House of Representatives: Democrats in da house!

[fraurosena]

 

[47of74]

Doesn't this Congressdouche have anything better to do?

Quote

Last night, nearly two dozen members of Congress joined Religious Right activists in Washington, D.C., for the annual “Washington – A Man of Prayer” event, held in Statuary Hall inside the U.S. Capitol.

Over the course of an hour and a half, 20 different members of Congress took to the podium to lead the gathering in prayer, including Rep. Randy Weber of Texas, who repeatedly choked up while begging God to forgive this nation for the “sins” of legal abortion and marriage equality.

Modifying the Lord’s Prayer to declare that “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth here in the halls of Congress,” Weber confessed the “sins our nation has been so emboldened to embark upon” and pleaded with God to forgive us.

“We have endeavored to try and kick your word out of public schools,” Weber said. “Father, we have endeavored to take the Bible out of classrooms, the Ten Commandments off the walls. Oh, Lord, forgive us. Father, we think we’re so smart, we have replaced your word and your precepts with drug-sniffing dogs, with metal detectors, with uniformed police officers in our schools. Oh, Lord, forgive us.”

 

[AmericanRose]

I feel a prayer like that should automatically kick a person out of Congress and trigger a special election, for mixing politics and religion.

[milkteeth]

So along with Ben Shapiro and Fox News, it looks like Nancy Pelosi has a new supporter in her war against progressive women of color within her own party. How many more death threats will they be getting now I wonder?

The rest of his vileness is under the spoiler cut:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[AmericanRose]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/green-files-articles-of-impeachment-against-trump-setting-up-floor-vote/ar-AAEqrvh?ocid=spartanntp

Rep. Al Green (D. TX) has filed articles of impeachment to force a House vote by the end of this week.

From the article:

Quote

Earlier Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Democratic leaders haven't yet decided how to handle Green's resolution on the floor. But he reiterated that they believe impeachment is still premature.

"I think we need to hear from [Mueller] and analyze what he has to say," Hoyer said. "I think there's a lot of information to come and we'll see - as the Speaker has said - where it leads us."

Have we not already heard from Mueller twice? Trump has shown us who he is and what he does for over 2 years, it's not going to get BETTER.

[GreyhoundFan]

Scalise is such a jerk: "Steve Scalise says House Republicans didn’t disrespect Obama’s position. Let’s go to the tape."

Spoiler

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) made quite an assertion Tuesday about how Republicans treated President Barack Obama while he was in office.

“We had disagreements with a lot of Barack Obama’s policies, but we never disrespected the office,” Scalise said, one day after Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) referred to President Trump as the “occupant of the White House” in a news conference.

“I called him president of the United States, as we all did,” Scalise said. “If he asked us to go meet with him at the White House, we went. We expressed our disagreements in a respectful way, but what they continue to do to go after him personally, to call for impeachment of the president from day one ...”

In Scalise’s framing, “disrespect” seems to hinge on calls for impeachment, attending White House meetings and referring to the president obliquely.

While it is true that House Republicans often used the word “president” when referring to Obama, some conservative media personalities, such as Sean Hannity, pointedly did not. Others called him president but questioned his patriotism, for instance in 2015, when Rudolph W. Giuliani said he did not “believe” Obama “loves America.”

But when Obama invited congressional Republicans to the White House, they often ignored him.

The New York Times in 2011 reported:

Congressional Republicans have turned down requests for White House meetings, refused to return the president’s call and walked out of budget talks. [And] Speaker John A. Boehner became what historians say was the first ever to tell a sitting president that no, he could not deliver an address to a joint session of Congress on the date of his choice.

Here are other times Republican “respect” for Obama was on display.

In 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) yelled “You lie!” at Obama during an address to Congress.

In 2011, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) apologized to Obama after calling him a “tar baby.”

In 2012, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said it was time to send Obama “home to Kenya.”

Amid negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program in 2015, Republican leaders broke normal procedure and invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress.

In 2016, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) prayed that Obama’s “days be few, and let another have his office.”

A House Republican staffer resigned in 2014 after she told Sasha and Malia Obama to show “a little class.”

And in 2011, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) said first lady Michelle Obama, “lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself.” (Sensenbrenner apologized the next day.)

More than a dozen congressional Republicans did not dismiss the birther conspiracy theory in 2009. In conservative media, there was near-endless coverage of Obama’s religion, vacations, golf trips and alleged communist and socialist ties throughout his presidency, examples of which you can watch in the video I made for HuffPost in 2016.

During a July 2014 appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Scalise was asked four times whether he wanted to impeach Obama.

Rather than rule out impeachment, Scalise dodged the question four times.

 

[fraurosena]

It's difficult to keep up your cognitive dissonance when confronted with the blatant facts, isn't it, Repugs?

 

[fraurosena]

Huh. If Pelosi listens to Bill and Wil's whining pleas, she's as much a traitor to the US as they are.

 

Edited July 18, 2019 by fraurosena

[GreyhoundFan]

[fraurosena]

Make it so. I want to see her haughty ass squirm.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

I’m posting this here rather than in the Mueller thread because it pertains to questions that should be asked during his testimony next week. As is his wont, Seth Abramson’s thread is incredibly long. The questions he poses are very insightful and actually lay bare everything that is wrong with Mueller’s report, and I highly recommend taking the time to read them.

