[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #611 Deadline for Barr

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Op maandag 1 april 2019 10:32 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

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Over valsspelen gesproken, hoeveel democraten steunen het plan om ID te verplichten bij het stemmen?

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Op maandag 1 april 2019 10:42 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Weinig, omdat het gewoon verkapte voter surpression is in plaats van een poging eerlijke en transparante verkiezingen te garanderen. Je ziet het in bizarre taferelen als voorstellen dat een studentenpas geen geldige legitimatie zou zijn, maar een lidmaatschap pas van de NRA wel. Het gaat ook vaak niet om 'ID', maar om specifieke varianten van IDs waar niet iedereen even makkelijk aan kan komen. De Amerikaanse bureaucratie is ook een enorm amateuristisch zooitje vergeleken bij bijvoorbeeld die in Nederland. Hier is voor het gros van de mensen een ID-kaart te verkrijgen op een locatie die hooguit op fietsafstand ligt en fatsoenlijke openingstijden kent, is er doorgaans tegemoetkoming in de kosten voor minderbedeelden, hebben we automatische kiezersregistratie en ga zo maar door.

Het idee achter democratie is dat het laagdrempelig is. De VS kent een lange geschiedenis van wetgeving die probeert de kiezersopkomst (selectief) te drukken. Ook nadat het concept expliciet 'negers mogen niet stemmen' was afgeschaft, waren er honderdeneen andere manieren om de opkomst onder zwarte Amerikanen te drukken, van stembelasting tot het testen van geletterdheid.

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Op maandag 1 april 2019 10:40 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:

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- Dat ligt wel even genuanceerder uiteraard, wat ze wil is dat platform-utilities geen eigenaar mogen zijn van de producten op dat platform. Ook wil ze de monopolie-wetgeving wat meer toepassen op techbedrijven. Hoe is dat extreem-links volgens jou?

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Op maandag 1 april 2019 10:43 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Hangt van de staat af. Maar een goedkoop makkelijk te krijgen langdurig geldig federaal ID is best een prima idee.
Moeten die wel gewoon overal te halen zijn, niet van die geintjes die je nu in rode staten hebt dat je ze een keer per twee weken op een dinsdag tussen elf en half twaalf kunt ophalen bij een bureau 100 kilometer verder.

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Op maandag 1 april 2019 10:47 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

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Er is vast een middenweg als het gaat om verplichte ID bij stemmen. Wat ik vooral zie is dat de democraten zwarte mensen graag als hulpbehoevend zien en dat er daarom niets van ze gevraagd mag worden.
Een mooi voorstel zou zijn dat er verplichte ID komt in ruil voor meer stembureaus.

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Op maandag 1 april 2019 10:47 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

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Er is vast een middenweg als het gaat om verplichte ID bij stemmen. Wat ik vooral zie is dat de democraten zwarte mensen graag als hulpbehoevend zien en dat er daarom niets van ze gevraagd mag worden.

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Een mooi voorstel zou zijn dat er verplichte ID komt in ruil voor meer stembureaus.

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The House Judiciary Committee intends to authorize subpoenas Wednesday morning for special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report and his underlying evidence, escalating a fight with the Justice Department as it reviews the special counsel’s work.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the committee chairman, said Monday he’s moving ahead with plans to press for the nearly 400-page Mueller report via subpoena despite written assurances from Attorney General William Barr that he plans to release the document by mid-April or sooner.

Under the proposal, Nadler would determine when to actually issue the subpoenas, which may depend on the level of cooperation and transparency Democrats get from the Justice Department. Nadler has said he’s “disturbed” by Barr’s reticence to share the full report immediately and has asked him to join the committee in seeking a judge’s approval to release all grand jury information in Mueller’s report.

Barr is reviewing the document to scrub it of four categories of information — including grand jury information and material he deems derogatory to “peripheral third parties.” Barr has also indicated he intends to redact classified information and material relevant to ongoing investigations.

Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, blasted Nadler's move as an unnecessary escalation against Barr.

“Judiciary Democrats have escalated from setting arbitrary deadlines to demanding unredacted material that Congress does not, in truth, require and that the law does not allow to be shared outside the Justice Department," Collins said. "It’s unfortunate that a body meant to uphold the law has grown so desperate that it’s patently misrepresenting the law, even as the attorney general has already demonstrated transparency above and beyond what is required.”

SPOILER

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Op zondag 31 maart 2019 20:45 schreef EipNiC het volgende:

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Zoals ik al zei; je bent nergens zonder je vijand.

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President Trump on Monday is expected to host about 300 guests, including convicted felons, at the White House for the “First Step Act Celebration,” a party intended to bring attention to a rare piece of bipartisan legislation he passed last year, and which he plans to highlight on the campaign trail.

The East Room fete will cap a day of events dedicated to overhauling the criminal justice system, an issue that agencies across the government have been asked to elevate. The labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, is expected to participate in a panel on work force development. Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is to lead a session about prisoner re-entry. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser, will weigh in on a session dealing with incarcerated women. Kim Kardashian, the reality star, was even invited to participate in the panels and the party, but couldn’t attend.

Months after the legislation passed, and amid foreign policy blunders and a defeat on funding a wall along the southern border, Mr. Trump’s administration is putting the issue front and center.

