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Pandemic Paranoia Open Thread: Presenting the ‘New’ Wuhan Coronovirus

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To quote every single article I’ve seen so far: And just in time for the mass migration during Lunar New Year, too!

(Mandatory disclosure: Yes, I am preternaturally interested in pandemics, so YMMV.)

CNN, this evening — “First US case of Wuhan coronavirus confirmed by CDC”:

The United States has its first confirmed case of a new virus that appeared in Wuhan, China, last month, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday. The coronavirus has already sickened hundreds and killed six people in Asia…

The patient, who is not being named, is in isolation at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. He is in his 30s and lives in Snohomish County, Washington, just north of Seattle. He had recently returned from Wuhan.

He arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on January 15, before any health screenings for the Wuhan coronavirus began at US airports. He sought medical care on January 19. The CDC and Washington state are now tracing the people he was in contact with to see if he might have spread the disease to someone else…

The patient became ill four days after arriving in the United States and sought care. Based on the patient’s symptoms and travel history, doctors suspected the novel Wuhan coronavirus and sent specimens to the CDC in Atlanta, where tests Monday confirmed the virus.

The patient is faring well but is still being kept in isolation out of an abundance of caution, health officials said.

Soon, passengers from Wuhan to the United States, whether on direct or indirect flights, will only be allowed to land at one of the five US airports doing health screenings. Screenings include a temperature check and observation for symptoms such as a cough and trouble breathing.

Last weekend, the CDC started health screenings for Wuhan passengers arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Los Angeles International Airport and San Francisco International Airport. Starting this week, Wuhan passengers will also be screened at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport…

This is actually good news — authorities *have* learned from previous scares, and sensible precautions are being slotted into place with due speed.

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Information Security Is Essential!

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The Guardian has now reported that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hacked Jeff Bezos’s cell phone, which is what many of us who work in the information warfare area of national security had assessed shortly after The National Enquirer ran their hit piece on him. What we got in today’s reporting, however, were important and disturbing details! (emphasis mine)

The Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone “hacked” in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sources have told the Guardian.

The encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated the phone of the world’s richest man, according to the results of a digital forensic analysis.

This analysis found it “highly probable” that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.

The two men had been having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on 1 May of that year, the unsolicited file was sent, according to sources who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity.

Large amounts of data were exfiltrated from Bezos’s phone within hours, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Guardian has no knowledge of what was taken from the phone or how it was used.

WhatsApp is notoriously insecure and should not be used! It is now owned by Facebook and there are serious concerns about what Facebook may be doing with the data from the app, including the personally identifying information (PII), of its users. Another security flaw is that the app itself isn’t encrypted, just the information while it is in transit from device (user) to device (user). So any spyware, on either the device on the sending or receiving end of the transmission, can pick up what is being sent and/or received.

The larger issue here is that WhatsApp is very popular. We know from reporting that Jared Kushner uses it to communicate with Muhammed bin Salman, as well as others. From the late Congressman Cummings’ March 2019 letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone:

During this period the Committee obtained additional information raising even more concerns about the use of private email and messaging apps by Jared Kushner and other White House officials.

For example, during a meeting with Mr. Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, Mr. Lowell confirmed that Mr. Kushner has been using the messaging app WhatsApp as part of his official White House duties to communicate with foreign leaders.

Jared isn’t the only US official using WhatsApp.

Multiple Trump administration officials are known to have used WhatsApp to carry out sensitive conversations, raising the prospect that their communications have been intercepted.

Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union and a key figure in in the administration’s campaign to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations that would benefit the president, communicated with other US diplomats about the effort over WhatsApp. During Trump’s run for the presidency campaign chairman Paul Manafort regularly sent polling data to a Russian associate via the app.

The problem isn’t isolated just to Jared and other US officials.

Senior government officials in multiple U.S.-allied countries were targeted earlier this year with hacking software that used Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) WhatsApp to take over users’ phones, according to people familiar with the messaging company’s investigation.

Sources familiar with WhatsApp’s internal investigation into the breach said a “significant” portion of the known victims are high-profile government and military officials spread across at least 20 countries on five continents. Many of the nations are U.S. allies, they said

Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas were also using WhatsApp!

