***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[Belgium]

It would be fair to say I dislike most of our government, mostly over sheer incompetence rather than malicious actions, but boy they really cooked up something horrible and ridiculous this past week.
Our federal Ministers of Justice, Domestic Affairs/Security and Asylum/Migration pushed a bill that would allow police to enter homes without search warrants in order to arrest illegal immigrants, this would also include homes where both illegal immigrants and legal citizens are. It's literally what is in the bill. It would allow police to just enter any home without a search warrant if they think they can arrest an illegal immigrant inside. Due to the very specific language about that in the bill it does not appear if they could perform any other action besides arresting an illegal immigrant once they are inside a home without a warrant. If they were to encounter evidence of other criminal activity such as drugs while in a home without a search warrant it's not clear to me what would happen under this disastrous bill.

The parliamentary panel on domestic affairs was due for a vote on this bill but Prime Minister Michel cancelled the vote today and is now personally involved in thoroughly examining the bill. He stated that he supports his federal government partners but disagrees with the current text of the bill and he wants a consultation round with other members of the federal government to make amendments.
Some of the fiercest criticism against the bill came from criminal investigators, judges, judicial investigators and prosecutors, ...
Many of them from within the DOJ, going against the Minister of Justice co-authoring the bill.

 

[getback]

 

[Belgium]

Also a reminder that opposition can not contest the memo due to the underlying material being classified and attempting to contest it would have to make use of that classified information. House republicans also voted down the democrats' proposal for both sides' memos to be released in a joint-release. Democrats also stated that their republican counterparts also voted down a proposal to give the FBI a few extra days to review the memo.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-over-republican-memos-accuracy-idUSKBN1FK25P
FBI has 'grave concerns' over Republican memo's accuracy

The FBI on Wednesday pushed back against any attempt by the White House to release a classified House Intelligence Committee memo that Republicans say shows anti-Trump bias by the federal law enforcement agency and the Justice Department.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in a rare public statement, said it had “grave concerns” over the document’s accuracy and had been given little time to review it.


The rebuke comes just hours after White House chief of staff John Kelly said he expected the memo to be made public “pretty quick.”

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump told lawmakers after his televised address to Congress that there was a “100 percent” chance it would be released.


The memo has become a lightning rod in a bitter partisan fight amid ongoing investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and any possible collusion by Trump’s campaign, something both Russia and Trump have denied.

“The FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it. As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the FBI said in a statement.

Republicans, who blocked an effort to release a counterpoint memo by Democrats on the panel, have said it shows anti-Trump bias by the FBI and the Justice Department in seeking a warrant to conduct an intelligence eavesdropping operation.

Democrats have said the memo selectively uses highly classified materials in a misleading effort to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Justice Department’s Russia probe, and Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who hired him.

The House panel this week voted along partisan lines to release the memo. Trump has until the weekend to decide whether to make it public.

“It will be released here pretty quick, I think, and then the whole world can see it,” Kelly told Fox News Radio, adding he had seen the four-page document and that White House lawyers were reviewing it.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told CNN on Wednesday the memo was still being reviewed and “there’s always a chance” that it would not be released.

Justice Department officials have warned that releasing the memo would be reckless. On Monday, department officials advised Kelly against releasing the memo on the grounds it could jeopardize classified information, the Washington Post reported.

The document was commissioned by Representative Devin Nunes, the House committee’s Republican chairman who had recused himself from the panel’s Russia probe.

Sanders told CNN she did not know if Nunes had worked with anyone at the White House on the memo, and that Trump had not seen it before his address on Tuesday night or immediately afterwards.

 

[kdawg]

Today I am reminded of Gerald Ford’s inauguration comments:

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule...
...I now solemnly reaffirm my promise I made to you last December 6: to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to do the very best I can for America.

God helping me, I will not let you down.

This couldn’t be more different in tone from that - even trying to write/perform something positive results in the nonsense we saw last night.

 

[elpablo21]

Of course he did

 

[RustyShackleford]

So the dude leading the anti-Trump society in the FBI, helped set into motion the events that probably got Trump elected.

Just when you thought things might improve......2017 is byke!!!

 

[IATT]

 

[elpablo21]

So the dude leading the anti-Trump society in the FBI, helped set into motion the events that probably got Trump elected.

Just when you thought things might improve......2017 is byke!!!

so much for that

 

[MVP]

Who woulda thunk?

 

[RustyShackleford]

Who woulda thunk?

Wait, wait, wait, this can't be right.

Da tax bill was supposed to supercharge economic growth and have the tax coffers booming. What gives?

 

[iamdef]

Who woulda thunk?

No need for that, we can just donate that extra money to offset it

 

[Belgium]

Edit: wrong thread

 

[IATT]

 

[frink85]

But I thought the stock market was the strongest ever?!?!

 

[RustyShackleford]

Maybe the CBO should just "wait and see"

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[frink85]

SMH YIKES WOW. Lloyd ain’t a doctor. This reeks of nazi Germany experimation ish

 

[deleted]

SMH YIKES WOW. Lloyd ain’t a doctor. This reeks of nazi Germany experimation ish

"The irony is...if you were actually sick Mengele could prolly help"

 

[gry60]

Random interwebz comments:

"A more appropriate way to say all of that is that Reagan illegally sold weapons to Muslims, then took that money and illegally funded violent, Latino militias who smuggled massive amounts of drugs into this country. Think about how many boxes that checks off for today's Republican base."

 

[stuntman mike]

"The irony is...if you were actually sick Mengele could prolly help"

 

[elpablo21]

These folks aint ****

 

[aepps20]

Libs can't take their Ls gracefully. Don destroyed their talking points with the greatest SOTUS we've ever heard. Tax cuts, cutting Libs down to 0. Wall is getting built, Comet getting fired and Crooked H is getting arrested. Papa Vlad approves of Our leader and SHERIFF Elect is a shoe in for 2020. #LIBTEARSTASTEGRRRREAT.

 

[gry60]

The subversion of the people’s preferences in our supposedly democratic system was explored in a 2014 study by the political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern. Four broad theories have long sought to answer a fundamental question about our government: Who rules? One theory, the one we teach our children in civics classes, holds that the views of average people are decisive. Another theory suggests that mass-based interest groups such as the AARP have the power. A third theory predicts that business groups such as the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America and the National Beer Wholesalers Association carry the day. A fourth theory holds that policy reflects the views of the economic elite.

Gilens and Page tested those theories by tracking how well the preferences of various groups predicted the way that Congress and the executive branch would act on 1,779 policy issues over a span of two decades. The results were shocking. Economic elites and narrow interest groups were very influential: They succeeded in getting their favored policies adopted about half of the time, and in stopping legislation to which they were opposed nearly all of the time. Mass-based interest groups, meanwhile, had little effect on public policy. As for the views of ordinary citizens, they had virtually no independent effect at all. “When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” Gilens and Page wrote.

Many forms of lobbying were banned throughout the 19th century. In Georgia, the state constitution at one time read that “lobbying is declared to be a crime.” In California, it was a felony.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america-is-not-a-democracy/550931/

 

[frenchbreadbuilds]

THIS JUST IN: White House orders investigation into CBO for bias