in, say, Mississippi or Tennessee? No. 

The debate over Iowa being first has changed over the years and now presents Democratic leadership with new challenges. How does a state that is not representative of the Democratic base benefit from being first in the nation?

The answer is simple: It shouldn’t.

In disputing this theory, a Des Moines Register editorial argues that Iowans are just used to “candidating,” meaning that they get personal time with the candidate and that is more important than money spent. Isn’t that nice? Candidates spend tons of personal time in one state, paying attention to the direct issues of one state. Despite the thought that “it isn’t about money,” the truth is that money is spent—and often, that money isn’t spent inside of Iowa. Candidates have ads created on the east or west coast. They hire staff they know and trust who are often from out of state. While Iowa benefits from the tourism, my past experience tells me that the number of out-of-staters who staff the campaigns in Iowa far exceeds local hires.

The benefit to Iowa, however, remains significant. Its oversized impact on the direction of the presidential race as well as the benefit of “candidating” can influence political campaigns and provide a testing ground for policy positions. 

On Tuesday night in a town hall, Julián Castro was asked to defend his position on why Iowa should not be first. The Des Moines Register covered it by pointing out he did not back down.

On Tuesday night, the Democratic presidential candidate made sure to clarify: criticizing the process isn't about changing 2020. It's about changing the Democratic Party for the future — a conversation he knows comes with risks, Castro said. It isn't just "sour grapes" because he may not win Iowa or New Hampshire, he said.

"I'm 45 years old," he said. "If it’s a catastrophe to bring this up, if I ever wanted to run again in the future, the same thing applies. So I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to bring this up, and I do, because it needs to be said."

The argument that Castro makes should not fall on deaf ears. Until Andrew Yang qualified for the December debate, there were no persons of color who had qualified. Cory Booker and Julián Castro are both on the outside looking in.

During the Democratic National Committee’s Unity Reform Commission, one of the things I heard repeatedly from members on both sides was that the end goal was to make sure people had the opportunity to vote, to open up the process, and to work to maintain voting rights. This call from all members is an important one, and was celebrated by every single member of the DNC, in public and in private.

The fight for voting rights is a fight that happens everywhere, in districts that can be deep red or districts that are bright blue. The party has said that we care about the intent to vote everywhere, and that persons of color have their voting rights protected, especially following discriminatory practices by Republicans. This drive for voter rights and building a better process for voters makes holding the Iowa caucus followed by the New Hampshire primary questionable. Iowa (91% white) and New Hampshire (93% white) just don’t reflect where the party is today.

During Democratic National Committee events, even guests attending from Iowa as observers and former officials pointed out that if Iowa were to go for Trump in 2024, it would be apparent that its value to a Democratic candidate would be minimal. Some argue that today: How much time does a Democratic candidate invest in Iowa in the general election? Do any of our candidates have it on their list of battleground states in a general election?

The New York Times addressed the issue this way:

After touching off the latest round of Iowa pearl-clutching with a vigorous denunciation, Mr. Castro has continued to speak out against the primary schedule. It has become one of the few avenues for his struggling campaign to receive attention.

“We can’t as a Democratic Party continually and justifiably complain about Republicans who suppress the votes of people of color and then turn around and start our nominating contest in two states that, even though they take their role seriously, hardly have any people of color,” he said.

This issue has been debated for years inside the Democratic National Committee. Very few other states will in any way defend the Iowa caucus going first. Those state officials also are not very willing to go on the record saying that, fearing that could cause their future support of a candidate or work for a candidate to be—you guessed it—damaging to a candidate in Iowa.

Because Iowa is insistent on remaining first, it is difficult for members of the Democratic National Committee to come up with a solution that could actually work. One joke i’ve heard more than once is that the debate around the Iowa caucus is part of the reason why some develop a taste for good liquor. 

The change in the Iowa caucus can happen for the party, and it should happen. In order for that to be true, however, one thing must happen first: The Democratic candidate must win the general election in 2020. By doing so, the 2024 caucus becomes a non-factor, and gives a sitting Democratic president more opportunities to make the call for change. Without that power on the side of change, it is incredibly doubtful there will ever be movement on this issue.

If we truly want a diverse system with better voter representation, we should fight for it. Democratic candidates should be brave enough to at least say we should reconsider the slotting of the entire primary calendar. 

If we shrug our shoulders and refuse to consider change in the process, the only thing we guarantee is that no change will ever happen.

Hallmark has pulled four ads from the wedding planning website Zola featuring a lesbian wedding, with brides kissing after pressure from the American Family Association subgroup One Million Moms. Towleroad reported on the campaign by the conservative group earlier this week.

The NYT reports: “Asked to explain why the ads had been rejected, an employee of Hallmark’s parent company said the channel did not accept ads ‘that are deemed controversial,’ according to an email exchange shared with The New York Times. A spokesman for Hallmark said the women’s “public displays of affection” violated the channel’s policies, but he declined to comment on why a nearly identical ad featuring a bride and groom kissing was not rejected.”