WhatsApp messages from Parnas to Giuliani and Republican congressional candidate Robert F. Hyde are included in the evidence.

Let’s see what the President’s Cybersecurity Advisor and the First Name in Cybersecurity has to say:

Ruh Roh!

Anyone and everyone who has messaged Muhammed bin Salman using WhatsApp have likely had their phones or tablets compromised. And there is no telling what he collected, who he collected it from, and what he intends to do with it. Though we can be pretty sure it isn’t anything good. WhatsApp is not a secure form of communication. You should not be using it. More importantly, US government officials – from political appointees to civil servants to uniformed personnel to contractors – should not be using it either. Not for personal communications and certainly not for official and work related communication. That the President’s advisors, both those in the White House like his son in law Jared Kushner and those outside of it like Rudy Giuliani, and his other political appointees like Gordon Sondland are using WhatsApp means that over three years worth of official US communications have been compromised. And Muhammad bin Salman is not the only one whose intelligence and security services have compromised WhatsApp. Both the Israelis and the Russians have compromised WhatsApp, So have the Chinese.

Whatever information that Muhammed bin Salman or the Israelis or Putin or Xi have managed to pull off of the phones of US officials, as well as those of other governments, that use WhatsApp is a ticking political warfare information bomb. We don’t know when this information will be used. We don’t know how it will be used. But we do know that it will be used. It may be used subtly to try to force US officials to do something they ordinarily wouldn’t. Or it might be used, as was the case with Bezos’s data, in an almost brutish assault. But it will eventually be used.

Does anyone really want to contemplate what Mark Zuckerberg might do with the information transmitted via WhatsApp, which he owns? Zuckerberg has the ability to blackmail and extort everyone who uses his social media products because those products are designed to suck up everyone’s information and data so that Zuckerberg can monetize it. That is not a good thing.

Every one of these government officials that are using WhatsApp, from Jared Kushner to Ambassador Sondland to those we don’t even know about should have their security clearances suspended pending a full counterintelligence investigation. They have made themselves into insider threats by refusing to follow best information and operational security practices. Rudy Giuliani doesn’t have a security clearance to suspend, but he and his associates who have been using WhatsApp all need to be subjected to a full counterintelligence investigation as well given Giuliani’s pro-bono work as the President’ private attorney and all the activity he has been up to in Ukraine and other parts of Europe.

Open thread!

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Annals Of Lawlessness

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This is the new normal in Trump’s America:

An Iranian student planning to attend Northeastern University was removed from the country overnight Monday in defiance of a court order, his lawyer said, and a federal judge said Tuesday there was nothing that he could immediately do.

And in case you are wondering exactly what threat the fearsome Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, 24 years old, posed to the United States…consider this:

According to the legal filing, Hossein Abadi was admitted to Northeastern for the 2018-2019 academic year and submitted his visa application in 2018. After a background check that took nearly a year, the State Department issued Hossein Abadi a student visa last week, the petition says.

HE HAD A VISA.

The US State Department, not exactly a hotbed of radical Islamic activism, granted him one after an exhaustive inquiry.  And still, CBP agents stopped him at Logan, and then defied a federal judge’s order not to deport him until a hearing could be held. They lied to the judge about the deportation, asserting that he was being kept in the country when he was already on an Air France flight to Paris.

Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said Hossein Abadi had been put on an Air France flight out of Logan late Monday night. It was not immediately clear why he Hossein Abadi was removed in spite of the judge’s emergency order that he be detained here and brought to court Tuesday morning.

It’s pretty fucking clear, I’d say: CBP agents, operating under the accepted lawlessness that flows to and through their organization from the Oval Office on down, don’t see themselves as bound by anything so 2016ish as the rule of law.

What adds to my fury is this:

“There seems to be some history of CBP ignoring district court orders, which should concern the court,” Doyle said during the hearing. She asked that Hossein Abadi be returned to the US, but the judge said there was little he could do now that the student was gone.

“I don’t think they’re going to listen to me,” Stearns said.

How about starting by holding every agent involved, and their supervisors, in contempt. Throw them in jail. Fine the shit out of them. I’m sure that Barr’s “Justice” Department will pry them loose fast enough, but put at least a little bit of consequences into the equation.

