The Real President Joe Biden Is Starting to Come Out, It Seems

We hoped he'd be stronger.  We hoped he'd be stronger than this, especially this early. It's not a complete surprise but that doesn't mean it's not a disappointment. Here's the first.

Biden's refusal to go big on student loan relief is one of his first big stumbles as president

He, President Biden, insists he can't pardon $50,000 of student higher education debt. He says he can, constitutionally, pardon $10,000 in debt but not $50,000.  

What??

I'm pretty sure if the Constitution says you can forgive 10, you can forgive 50.

Number two. First he does and says this.

Biden says $15 minimum wage won't survive Covid relief talks

Then he backtracks yesterday.

President Biden reiterates his support for a $15 minimum wage

Mr. President, sir, I have to tell you, that first statement weakens you and weakens your position on this issue as far as the Republicans are concerned. You get that, right?

And finally, third today.

Under Biden, Justice Department presses fight against Omarosa

A new brief takes an aggressive stance against outspoken Trump critic Omarosa Manigault Newman in a financial disclosure flap.

Check this story out.

The Biden Justice Department is showing no sign of letting up in a two-year-old legal fight against a former White House aide who became an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump.

While the Justice Department has sought to pause or drop a number of high-profile court battles due to the change in administration, government lawyers are pressing on aggressively with a lawsuit claiming that Omarosa Manigault Newman failed to file a required financial disclosure following her attention-grabbing firing in December 2017.

Manigault Newman has described the suit as a vendetta aimed at her for turning on Trump, calling him a racist and making revealing disclosures about the former president and his top aides. She also wrote a tell-all book, “Unhinged,” which chronicles her dealings with Trump as a contestant on “The Apprentice” and later as his most prominent African American White House aide.

In a new brief filed in federal court in Washington just before midnight Thursday, the Justice Department forcefully defended its position in the case, even tangling with Manigault Newman over the contentious circumstances of her dismissal by then-White House chief of staff John Kelly.

“She…made no attempt to file any Termination Report before September 2019, more than a year and a half after it was due and after this litigation was commenced,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “Then, following that submission—in which only half the required fields were even filled out—Defendant made no effort for over a year to correct her submission, despite being promptly advised of its deficiencies…She remains out of compliance with [the Ethics in Government Act] to this day.”

The suit asks U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon to impose a civil penalty of $61,585 on Manigault Newman for willfully refusing to file the financial disclosure. Such suits are rare. Disputes over financial disclosures are typically resolved by an employee updating the forms and, in some instances, incurring a small penalty.

Manigault Newman’s main defense in the case has been that — after her acrimonious departure from the White House — Trump aides refused to return her personal effects, including financial records she needed to complete the required exit report. She also asserts that she is a whistleblower on government wrongdoing and that the lawsuit amounts to illegal retaliation for that.

After her dismissal, Manigault Newman released audio recordings she secretly made of a tense conversation with Kelly held in the highly-secure White House Situation Room — as well as a recording of another conversation where Trump implausibly asserted he was unaware Kelly planned to fire her.

In the audio, Kelly encourages Manigault Newman to go quietly so she “can go on without any kind of difficulty relative to her reputation.” It later emerged that Kelly said Manigault Newman had abused the White House car service. She contends that was a pretext for firing her.

While the new Justice Department brief argues that statement by Kelly was not a threat and maintains that she was fired for “misuse of government resources,” government lawyers also contend those disputes are irrelevant to the ongoing suit.

“Notwithstanding Defendant’s unfounded references to ‘threats’ at the time of her termination, the merits of Defendant’s termination from the White House are not at issue in this case,” the attorneys wrote...

So here's the deal. It looks as though, certainly seems as though, this lawsuit should be thrown out, on its own merits, for starters. It seems clear this is vengeance from the previous President and his administration.

You'd think it would be a no-brainer, right?

But here's the thing. From what I've read, now-President Biden wants to make sure no one in his administration does anything remotely similar to him once he's out of office so he and his administration want the lawsuit to go forward.

Don't get me wrong. We knew what we were getting with Joe Biden, to be sure. And I/we don't think he is or ever was or was going to be perfect in this role as President---and he's a HUGE, huge improvement over the previous occupant of the White House, to state the necessary and obvious but...  Geez   Let's be a bit tougher, Joe and a bit more consistent.

Could you? Would you work on that?