The “controversial” aspect of the ad was the kissing, according to the Hallmark spokesman.

But that doesn’t apparently apply to heterosexual PDA. The NYT adds: “In one of the two ads that were permitted to continue to air, a bride and groom kiss passionately at the altar.”

Wrote One Million Moms on its website: “The Hallmark Channel has always been known for its family friendly movies. Even its commercials are usually safe for family viewing. But unfortunately, that is not the case anymore. Recently, One Million Moms received concerns about Hallmark airing a commercial from Zola.com in which two lesbians are shown kissing at the end of their wedding ceremony. … Conservative viewers will be disappointed to learn that Hallmark has ideas of moving beyond airing only commercials with LGBT content and is open to producing LGBT movies in the future.”

“Shame on Hallmark for airing commercials with same-sex couples and even considering movies with LGBT content and lead characters,” they continue. “Now, parents can no longer trust Hallmark because Hallmark is no longer allowing parents to be the primary educators when it comes to sex and sexual morality.”

OMM told Hallmark in a petition letter on their site: “Please reconsider airing commercials with same-sex couples, and please do not add LGBT movies to the Hallmark Channel. Such content goes against Christian and conservative values that are important to your primary audience. You will lose viewers if you cave to the LBGT agenda.”

The post Hallmark Pulls Gay Wedding Ad After Pressure from ‘One Million Moms’ appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

There have been far too few Republican voices willing to call out this president for what he is, and for the threat that he represents to our system of government.

From the very start, the entire presidency of Donald Trump has been predicated on the single spiteful, overarching goal of eradicating the legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Whether it was the reckless dismantling and corruption of executive agencies meant to serve the American people, the weaponization of the Justice Department in his attempts to gut or kill both the Voting Rights and Affordable Care Acts, the repudiation of foreign alliances and strange embrace of totalitarian dictatorships, or the poisoning of the federal judiciary with incompetents and ideological hacks, Trump’s entire presidency can be fairly cast as one extended attempt to reverse the progress realized under Obama.

Trump’s desire to construct a “wall” to repel immigrants, his unilateral revocation of longstanding strategic arms treaties and trade agreements that have, possibly irrevocably, transformed the United States into an erratic and unreliable pariah among other nations, all serve his need to distinguish himself from Obama’s legacy, to somehow set himself apart. Indeed, he commonly tweets about his achievements, bragging about them in comparison to Obama, because, apparently, Trump can’t bear the thought that an African American could do a better job than he.

Conservative commentator Jennifer Rubin, writing for the Washington Post, observes that as of next week, Trump will finally attain the specific satisfaction and recognition he craves. His presidency, his historical legacy, will be distinctly separated from that of Barack Obama, once and for all when Donald Trump is impeached.

Rubin writes that “Trump can hate-tweet, and House Republicans can rant and lie all they want, but Trump, after what is expected to be a near straight party-line vote in the full House next week, will have gotten his one line in history: ‘Trump was impeached for abusing his office to pressure a foreign nation to influence a presidential election in his favor and for obstructing Congress’s investigation of the same.’”

Historians tasked with examining Trump’s presidency will forever note the asterisk following his name, but they will never find a similar notation for Obama. Because even with the unprecedented degree of personal smears, attacks and lies leveled against then-President Obama by the Republican Party (which controlled both chambers of Congress throughout the majority of his two terms), there was never any serious thought given to impeaching him. Meanwhile, Trump will own that distinction for the rest of of his life, and history will faithfully record it for all time.

As for those Republicans, as Rubin points out, they too, along with their many enablers in the media, will also, forever, experience the verdict of history when it comes to their own actions during the Trump era. They too will be remembered, long after this process has run its course.

For the Republican Party, this episode is, we can only hope, the final nail in a party that has become a mouthpiece for foreign propaganda and an anti-democratic enabler of a corrupt president. We arrived at this point because Republicans rejected character as a qualification for president; Republicans joined in Trump’s assault on facts; Republicans attacked and smeared the intelligence community; Republicans refused to hold Trump accountable for obstruction of Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation in Russian interference in the 2016 election; and Republicans refused to find fault and perhaps agree on a lesser penalty than impeachment. Without a willing and deceitful right-wing media and “useful idiots” in the House Republican caucus, we would not now be facing the ordeal of impeachment.

Likewise, the “sham” trial being concocted right now for Trump by the Republican Senate will also make for sorry fodder in the country’s historical record, as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell openly conspires with the administration to reach what is obviously shaping up to be a predetermined and preordained outcome. Thus Trump will not only have succeeded in permanently staining his own presidency, Rubin notes, but abetting the destruction of the Senate’s historical reputation for integrity as well.