Annals Of Lawlessness

This is why Trump — and every Republican in elected office everywhere in this country — needs to go. The spectacular corruption and egregious crimes grab the headlines, but it’s the daily acts of cruelty, and the brick-by-brick destruction of US governance in every domain that will leave us bereft.

Salt their fields.

Image: Unknown artist, Shoki (The Extermination of Evil), 12th century.

 

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A Little More Bite and a Little Less Bark

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Has anyone ever gotten more press for less?

In an email to constituents, Sen Mitt Romney said Monday he will oppose efforts to decide on witnesses and evidence before opening arguments in the Senate trial of President Donald Trump.The Utah Republican said he is sticking to the plan outlined in a resolution the Senate will debate Tuesday. Opening arguments in the impeachment trial are anticipated Wednesday.

The plan modeled after the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton compresses the proceeding into several days and leaves open the unlikely possibility of a motion to dismiss. It also requires a Senate vote to admit material from House impeachment proceedings.

Romney is among a small group of senators who want the ability to call witnesses following opening arguments and questions by senators to the prosecution and defense teams.

“The organizing resolution released tonight includes this step, and overall, it aligns closely with the rules package approved 100-0 during the Clinton trial,” Romney wrote. “If attempts are made to vote on witnesses prior to opening arguments, I would oppose those efforts.”

I have nothing clever to say about this–he really is the most disgusting toadying coward in our current politics.

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Call your senators!

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It’s not much, but there is something you can do about the Republicans’ scheme to hold a fake impeachment trial with no witnesses and no documents: you can call your senators and tell them that you (along with nearly 70% of Americans, according to a CNN poll that came out yesterday) want a real trial with witnesses and documents.

202-224-3121

That’s the Capitol switchboard number. It’s easier to Google your senators and call them directly. I left messages for the craven shitstains Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. Only takes a few seconds.

It’s easy to feel hopeless about this whole thing, but I don’t think we should. Republicans control the trial, so of course they’re going to rig it, and there’s a 99.9% chance they’ll acquit Trump. (I say 99.9% rather than 100% because it’s possible that Trump will poop in his pants during a Davos presser today, strip to the waist and try to draw the 2016 Electoral College map on the wall, using his own turds as a Sharpie.)

But even so, his ass is impeached! And a majority of the country wants him removed! That’s a big fucking deal! It’s also 100% obvious that the Republicans in Congress are propping up Trump’s unpopular, criminal ass, which is helpful to our cause in 2020.

So, call your damned senators. It’ll make you feel better, even if they are a pair of corrupt toadies like mine.

Open thread!

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Glory Days

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Apparently, and regrettably, David Lee Roth has started a residency at Las Vegas, and for some absurd amount of money, you too can witness the spectacle of an elderly man in ill fitting clothes and obvious frontal lobe damage stiffly strutting around stage. I suppose that yes, it is still David Lee Roth, but it’s not the David Lee Roth you remember or want to remember. It’s an obscene caricature of David Lee Roth- long in the tooth, without voice or authority, cheapened by wear and tear and misuse, and ready to collapse at any moment. It’s enough to make you wonder if it was always this bad as you unfortunately glimpse his sagging ass betrayed by skin tight attire that should, at the very least, provide the bare minimum of architectural support.

It does not.

***

That’s basically how I feel about the state of our democracy heading into the impeachment. I spent a little bit of time watching the news shows this weekend- only a little, as I, too, am aging, and life is too short for this shit. I watched people on my tv put on their serious voices as they explain what a big and momentous deal this is- “JUST THE THIRD TIME IN HISTORY,” you know! The gravity of the situation never takes hold, though, because I remember the same serious voices talking about Hillary’s emails, or how Obama really screwed up by saying it was wrong for Henry Louis Gates to get fucked with by cops on his own god damned couch, or how the tea party really cared about the deficit or Iraq really did have WMD. It’s all a fucking show that no one wants to go to, we all know the ending, and we’re not going to get our money’s worth.

Donald Trump has been impeached. He did everything and more for which he was impeached. Everyone knows he is guilty, even his most ardent supporters in the jury pool, there will be a show trial, and he will be acquitted. And then Republicans will get back to the very serious business of rigging elections, pitting Americans against each other, wiping up what remains of our institutions and packing the courts, and the always popular looting of the treasury.