Please?

More. Another, too, sadly.

'A Clear Back-Track': Rights Groups Warn New Biden Guidelines Not Enough to Curb ICE Abuses

This President Attacks Our Own Government

Breaking today, this afternoon:

Supreme Court grants Trump administration request to end Census count

Not done there, this, too.

Fauci says Trump campaign is 'harassing' him with unauthorized ad

And that's only two.

This is a President who has openly attacked our 

--US Postal Service

--Social Security

--Medicare

--Medicaid

--Military

--Census

--Department of Justice

--FBI

Tell me again why he should be reelected?

86 45

BYEDON

Americans Need to Know What Just Happened In and To Our Justice System

Yes, every adult American needs to know and be fully aware just what, exactly, took place in and to our justice system yesterday. It starts here.

The Justice Department has dropped Michael Flynn’s case

It seems Attorney General William Barr had up to now guilty Michael Flynn freed from his guilty convictions.

Michael Flynn was formally found guilty in our courts, in our justice system and this administration just overturned that finding.

Everyone needs to know, remember, keep in mind that Michael Flynn plead guilty---twice---formally, officially, in a court of law to lying to the FBI. Perjury. One of the worst offenses, short of murder, one can be found guilty.

Now this.

Pardoning Flynn would have looked bad. Dropping the charges is far worse.

The Trump administration’s Justice Department is undermining the rule of law.

For months, President Trump has suggested that he might pardon retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. But now Trump won’t have to worry about it: Attorney General William P. Barr filed a motion Thursday asking the federal court overseeing Flynn’s case to dismiss the charges.

If he is successful, Barr will save Trump from the political fallout of pardoning a former close aide, while still clearing Flynn. A pardon might have seemed to be the ultimate perversion of justice — but Barr’s maneuver is actually much, much worse.

Flynn lied to the FBI in early 2017 about a conversation he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when Flynn was a member of the Trump transition team. Flynn’s conversation involved mollifying Russia immediately after the Obama administration expelled 35 Russian spies and imposed sanctions as punishment for its interference in the 2016 election. When interviewed by the FBI about his conversation with Kislyak, Flynn lied, despite knowing — as he undoubtedly would, as the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency — that doing so was a crime.

The fact that he would lie to the FBI, which is charged with protecting the country’s national security, raised the concern that he might be compromised by a foreign power — a concern that Barr’s current motion to the court claims that the FBI should have ignored. In fact, Barr’s motion to the court echoes the request Trump made to the bureau’s then-director, James B. Comey, in February 2017, when he asked Comey to “see [his] way clear to letting Flynn go” — a request that landed Trump in the middle of an investigation into obstruction of justice...

William Barr's Dropping of Michael Flynn Case Is Corrupt

'Transparently Corrupt': Barr Lets Flynn Off Scot-Free 

'My God,' Says US Senator After William Barr Deploys 'History Is Written by the Winners' Trope

"The head of the American justice system now saying publicly that there is no good or bad except what the strongest want," said another critic. "The definition of autocracy."

And today, now, it seems this President Trump is even honestly making things worse for himself by---wait for it---shooting off his mouth. Further. Check this out.

Trump: 'I learned a lot from Richard Nixon'

Trump says he 'learned a lot from Richard Nixon,' including not to tape his conversations and 'don't fire people'

During a Friday morning phone interview on Fox News' morning show, "Fox and Friends," President Donald Trump said he's studied history and "learned a lot from Richard Nixon," while reflecting on the federal investigation into his 2016 campaign's ties to Russia.

The president said one of his key lessons came from Nixon, who resigned in 1974 while facing almost-certain impeachment after directing the criminal Watergate break-in. Taped conversations illustrating Nixon's involvement in the criminal conspiracy and his attempts to cover up the wrongdoing by firing top aides helped seal his fate. 

"I learned a lot from Richard Nixon. Don't fire people," Trump said.

"Only the best people..."

Remember that?

Thanks, Republicans.

God help us all.

God forgive and help us all.

Additional link:

Bill Barr Tests Negative for Integrity

(Scathing) Quotes of the Day on Donald Trump -- From a Long Time Republican

Fantastic, spot on writing today on this President and what he's doing to us, all of us, the Presidency and nation from the New York Times.

The Full-Spectrum Corruption 

of Donald Trump

Just a few---of the best--quotes.

