Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Opinion

Less than One Month to the Midterms

If you’re angry about politics, do something about it.

By David Leonhardt
Opinion Columnist


I spent a little time diving into the history of presidential elections for my column this week. Specifically, I wanted to see how President Trump’s share of the popular vote in 2016 — 46.1 percent — compared to the share of other candidates.

Trump received a smaller share of the popular vote than every elected president over the past century except two — Richard Nixon in 1968 and Bill Clinton in 1992, thanks to the two strongest modern third-party candidates (George Wallace and Ross Perot, respectively).

But the truly shocking comparison was this one: Trump received a smaller share of the vote than 16 losing candidates over the country’s history, including Mitt Romney, John Kerry, Henry Clay, William Jennings Bryan and a couple of men I bet you didn’t even realize had been major-party presidential nominees. I included a particularly obscure one in the column.

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is what led me to look up these numbers. I think it’s important to consider the full series of events that have led us to this moment, such as Trump’s history of fraud; his razor-thin win, with illegal help from a foreign enemy; and the Senate Republicans’ theft of a Supreme Court seat.

It’s more than enough reason to be furious. It’s also reason to get involved in politics, and to do so now, as I argue in the column.

As I was writing it, I wanted to be able to recommend ways for people to get involved in the midterms that didn’t simply involve voting for Democrats. Unfortunately, that would be a fantasy. “It’s a binary choice: either you support the Dems or the GOP. If the latter you are endorsing Trump,” tweeted Max Boot, the conservative foreign policy expert.
“The Republican Party now exists for one reason, and one reason only: for the exercise of raw political power,” writes Tom Nichols, another conservative, in The Atlantic. “True authoritarian muscle is now being flexed by the GOP, in a kind of buzzy, steroidal McCarthyism that lacks even anti-communism as a central organizing principle.”

More on Kavanaugh. The ugliness of his confirmation process is likely to push the newest justice even further to the right, predicts Noah Feldman, the legal scholar and author of a book (which I enjoyed) on the New Deal-era Supreme Court. “There is good reason to think that Kavanaugh will be a more far-right and party-line conservative justice after this confirmation process than he would otherwise have been,” Feldman writes in Bloomberg Opinion.

In The Times, Barry Friedman, an N.Y.U. law professor, reviews some of that same New Deal history and concludes: “Historically, when big collisions between public opinion and the Supreme Court have occurred, the justices lose and the public gets its way.”

The climate. What’s the biggest single reason to get involved in politics? The condition of the planet — and the refusal of the current government, including the Supreme Court, to do anything about the problem.

Coral Davenport of The Times had a chilling lead sentence on a story this weekend: “A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has ‘no documented historic precedent.’”

RichardSM Loc: Back in Texas

These quotes are absolutely ridiculous there’s been nothing that has been proven that the president is doing anything illegal all this from the left putting out false information it amounts to just B.S. all it does is to work up the left leaning Democrats claiming Trump is selling out America again B.S.

And for judge Kavanaugh the left is being worked up into another nothing, he will do his job as a fine Supreme Court justices. You nut case lefty’s get a life, he will protect woman’s rights.

skylane5sp Loc: Puyallup, WA

These are just opinions. And we all know what opinions are compared to...

And tward seems to have way more 'opinions' than should be medically possible.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Trump confronted with ‘unprecedented’ legal issues after Cohen’s ‘earth-shattering’ plea, lawyers say

GLOBE CORRESPONDENTS AND GLOBE STAFF  AUGUST 22, 2018


Local lawyers said President Trump faces “unprecedented” legal issues after his former attorney Michael Cohen admitted Tuesday to breaking campaign finance laws at the president’s behest, with one calling Cohen’s guilty plea “clearly the most pressing legal threat to Donald Trump to date.”

Daniel S. Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University who specializes in criminal law and evidence, called Cohen’s guilty plea to eight charges “earth-shattering.”

“We have somebody declaring in open court that the now-president of the United States coordinated with him and directed him to commit a federal crime,” said Medwed.

Cohen is pleading guilty to two campaign finance charges. The first alleges that he worked with the National Enquirer to pay former Playboy model Karen McDougal not to disclose potentially damaging information about Trump. The second involves a hush money payment to porn star Stephanie Clifford, who performs under the name Stormy Daniels.

Trump, McDougal, and Clifford were not mentioned by name in the court document known as a “criminal information” that lays out the charges Cohen was facing. The Justice Department has a policy of not naming a person in an information unless they’re being charged, said David S. Schumacher, an attorney at Hooper, Lundy & Bookman and a former assistant US attorney for Massachusetts.

But if Trump is prosecuted down the road, the fact that he was unnamed in Cohen’s case won’t be an issue.

“I don’t think there’s any question that Trump’s the unnamed person,” said Schumacher.

Cohen likely pleaded guilty because he would have faced a lengthier prison sentence if he had lost at trial, Medwed said. Cohen could spend four to five years behind bars, whereas if he fought the case, he could have faced decades in prison, Medwed said.

Cohen’s plea, Medwed said, “directly implicates” Trump in criminal conduct.

“Michael Cohen alone might not be enough to bring Trump in on a criminal case,” he said. “But this could provide the basis for pursuing an indictment against” Trump.

Stephen J. Weymouth, a veteran Boston defense attorney, said Cohen’s admissions show that he and Trump “basically participated in a conspiracy to violate campaign laws.”

“It seems to me that if it wasn’t the president, that person would have been indicted as well,” said Weymouth, noting he is not an expert on campaign finance law.
The Department of Justice has long had a policy against allowing an indictment of a sitting president — a policy that Weymouth questioned.

“I don’t see why there can’t be an indictment and then put it off for trial until after he’s done being president,” he said.

Weymouth said he suspected that Trump will eventually pardon both Cohen and his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who was convicted Tuesday in Virginia on eight counts in a financial fraud trial unrelated to Cohen’s case.

“Trump has been quite clear that he’s got the power to . . . pardon anyone, everyone, including himself,” he said.

Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, said Wednesday in media interviews that Cohen would not accept a pardon from Trump.

The jury in Manafort’s trial deadlocked on 10 counts, and the judge in the case declared a mistrial on those charges — meaning Manafort could find himself back in court to face those allegations again. He also faces a second, separate trial that is set to begin next month in Washington.

Unlike Cohen, Manafort has not implicated the president in any wrongdoing, but it’s possible he knows things that could be damaging to Trump and “was trying to be a stand-up guy,” Weymouth said.

Manafort’s calculus could change, though, now that he is facing prison time, Weymouth added.

“Maybe he does have information, and maybe now he thinks it’s time to start trading on it,” he said.

Weymouth said federal prosecutors might also have evidence of illegal acts by Trump’s two adult sons. Observers have speculated that Donald Trump Jr. may have broken the law when he met inside Trump Tower with Russians promising dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“This is unprecedented, and to a certain extent it’s like a circus. Why knows what’s going to happen next?” Weymouth said.

Though the president’s involvement makes Cohen’s case exceptional, at its base are all the hallmarks of a classic white-collar crime case, Schumacher said: “lying, cheating, and stealing.”

“It’s always about money,” said Schumacher.

How Cohen’s plea deal will affect the president, though, Schumacher said, is “the question on everyone’s mind.”

“It’s a pretty shocking development and clearly the most pressing legal threat to Donald Trump to date,” he said. “What does this mean for Donald Trump’s legal jeopardy? That’s something we don’t know yet.”

Medwed said the presidency likely will shield Trump — for now.

“My strong hunch is that he won’t be indicted until he leaves office,” said Medwed.

But he added, “This is a cloud that will not dissipate for the remainder of the 45th president’s reign. It’s not a question of politics. It’s just there. There is a strong basis for indicting him.”



https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/08/22/lawyers-cohen-plea-cloud-that-will-not-dissipate/4jGK7gV3k5Htt56OeRgSUK/story.html

RichardSM Loc: Back in Texas

Again quotes and a bunch of BS from over active imaginative far left just hoping to rally up the idiotic extremists on the left, you know this why do you keep pushing this dribble.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

‘Cause it ain’t dribble.

You’re in denial...you know what that is, don’t you?

RichardSM Loc: Back in Texas

You need to stop listening to msnbc,abc,cbs. Your being brainwashed by the nutty left and progressive socialistic BS .

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Can you overcome your denial in order to see reality?

Are you so poisoned you can’t think?

Reality exists, is real, can be found, but also can be denied in error.

Your desires don’t define reality; it is what it is, independent of your wishes.

Trump is a crook and it’s out there for anyone to see who’s looking.

RBC

If this is so damaging to Trump, why has the press basically Ignored it, the opinion is dated 10 weeks ago.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Boy, you republicans don’t count weeks too well, do you?—approximately seven weeks!

And in the legal business, seven weeks is not time at all—seven months is not time at all.

The cop recently found guilty in Chicago for killing a black kid, if I remember correctly, killed him four years ago!

Most of this will b hHandled by Mueller, who so far isn’t speaking, presumably keeping out of the way of the coming November elections.

As I’ve said elsewhere, “The Mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.”