This is not to say Democrats will not try. I am sure they will. They will fight, they will make a clear case, they will plead for sanity from clearly insane and evil people like Susan Collins, and then they will lose. We can applaud them for their attempt to do the right thing, but it is important to remember the one thing that no one seems to care about when shouting “Remember the Alamo!” The good guys lost and all got killed.

***

When it is all over with, the serious voices on your tv will tell you what to think, and we’ll head into another election where we can focus on important issues like “Does Elizabeth Warren have native American blood” and “what they are really saying over corned beef hash in a former Kentucky mining town.” We’ll soon get distracted by something shiny, and meanwhile our hobbled democracy will pick up the microphone and start half singing:

“Oh, baby baby
Won’t-cha turn your head my way?”

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Late Night WTF Open Thread: Actual Ammosexuals

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Warning: The image below the fold, once seen, cannot be unseen. I hope it’s a self-aware parody…

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Post-Racial America Open Thread: In Commemoration

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Approximately an hour later:


(If you click on the image, you can see Obama’s tweet at the top right, above Clinton’s)

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McConnell Has Released His Motion for the Senate Impeachment Trial Rules

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Senate Majority Leader McConnell has released the motion, which will be voted on tomorrow, that delineates the rules for the Senate’s impeachment trial.

So here’s the bottom line:

  1. The evidence, records, and documents sent over by the House will not automatically be made part of the Senate’s trial proceedings. It may, at such time as Senator McConnell brings up a subsequent motion to allow it and that motion passes with 51 votes. And this will be done on an individual basis for each piece of evidence, not en masse for the whole of it, which is a break from how the Senate handled President Clinton’s impeachment.
  2. The Democratic impeachment managers from the House will have 24 hours to make their case, divided into two days. Each day will start at 1 PM EST and will conclude no later than 1 AM EST the next morning. Then the President’s defense team will have the same arrangement.
  3. According to Senator Halwey (warning: auto play video at that link!), Senator McConnell has built a kill switch into the rules package allowing him to move to summary dismissal whenever he feels he has the 51 votes to do so.
  4. There will be no vote on witness or additional evidence until after the Democratic House managers and the President’s defense finish presenting their cases.
  5. Senator McConnell controls the audio and video in the Senate chamber. He has already pissed off C-Span by informing them that he will control their cameras and feed during the trial, not C-Span, as part of his news media control rules that he has implemented for the Senate trial. Americans will see as much or as little as Senator McConnell wants them to see and only what he wants them to see.

Yes, I know Senator Schumer is putting up a fight. And he’s doing a good job, he almost looks like he’s caffeinated! More seriously, Senator Schumer is fighting the good fight, but he doesn’t have the terrain, nor does he have the ammunition to win. The simple reality of the Senate is that Senator McConnell as the Majority Leader controls the Senate. Especially if he has the votes. And for everything involving the Senate’s impeachment trial he only needs 51 votes and, according to all the reporting, he has the 51 votes he needs to at least get started the way he wants. And as soon as he has the 51 votes to acquit, he’ll entertain that motion from the President’s defense and hold that vote. Until he has those 51 votes, he’ll allow things to continue, even if that is through a crooked and corrupt process.

Senator McConnell knows, because he has been doing it successfully since January 2009, that the majority of Americans do not care about process, if they even understand it. And that the vast majority of Americans aren’t political junkies either. So if he just does what he’s going to do, give his regular more in sadness than in anger remarks, and is boring, then the news media will move along to whichever shiny object catches their attention. This is how he stymied President Obama for eight years. This is how he brought the Republicans back into the majority in the Senate. This is how he stole a Supreme Court seat. This is how he stole over 150 Federal judgeships. And this is how he was able to place Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. As I wrote back in June 2018 when people were hoping that Senators Corker, Flake, and Collins might break with him:

Senate Majority Leader McConnell really isn’t a politician or like any politician who has ever served as Senate Majority or Minority Leader. Rather than view him as a politician, it is more appropriate to understand Senator McConnell as an insurgent, albeit a non-violent one. He recognizes no legitimacy but his own. When out of power he’ll do whatever is necessary using asymmetric, irregular, and/or unconventional means to achieve power. And once he achieves power he will do whatever he can to achieve his objectives to consolidate his gains as quickly as possible using any means necessary as he believes his actions are self justifying – that his achievement of power justifies his by any means necessary strategy. This is, by the way, the basic argument of the premier Italian fascist (national-syndicalist) theorist Sergio Panunzio, who delineated the fascist theories for the use of political violence and low intensity warfare in the 1920s. As a result, there is no law, rule, tradition, norm, ethic, promise, and/or deal he won’t violate or renege on. This also makes him an unreliable interlocutor and makes it impossible to negotiate with him in good faith as he doesn’t believe in good faith negotiations.