First up, just the byline alone:

Everyone and everything he touches rots.

Going on from there.

A party that once spoke with urgency and apparent conviction about the importance of ethical leadership — fidelity, honesty, honor, decency, good manners, setting a good example — has hitched its wagon to the most thoroughly and comprehensively corrupt individual who has ever been elected president. Some of the men who have been elected president have been unscrupulous in certain areas — infidelity, lying, dirty tricks, financial misdeeds — but we’ve never before had the full-spectrum corruption we see in the life of Donald Trump...

...the moral indictment against Mr. Trump is obvious and overwhelming. Corruption has been evident in Mr. Trump’s private and public life, in how he has treated his wives, in his business dealings and scams, in his pathological lying and cruelty, in his bullying and shamelessness, in his conspiracy-mongering and appeals to the darkest impulses of Americans. (Senator Bob Corker, a Republican, refers to the president’s race-based comments as a “base stimulator.”) Mr. Trump’s corruptions are ingrained, the result of a lifetime of habits. It was delusional to think he would change for the better once he became president...

In any case, the Republican Party’s as-yet unbreakable attachment to Mr. Trump is coming at quite a cost. There is the rank hypocrisy, the squandered ability to venerate public character or criticize Democrats who lack it, and the damage to the white Evangelical movement, which has for the most part enthusiastically rallied to Mr. Trump and as a result has been largely discredited. There is also likely to be an electoral price to pay in November.

But the greatest damage is being done to our civic culture and our politics. Mr. Trump and the Republican Party are right now the chief emblem of corruption and cynicism in American political life, of an ethic of might makes right. Dehumanizing others is fashionable and truth is relative. (“Truth isn’t truth,” in the infamous words of Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.) They are stripping politics of its high purpose and nobility....

A warning to my Republican friends: The worst is yet to come. Thanks to the work of Robert Mueller — a distinguished public servant, not the leader of a “group of Angry Democrat Thugs” — we are going to discover deeper and deeper layers to Mr. Trump’s corruption. When we do, I expect Mr. Trump will unravel further as he feels more cornered, more desperate, more enraged; his behavior will become ever more erratic, disordered and crazed.

And the source.

By Peter Wehner
Mr. Wehner served in the previous three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer.

The Very Dangerous President Who's Trying To Bamboozle You, America

I don't think most people realize how dangerous this President is.

Besides watching a great deal of Fox TV (it's not "news") and then responding to it all, he is also, according to news reports and this from Gabe Fleisher at Wake Up To Politics today:

"Trump has reportedly been musing about firing Rosenstein lately, which would give him more control over the Russia probe. According to CNN, the White House is preparing an effort to undermine Rosenstein's credibility, instructing allies to highlight potential areas of conflict that would preclude the Deputy Attorney General from overseeing the investigation.

--- The meeting comes as Trump's outside allies have increased calls for Rosenstein and Mueller to be fired. CBS News' Jacqueline Alemany: 'A source tells me that Trump called yesterday and asked source to go on TV to call for Trump to fire Mueller.'"

So understand, everyone, Americans. This President is trying to undermine an investigation into his own possible wrongdoings, illegalities, by having his own people go on television news programs to call for he, himself, to fire the man overseeing the investigation of him.

He's trying to flim-flam you, America.

And that's just one of the ways in which he's dangerous, presently.

Oh, and according to that same source, this President also has zero, zilch, nothing whatever on his official business/work schedule/calendar today other than an 11:45 am intelligence briefing.

I'm busier than that and I'm not leading the entire nation.

As if that's not bad enough, by itself, for the foreseeable future, as former FBI Director James Comey tours on his new book, expect this President to become increasingly unhinged.

Comey paints unsparing portrait of Trump 

in devastating tell-all book

I would love, love to get good news out of this administration.

Quote of the Day -- On This President

"Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts — who have never served our country in any capacity — dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller — all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations — I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit."

--Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters

From the article:

Fox News contributor quits, 

slams network as 'propaganda machine 

More Reports From Brownbackistan Today

Once again, Kansas and Republican Governor Sam Brownback are in the news--never in good ways, dependably, unfortunately, even tragically. And once again, it's from and in The New York Times‎. Seems the good Guv wants to get his hands on the state courts:



Courts Budget Intensifies Kansas Dispute Over Powers

The fight between Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas and the state’s judicial branch has escalated, with the governor last week signing into law a bill that could strip state courts of their funding.

