Adam Serwer at The Atlantic writes—Trump Will Only Get More Dangerous. The dismissal of Jeff Sessions makes this much clear: The Republicans’ midterm defeat has made the president more desperate to undermine the rule of law:
Jeff Sessions was unfit to serve as attorney general of the United States. He had lied about his civil-rights record, claiming that he desegregated schools in Alabama when he hadn’t, as he later admitted under oath. He and his surrogates misled the public by insisting he had begun his political life campaigning against segregationist Lurleen Wallace, without mentioning her GOP opponent was also a segregationist. He exaggerated his role in the prosecution of the Ku Klux Klansmen who lynched Michael Donald. He praised the racist 1924 immigration law that targeted non-whites, Eastern and Southern Europeans, and Jews. He was rejected for a federal judgeship for allegedly calling a black attorney a “boy” and a civil rights attorney a “race traitor.” On every crucial question of civil rights in the last 40 years, Sessions has been on the wrong side. [...]
As attorney general, Sessions rolled back civil-rights enforcement, failing to file even a single voting-rights case in a country where the Republican Party has settled on disenfranchisement of rival constituencies as a tactic for winning elections. He failed in his duty to prevent the president from attempting to influence the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and then aided the president in presenting a patently false justification for firing former FBI Director James Comey over that investigation. In virtually every consequential way, Sessions should go down in history as one of the worst attorney generals ever to hold the office.
Yet in one important sense, Sessions’s forced departure is alarming. Sessions, for all his flaws, envisioned the position of attorney general as an office that should resist political pressure from the White House, and one whose ultimate loyalty is to the Constitution. It was that view that caused Sessions, under pressure, to agree to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. This runs contrary to the central tenet of Trumpism, which holds that the highest loyalty is not to the public, the nation, or the Constitution, but to Donald Trump. The president was enraged that Sessions’s recusal meant that he could not control the investigation himself. He will not make that mistake with his next choice of attorney general. [...]
The Rapid Response Mueller Protection Team can show you where to protest Thursday 5 PM local time. Click to find your site.
Donald Trump has installed a crony to oversee the special counsel's Trump-Russia investigation, crossing a red line set to protect the investigation. By replacing Rod Rosenstein with just-named Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker as special counsel Robert Mueller's boss on the investigation, Trump has undercut the independence of the investigation. Whitaker has publicly outlined strategies to stifle the investigation and cannot be allowed to remain in charge of it. The Nobody Is Above the Law network demands that Whitaker immediately commit not to assume supervision of the investigation. Our hundreds of response events are being launched to demonstrate the public demand for action to correct this injustice.
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION(S)
"Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
~~Richard M. Nixon, to David Frost in 1977 regarding the Huston Plan
“I can go in, and I could do whatever — I could run it if I want.”
~~Donald J. Trump, to reporters in August 2018 regarding the Russia investigation
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2015—Ben Carson on why he should be president: Because freedom, and so forth:
Ben Carson has been facing a lot of questions about his qualifications for the presidency, and specifically his lack of experience in pretty much every area of expertise that a president may need to be versed in. So Ben Carson has done what any reasonable candidate for the presidency would do to respond to these concerns: penned a long post on Facebook.
You are absolutely right — I have no political experience. The current Members of Congress have a combined 8,700 years of political experience. Are we sure political experience is what we need. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience.
If you are thinking that Dr. Ben Carson is going to go the Palinesque route of declaring that his own lack of political expertise doesn't just make him _better_ than the people who do have that experience, it in fact makes him akin to Our Founding Fathers Themselves, you are correct. If you think Dr. Ben Carson is going to summarily ignore all of the elected offices the actual signers of the Declaration of Independence indeed had held before their service in the Continental Congress, rendering his statement absolutely false right off the bat, you are also correct. But to hell with the facts, it's Ben Carson time
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: An extraordinarily link-rich #KITM today, rounding up election results and the attendant punditry, with Greg Dworkin & Joan McCarter. Not sure how to take the events of last evening? Let us help. If we don’t know how, we’ve got links to people who do
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