It is fitting, I suppose, that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is already colluding with the White House to conduct a sham Senate trial in which witnesses will be prevented from testifying. McConnell hammers the last nail in the coffin of the Senate’s reputation when, without hesitation nor any concern for the institution and in the role of the trial juror’s foreman, he plots with the defendant to promulgate rules that ensure the least amount of fuss in the march to their predetermined outcome.

Rubin is conscious of the sad legacy that will be left for her fellow Republicans as the years pass along and future generations are tasked with examining the behavior and actions of her compatriots, tacitly acknowledging that college-level studies in political science and the history of this time will forever, invariably, be reduced to examining the antics of such GOP “representative” specimens such as Jim Jordan,  Louis Gohmert and Matt Gaetz (for the record, Jordan has declared he “doesn’t care” how he’s remembered). Conversely, the bravery and integrity of ordinary civil servants, the Fiona Hills, the Marie Yovanovitches, the William Taylors, will be extolled as examples of dedication and courage.

And, in what must be a painful political admission, she credits Democrats for steadfastly following their Constitutional responsibility in this sordid affair.

Anyone not intoxicated by the brew of Fox News-Breitbart-Federalist-Sinclair-talk radio conspiracy theories, out-and-out lies and hysteria would, after only a few minutes of viewing the past two days of House Judiciary Committee proceedings, conclude that one party is utterly unfit to hold office and is collectively off its rocker. The other, however imperfectly, is attempting to lay down a marker, to conduct constitutional hygiene and to leave bread crumbs for history that lead to the conclusion: This was the most corrupt president in history who violated his oath and betrayed his country.

Rubin acknowledges there may not be more than “bread crumbs” of democracy left in this country if, after all this, Trump manages to get himself re-elected in 2020. But she remains hopeful—now that he is about to achieve the unique distinction he has always desperately craved—that the American electorate will see fit to dump this president (and the corrupt party that supported him) into that collective trash bin of shame, where all historical travesties go to die.

Those who still love democracy, constitutional government, the rule of law and the promise of a multiracial and multiethnic democracy had better choose a Democratic nominee wisely and then work like hell to elect him or her. The alternative is unimaginable.

Again, almost no Republicans have been willing to discuss Donald Trump and the the danger to democracy that keeping him in power presents. Rubin has been one of those few.

Arizona’s interim Republican Senator Martha McSally’s seat is up for grabs this coming year. She is not well-liked in general—the late Sen. John McCain, whose vacated seat she was given, has family that seem to be less than thrilled by her—and while the race is close, she trails Democratic candidate and retired astronaut Mark Kelly. A couple of months ago McSally feinted that she might be open to the impeachment of Donald Trump, but as Sen. Mitch McConnell and the Republican ranks have settled into the idea of becoming an undemocratic oligarchy, Sen. McSally and her made-up ethics have also dissipated. 

Defend American Democracy posted a video, purporting to show a few military veterans trying, rather politely, to have a discussion with Sen. McSally, surrounding the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. Sen. McSally, like a true American hero, picks up her phone and begins to pretend she is on it, while trying to briskly outpace the veterans asking her for her thoughts on Trump’s impeachable offenses.

It’s a truly cowardly display and hits McSally in what normally would be her strength—veteran affairs. This comes on the heels of reports that while making headlines for calling out military “slumlords,” Sen. McSally has received quite a bit of campaign money from those very same “slumlords.”

x

WATCH: @SenMcSallyAZ walks away from veterans—taking a “phone call” to avoid questions about Trump's abuse of power. pic.twitter.com/Ohsq99xJ3n

— Defend American Democracy (@NoOneIsAboveLaw) December 12, 2019

McSally has been pretty loud when barking about veteran affairs, but that dog don’t hunt.

BuzzFeed News reported in late October that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials deleted surveillance footage of a transgender woman who died while under custody last year. Now the outlet has further confirmed that federal immigration officials got rid of this footage even though they were clearly instructed to preserve it.

Emails show that ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility requested records regarding 33-year-old Roxsana Hernández, an asylum-seeker from Honduras, a little more than a week after her May 2018 death, which her advocates said could have been prevented if she’d received speedy medical attention. Included was a clear-as-day request to keep video records: "’Please archive and retain all facility video surveillance footage,’ the analyst asked, with the word ‘all’ underlined.”

But as BuzzFeed News reported in October, officials told the Office of Professional Responsibility in emails sent in late August that the footage was gone. “The requested video is no longer available. The footage is held in memory up to around 90 days. They attempted to locate and was negative.” The emails sent by officers to to the Office of Professional Responsibility were sent 95 days after Hernández's death, BuzzFeed News said.

