11 Comments
User's avatar
Mary's avatar

I hope you have someone who hugs you after having to report all of this. Thank you. Happy Veteran's Day.

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Dawn Pollock's avatar

Thank you for your commitment to continuing to report on all the sad, nefarious, unnecessary, and just cruel events that are taking place. It speaks to your strength of character and your commitment to the hope that we will recover eventually. Hard work, much appreciated.

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Don Coolidge's avatar

Just a note on the very first part of today's Morning Memo - I'm sure I'll have more to say later about the rest of it.

The part of the shutdown "deal" that lets Senators whose phone records were lawfully subpoenaed by Jack Smith's investigation, retroactively sue the Federal government for $500,000 each, a lawsuit that the corrupt DoJ will obviously not contest, smells, not just like bribery or a payoff, but also like an ex-post-facto bill. Those are prohibited by the Constitution. It's a fundamental precept of government by law that you cannot retroactively make illegal or actionable any act that was legal when it happened in the past. Laws only move forward in time.

The hypocrisy and corruption of this Administration and the Congressional GOP as a whole are ballooning far past the unacceptable and well into the inconceivable realm.

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Victoria Brown's avatar

So, it's ok to snag our

citizen phone records,

but not a senators. 500

grand is a lot of bucks.

Do we get to see the

phone records, or are

they all redacted? If so,

don't pay a penny.

Abuse of the pardon

system. 🙄

In remembrance of all

who gave their lives in

defense of freedom this

Veterans Day.

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Lance Khrome's avatar

Speaking of "war on judges", tRump has taken his E Jean Carroll defamation case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the presiding judge, fed. district court Judge Lewis Kaplan, did tRump a series of naughty bads during the trial, and tRump is arguing that the verdict be tossed out, including of course the judgment damages to be paid out to the plaintiff. "Carroll I" — the $5mil original suit — is first on the docket, and if that fails, tRump may also contest "Carroll II", the $84 mil judgment...or not, depending on the disposition of this initial filing, but given tRump's litigious nature, he'll keep trying in order to delay further the payouts due to Ms Carroll.

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J. R. Buzzell's avatar

Just a quick note on the “taking screenshots of text messages.” If you take a screenshot, it generally removes the meta-data on the information. So, a screenshot of a text-message would remove the actual information tying it to an individuals phone - providing some level of exculpability.

I could be wrong or outdated, but this is how it still works with images captured with a screenshot.

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Rodney Proctor's avatar

Wouldn’t John Thune’s too-cute-by-half hidden provision allowing senators, retroactively, to sue over the lawful subpoena of phone logs constitute an ex post facto law? And aren’t such laws prohibited under Article One, Section Nine, of the Constitution? Please explain what I’m missing.

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Bea Cardea's avatar

Just read the posting by Rachel Bitecofer (The Cycle on Substack). I'm breathing better. https://open.substack.com/pub/thecycle/p/reality-bites?r=h0feb&utm_medium=ios

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Susan Linehan's avatar

Since those working with Jack Smith had gone through the correct legal hoops to review phone records, it will be fascinating to see whether the DOJ will actually properly raise the question of sovereign immunity or will just hand over the money to "settle" and just accept that the "damage" they sustained was really 500K each.

I guess the mail in vote case will finally force whoever the plaintiffs are to articulate why counting properly postmarked ballots constitutes "fraud." Is the allegation that millions of illegal immigrants are faking postmarks? If the "paper ballots only" crowd prevails, the delay in results will be much longer than 5 days.

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Kim's avatar

Retroactive? How can you break a non-existing law?

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