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FOCUS: Can the Electoral College Accept Foreign Influence? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=63"><span class="small">Marc Ash, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Saturday, 17 December 2016 11:35 |
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Ash writes: "With the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA in unilateral agreement with a 'high degree of confidence' that the November 8, 2016, U.S. presidential election was influenced by a foreign actor, specifically Russia, can the Electoral College vote even proceed?"
Donald Trump. (photo: ABC News)
Can the Electoral College Accept Foreign Influence?
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
17 December 16
 ith the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA in unilateral agreement with a “high degree of confidence" that the November 8, 2016, U.S. presidential election was influenced by a foreign actor, specifically Russia, can the Electoral College vote even proceed?
Should the electors ratify Donald Trump’s victory knowing what they now know, they would – at the very least – be accepting a foreign hand in choosing the President of the United States.
This is a historic moment politically and constitutionally for the country. These are conclusive statements by all major U.S. national security agencies. This is specifically what the Electoral College was created to detect and prevent.
Alexander Hamilton, in creating the foundation for the college, addressed the question directly in his Federalist Paper 68:
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?
– Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 68, 1788
Cast in that light, the current situation is completely unprecedented in the entire scope of American history. Never before have the Electoral College electors been so informed, in such direct and unequivocal terms, that the hand of a foreign actor is influencing the outcome of the election for the highest office in the land.
It is the constitutional duty of all 538 electors to take into urgent consideration the implications of the joint findings of all federal National Security and law enforcement agencies.
Should Donald Trump be denied an Electoral College victory, he is not disqualified from becoming president, it simply remands the matter to the House of Representatives. House members certainly have both public and classified avenues to discovery of the facts. Something the electors do not have.
No presidential election in history compares even remotely to the one now upon the nation. The electors are duty-bound, constitutionally, to take into full account the extraordinary statements made by the joint National Security and law enforcement agencies.
It is of grave importance to the nation that the Electoral College electors put the security and integrity of Office of the President above political obligation.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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It's Time for Mass Clemency From Obama |
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Saturday, 17 December 2016 09:45 |
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Alexander writes: "Time is running out for thousands of people who have been holding out hope that they or their loved ones might be granted clemency before President Obama leaves office."
Michelle Alexander. (photo: MichelleAlexander.com)
It's Time for Mass Clemency From Obama
By Michelle Alexander, Michelle Alexander's Facebook Page
17 December 16
 ime is running out for thousands of people who have been holding out hope that they or their loved ones might be granted clemency before President Obama leaves office. Obama has freed more than 1000 people in recent years, granting clemency to more people than the past 11 presidents combined. But now is the time for even bolder and more courageous action. Trump has vowed to be a "law and order" president and has praised the horrific, murderous drug war in the Philippines. He has nominated as his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, a man who not only has a history of overt bigotry, but who has been a primary opponent of criminal justice reform in Congress. For those who believed America's drug war was winding down, I fear I hear the engine of mass incarceration revving up again. The stock market hears it too -- private prison stocks have soared since Trump was declared president. One can only wonder if Trump -- a man obsessed with proving his "toughness" -- will ever find anyone worthy of clemency.
The word clemency means mercy, lenience. It is granted in a spirit of generosity and compassion, an implicit acknowledgement of the universality of human suffering and failing. Obama has granted a record number of clemency petitions because he is well aware that the drug war has been a spectacular failure, needlessly destroying countless families and lives. Obama has acknowledged his own frequent, illegal drug use in his youth, not just marijuana but cocaine as well. Surely he knows that if he had not been raised by white grandparents in Hawaii -- if he had been raised instead in the 'hood -- he, too, would most likely be cycling in and out of prison today rather than serving as president of the United States. Clemency reflects an impulse to extend compassion rather than resort to unrelenting punitiveness.
