Merrick Garland appoints special prosecutor to handle Trump investigations
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favorite Living Canadian)
No no no. A thousand times, no.
Stop it, Merrick. Wave your hand. Give up, abort, abort!
From Washington Post:
Garland announced her decision on Friday afternoon, appealing to Jack Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor who has worked for the past few years at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The announcement comes three days after Trump officially declared himself a presidential candidate in 2024. “Based on recent developments, including the former president’s announcement that he is running for president in the next election, and the incumbent president’s stated intention to also be a candidate, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint counsel,” Garland said at a press conference at the Department of Justice[…]Appointing a special advocate “is the right thing to do,” the attorney general said. “The extraordinary circumstances presented here demand it. Mr. Smith is the right choice to address these issues impartially and urgently.”
This is a massive political mistake at the worst possible time. One earlier WaPo story about how “investigators” believed the former president* stole the documents out of “ego” had me worried things might get soft at the DOJ. And now this movement in which Garland seems to be dancing to the tune of the former president*.
Garland seems more concerned with the perception of a political prosecution than the perception of a DOJ crippled by politeness and standards and norms that the suspects do not abide by in the least. Does Garland think Smith won’t be attacked for being a partisan henchman? Hell, the next House of Representatives is preparing to put Garland on the hot plate with half the administration, which will also damage the credibility of ongoing investigations. And referring the January 6 charge to a special prosecutor seems to me a critical abandonment of the position to which Garland was appointed.
A special advocate means another layer of bureaucracy, which means additional delays and opportunities for mischief and deception. The “circumstances” are simply not “extraordinary” here. The guy is a private citizen suspected of a crime. That’s all it is, no more, no less. There is nothing magical about declaring yourself a candidate for the presidency. You are then not blessed with the magic oil of immunity. This is not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. If so, Harvey Weinstein would have filed for the New Hampshire primary in 2016.
With the January 6 committee likely to be vaporized at the end of this Congress, one thing we don’t need is another rock in the middle of the road. Garland’s clear responsibility is to root out all crime and corruption that existed under the previous administration*. It’s about presenting the country with a clear indication that a defeated president* can’t call the crowd whenever he pleases. It is not—I repeat, not-to try to protect the DOJ from Fox News and the hysteria of Yahoo’s congressmen on the run. He is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. Enforce that damn law, and do it yourself.
Yeah, good luck with that, Mr. President.
From WaPo:
The United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ruled 3-0 on Monday to side with a coalition of six Republican-led states that have asked the court to file any debt forgiveness as part of his ongoing litigation. The injunction must remain in place until further orders from the court or the Supreme Court, depending on the order. The ruling comes days after a federal judge in a separate lawsuit in Texas ruled Biden’s debt relief plan illegal, effectively preventing the Department of Education from accepting more applications and paying. of any debt. This week, Justice Department attorneys asked the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to stay the decision in the Texas case and asked the court to issue a ruling by May 1. December “to allow the government to seek redress from the Supreme Court” if necessary. .
I can almost hear Mr. Justice Thomas’ “Off your bootstraps, you whiny kids” lecture now.
You may have noticed that in the wake of the GOP debacle last Tuesday, Senator Josh “My Feet Are Like Wings” Hawley reappeared in his old “conservative populist” drag. However, back home in old Mizzou, a judge has some questions he would like answered. From the AP:
The issue relates to requests for Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee records from 2017 and 2018, when Republican Hawley was state attorney general campaigning for the seat of former Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee sought emails and other communications between staff in the attorney general’s office and politicians linked to Hawley’s campaign, saying the official staffers were directed by activists in order to help the Hawley’s candidacy for the Senate. In one case, the attorney general’s office found responsive records three days after receiving the Democratic request, but did not release the documents until forced to do so as part of the trial over d ‘one year later… Other responsive files were provided to the Secretary of State. Office in the days after that office launched an investigation into whether resources from the Attorney General’s Office had been inappropriately used to help Hawley’s Senate campaign. But the attorney general’s office never turned over those documents to the Democratic Senate campaign committee. The secretary of state’s office, led by Republican Jay Ashcroft, found no wrongdoing in terms of the misuse of public resources. “The decision to withhold documents in response to DSCC’s Sunshine requests was made by officials who had personal and professional interests in the documents not being released and in the success of the then-candidate’s campaign. , Hawley,” Beetem wrote in her decision.
