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Beth Glenn's avatar

" House Speaker Mike Johnson (D-LA)" - Mike Johnson is NOT a Democrat from Louisiana. He is in fact a raging Republican. His district is so gerry-mandered, it's no wonder we can't vote him out, in spite of our parish (the Louisiana version of a county) going BLUE in the last presidential election. Please don't besmirch the designation "D" by applying it to that ultra-MAGA (also impeachable) Rethuglican named Mike Johnson.

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Lance Khrome's avatar

Li'l Mikey absolutely revels in being personally gelded by tRump, becoming one of the latter's favorite court eunuchs...and does so shamelessly, ffs!

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dan tynan's avatar

I was just coming here to say that. Clearly a typo on David’s part.

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Manqueman's avatar

My unitary theory of Trump: He’s a crazy person acting out. Bullying, lashing out, putting his pleasure first, whatever. Obviously, no offense or belittling of people with legitimate problems.

As for not getting the MAL case taken away from Cannon: My understanding and recollection is that it started with Trump having issues with subpoenas OK’d by a magistrate in the US district court for the district in which MAL is located. When a party has an issue with a magistrate’s action, the first step is to appeal to the judge under whom the magistrate was acting.

The protege of Roy Cohn having issue there instead went to another district and went judge shopping for a puppet that would put loyalty to Trump before the law or national security. There is absolutely no justification for having let Trump get away with that. And optics-wise, it looks even worse after seeing how easily the Trump DOJ indicted Bolton for similar yet lesser acts—which looks yet worse because a successful prosecution or just proceeding with far less of the shit Cannon pulled likely would have electoral benefit last November in maybe preventing the nation’s collapse which is exactly what we got.

Obviously, if I got my understanding of federal court procedure wrong, I’d love to be corrected.

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Paula Jacobson's avatar

It's clear to me that trump's attack on little boats coming out of South America can be anything but outright murder. Add to that, drug running is NOT a capital offense in the U.S. Why, oh why is anyone standing for this?????

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Lance Khrome's avatar

"Some junior U.S. officers have asked military lawyers, an increasingly marginalized group, for a “written sign-off” before taking part in the lawless strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats but were apparently not given any such assurances..."

The NYT has already reported upon the existence of a DOJ OLC memo claiming "legal authority" for the high-seas murders, but that document has yet to surface publicly. Jack Goldsmith calls these memos "golden shields", as they "immunize" people carrying out questionable if not illegal actions by cloaking their deeds as "sanctioned by law", despite facial evidence to the contrary — the John Woo "torture" memos during the Bush years as an example.

So, despite what international law says, despite what the UCMJ may say about illegal orders, and despite what federal judges may say, tRump people can claim "it's all legal cos we got this memo, see?"

And there you have it...just put some person in the Office of Legal Counsel to issue a get-out-of-jail-free memo, and it looks like you're gold to do crime.

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Victoria Brown's avatar

Where is the "proof"

these boats out of

Venezuela are running

drugs? Where are the

drugs? The one boat

was supposedly carrying

packaged bales of some

drug. If you go back with

some of the drug busts

by the Coast Guard a

few years ago, they

hauled "bales" of

marijuana out of the

ocean. I don't remember

them murdering any of

the drug runners who

were a lot closer to the

US than Venezuela is.

Bravo to Jack Smith for

saying no to closed door

with Jordan and only

public meeting.

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Runfastandwin's avatar

"that doesn’t mean the decision was wrong" sure it does.

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