The Right Side of the News

And you don't remember Trump claiming millions of fraudulent voters were the reason he lost the popular vote? You've never heard of voter ID requirements that address nearly non-existent instances of people voting under a false name*? Nobody told you about closing polling places that just happened to be in black or Hispanic neighborhoods or on Indian reservations? Cutting off mobile polling places? Shortening and restricting early voting days, especially weekends so the poor who can't just take a day off have to vote in the evening, facing long lines and maybe the shutdown of the polls before they vote?All of which have been demonstrated over and over again to disproportionately suppress liberal-leaning voters.Personally, I think voter ID is OK as long as the state makes herculean efforts to get as close as possible to every eligible voter having ID.Of course you don't remember Trump’s voter fraud commission, led by Kris Kobach (the most rabid anti-minority-voting zealot in the nation) ? Shut down with no results, largely because they demanded sensitive voter data from the states without bothering to set up any safeguards for those voters' privacy?

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*PolitiFact | Donald Trump says there's 'substantial evidence of voter fraud.' There isn't

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In a press briefing on Jan. 24, 2017, a reporter asked his then-press secretary Sean Spicer how Trump came to believe that it’s possible that illegal votes were to blame for his popular vote loss.

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"I think there's been studies," Spicer responded. "There's one that came out of Pew in 2008 that showed 14 percent of people who voted were noncitizens. There's other studies that have been presented to him. It's a belief he maintains."

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We determined that Spicer was conflating a couple different studies, and that those studies have been erroneously used to prop up claims that noncitizens have swayed elections by voting illegally.

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There is no study that shows 14 percent of the votes cast in 2008 were cast by noncitizens. That would have added up to more than 18 million fraudulent votes ” an implausible assertion, considering the total noncitizen population was about 22.5 million in 2010.

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As for the study that "came out of Pew in 2008," it actually came out in 2012, and it’s about outdated voter rolls -- not fraudulent votes.

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The 2012 Pew study -- found that about 24 million, or one in every eight, voter registrations in the United States are inaccurate or no longer valid, but it did not find evidence of actual voter fraud. The study was about record-keeping that is badly managed and in disarray.

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David Becker, the former director of Pew’s election program, tweeted in November 2016 that "we found millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying, but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted."

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Meanwhile, the study that shows that "14 percent of people who voted were noncitizens" has been widely criticized for its methodology.

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Many credible researchers have panned the study as methodologically unsound for using an opt-in Internet poll originally designed to survey citizens and not considering possible survey response error.

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In a blog post, one of the authors, Old Dominion professor Jesse Richman, said he stands by his study, but "our results suggest that almost all elections in the U.S. are not determined by noncitizen participation, with occasional and very rare potential exceptions."

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I gave the most salient examples I'm aware of in mentioning illegal aliens and felons (and I'm not including those who have served their term, which ought to go without saying, but who is it, Biden or Sanders who is proposing that those in prison have the right to vote). Anyway that doesn't mean there are other problems involving voter fraud that I didn't mention because they are contested or hard to prove. Illegal aliens are to my mind a very clear case of who should not be allowed to vote in our elections.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But neither you or donnie's voting commission could find any evidence. If you have the evidence present it, if you don't shut up about it. Because claiming otherwise would be a lie. But neither you or donnie's voting commission could find any evidence of this being an actual issue.
If you have the evidence present it, if you don't shut up about it. Because claiming otherwise would be a lie.

And nobody's suggesting they should, in state and Federal elections. So why worry about something that's not happening and there's no reason to believe it'll ever happen?The only problems regarding voter fraud are the right wing's attempts at voter suppression. The kind of fraud that voter ID could prevent is vanishingly rare.Absentee ballot fraud is more common but still pretty rare. But I see you have no comment on the massive NC-09 fraud the Republicans committed. It's OK If You're A Republican, right?

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The only voter manipulation tactics I'm aware of are the work of the Izquierdo.

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Presumably you mean the Republican Party, then. Practically all the real examples of voter manipulation or fraud that come up are from the Republicans. You say later that the “Izquierdo” has no integrity, which also fits.

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American blacks are citizens, illegals are not.

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I’m glad that you actually admit that. Odd that you seem completely unconcerned with all the attempts to make it difficult for them to vote.But let’s be honest. To the Republican Party “voter fraud” really means “voting Democrat”.

The horse with blinkers is only aware of what's directly in front of her.

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Speaking at a Paducah Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Kentucky, McConnell was asked by an attendee, "Should a Supreme Court justice die next year, what will your position be on filling that spot?"

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The leader took a long sip of what appeared to be iced tea before announcing with a smile, "Oh, we'd fill it," triggering loud laughter from the audience.

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In 2016 the Republicans cried "let the voters decide!".Now it's "don't let the voters decide!" Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fixed quote box.

Fox News on Mueller's press conference today:

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in his first public appearance since being appointed to lead the Russia investigation, said it was “not an option” to charge President Trump with a crime, citing Department of Justice policy, but maintained that if they had “confidence” that the president did not commit a crime, they "would have said so.”