“Personal and professional issues”? Don’t Missouri Republicans worry about emerging conflicts of interest?
WWOZ Weekly Pick To Click: “Dippermouth Blues” (King Oliver): Yeah, I still love New Orleans.
Weekly visit to the Pathé Archives: Well, the soccer World Cup starts this weekend, in one of the most unforgivable places in the world and in a setting that (as the late Ms Ivins said) would make a maggot vomit.
Anyway, from 1937, here is a qualifying match between Norway and the “Irish Free State”. Later that year, the Irish constitution was changed and with it the name of the country. It would now be called Ireland (or in English, Ireland). It was a big step away from dominion status and towards the 26-county Republic of Ireland that would finally come into being in 1949. Anyway, the IFS lost this one to Norway, 3-2 , which eliminated the Irish from the final draw. Norway traveled to France and lasted just one round, losing 2-1 to Italy in Marseille. It was the last World Cup before World War II. Italians and Germans returned fascist salutes to their adoring fans. And Austria did not appear because there was no more Austria, the Anschluss occurred two months earlier.
The story is so cool.
Watching Twitter try to function itself these days is like watching animals trapped in quicksand. The more they struggle, the deeper they sink. CNBC has a great example.
Late Thursday, Twitter sent out a company-wide email saying its offices would be closed Friday through Monday and badge access would be cut off during the temporary shutdown.
Then, in a pair of widely distributed emails sent at the start of business on Friday, Musk called on “anyone who actually writes software” to report to Twitter headquarters by Friday afternoon. However, he first asked them to send him a high-level report of the best code they’ve worked on in the past six months. After the initial call for engineers to come to the office, he also sent a follow-up encouraging people to come to San Francisco to show up in person. He said, in one of his emails, that he would be working late at night at the company’s headquarters on Friday and again on Saturday morning. Musk said the point of sharing all that code and meeting him at the office would be for “short tech talks” that would help him “better understand Twitter’s tech stack.” Musk said people authorized to work remotely could request to speak to him via video. But chimerically, he also said, “Only those who can’t make it to Twitter HQ or have a family emergency are excused.”
“The building is locked, but enter anyway, after sending me a report of the building being locked. And if you live far away, you can enter by video, but only if your mother is dying or something. “
It’s also like watching that Three Stooges short where they all pretend to be plumbers and, eventually, water comes out of the TV.
Hey. Live Science, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
Paleontologists made the discovery after studying two North American bone beds containing the fossilized remains of the duck-billed dinosaur Hypacrosaurus stebingeri, also known as the hadrosaur. These herbivorous dinosaurs lived at the end of the Cretaceous about 75 million years ago. By studying dinosaurs in the bonebeds that died at different stages of their life, such as juvenile or adult, the researchers found that “young individuals left the herd at some point in their lives”, probably when they reached about 45% of their maximum size as mature adults. , Tristan Joubarne, a graduate student in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Calgary, told Live Science in an email.
I guess it was a Square pickets sort of thing. Hadrosaurs are inherently cool because they are, after all, dinosaurs. But realistically, being duck-billed doesn’t equate to being armored like Triceratops, or massive like Brontosaurus, or ferocious like the T Rex, or even lethal like a movie star like Velociraptors. So the teenagers all huddled together at the mall, or the swamp or whatever, and supported each other in their efforts to live then to make us happy now.
“An asteroid? Mom, as if!
I’ll be back on Monday to see how far the prosecution of the former president* has gone. Be well and play well, you bastards. Stay above the snake line, and wear the fucking mask, get the fucking hits, especially the fucking boosters, and especially the fucking current booster. Spare a thought or two for the people of Ukraine, East Africa, Pakistan and Nigeria.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, the most recent of which stupid americaand has worked as a journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
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