Criminal Tweets: Trump Critics Should Not Respond To Acts Of “Fake News” With Fake Law

JONATHAN TURLEY

Below is my column in the Hill Newspaper on the latest “smoking gun” of obstruction in the form of Trump tweets.  There continues to be a categorical refusal of many to acknowledge the implications of the interpretation being advanced to implicate Trump.  There is also a failure to acknowledge that the Clinton campaign received more information was Russian sources, including Russian intelligence figures. The difference is the Clinton people were smart enough to use a cut out in the form of a former British spy.

While advocates continue to maintain that agreeing to go to a meeting to review promised evidence of crimes is a federal election violation, no case like this has ever resulted in a conviction that I know of.  Indeed, I do not know of any case remotely similar to this case as being brought.  The First Amendment implications should bar any such prosecution.

Here is the…

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$2 billion for something that doesn’t exist?

CRAIN'S COMMENTS

That’s how much electrical utilities, coal, oil and transportation have spent lobbying Congress against regulation of carbon emissions (aka climate change legislation) between 2000 and 2016.(3)

In my humble opinion, if they can afford to waste money that way, they’re not paying enough in taxes.

“All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law,” said [President Theodore] Roosevelt in the first years of the 20th century, when he was also proposing public financing of federal election.(1)

There’s no question that business involvement in politics has created evils affecting the welfare and health of every American. There’s also no question that current members of the Republican Party have no clue as to what the leading thinkers of that Party said.

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Sources:

1. https://www.thenation.com/article/teddy-roosevelt-was-right-ban-all-corporate-contributions/
2. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718223101.htm
3. Robert J. Brulle. The climate lobby: a sectoral analysis of lobbying spending on climate change in the USA, 2000…

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Daniels Charge Dismissal Deepens Doubts About Police Sting Operation In Columbus

JONATHAN TURLEY

We discussed the arrest of Stormy Daniels this week and the curious Ohio laws making any touching between strippers and customers a crime, even the touching of clothing.  The arrest was part of an operation with four undercover officers.  The later dropping of the charges only deepened questions over the need for the string operation and the arrest of Daniels, who real name is Stephanie Clifford.

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The Pelosi Factor: Poll Shows 55 Percent Of Registered Voters Are Unlikely To Support Anyone Who Supports Nancy Pelosi

JONATHAN TURLEY

For years, Democratic activists and analysts have complained about the negative impact of Nancy Pelosi on their efforts to take back the House of Representatives and forge a new party coalition.  Pelosi, 78, has consistently remained one of the two least popular Democrats in Washington. The other was Hillary Clinton.  So why would the Democratic Party rig a primary for Clinton and keep Pelosi when fighting to curtail Trump? The answer is found in what these leaders offer establishment figures not what they offer the party, the public, or the country.  They deliver in jobs and money for powerful allies who see no personal advantage in supporting other candidates.  The dominance of self-interest is evident in yet another poll showing that forty-five percent of registered voters say they are less likely to support a candidate who backs the California Democrat for House speaker should her party win a House majority…

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Far Right Liar, Lunatic Charles Krauthammer Finally Does Something Decent.

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Charles Krauthammer

Right-wing extremist and professional liar, defender shameless of anything and everything Israel does to brutalize and murder Palestinians and steal their land, supporter of each and every one of George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s depraved policies and defender thereof in the media, who never saw a U.S. war he didn’t love as long as he never had to face the prospect of having to actually fight in it, Charles Krauthammer, has at long last finally gone and done something half-way decent.

The climate-change-denier and all-around piece of filth has died.

Before you start in on me with hypocritical cried of, “oh you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” remember that “a dead asshole is still an asshole.”

You don’t mourn the passing of evil people. You celebrate that they are no longer able to work their evil in the world. By the sort of faux-decorum “logic” demanded by the far right yet never reciprocated, the world should have shut up about Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin on learning of their deaths, posthumously rehabilitated their sick characters, and forgotten their millions of victims murdered under the banner of lust for absolute power.

