Justice trump style.

We learned a lot today about where we will be going for the next four years.

Jeff Sessions is one of the most powerful men in America. He is the attorney general and he runs Donald trump's justice department.

 So let's take a look at what he has been up to since taking office. 

"It is hard to believe this is happening, but it’s real: The US Department of Justice is literally prosecuting a woman for laughing at now–Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year.

According to Ryan Reilly at HuffPost, Code Pink activist Desiree Fairooz was arrested in January after she laughed at a claim from Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) that Sessions’s history of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.”

Sessions, in fact, has a long history of opposing the equal treatment of all Americans under the law. He has repeatedly criticized the historic Voting Rights Act. He voted against hate crime legislation that protected LGBTQ people, arguing, “Today, I'm not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face that kind of discrimination. I just don't see it.” And his nomination for a position as a federal judge was rejected in the 1980s after he was accused of making racist remarks, including a supposed joke that he thought the Ku Klux Klan “was okay until I found out they smoked pot.”

Given this history, Fairooz laughed at Shelby’s claim.

But federal prosecutors have pushed forward with the case against Fairooz. As Reilly reported, prosecutors argue that “the laugh amounted to willful ‘disorderly and disruptive conduct’ intended to ‘impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct’ of congressional proceedings.” In court, they have tried to emphasize that the laugh was extraordinarily disruptive, with a US Capitol Police officer claiming that Fairooz laughed “very loudly” and people in the hearings turned around when they heard it.

Fairooz’s defense, meanwhile, has argued that her laughter was a reflex and not meant to disrupt the hearings. Fairooz was also in the back of the room, and her laughter had no noticeable impact, based on video of the hearings, on Shelby’s introductory speech for Sessions.

The trial will continue at the Superior Court in DC this week. If convicted, Fairooz faces a fine up to $500 and up to six months’ imprisonment for the laugh-related charge. She is also charged with another misdemeanor for “allegedly parading, demonstrating or picketing within a Capitol, evidently for her actions after she was being escorted from the room,” Reilly reported.

Fairooz has a history of disruptive protests. During protests over the Iraq War, she put fake blood on her hands and confronted then–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

This time, however, Fairooz claims she was not trying to be disruptive — but merely laughing. " [Source]

So she will be prosecuted for laughing, but.......

"The Justice Department has decided not to bring charges against the officers involved in the death of Alton Sterling, whose videotaped shooting by police in Baton Rouge last summer prompted unrest across the city, and is planning to reveal in the next 24 hours that it has closed the probe, according to four people familiar with the matter.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Sterling family had yet to be informed by the Justice Department of the decision, and it is unclear how and when the department will announce its findings.

“We have not heard nor received an update and are unaware of any charges that may or may not be filed,” said Ryan Julison, a spokesman for the Sterling family’s attorneys. “We have not received word, nor has the family been given any notice of upcoming updates regarding this case.”

The case will be the first time under Attorney General Jeff Sessions that the department has publicly declined to prosecute officers investigated for possible wrongdoing in a high-profile case, and officials in Baton Rouge have been girding for a possible reaction there." [Source]

I bet former President Obama did not know that Beauregard Sessions would be running the justice department.

So to recap: laugh during Mr. Session's  confirmation and you get prosecuted. Shoot an unarmed man to death, and you are not. Got it.

What a country.

Drip-drip.

 All this brouhaha about Jeff Sessions and the rest of the trump team playing let's make a deal with the Russians, and it might not amount to much.

This is because the republicans in congress will do their best to make sure that it doesn't. They have been blocking efforts to investigate at every turn.

I suppose that's how Washington works: Yes, he is a crook, but he is our crook.

What a difference an administration makes. Just imagine if the shoes were on the other foot. If you think the cries of Benghazi were bad, just remember that the cries of Moscow would be ten times worse. 

As for trump's taxes, we might as well forget that as well. It looks like we will never see the taxes of our charlatan in chief. This is because house republicans just voted to make sure that we, the public, never see them.

The president must really love his fellow republicans right about now. They have gotten his back and they have tried to shield him from himself and the law. 

"House Republicans voted en masse to block a resolution that would have forced Trump to turn his tax returns over to Congress on Monday night.

 

The measure was introduced by Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Under a 1924 law, the Ways and Means Committee is empowered to examine tax returns. The committee could then decide to release them to the full Congress, effectively making them public.

 

Trump has broken with decades of precedent and refused to release his tax returns, citing an ongoing audit.

 

Pascrell first brought his request to the Chairman of the Way and Mean Committee, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX). Brady rejected the request, citing concern for Trump’s “civil liberties.”

Pascrell was able to bring the issue to a full vote on the floor through a vehicle known as a “privileged d resolution.”'

 

Protect what's in the swamp at all cost. 

