Earlier NY Times:
Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy but Stops Short of Exonerating President on Obstruction of Justice
Mr. Barr also said that Mr. Mueller’s team drew no conclusions about whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice. Mr. Barr and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, concluded that the special counsel’s investigators lacked sufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Trump committed that offense, but added that Mr. Mueller’s team stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump.
Later NY Times:
A Cloud Over Trump’s Presidency Is Lifted
Until they read the report for themselves, Democrats are hardly going to agree that the president has been cleared. And they will most likely summon Mr. Mueller to testify, which could provide a public airing of Mr. Trump’s actions that, even if not rising to a crime, may not reflect well on the president.
We are going to have to see the report. There is no other way, because Stops Short of Exonerating President on Obstruction of Justice needs further explanation than AG Barr’s opinion (remember, he doesn’t believe presidents can obstruct, as per his memo).
What happens next? What’s been happening before.
SDNY continues its work, House Democrats continue their investigations and election time will settle the issue for the public.
Looking for better than NY Times?
Will Saletan/Slate:
Bill Barr’s Weasel Words
All the ways the attorney general is spinning the Mueller report to protect Trump.
Special counsel Robert Mueller has submitted his report on the Russia investigation, and Republicans are gloating. They claim a four-page letter from Attorney General William Barr, purporting to summarize the report, exonerates President Donald Trump. They’re wrong. The letter says the Justice Department won’t prosecute Trump, but it reaches that conclusion by tailoring legal standards to protect the president. Here’s a list of Barr’s weasel words and what they’re hiding.
Garrett Graff/Wired:
MUELLER SAYS NO COLLUSION, BARR RAISES A MILLION QUESTIONS
Over the course of his investigation, Mueller established two separate criminal conspiracies to aid President Trump’s election in 2016: one by the Russians, the second involving Trump himself, who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the campaign-finance felony charges over hush money payments made to cover his affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. (Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to his role in that conspiracy, making clear that Donald Trump directed the cover-up.)
But Mueller apparently will never answer one way or the other whether the President’s actions count as obstruction. Instead, according to Barr, his report lays out the evidence on both sides of the question. The full final results of Mueller’s investigation, however long the “comprehensive” document may turn out to be, though, remain under lock-and-key at the Justice Department. Barr set no timetable for making more of it public, saying that it needs to go through a careful review first.
Franklin Foer/Atlantic:
The Mueller Probe Was an Unmitigated Success
The scandal is how much corruption it exposed—and how much turns out to have been perfectly legal.
With tonight’s summation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, there will be a temptation among those who loudly trumpeted this scandal to apologize. And without a doubt, some Twitter detectives and journalists made mistakes—and overshot the evidence. They can apologize, but I won’t. Even if the actual Mueller report is anything like the attorney general’s summation of its contents, Russiagate will go down as one of the biggest scandals in American political history.
Political scientist:
A lot of political truth in that. And, by the way, a lot of political truth in Nancy Pelosi managing expectations well. SDNY is the threat on the horizon, Congressional investigations need to continue their constitutional obligations.
Robert Mueller did his job. We don’t know what he said, exactly, but parts of the report seem clear. For example:
So, without conspiracy, a case can be made there is no legal obstruction case (i.e. no crime, no obstruction). But as to the rest, both Congress and other entities (including SDNY) need to flesh out the details, starting by making the report public.
Meanwhile:
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
It’s not the Democrats who’ll have a problem addressing impeachment
Much has been written about the Democrats’ dilemma once the report’s contents are known. Will their base demand impeachment hearings? What’s the point of impeaching if the Senate won’t act?
However, let’s say for the sake of argument that the report shows: 1.) Trump hired multiple campaign officials who had, collectively, more than 100 contacts with Russians and solicited a hostile foreign power’s help in winning the presidency; 2.) Trump lied repeatedly about his pursuit of a business deal with a hostile foreign power while running for president; and 3.) Trump took a slew of actions (from misleading the public to seeking leniency for Michael Flynn to intimidating witnesses in plain sight) that, if committed by anyone other than the president, would be grounds for indictment. Do the Republicans plan on running in 2020 under the banner: Leave the Russian patsy in power — or What’s a little obstruction between friends?
Josh Kraushaar/National Journal:
The Ghosting of the Democratic Centrists
The story of the Democrats’ freshman congressional class is the rise of its moderates. But only the left-wing rabble-rousers are getting any attention.
But when you look at the generational makeup of the freshman Democratic class, the youngest members are actually among the most moderate of the entire caucus. Reps. Max Rose (32 years old), Conor Lamb (34), Xochitl Torres Small (34), Jared Golden (36), and Joe Cunningham (36) are all in that camp. Six more freshmen in the under-40 crowd represent districts that President Trump carried—and their early careers have been defined by their pragmatic approach to legislating. All told, the 11 millennial moderates greatly outnumber the three true-blue progressives (Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Rep. Joe Neguse).
The 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez gets more attention than her party’s own leadership. Rep. Abby Finkenauer of Iowa, a 30-year-old who won a seat crucial to the party’s House majority, is a virtual unknown on Capitol Hill.
Matthew Gabriele/Forbes, and a pitch for historians:
Why Historians Are Like Tax Collectors
To say that these historians "correct the record" isn't to say that it's all about getting the "facts" right. That will never be enough. It will never get people to ask more questions. Instead, what Burke was trying to get at was that studying the past - and then, importantly, talking about it with an audience - is about revealing the mess behind the myth, the story behind what we think we know. A #twitterstorians Twitter thread, an opinion piece in a magazine, an appearance on TV, all in their own way asks questions in order to break down that myth into is base parts, to see how it works and why it was put together in the way it originally was. And that can be uncomfortable.
For example, both sides agree on the names and dates associated with the so-called "Silent Sam" statue - now toppled but formerly at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (image above). Where the disagreement lies is about the meaning of the statue, and on both sides their understanding of the meaning of the past led them to act. White supremacists protested to protect the statue, students and scholars tore it down. But historians, as Burke said, remind us of what we'd like to otherwise forget. In this case, it's the moment of the statue's dedication and the terribly racist speech given then by Julian Carr.
Colin McInroe on a sports-meets-politics piece regarding Connecticut athletics:
March brings out that special Geno madness
Connecticut is especially excited this year because some men’s games are being played in the XL Center in Hartford, where this year’s slogan is “What are the odds of the same roof caving twice?”
Actually, the arena has slipped into substantial disrepair and degringolade (a complex French word meaning, “decline characterized by an increased likelihood of patrons being bitten by monkeys or weasels”)…
[UConn women’s basketball coach Geno] Auriemma also volunteered: “And if anybody says ‘How do we pay for it?’ That’s not my job. I don’t ask you how to coach my team, don’t ask me how you’re going to pay for it. That’s your job.”
This whole question of how to pay for things has taken on a sharper edge ever since UConn’s own reporting to the NCAA earlier this year disclosed the nation’s highest university-to-athletic-department subsidy ($42 million) with Auriemma’s program costing $3.1 million more to run than it takes in.
Auriemma’s right. Why should he have to tell kids living in dilapidated public housing that they’ll have to wait until he feels better about himself before their lives can improve?
And now for something completely different.
Kottke.org:
A Phonetic Map of the Human Mouth
I’ve had zero voice training in my life, so it was really illuminating to speak all of the different sounds while paying close attention to where in my mouth they were happening. Try it!
Because, why not?