Federal rules say that officials are required to preserve records in case of court litigation, which her advocates filed the following November. But even if there isn’t speedy court action or any court action at all, in what world does it make sense to not preserve records following an in-custody death (and when there are allegations of mistreatment)? Unless something is being hidden. Following the report that ICE deleted footage that could have provided some answers, legislators including Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Kamala Harris and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called for further investigation.

“The American people deserve answers for what happened to Ms. Hernandez, and members of Congress have sought those answers,” Blumenthal and Harris said in requesting a special counsel from the Justice Department. “The need for answers is all the more acute in light of other deaths in U.S. custody, including the deaths of transgender individuals, and reports of insufficient medical care at U.S. facilities, including ICE facilities. We now need answers as to why that footage was not preserved. Any policies in need of reform must be examined. And any individuals that acted wrongfully must be held accountable.”

Hernández's advocates remain hopeful that needed footage could still exist somewhere, BuzzFeed News continued. "It's completely ridiculous to suggest they didn't know they were supposed to preserve critical video footage—the most basic thing you do when there's some type of investigation, or you expect to be sued," said Dale Melchert of the Transgender Law Center.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T doesn't want its home Internet speeds to be measured by the Federal Communications Commission anymore, and it already convinced the FCC to exclude its worst speed-test results from an annual government report. "AT&T this year told the commission it will no longer cooperate with the FCC's SamKnows speed test," The Wall Street Journal wrote in an investigative report titled "Your Internet provider likely juiced its official speed scores." AT&T already convinced the FCC to exclude certain DSL test results from last year's Measuring Broadband America report. The reports are based on the SamKnows testing equipment installed in thousands of homes across the U.S. "AT&T was dismayed at its report card from a government test measuring Internet speeds" and thus "pushed the Federal Communications Commission to omit unflattering data on its DSL Internet service from the report," the Journal wrote. "In the end, the DSL data was left out of the report released late last year, to the chagrin of some agency officials," the Journal wrote. "AT&T's remaining speed tiers notched high marks." "AT&T developed a best-in-class tool to measure its consumer broadband services," the company said in a statement provided to Ars. "This tool measures performance on all AT&T IP broadband technologies and is more accurate, versatile, and transparent. For these and other reasons, our tool provides better and more useful information to our customers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive at the Supreme Court with Chief Justice John Roberts on July 22, 2019. | Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

The Supreme Court is about to tell us how willing it is to protect Donald Trump.

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will hear Trump v. Mazars, a case involving whether House investigators may obtain Trump’s financial records — most likely including his tax forms — from Trump’s accounting firm. Mazars will be heard alongside two other cases, Trump v. Vance and Trump v. Deutsche Bank, which also concern the scope of Trump’s immunity from investigation.

Deutsche Bank, like Mazars, concerns a congressional subpoena. Vance involves a Manhattan prosecutor’s effort to obtain Trump’s financial records.

The Court’s announcement is not surprising. Shortly before Thanksgiving, the Court stayed a lower court decision that would have allowed the House Oversight Committee to enforce a subpoena seeking Trump’s records. That same order, however, required Trump’s lawyers to formally ask the Supreme Court to review that lower court decision on an extraordinarily expedited basis.

The cases will be heard in March. We will likely know by the end of this June whether the subpoena from the House will be enforced.

The stakes in these cases are massive, and go well beyond the question of whether a particular subpoena may be enforced. A decision for Trump could give the president broad new immunity from oversight that would extend far beyond this one case. Under existing law, Trump’s legal arguments are exceedingly weak, so a decision embracing those arguments could completely rework the balance of power between Congress and the presidency.

The Supreme Court explained in Eastland v. United States Servicemen’s Fund (1975) that Congress’s investigatory power is broad, and it extends to subpoenas “intended to gather information about a subject on which legislation may be had.” In the Mazars case, lower courts agreed that the House subpoena was proper because the House is considering legislation that would impose stronger financial disclosure requirements on the president.

Thus, because the requested documents could inform Congress’s decision about whether such legislation is necessary, the documents concern “a subject on which legislation may be had.”

The Court also said in Clinton v. Jones (1997) that “we have never suggested that the President, or any other official, has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity.” Thus, because the House seeks records unrelated to Trump’s actions as president, he stands on particularly weak legal ground.

That said, at least some members of the Court have signaled that they would like to give presidents sweeping new immunity from lawful investigations. In 1999, future Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that United States v. Nixon (1974), the case requiring Nixon to turn over damning tapes that ended his presidency, was “wrongly decided.”

Kavanaugh, in fairness, later praised the Nixon decision during his confirmation hearing as an example of judicial independence, so it is unclear whether he still holds to the views that he expressed in 1999. It is also unclear whether four of Kavanaugh’s colleagues would join him in a decision undercutting Nixon.

But to rule in Trump’s favor in Mazars, the Supreme Court would have to walk away from at least some of its past decisions governing Congress’s oversight power and presidential immunity. If it does so, it could do considerable violence to the principle that the president is not above the rule of law.