Fuck you. You don’t get to spin the passing of a cheerleader for war and war crimes as something to be sad about.

Krauthammer, like the evil vermin he wasted his worthless existence supporting and defending, should have died a long time ago for the evils he wrote. He was a willful propagandist who lied endlessly and knew he was lying. He lied because he thought readers and listeners were stupid, because he knew that the truth would damage the ability of the genocidal maniacs he supported to carry out the horrors they ultimately got away with committing.

If anything should be spoken of evil people after their long-overdue demise, it’s that they took too long to finally rid the world of their presence, and to list one after the other the reasons why.

If any death ought to be mourned, it’s that of the truth at the hands of degenerates like Krauthammer.

Abdicare Decisis: Supreme Court Overturns Its Prior Rulings And Opens Internet Sales To Taxation

JONATHAN TURLEY

The Supreme Court overruled its prior decisions in a historic decision this week that will allow politicians to tap into Internet sales with new taxes.  President Donald Trump has praised the decision in allowing Internet sales to be now subject to taxation from all 50 states.  The decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair overturns the prior 1992 ruling in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota (what is it about those Dakotas and Internet taxes?).  South Dakota wanted to take a cut of sales from Internet sales even though these business have no property or employees in the state. To do so, the Supreme Court had to guy its prior requirement of a physical presence in a given state. It just did by a vote of 5-4. The opinion also contains a body blow to the doctrine of stare decisis (“to stand on the decisions”) under which the Court strives to…

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Congress Is Again AWOL On War Powers

JONATHAN TURLEY

Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the recent Senate hearing (in which I testified) on the proposed new AUMF legislation.  In the last couple days, an open battle erupted between Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., South Carolina) and Sen. Rand Paul (R., Kentucky) after Graham called for the addition of North Korea among the ever changing list of countries.  Paul called him “a danger to the country.”

Here is the column:

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Are You Or Have You Ever Been A Russian Collaborator? DNC Member Accuses Sanders Supporter Of Being A Russian Stooge

JONATHAN TURLEY

It may be the ultimate expression of our overheated politics.  Longtime DNC member Bob Mulholland accused a Sanders supporter of being a possible Russian stooge after she attended a meeting of the Democratic National Committee to discuss rules and bylaws.  It appears that anyone can now be denounced as Russian collaborators in an environment that is increasingly picking up McCarthyite elements.  The bizarre allegation from Mulholland comes after the DNC moved to effectively block Sanders from the next presidential primary unless he registers as a Democrat. The effort was later abandoned, but left bad memories of the last primary where the DNC was shown to have secretly rigged the process for Hillary Clinton.

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Clinton: Standards Have Changed Over “What You Can Do To Someone Against Their Will”

JONATHAN TURLEY

Democrats and media figures continue to struggle with the truth of the abuses of former President Bill Clinton who has been accused by multiple women of everything from sexual harassment to rape.  Dozens of reporters have interviewed Clinton without seriousness questioning him on these past allegations until recently.  Even after a year of “MeToo” stories, only this month did an interviewer risk the ire of Clinton supporters to press the former president.  Clinton became immediately condescending and dismissive.  The continued muted response to Clinton’s past is evident after a rather shocking claim in a new interview with PBS NewsHour where Clinton explained that “what you can do to someone against their will” has simply changed.

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Turley To Testify On War Powers In Senate Today

JONATHAN TURLEY

I will be testifying today in the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management.  The hearing is entitled “War Powers and the Effects of Unauthorized Military Engagements on Federal Spending” and will address the new proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) proposed by Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Tim Kaine (D-VA).  As my testimony below discusses, the new legislation would represent an unprecedented change in the law governing war powers.  The new AUMF amounts to a statutory revision of one of the most defining elements of the United States Constitution. Putting aside the constitutionality of such a change absent a formal amendment, the proposed legislation completes a long history of this body abdicating its core responsibilities over the declaration of war. 

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