But some activists who helped work on the legislation — which would expand job training and early-release programs, and modify sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders — have expressed concern that Mr. Trump is more attuned to the political opportunities the law offers him, rather than with ensuring it is enacted effectively.

Despite the high-profile party and round tables — and the White House releasing a presidential proclamation declaring April “second chance month” — Mr. Trump’s budget, released last month, listed only $14 million to pay for the First Step Act’s programs. The law passed in December specifically asked for $75 million a year for five years, beginning in 2019. The funding gap was first reported by The Marshall Project.

Advocates participating in the events at the White House on Monday said they were hoping that officials would publicly address questions about funding the program. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SPOILER

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A whistle-blower working inside the White House has told a House committee that senior Trump administration officials granted security clearances to at least 25 individuals whose applications had been denied by career employees, the committee’s Democratic staff said Monday.

The whistle-blower, Tricia Newbold, a manager in the White House’s Personnel Security Office, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a private interview last month that the 25 individuals included two current senior White House officials, in addition to contractors and other employees working for the office of the president, the staff said in a memo it released publicly.

The memo does not identify any of 25 individuals referenced by Ms. Newbold. The New York Times reported in February that President Trump had personally ordered his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to grant a clearance last year to Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser. Mr. Kelly had recorded Mr. Trump’s direction to him in a memo, according to several people familiar with its contents. Mr. Trump had denied playing a role in an interview with The Times in the Oval Office a month earlier. Mr. Kelly left the White House at the end of last year.

Ms. Newbold told the committee’s staff members that the clearance applications had been denied for a variety of reasons, including “foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct,” the memo said. The denials by the career employees were overturned, she said, by more-senior officials who did not follow the procedures designed to mitigate security risks.

Ms. Newbold, who has worked in the White House for 18 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, said she chose to speak to the Oversight Committee after attempts to raise concerns with her superiors and the White House counsel went nowhere, according to the committee staff’s account.

“I feel that right now this is my last hope to really bring the integrity back into our office,” she said, according to a summary of her March 23 interview with the committee’s staff distributed on Monday.

White House officials have been concerned for weeks that Ms. Newbold would either speak publicly or share information that she had gleaned about how security clearances had been handled during the first half of Mr. Trump’s term. Her statements to the Oversight Committee, which is controlled by Democrats, are likely to increase pressure on the White House to address lingering questions about its general practices around keeping the nation’s secrets and several high-profile cases.

Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who is the Oversight Committee’s chairman, included information provided by Ms. Newbold in a letter to Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, on Monday again demanding that the White House turn over files connected to the security clearance process and make administration personnel available for interviews.

Mr. Cummings said he was prepared to authorize subpoenas as soon as Tuesday to try to compel the White House to comply with an investigation into whether national secrets were at risk — an escalation that could force Mr. Cipollone either to reach an accommodation with Congress or fight in court.

“The committee has given the White House every possible opportunity to cooperate with this investigation, but you have declined,” Mr. Cummings wrote to Mr. Cipollone, describing a 90-minute briefing Mr. Cipollone provided and on-site document review as “general” and unhelpful. “Your actions are now preventing the committee from obtaining the information it needs to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SPOILER

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twitter:

BoutrousTed twitterde op maandag 01-04-2019 om 17:06:28 We have just filed an application for @rcfp with the Chief Judge in Washington seeking an order authorizing Attorney General Barr to release any grand jury material contained in the Mueller report so he won’t have to redact it. https://t.co/i7u8wbevma reageer retweet

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This morning the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a request in the federal district court for the District of Columbia for an order that would authorize the public release of grand jury material that is "cited, quoted, or referenced" in the report submitted to Attorney General William Barr by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

On March 27, the Reporters Committee filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for access to and a copy of the full Mueller report. The attorney general has stated that he will not--and maintains that he cannot--release the report in full, in part because it contains grand jury material subject to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e). A ruling from the district court granting the Reporters Committee's application would allow the Department of Justice and Congress to release those portions of the Mueller report to the public.

"Given the historical significance and overwhelming public interest in the Mueller report, the Reporters Committee is urging the Court to exercise its authority to allow those portions of the report that consist of grand jury material to be released to the public," said Reporters Committee Legal Director Katie Townsend. "The calls for transparency are broad and bipartisan. The president himself has said the report should be made public. We agree. The public is entitled to see as much of the Mueller report, unredacted, as possible."

The Reporters Committee is represented in the matter by Townsend and its executive director, Bruce Brown, as well as by attorneys, led by Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., from the law firm of Gibson Dunn.

"The exceptions to the federal grand jury secrecy rules, multiple precedents, the First Amendment and the public interest all support releasing the Mueller report in full given the extraordinary circumstances of this matter and the need to ensure public confidence in the results of this investigation," said Boutrous. "The American people deserve to see and scrutinize the full contents of the report so they can evaluate for themselves the threats to our electoral system from Russian interference and make their own judgments about whether the president and his campaign coordinated with Russia or obstructed justice."

twitter:

markberman twitterde op maandag 01-04-2019 om 15:22:16 The @washingtonpost's Fact Checkers have been tracking @realDonaldTrump's false or misleading claims since he took office. During his first year, he was averaging nearly 5.9 such public claims per day. Now the average has doubled to 11.7 claims per day https://t.co/b0ElhR5O5c reageer retweet