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Mueller, from the Justice Department Wednesday morning, detailed his findings throughout the Russia investigation, underscoring the fact that there “was not sufficient evidence to charge a conspiracy” in the probe over whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election.

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But Mueller did not mince words on the special counsel’s conclusion regarding its inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.

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“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said. “We did not determine whether the president did commit a crime.”

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Mueller explained longstanding Justice Department policy, which states that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.

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“Charging the president with a crime was not an option we could consider,” Mueller explained, adding that “it would be unfair to accuse someone of a crime when there could be no court resolution of the charge.”

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“We concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime,” Mueller added. “That is the office’s final position."

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https://www.google.com/...-dept-amid-pressure-to-testify.amp

Fox News Bret Baier:

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Fox News' straight news anchor and host of Special Report reacted to Robert Mueller's statement and remarked that Mueller's words were much different than William Barr's. Mueller's words, said Baier, were not as "clear-cut" as Trump's new Attorney General made them out to be.

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Baier said, "It was almost exactly the opposite, not clear-cut."

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"This was not,as the president says time and time again, 'no collusion, no obstruction.' It was much more nuanced than that. He said they couldn't find evidence on the collusion part of the investigation of the Trump campaign."

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"He said if they had found that the president did not commit a crime on obstruction, they would have said that."

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"This statement is going to be digested and looked over, analyzed word for word up on Capitol Hill. It was not anywhere as clear-cut as Attorney General Bill Barr said. It was almost exactly the opposite. Not clear-cut."

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Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

I'm surprised. Bret Baier is usually more clear than this:

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"This statement is going to be digested and looked over, analyzed word for word up on Capitol Hill. It was not anywhere as clear-cut as Attorney General Bill Barr said. It was almost exactly the opposite. Not clear-cut."

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Mueller was pretty clear, both in his report and in his comments today. He said they knew up-front that they couldn't charge a sitting president, but that they could investigate and report on possible obstruction, and that there was another process available for addressing presidential wrongdoing, i.e., impeachment.What Baier should have said was that Mueller made clear the degree to which Barr misrepresented the Mueller report on obstruction. This is what anyone would conclude, and what many have concluded, after checking Barr's comments and conclusions against the actual report.--Percy

IMHO it doesn't matter. Faith and her ilk will still bleat "no collusion, no obstruction." The rest of the world already knew.

No. We mean legal citizens who find it is more and more difficult to vote because of rules Republicans pass. We are also talking about gerrymandering which has nothing to do with illegals voting. Are you saying that citizens who are Arab, Muslims, and Chinese should not be allowed to vote? That seems consistent with Republican ideology given how hard they have tried to prevent minority Americans from voting.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Oh, please. When you talk about illegals who shouldn't vote you focus on minorities, be it Arabs, Chinese, or Hispanics and equate whole races with being illegals.Republican strategies of voter suppression have always focused on minority citizens. They reduce the number of polling places in minority neighborhoods and require ID laws that are burdensome on minority populations. A substantial proportion of Republican voters use absentee balloting which is the most susceptible to voter fraud, yet they don't pass any laws making absentee voting harder. In fact, GOP operatives set up operations that illegally take absentee ballots from people and change their votes as seen in the last election.You aren't worried about illegals voting. You are worried about minorities voting. It's extremely obvious.

Trump Allies Shift Their ”No Obstruction’ Refrain After Mueller Speaks Publicly

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President Trump’s allies, in the wake of public remarks by special counsel Robert Mueller Wednesday, have tweaked the language they have used to claim that the President did not commit criminal obstruction of justice.

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The shift is minor, but telling.

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No longer are the President’s top mouthpieces asserting that Mueller himself, in his report, found no obstruction. They are now hanging that conclusion on Attorney General Bill Barr ” who said in an initial summary of the report that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein found Mueller’s evidence of obstruction insufficient ” or on the Justice Department, generally....

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Both points he had previously stated in his report, which was mostly made public on April 18.

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Yet, perhaps because there is now camera footage of him making the statement, many in Trump’s orbit no longer feel comfortable attaching Mueller specifically to the “no obstruction” claim.

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“The report was clear”there was no collusion, no conspiracy”and the Department of Justice confirmed there was no obstruction,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement after his remarks.

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Vice President Mike Pence echoed that rhetoric in a statement of his own that said that the “Department of Justice concluded there was no collusion and no obstruction.”

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The President’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow said that Mueller’s probe had produced no “findings” of obstruction against the President, but then stressed that the “Attorney General conclusively determined that there was no obstruction by the President.”

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Hanging their hats on a guy who so seriously misrepresented (lied about) Mueller's report before it came out.Barr's Trump’s man. He's made it clear that he believes the main job of the Attorney General of the United States is as the President's defense lawyer.

From the New York Times: David Whitley, Texas Secretary of State, Resigns After Questioning Voters’ CitizenshipWhitley was appointed Secretary of State, but he wasn't able to get the two-thirds vote in the legislature required for confirmation. As a result, he had to step down at the end the legislative session. Anyone who has been paying attention can predict what comes next. Just in case some need the moral of the story spelled out: