American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

kind of a huge deal here imo

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/13/477896804/obama-administration-to-offer-schools-guidance-on-transgender-bathrooms

good move imho

NPR had some pedantic fundie lawyer on this morning talking about the trauma of a frightened girl having to wear her gym clothes all day ("getting nasty") so she wouldn't have to risk a "biological boy" intruding into the changing room.

posts very much out of character.

I know this "isn't about bathrooms" but I hope a side effect of this is more general thoughtfulness when it comes to the maintenance of public school bathrooms. When I was a high school student with IBD it was frustrating to me that important things like stall doors and soap dispensers were routinely broken or missing.

yeah Sotosyn i hate every single move the Administration makes yup yup yup why don't you join Anarchists for Clinton

Didn't say that, Morbs! But you're not apt to mention what you agree with.

Ahem. Yeah I'm like stunned and pleased by how strongly DOJ is making its point with this.

When I was a high school student with IBD it was frustrating to me that important things like stall doors and soap dispensers were routinely broken or missing.

In my high school, I thought the stall doors were missing because it made it more difficult for kids (and teachers) to secretly do drugs/have sex in them.

^^ this

http://i.imgur.com/C30COIb.jpg

That's Mister White from the Bond films, right?

In my high school, I thought the stall doors were missing because it made it more difficult for kids (and teachers) to secretly do drugs/have sex in them.

― i like to trump and i am crazy (DJP)

ts: american public high schools vs. the zoom club

@thedailybeast
The CIA has "mistakenly" destroyed the sole copy of a massive Senate torture report

https://www.yahoo.com/news/senate-report-on-cia-torture-1429636113023030.html

@ggreenwald
This is the most honest agency within The Most Transparent Administration Ever™, so nobody should suspect bad faith

The incident was privately disclosed to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department last summer, the sources said. But the destruction of a copy of the sensitive report has never been made public. Nor was it reported to the federal judge who, at the time, was overseeing a lawsuit seeking access to the still classified document under the Freedom of Information Act, according to a review of court files in the case.

I think I just heard Feinstein's head explode

lmao at the thought of a 'sole copy' of anything in 2016.

cia probably still has telephone records from the calls i made to my parents from germany in 2004 but somehow there's only one copy of an important senate document.

man, someone better get the inspector general on this

oh wait

it wasn't the sole copy, notwithstanding that dailybeast tweet

The CIA inspector general’s office — the spy agency’s internal watchdog — has acknowledged it “mistakenly” destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved, Yahoo News has learned.

Although other copies of the report exist, the erasure of the controversial document by the CIA office charged with policing agency conduct has alarmed the U.S. senator who oversaw the torture investigation and reignited a behind-the-scenes battle over whether the full unabridged report should ever be released, according to multiple intelligence community sources familiar with the incident.

The story's good but that "sole copy" line followed by the second paragraph threw me off such that I had to reread them.

it's the only copy of a report with other extant copies

it seems they tipped off South Africa on the only Nelson Mandela in '62 tho

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36296551

heh

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/5/16/1527124/-Conservative-congressional-candidate-shares-screenshot-forgets-to-close-porn-windows

That's in my district. So great, we've been chuckling about it all day.

The guy's "response" post is completely unhinged and incomprehensible, which almost ruins the fun.

lol

Whew! False alarm. Turns out he was just _researching_ porn sites, because viruses interfered with his FEC filing, and it must have been a malicious operator lurking in the world of porn.

https://www.arlnow.com/2016/05/17/webb-i-was-testing-porn-sites-for-viruses/

Oh holy shit, the actual repub candidate in that race used to work for me! That's a bizarre thing to suddenly realize.

Not the porno dude.

you weren't kidding about "unhinged"

I don't know if you were searching this morning for the notorious post that has now nominated me as Tab Webb, I was just as confused when I signed on this morning and found our page suspended pending approval for deletion of a the notorious post, not for the content of two tabs you needed a magnifying glass to see, but because of the comments from critics that failed to observe the social media guidelines. "See how dirty you are?"

Besides the inanity of the suggestion that someone in a world of confusion is waiting on an illicit website for a congressional candidate to infect his FEC data file, and throw in 4800 viruses to boot, there is the ludicrous claim of hypocrisy for a Christian who might be found there. Perhaps it is just my reading of the Gospels, but the only perfect person who ever lived was named Jesus, and if you check ARL Now, I am Jebus, with a B--yet another ludicrous claim.

"Now, I am Jebus, with a B--" now available as a DN

dude's too hard on himself, I'd give him a solid B, maybe a B+

Business as usual in Congress

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/16/politics/zika-congress-funding/

Republican-controlled House and Senate are on a collision course about how to deal with the spread of the Zika, pushing separate proposals for federal funding to combat the virus, and complicating efforts to deliver emergency money quickly to agencies hoping to develop a vaccine and head off new cases.