 

*Credit for the pic goes to news8000.com

Susan Collins, tax returns, and Felix Sater. Day 33 in trumpland.

* I tried to tell you all a couple of nights ago that this Russian connection with trump and his people could be a "big deal".

We are now learning that Herr trump might have to finally release those pesky tax returns he has tried so hard over the past few months to hide from the American people. He claims that he is under an audit, and that his lawyers won't allow him to show them, but he has refused to  show us the letter from the IRS that shows that they are auditing him in the first place. My guess (and I am sure yours is as well) is that there is no such letter.

But I digress.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, said today, that she would subpoena trump's tax returns if the Russia probe leads in that direction.   She is a republican, albeit a moderate one, but there are others like her, and this might be a crack in trump's wall of protection around his swamp in Washington.

They are seeing what we all see: that there is just too much smoke surrounding this entire Russian connection for there not to be a fire.

I am telling you people, this Russian cloud over team trump is like a bad hangover after a night of drinking vodka; it just won't go away.

"Asked whether that could include issuing a subpoena for the tax returns that Trump has refused to release, Collins said it could if that is what is required to find out if the president had undisclosed connections to the Russians.
 

“I don’t know whether we will need to do that,” Collins said. “If it is necessary to get to the answers, then I suspect that we would.”
 

But she also suggested she hoped it would not come to that. 
 

“My hope is that we’ll have a lot of voluntary cooperation,” Collins said."

Senator, you are wasting your time, there will be no cooperation from this administration.  We have learned over the first thirty days or so (seems like 30 years already) of this administration that they are just not built that way.

But there will be a reckoning, and I am sure that trump and his people know it.

I bet Felix Sater knows it. (You can read about him and his history with trump here.)

Across the pond in London, the bookmakers are already taking bets on how much longer trump will last in the White House. Just a hint for you: You won't make a whole lot of money betting that he will be impeached, because a lot of folks are already placing that bet.

"There needs to be a full-blown congressional investigation of the Trump-Russia connection, and there needs to be an independent prosecutor (and not Trump campaign supporter Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general) probing every aspect of a scandal that has all the potential of being worse than Watergate. And the first witness should be Felix Sater."

Yes it does. At least Watergate involved another domestic political party trying to influence our politics. We are talking about a foreign government with this one, and potential collaborators in very powerful positions. 

Donald, it might be time to call your accountant. We are going to need to see those returns.

*Pic from bbc.com














 

"I am very troubled that you would repeatedly over a decade or more make statements" like the one in 2001..

Living in A-merry-ca sometimes makes me wonder if I am not playing a character in one of those crazy Mel Brooks movies.


Is that Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) sitting across from, and sitting in judgement of, Sonia Sotomayor, while she tries to become the first Hispanic member of the supremes? (Cardozo doesn't count, he was Portuguese.) Please say it ain't so. Talk about the theater of the absurd.


Here is a man who openly despises anything [or anyone] having to do with civil rights; was cool with the KKK until he found out that some of them smoked pot, and called a black subordinate "boy" on quite a few occasions, while telling him to watch how he addressed white folks. And this man is sitting in judgment of Sotomayor and implying that she is a racist? Wow! Now that takes big ones. Only a republican could pull that off.

The irony of this entire episode is so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Sessions, himself, was shot down for a federal bench because of his little race problem, and now, like a bad horror movie, the GOP has brought him back. This time to be their face of these confirmation hearings. Nice.

This cannot sit well with my black friends in the republiklan party (Oh yes, I am on them again) and some of them have not been shy about making their feelings known about it. I can't say that I blame them. I would be pissed off as well. You would think my fiends (that's a typo but I am leaving it. It fits) from the party of Lincoln (oh, and let's not forget MLK) would be smarter than this. Alienating an entire voting block (Hispanics) by having your racist front man beat up on one of their own might be good red meat (no pun intended) to throw to your base, but it's dumb politics.


Of course, some on the right don't see it that way. They see it as a vindication of sorts: Mr. Sessions comes to Washington, the very place that sent him packing back to Alabama over 20 years ago. To them, he has come full circle, and now he is leading the charge against the evil liberal appointee to the highest court in the land. It's exactly this type of thinking that has caused folks like Byron York (the clown whose article I linked) and the rest of the people on the right to be banished to the political wilderness. A place where they could find themselves dwelling for years to come. Here is the thing: Old white men aren't getting any younger, and they will all eventually die. It is time that they (The GOP) adjust to the political landscape, or I am afraid that the party of Lincoln (and King*rolling eyes*) will die right along with them.


