The Right Side of the News

Trump walked out of the meeting in a pre-planned stunt (the podium and sign were set up well before the meeting and the press conference was announced as being 20 minutes after the meeting was supposed to start). A five-year-old has more maturity than that.But Pelosi and Schumer must have forced him to do it.This is 1984.

Even Fox knows.Manipulated videos of Nancy Pelosi edited to falsely depict her as drunk spread on social media | Fox News

No, that's not what anyone means. He's referring to blatant gerrymandering to ensure Republicans get more representation than Democrats no matter how many more votes the Democrats get. And the laws "addressing" the nonexistent in-person voter fraud that just happen to make it more difficult for left-leaning citizens to vote.Got any evidence of a noticeable amount of in-person voter frauds ? No? Didn't think so. Most of the small amount of voter fraud is with absentee ballots,such as in North Carolina district 9 in 2018. Massive fraud. By Republicans.Nobody is proposing that non-citizens vote in state or Federal elections. Got any evidence for your claim? Not for that one either?Gosh, what a surprise. Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

And Hispanics and courtllege students and...

I think she doesn't know. She thinks liberals are liter spawn of Satan trying to destroy all that is good. She eagerly and unthinkingly swallows every right-wing hallucination there is.

You didn't hear about NC 9? The biggest voter fraud in 2018 and maybe the 21st century? Perpetrated by Republicans?Maybe the sources you trust don't want you to know. Understanding the election scandal in North Carolina’s 9th district:

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The story has a lot of moving parts, but here are the basics: the 2018 general election in North Carolina’s 9th district was a contest between Democrat Dan McCready and Republican Mark Harris; Harris had defeated the incumbent GOP holder of the seat, Robert Pittenger, in the primary. While Harris leads in the vote count by 905 votes, the North Carolina State Board of Elections has twice refused to certify the results of the race because of potential irregularities involving mail-in ballots. The allegations fall into several categories. Some voters claim that individuals came to their homes and collected their unsealed absentee ballots. Others allege that they received absentee ballots that they never requested. In addition, multiple individuals have come forward to claim that they were paid by a Republican political operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, to collect absentee ballots from voters; under North Carolina law, it is, with limited exceptions, illegal to collect and return someone else’s absentee ballot. (For more on the ins-and-outs of the controversy, I’d recommend some great reporting from local journalists on the episode.)

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Turned out all those allegations were true. Eventually they decided to do a complete new election, including primaries because the Republicans had committed similar fraud in the primary. The primaries are over, the new election is in the future.

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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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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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.

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

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.

They want Russia to hack the 2020 elections. They know Russia is on their side and It's OK If You're A Republican.McConnell will not allow any election security bills on the floor. The Senate Will Not Vote on Any Election Security Bills, GOP Senator Says

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The reason, said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Wednesday, is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has decided not to bring any election security bills to the floor for a vote. Blunt’s remark occurred during a hearing of the Rules and Administration Committee, which has oversight of election administration. When Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Blunt, the chairman, whether he was planning mark-ups of any of the several election security bills pending before the committee, Blunt responded that it would be fruitless to advance legislation that McConnell would not allow to come up for a vote.

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“I don’t see any likelihood that those bills would get to the floor if we marked them up,” Blunt said. After prodding from Durbin, Blunt explained, “I think the majority leader just is of the view that this debate reaches no conclusion.”

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Blunt also acknowledged that it was McConnell who stopped the Rules Committee last year from advancing the Secure Elections Act, a bipartisan bill to protect elections from interference. The committee was poised to mark up that bill last August when the hearing was mysteriously canceled the same morning that it was set to begin.

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Nobody knows the extent of the Russian's effect on the 2016 election. We can be sure they've been honing and testing their skills, and they'll have a lot more capabilities than they had in 2016. We won't have improved our defenses. There's a good chance they'll have a larger effect than whatever effect they had in 2016.McConnell won't consider any election security bills, no matter how clean they are or what their content is or what else is going on. The ban is based solely on the subject of the bill; if it's election security it's out.Marking up is changes made in committee. Amendments, rewrites, debates, votes. Edited by JonF, : No reason given.