The Zika virus causes microcephaly and other birth defects, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and can be spread through mosquito bites.

House Republicans unveiled a $622 million proposal on Monday -- about half of the $1.1 billion that a bipartisan Senate group is pushing, and far short of the initial $1.9 billion request from the White House that President Barack Obama and many congressional Democrats are pressuring Republicans to approve.

the House GOP really doesn't think the government should ever do anything at all, do they. it's weird that they expect a paycheck.

When they do think the govt should take action it can be problematic as well

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/house-bill-budget-power-dc-government-39161377

A House committee approved a bill on Tuesday that would block the District of Columbia government from spending local tax dollars without approval by Congress.

The party-line vote by the House Oversight Committee was not a surprise after Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, characterized the city's so-called "budget autonomy" law as an illegal attempt to take power away from Congress.

The District government has sent its budget to Congress for approval every year since the city was granted home rule in 1973. But this year, city leaders planned to skip that step. City voters approved a referendum granting freedom over the budget to the District, and a judge ruled in the city's favor after the law was challenged in court.

The arcane issue of how and when the city can spend its money is a big deal to local officials and advocates of home rule, who say it's unfair for the city government to be treated like a federal agency. Roughly three-quarters of the city's $13 billion budget comes from local tax dollars rather than federal appropriations. In the past, the city government has been forced to close during federal shutdowns even though it had the money to continue operating.

And this:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article78266277.html

Defying a veto threat, the GOP-led House is pressing ahead with debate on a $602 billion defense policy bill that seeks to halt an erosion of the U.S. military's combat readiness by purchasing more weapons and forbidding further cuts in troop levels.

The legislation also proposes greater oversight of the White House's National Security Council, prohibits prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility from being moved to the U.S., and gives U.S. service members a higher pay raise than the Pentagon recommended. A vote on the bill is expected Wednesday.

In a 17-page statement on the policy bill, the White House detailed its objections to numerous provisions and said President Barack Obama would reject the legislation if it reached his desk.

Among the measures the Obama administration opposes is a Republican plan to shift $18 billion in wartime spending to pay for additional ships, jet fighters, helicopters and more that the Pentagon didn't request.

Defying a veto threat, the GOP-led House is pressing ahead with debate on a $602 billion defense policy bill that seeks to halt an erosion of the U.S. military's combat readiness by purchasing more weapons and forbidding further cuts in troop levels.

nice editorializing there, mcclatchy

Among the measures the Obama administration opposes is a Republican plan to shift $18 billion in wartime spending to pay for additional ships, jet fighters, helicopters and more that the Pentagon didn't request.

maybe the white house will compromise by only allowing 17.2 billion to shift over to new toys and then use the other 0.8 billion to help fight zika

$18 billion in crap the Pentagon didn't ask for, amazing

gotta grow that gdp somehow

Government spending only creates jobs when those jobs are with defense contractors, dontcha know.

time to go full throttle with "GOP wants your babies to get Zika"

you know, like how the gop did with ebola and the dems in 2014.

I don't know what our latest batshit rightwing American thread is, but here's a submission:

http://therightstuff.biz/2016/03/29/cuck-is-our-racist/

"cuck" is our "racist"

The best thing about "cuck" is how it sounds like a nonsensical yelp

Just as “racist” hits rightists hard because it attempts to psychopathologize the healthy preference for our own race,

“cuck” is devastating to leftists because they are being described as the most humiliating kind of man possible, one who gets aroused by letting another man—or other men—have sex with his wife.

might not be worth reading too deeply into something written by 'Auschwitz S0ccer R3f'

I feel like most leftists would be with me on not knowing this was a thing until the far-right started obsessing over it.

^this really can not be stressed enough.

Probably a lot more poly nonbinary leftists than leftists who'd lose their shit if you called them a cuck

also, it's just silly as fuck. like, can you even imagine a person in the real world saying that and not getting laughed out of the room - assuming anyone in said room even knew what in the actual fuck this person was talking about.

Cuckoldry was a big topic in Shakespeare's comedies, but largely because it was prominent in the plots of comedies by Plautus, who was used as a model by Elizabethans.

"cuck!"

...oh shit dude are you choking or

xpost - sure, but these guys don't seem to be talking about literal cuckoldry (afaict?) and i doubt they sit around reading shakespeare. it's just another idiotic, childish epithet .

i do enjoy how the guy points out that "no one bought it" when the GOP rails against the Left as the "real racists". i mean he tries to salvage the point by decrying the 'leftist media' controlling the narrative or whatever, but even this idiot knows how lame the talking point is.

(not that there aren't leftists who are also racists obv)