I am sorry, but while looking at that picture of old Jeff, I see a man who as a kid watched some strange fruit hanging from trees down in Southern Alabama while his daddy and granddaddy drank moonshine. Oh field, stop it! The man flat out denied that he was a racist at his own confirmation hearing. “I am not a racist” Now tell me, if the man was a racist for crying out loud, would he have said that? Ahhh yes. In fact, that is exactly why he would say it. Here is the thing: if you have to declare that you are not a racist, there is a pretty good chance that you just might be one. Ok wise guy, consider this:


"A few years ago, when Sessions appeared on “Meet the Press” to discuss confirmations, he found himself staring at an old image of Kennedy speaking in 1986. “Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past,” Kennedy said. It wasn’t something Sessions enjoyed reliving.
'That was the most unkind thing that has ever been said about me,' Sessions says. 'it was exceedingly painful to hear someone of that prominence make that statement, and it was hurtful because it wasn’t true.”'



I know Jeff, It wasn't true about you. But keep probing. I bet we can make it stick to that Hispanic woman.

"If I knew then what I know now I would have picked my own damn cotton!"

I bet that infamous quote has been on the lips of lots of white folks lately. I know it was running through poor Mr. Ricci's mind back in 2003, when he thought he passed a test given by the New Haven fire department to promote 15 captains and lieutenants; only to be told that the test would be tossed because none of the black applicants passed.

Well worry no more Mr. Ricci; today the supremes vindicated you and they said that the city of New Haven was wrong to throw out the test. Yep, it was 5-4 for your team and zero for the black guys. That will teach them to pass over more qualified firefighters for less qualified blacks. Well, actually field, that isn't exactly true, no one was passed over. And field, what about the poor black firefighters? Haven't black fire fighters all over the country been discriminated against and suffered racism from their supposed comrades on the various ladders? Really? Prove it. Well, how about this:

".. In New Jersey in 2006, two black fire officers from Camden won a suit that included evidence that African-American firefighters were abandoned by white ones at the scene of a fire, that beds in the firehouse were divvied up by race, and that a white fire chief had told one of the plaintiffs, "I am better than any 10 of you fucking black guys." A federal appeals court the same year found Cleveland liable for putting most of its African-American firefighters in one battalion, which became known as "Monkey Island."

Oh that's you black folks just being sensitive again. You people are so sensitive and always causing trouble. Look, you won a few of these battles in the early seventies due to some isolated incidents but........but field, they won battles in Philadelphia, New York, Newark, Baltimore, San Francisco, St. Louis, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Bridgeport (which just happens to be the city over from New Haven). Okay, so there were a couple of cases. But what does that have to do with now? You blacks need to study and work harder if you want to be rewarded. The poor guy (Ricci) was dyslexic for crying out loud!

The truth is, the "New Haven 20" (That has a nice civil rights sounding ring to it) are great A-merry-cans, they challenged the political correctness police and won. No more affirmative action? Well, not quite, field. The court's ruling was very narrow, today. They didn't actually address the issue of affirmative action but chose to focus on Title VII and work place discrimination. The city of New Haven anticipated a lawsuit from the black firefighters and the supremes were all over that. And the ruling was still pretty close. "The court noted that despite what otherwise would have constituted a "prima facie" showing of disparate impact race discrimination, several defenses were available to the city--namely that the exam at issue was job related, consistent with business necessity, and there existed no equally valid, less discriminatory alternative that suited the city's needs but was not adopted.."

Hmmmm, well, whatever, you democrats can spin it all you want, it's still a punch in the gut for Ms. Sotomayor. Some of my republican friends sure seemed thrilled:

“Every citizen has a right to have his or her case heard by a judge who will rule on the laws, the facts, and the Constitution—and not play favorites. This case sharpens our focus on Judge Sotomayor’s troubling speeches and writings, which indicate the opposite belief: that personal experiences and political views should influence a judge’s decision. That theory is a breathtaking departure from the proper role of the American judge and will clearly be the subject of questioning at the upcoming hearing.”..This case will only raise more questions in the minds of the American people concerning Judge Sotomayor’s commitment to treat each individual fairly and not as a member of a group.”

That was my main man, Jeff Sessions, the ranking republican on the Judiciary Committee. You go on Jeff, you might as well score some political points to go along with your victory. Way to throw that Obama pick, Sotomayor, in the mix. Yeah wasn't this her baby? Well, not really field, she was on a three Judge panel of the Second Circuit Court Of Appeals who simply refused to hear the case. And the full Second Circuit court voted 7-6 to deny a rehearing. So from a legal standpoint, what she did was not that radical. Actually, she practiced what republicans are always calling for: "Judicial restraint". Besides, read this quote:

"...[in] Ricci, five justices of the Supreme Court narrowly reversed the ruling of the Second Circuit, which had been supported by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Justice, many states, the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties. The lower court’s ruling in Ricci was also supported by the majority of the Second Circuit, including judges appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents. "

Ahh that's just democrats talking, again. What do they know?