 

The measure, at the end of a lengthy bill that allocated money for the judiciary this year, stipulates that if a state court strikes down a 2014 law that removed some powers from the State Supreme Court, the judiciary will lose its funding.

 

The 2014 law took the authority to appoint district court judges from the Supreme Court and gave it to the district courts themselves. It also deprived the state’s highest court of the right to set district court budgets. Critics said the law was an attempt by Mr. Brownback, a Republican, to stack the district courts with judges who may be more favorable to his policies.

 

The budget bill that Mr. Brownback signed on Thursday was related only to the judiciary. He said he wanted to ensure that the courts would remain open while lawmakers sparred over the larger budget issues. Lawmakers have been debating how to fill a $400 million shortfall, which will most likely require tax increases that Mr. Brownback and many in the conservative-dominated Legislature oppose. If a budget is not passed by Sunday, state workers may be furloughed.

 

But in passing a separate budget bill to keep the third branch of government from shutting down, Republican lawmakers took the opportunity to insert language that would shield the 2014 law.

 

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Matthew Menendez, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, which is helping to represent a Kansas judge who is challenging the constitutionality of the 2014 law. “It seems pretty clear that these mechanisms have been an effort by the governor and the Legislature to try and get a court system that is more in line with their philosophy.”

 

Richard E. Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, likened the measure in the judiciary budget bill to Congress’s passing a law outlawing abortion and then telling the judicial branch that it will lose its funding if it finds the law unconstitutional.

 

“That kind of threat to the independence of the judiciary strikes me as invalid under the separation of powers principle,” Mr. Levy said in an interview on Friday.

Can you imagine what the Republicans would be saying and, in fact, how loudly they'd be screaming if a governor in Kansas tried to pull such governmental stunts while they were in office?

What part of "small government" is this, exactly?

How "conservative" is this?

Let's be clear here, Governor Sam Brownback is a power-hungry, governmental abuser. There's nothing he doesn't want to get his hands on and control and/or change and to his and his political party's and their supporter's own benefit.

The fact is, if a governor from the Democratic Party tried to do or did all the things he's either done or tried to accomplish, he and his entire Republican Party would be screaming that they're "big government" kooks. There is nothing remotely small government or Conservative about this guy, what he's done, what he's doing or what he is trying to achieve. And it's all for himself, his own temporary power, his political party and the wealthy and corporations in Kansas it can benefit.

Kansans need, desperately, to vote all these Right Wing extremists out of office, post haste. The damage they and the Republican Party have put on that state has been bad enough already, as we keep seeing.

Where We Are, Where We Could Be

What we're actually capable of, now.

If only we'd work together.

Imagine.

Quote of the day -- on Justice

Very timely. Think Ferguson.

Like

Quote of the Day -- On America Today

America? Unfair??

And racist??

Nah....

Couldn't be.

Right??

The one thing, the only thing that mattered in the George Zimmerman case

Police dispatcher:  "Are you following him?"

 Zimmerman:  "Yes"

 Dispatcher:  "Okay. We don't need you to do that."

Shame on you, Missouri

Missouri stands alone in keeping an innocent man incarcerated after the only witnesses against him have admitted perjury in open court at a habeas hearing. After an exhaustive review of case law across the United States, no case exists in which the only witnesses against the defendant admitted perjury in open court at a habeas hearing. Until April of 2012, there were two alleged eyewitnesses keeping Ryan in prison--Jerry Trump and Charles Erickson. Until April of 2012, Ryan had no chance of walking out of prison because of these two people.

Remarkably, Erickson and Trump took the stand in April of 2012 and admitted they lied at Ryan's trial when they implicated him in Kent Heitholt's murder. Both men subjected themselves to perjury charges by recanting. This has never happened before in an American courtroom in a habeas hearing.

Recanting witnesses may give affidavits admitting perjury but they rarely take the stand and admit perjury. This is the watershed event in Ryan Ferguson's case. There is no case in the United States where the only alleged eyewitnesses recanted in open court, the conviction has been upheld, and the person remains incarcerated.

Link:  http://justiceforryanferguson.com

A note to the local, national and international Muslim Community

I just saw this local news online:

Local Muslims petition Obama to restrict 'hate speech'

The article:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - More than 300 local Muslims are petitioning the White House for change.

Members of the Islamic Society of Greater Kansas City tell 41 Action News they have good reasons for wanting to limit first amendment rights. They said their petition to ban language that defames, insults or provokes violence has been sparked by a video that has caused outrage across the globe.

From violent attacks, to angry marches, the "Innocence of Muslims" film has encouraged local Muslims to fight for change.

"Insulting somebody else or putting somebody down can insight violence and lead to people losing their lives. We’re trying not to give these people a chance to misbehave," said Mohammed Kohia, who started the petition along with the executive board of the Islamic Society of Greater Kansas City.

First things, first here--sure, I'm all for a bit of limitation on true "hate speech." Millions of Jews were killed all across Europe due to the inflammation of this type of speech, sure, as just one example.

But what we're talking about here is limiting our Constitutional right of free speech OR ELSE MUSLIMS WILL KILL THE PEOPLE THEY SEE AS OFFENDERS.

It's patently not the same thing.

This is what happened in the last few days in Bangladesh. (see 2nd link below) Someone reportedly put a picture that offended some followers of the Muslim faith on their own Facebook page so thousands of followers of Mohammed took the law into their own hands and burned down Buddhist Temples and 40 people's homes.

And now, apparently, the local Muslim community wants us to limit our free speech, just so they won't have to--what?--go all crazy on us?

No. No, I don't think so.

It's as I said yesterday out on the internet--the entire, rational, educated, peace-loving Muslim world out there needs to come down squarely on the side of logic, sanity and reason and say that the radical Islamists must not, ever again, kill, maim, torture or otherwise go all looney on people just because they perceive Mohammed was defamed in some way. That, ladies and gentlemen, are what judicial courts are for. No one--no one--is supposed to take the law, immediately, into their own hands, as the radical, terrorist Muslim community has done, repeatedly, time and again, across the world.

We need an end to the terrorism and torture and killing, not an end or limitation of free speech.

So, in response to your request to us to limit our speech?

Oh, hell no.

Links: http://www.kshb.com/dpp/lifestyle/local-muslims-petition-president-obama-to-restrict-freedom-of-speech

http://photos.denverpost.com/2012/10/02/photos-thousands-of-muslims-go-on-rampage-burn-more-than-a-dozen-temples/

I only have two questions

1) If the President says his administration did nothing illegal in the "fast and furious" weapons case down South, why won't they release the information?

2) If Julian Assange is innocent, as he says, of any sexual abuse of any kind in Europe, why doesn't he face the charges?

Links: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/white-house-denies-fast-furious-cover-obama-full-212027627.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/9349556/Julian-Assange-WikiLeaks-founder-could-be-holed-up-in-Ecuadorian-embassy-for-years.html

The very racist United States of America

Please press for justice for Trayvon Martin. Call for prosecution, in a court of law, of his assailant, George Zimmerman.

First Texas---next, Kansas and Missouri?

Let's hope so. It seems the US Department of Justice ruled Texas' Voter ID laws discriminatory and so, has thrown them out. Good for them. That's a good start. Now, hopefully, as said above, maybe it can come this way and disavow Kansas' and Missouri's useless, discriminatory, un-American voter ID laws since they're only really created to get fewer Americans voting. Link: http://www.workingamerica.org/blog/2012/03/13/texas-voter-id-law-deemed-discriminatory/

"Preventive detention"? From a former Constitutional Law Professor?

Are you freaking kidding me? This from a constitutional law professor? No proof of guilt first? No trial by jury?

Quote of the day

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." --Abraham Lincoln

Churches just want to be able to discriminate, that's all

The Supreme Court in Washington began hearing the case today (Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church vs. EEOC, see link, below) about the church who--get this--wants to be able to discriminate against its employees for whatever reason they deem fit (sexuality, age, disability, etc.) because they're supposed to be left alone by the state via the Constitution. Boy, that's a beauty. Sure, they also want tax deductions from that same state for the same reasons, then they want money from that same government in the form of "Faith-based initiatives", thanks to that last, ignorant administration out of the White House and now this. They really want everything. They want to have that cake and eat it, too. How a church could even remotely request, let alone demand, as they are here, that discrimination laws shouldn't apply to them is beyond the pale. It seems this Lutheran church isn't aware of that Jesus Christ guy and what he said and stood for. Sheesh. Link: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/10/supreme-court-church-state-conflict-schools.html