Since Senators Corker, Flake, and Collins, let alone anyone else, cannot negotiate with Senator McConnell in good faith, because Senator McConnell doesn’t do anything in good faith, if they want to get anything done, then they need to rely on their leverage as senators in a very slim Senate majority caucus to force their initiatives through. This means threatening to and/or actually caucusing with the Democrats. The last thing that Senator McConnell wants is to lose control of the Senate. Whether now because of the defections of a pair of his retiring members using it as leverage to achieve their own objectives or in the mid terms because enough voters want a check on the President to override the partisan Republican advantage in this senatorial election cycle. It is why he’s ground everything in the chamber other than handling nominations, specifically judicial nominations, to a halt. It is why he doesn’t want to do the legally required annual budgetary resolution so he can avoid having his members take tough votes before the midterms. And it is why he’s cancelled most of the August recess under the pretense that it is the only way he can move judicial nominees because of what he alleges is Democratic obstruction. Nominations that only exist because he prevented President Obama from seating almost any judicial nominees during his final two years in office. The Democratic minority has no tools to stop these nominations, regardless of what Senator McConnell says because Senator McConnell in conjunction with Senator Grassley has gotten rid of the blue slip rule and refuses to recognize Democratic senators holds on nominees. Senator McConnell’s cancellation of the August recess is really just a thinly veiled attempt to keep incumbent Democratic senators up for reelection off the campaign trail. Every Senate rule, tradition, norm, ethic, and even law (Congressional Budget Act) has been bent or stretched to breaking or just outright ignored by Senator McConnell in his quest to consolidate his power and achieve his revanchist and reactionary objectives. As an insurgent, albeit a non-violent one, Senator McConnell only understands and recognizes the application of leverage and force. Senators Corker, Flake, and Collins have the ability to apply significant leverage and force. The question is whether or not they have the will to do so. The sad reality is the answer is almost certainly not.

If you are counting on Senators Romney, Murkowski, Alexander, and/or Collins to do what Senators Corker and Flake did not in 2018, please email me about the great bridge I have to sell you on a lovely beachfront in Florida. The Senate runs according to McConnell’s rules and Senator McConnell’s only rule is doing whatever he can get away with to maintain power to achieve his objectives. That’s it. Expecting anything else to happen is self delusion.

Open thread!

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WhitePeoplePalooza 2020 Has Ended

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WhitePeoplePalooza 2020 Has Ended

WhitePeoplePalooza, doing business as The Virginia Citizen’s Defense League’s (VCDL) annual day of lobbying in Richmond, Virginia, has come to an end. Without, apparently any acts of extremist domestic terrorism.

Robert Evans (above), as well as Eve Ettinger and JJ McNabb have all the details in their twitter feeds.

The most depressing part is the result of discretion being the better part of valor. The counterprotestors, from legitimate civil rights groups to antifa stayed home because they couldn’t be sure they’d be safe. Some of that is they were unsure just who was going to show up and what kind of agro they’d encounter. The proud boys and patriot prayer and III%ers and OathKeepers and a bunch of other “patriot” and “militia” groups with a history of street violence did turn out. Including leadership, despite them being either wanted for arrest in other jurisdictions for violent behavior at previous events or being on bail awaiting trial for the same thing. And these groups, especially the OathKeepers, blew enough smoke on social media, that no one could be sure if they had law enforcement support for what they might do. As a result those who would oppose them stayed home or out of the way. While this meant that WhitePeoplePalooza ended with no violence, at least that I’ve seen reported, it also meant that if you can turn out enough white Christians in support of extreme positions who are heavily armed and make a lot of noise that they have law enforcement support, that you can prevent others from dissenting for fear of violence – both from the white Christian demonstrators and, possibly, from police allied with them. And that’s a problem.