If you don’t have enough time to read all of his questions, you could start here, where the fourth category of questions begin, as they focus on Mueller’s handeling of the investigation, and also dig into his apparent unwillingness to testify.

There is also an unrolled version of the thread available:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1153036553666670592.html

[fraurosena]

I find it disconcerting that, according to Rachel Maddow last night, Mueller apparently asked the DOJ for this letter.

Quote

There are just three simple yes-or-no questions Congress should ask Robert Mueller:

Mr. Mueller, the president said your report found, in his words, “no collusion, no obstruction, complete and total exoneration.”

First, did your report find there was no collusion?

Second, did your report find there was no obstruction?

Third, did your report give the president complete and total exoneration?

That’s it. That’s the ballgame. It makes no difference if there are 20 questioners or two when Mr. Mueller appears before two House committees on Wednesday. All of this speculation about whether Mr. Mueller will go beyond the four corners of his report is largely a waste of time, with one asterisk. The report itself is deeply damning to Mr. Trump, elevating him to the rare president who has been credibly documented as committing federal crimes while sitting in office.

So what accounts for the vast discrepancy between what the report says and the way the American public has received it? It’s not hard to pinpoint three factors and to design the right questions to bring the focus back to the report.

First, when the report was finished, Americans were not even able to read it for several weeks. Instead, they were treated to an immediate and total distortion of what it said by the attorney general, William Barr. In his four-page letter on the report, he wrote that it “identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct.” He pushed that false narrative for weeks before letting the public see the actual report. Mr. Barr’s misleading letter also did not inform the nation of many of Mr. Mueller’s most critical lines.

In particular, Mr. Barr did not mention that Mr. Mueller said that he would have cleared the president of obstruction if the facts so showed. Nor did it mention that Mr. Mueller believed Justice Department policy prevented him from indicting a sitting president or even calling Mr. Trump’s conduct criminal. The president echoed Mr. Barr’s claims for months, saying things like “Robert Mueller and the 18 angry Trump-hating Democrats” arrived “at a conclusion of no collusion and no obstruction!”

Second, the Democrats in Congress have myopically viewed the report in political terms, asking whether their fortunes would be harmed by opening an impeachment proceeding. That is the wrong way to look at it. The right way is to look at it in law enforcement terms — a president who takes grave steps to undermine the rule of law in the very way the report describes is not fit for office.

There is no higher duty for Congress than to investigate and act when such a report lands on your desk. Those who say “oh, a Senate supermajority will never convict Trump” have it backward. That’s a feature, not a bug — our Constitution allows the House to investigate without the worry that its investigation will be twisted for political ends that would force the removal of an innocent president. The members of the House have a duty to act, even if the Senate won’t convict, because they are setting the standards for future presidents and because impeachment hearings will crystallize the nation’s attention on the actual events, as opposed to spin from the president and his attorney general.

And third, people don’t have the time or inclination to read a long report, at least not unless there’s something more lurid in it (the Starr report comes to mind). I’ve addressed many large audiences recently and asked for a show of hands on how many have read the Mueller report. The response is always under 1 percent — and it’s not surprising, given that the report is over 440 pages long and doesn’t reach a conclusion.

But now we get to something interesting — the asterisk. Mr. Mueller’s testimony will occur under a greatly changed circumstance from when the report was finished. The attorney general has recently said, referring to Mr. Mueller, “I personally felt he could’ve reached a decision” about obstruction, and further said that “the opinion says you cannot indict a president while he is in office, but he could’ve reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity.”

That compels Congress to ask Mr. Mueller two final questions: “First, when you were serving as special counsel, did Mr. Barr ever tell you that you could reach a decision about Mr. Trump’s criminality? Second, since Mr. Barr has now said that department policy allows you to reach a decision as to whether it was criminal activity, please do so. No one knows the facts better than you. We need you to. ”

The report speaks for itself. But in an era when our leaders have lied about it in the hope that Americans won’t read it, we need simple connect-the-dots questions clearly posed that will correct the record. Mr. Mueller’s report itself says that a sitting president cannot be indicted because it may “potentially pre-empt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct.” Our Constitution outlines only one such process: an impeachment inquiry in the House. It’s time.

 

[fraurosena]

Mueller won’t be testifying alone tomorrow. His former chief of staff will be joining him, as Mueller’s counsel, and to testify himself. What’s going on here?

 

[fraurosena]

It seems Trump isn’t very pleased with the latest development.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Ticklish]

No, thanks. We're already stuck with the heinous Steve King and Joni Ernst. We don't need more awful people representing us in Iowa. 

[fraurosena]

Cue hissy fit.

 

[fraurosena]

Finally!

 

But that's not all. 

 

[Palimpsest]

Things may finally be looking up!

[fraurosena]

Short Seth Abramson thread with his explaination of why Pelosi seems reluctant to impeach.

TL:DR

The dems are strengthening their hand by investigating more impeachable facts than the clear obstruction cases from the Mueller report. Repugs may downplay the seriousness of obstruction, but it will be harder to do so for bribery, money-laundering, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy.

[fraurosena]

In case anyone doubts the Dems are gearing the country for impeachment:

 

[fraurosena]

Nadler says Pelosi is on board.