And then there were these dipshits!

I’m pretty sure this guy isn’t Jewish, despite his outfit.

And this guy is definitely not an ancient Israelite. Also, why is Joe Stalin laying hands on the President in prayer?

Anyone know why Ice T is doing security for the InfoWars schmucks?

Here’s a better picture of this genius:

WhitePeoplePalooza 2020 Has Ended 1

As for the doofus with the Barrett .50 cal, I don’t think the guy did much marching, just stood around posing for pictures. Those things aren’t light, they’re not ergonomic, and they’re not designed to be humped around all day. They’re a long range sniper rifle, though there are now better and lighter alternatives thanks to improvements in ballistics. Barretts weigh about 30 lbs depending on how they’re configured and customized. Comparatively, most AR pattern rifles weigh between 6 and 10 lbs depending on caliber and configuration. My guess is if he had to walk farther than a block carrying that thing he’d stroke out.

Obligatory:

WhitePeoplePalooza 2020 Has Ended 2

Open thread!

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Armed fanatics in Virginia

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Please stay safe, Virginians; armed fanatics are roaming around:

The other photos in reporters’ Twitter feeds are surreal. There’s an Info Wars armored vehicle rolling around too. It’s worth remembering what inspired these lunatics to intimidate their fellow citizens and attempt to cow lawmakers:

Three bills that will prohibit firearm possession in public spaces, limit monthly handgun purchases, and require background checks for firearm transfers passed the state Senate on Thursday, marking the first of stronger gun-control legislation proposed by the new Democratic majority in the General Assembly.

That’s it. There’s an exemption for transfer of firearms between family members, so there’s not even the excuse of opposing laws that impede the generational transmittal of grandpappy’s shootin’ arn.

For what it’s worth, I think the gun-humpers will lose this battle eventually. Allowing unfettered access to weapons that can kill dozens of people in under a minute just isn’t sustainable long term. The question is how much blood will be shed before sanity prevails. Here’s hoping none is shed today.

Open thread.

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Late Night Open Thread: Mormon Humor, More Risque Than You Might’ve Expected

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Toss the Jello Salad?…

… “The Governor understands the importance of the Utah Department of Health conducting a campaign to educate Utahns about HIV prevention,” his spokeswoman, Anna Lehnardt, told FOX 13 in a statement. “He does not, however, approve the use of sexual innuendo as part of a taxpayer-funded campaign, and our office has asked the department to rework the campaign’s branding.”

The condoms had wrappers that touted the “Greatest Sex on Earth” (a parody of Utah’s “Greatest Snow on Earth”); “This is the Place” (which was uttered by Brigham Young when pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley); the subversive “SL, UT” for Salt Lake, Utah; “Toss the Jello Salad;” and, of course, the local landmarks “Fillmore, Beaver.”

The campaign was a joint venture between the Utah Department of Health and Love Communications. Wyoming and Alaska have done similar campaigns using popular slogans native to their respective states…

About 100,000 of the condoms were to be distributed for free through local health departments, the Utah AIDS Foundation, bars and other community locations. In response, the Utah Department of Health said Wednesday night it has told those who would distribute the condoms to refrain from doing so while the campaign is re-worked…

[Insert your own ‘now a collector’s item’ joke here.]

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All the President’s Henchmen

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Maddow on AM Joy yesterday:

Me too, Rachel. The Trumps and their mobbed-up flunkies are an extreme danger to the republic and must be defeated. But GOP establishment figures like Barr, who’ve proved willing to go to any lengths to keep the con going, are a more insidious menace.

Some connected and elected Democrats vouched for Barr when Trump nominated him. They figured a long-term DC player could be trusted to protect institutions instead of subverting them on behalf of the demented conman. It was a bad bet.

The hot tub salesman who filled the AG job on an acting basis was an unqualified numpty, but at least he was impeded in his corruption by lack of familiarity with the job. Not so Mr. Barr. Consider a small sample of Barr’s inappropriate actions since his confirmation:

  • Lied about the contents of the Mueller report before its release
  • Held a press conference just prior to the Mueller report release to lie about it some more
  • Buried the whistleblower report and unlawfully failed to transmit the complaint to the FEC
  • Dismissed IG investigations that cleared Trump’s perceived enemies and reopened investigations
  • Undermined relationships with allies to investigate “deep state” conspiracy theories
  • Obstructed investigations into corrupt attempts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census

Parnas is a shady character with his own agenda, so it makes sense to treat his unverified claims about Barr or anyone else with skepticism. But as Maddow points out, Trump did mention Barr as well as Giuliani during the phone call with Zelensky to advance the extortion scheme.

Speaker Pelosi gets it. She called Barr a “rogue attorney general” and one of “the president’s henchmen” the other day at a press conference (clip included in another post). She’s right:

Does anybody think that the rogue attorney general is going to support–appoint a special prosecutor? No, because he’s implicated in all of this. This is an example of all of the president’s henchmen, and I hope that the senators do not become part of the president’s henchmen.

Pelosi’s remarks about Barr didn’t get the attention they deserved because of the media circus around Trump’s impeachment. But it was reassuring (for me, at least) that she chose to make them.

Because only a portion of one half of one branch of government is currently acting as guardians of the Constitution the entire government swore to uphold, it’s a heavy lift to ask the House Dems to investigate the attorney general too. But no one else is going to shoulder that load. It’s up to the Speaker.

All the President’s HenchmenPost + Comments (120)

Repub Venality Open Thread: But Rod Rosenstein Had Only the *Best* Intentions!

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There is nobody within the Trump orbit who isn’t compromised. Another ‘with only the best intentions’ criminal steps forward in this week’s Friday night doc dump, per Politico:

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein authorized the release to the media of text messages between two highly placed FBI employees who exchanged criticism of then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Justice Department has revealed in a new court filing.

Rosenstein also said in the court filing submitted shortly before midnight Friday that he made the decision to share the messages with the press in part to protect FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page from the drip effect of incremental releases of the texts by lawmakers or others…

Strzok and Page filed separate lawsuits against the Justice Department last year, alleging that the release of their text messages violated the Privacy Act — an almost half-century-old statute that safeguards information federal agencies hold about private individuals.

Despite the litigation, until Friday it remained unclear just who at Justice gave the final OK to give about 375 Strzok-Page texts to journalists — including a POLITICO reporter — on the evening of December 12, 2017.

In a formal declaration submitted as part of the government’s defense to Strzok’s suit, Rosenstein owned up to being the one who made the call. He said he did so in part because the texts’ public release by members of Congress was inevitable in connection with testimony he was set to give to the House Judiciary Committee the following day…

Rosenstein, who stepped down from his position as Justice’s No. 2 official last May, said in his new submission that his aides initially suggested he might want to delay sending the texts to Congress until after his House testimony. But the veteran prosecutor said he concluded it would be “inappropriate” to hold them back, even briefly, for that reason…

While Rosenstein said the disclosure to the media was aimed at putting the messages in context, Strzok and Page have noted that the set of fewer than 400 texts sent to the Hill and shared with reporters that night was just a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of messages the pair exchanged on work topics as well as personal matters…

Rosenstein’s statement does not indicate whether he consulted with Page, Strzok or their attorneys to seek their views on the planned release, but he had them informed that night that the disclosure was forthcoming. The former DOJ No. 2 official said he did have one of his top aides confirm with Justice’s top privacy official that the disclosure would not run afoul of the Privacy Act…

Special Counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from his senior role on the Trump-Russia probe after learning of the texts in the summer of 2017. Page, who worked on the earlier stages of the investigation, had already moved on to another assignment.

The FBI fired Strzok in 2018, while Page ultimately resigned from the agency.

In a statement published last month by the Daily Beast, Rosenstein argued the Justice Department was not responsible for the criticism Page has endured. However, without getting into detail or directly challenging Trump, the former DOJ official said some of the attacks on her had gone too far…

Sure, I gave a known character assassin a powerful metaphorical gun, along with the names & addresses of a couple of tempting victims. But you can’t blame me for the fact that he killed them! I only did it to protect them!

Repub Venality Open Thread: But Rod Rosenstein Had Only the *Best* Intentions!Post + Comments (106)