Trump, by contrast, is the embodiment of our worst human impulses. If that sentence is not self-evident to you, we need to have a conversation much longer than what can transpire in a Facebook post. What I simply want to say here is that there would be no better demonstration of what it means to embrace an alternative vision of America than to set free all those who have been unfairly shamed, demonized, condemned and treated as disposable in the recent domestic wars we've waged on poor people and people of color. These wars (supposedly on drugs and immigration, but really on people) are directly traceable to the very same racially divisive politics and fear mongering that swept Trump into the presidency last month. By granting mass clemency to those who have suffered the most for the least crimes, Obama would demonstrate through deeds -- not just words -- what it means to be a nation that treats every human being as though their life matters.
PICO has launched a petition urging President Obama to grant mass clemency to non-violent, federal drug offenders convicted of low-level drug offenses and to pardon all those who fear mass deportation and the destruction of their families as a result of civil immigration infractions, such as overstaying a visa or unlawful employment. I have signed this petition, and I hope you will as well.
Color of Change is also urging mass clemency, focusing more narrowly on the clemency process itself. This petition urges Obama to rapidly accelerate the clemency process for low-risk categories of non-violent offenders and to expand who's eligible for relief by considering people who did not get retroactive consideration under the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010 or who failed to file for clemency or filed their clemency petition late. I have signed this petition too.
See https://act.colorofchange.org/sign/obama-clemency-before-jan20/?t=3&akid=6599.1469225.PjrZBF
Right now, thousands of people are holding on to the audacity of hope -- the hope that the first black president will show profound moral courage as he walks out the door. Maybe, just maybe, they say, President Obama will show us -- in a big way that will inspire and capture the imagination of millions -- change we can truly believe in. I say, let's do more than hope. Let's have the audacity to demand freedom for those who have already waited much too long for justice.
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Putin Agrees to Receive Intelligence Briefings in Trump's Place |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Friday, 16 December 2016 15:10 |
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Borowitz writes: "In what Donald Trump's transition-team members are calling a further example of international cooperation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to receive daily U.S. intelligence briefings in the place of the President-elect."
Russian president Vladimir Putin. (photo: Alexnei Nikolosky/Getty)
Putin Agrees to Receive Intelligence Briefings in Trump's Place
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
16 December 16
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 n what Donald Trump’s transition-team members are calling a further example of international coöperation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to receive daily U.S. intelligence briefings in the place of the President-elect.
Trump, who had earlier decided that he did not need the briefings and had assigned Vice-President-elect Mike Pence to receive them, said on Tuesday that Putin was a “much better choice.”
“No offense to Mike, but Vladimir Putin is just a terrific, terrific guy to do this,” he said. “He knows all the players.”
Trump said that, while he was “totally uninterested” in receiving the briefings, Putin appeared to be “extremely interested.”
Trump also touted his deal-making prowess in securing the Russian President’s services. “The American people are getting an amazing deal here,” he said. “Putin is doing this totally for free.”
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If Donald Trump Is So Upset About Iraq WMD Lies, Why Would He Want to Hire John Bolton? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=35798"><span class="small">Jon Schwarz, The Intercept</span></a>
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Friday, 16 December 2016 15:08 |
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Schwarz writes: "The Bush administration, with Bolton as undersecretary of state for arms control, arrived in Washington, D.C., in 2001 with the goal of invading Iraq."
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty)
If Donald Trump Is So Upset About Iraq WMD Lies, Why Would He Want to Hire John Bolton?
By Jon Schwarz, The Intercept
16 December 16
 onald Trump’s reaction to news that some U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election on his behalf was to fire back: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”
He might have had a point — were it not for the fact that he was being so obviously and ludicrously insincere. Case in point: Trump is said to be on the brink of appointing John Bolton as deputy secretary of state. He is arguably the man most responsible for hiding the truth about Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs.
The Bush administration, with Bolton as undersecretary of state for arms control, arrived in Washington, D.C., in 2001 with the goal of invading Iraq. They weren’t motivated by whatever WMDs Iraq might or might not have, but, as a senior administration official later explained, by the simple and highly galling fact of Saddam Hussein’s “defiance” of the U.S.
When the September 11 terrorist attacks gave them the opportunity, the administration’s conservative wing, including Bolton, had no interest in sending inspectors to Iraq to see if Hussein had WMD. They wanted to simply use WMD as “justification you can jump on” to invade — without bothering to check whether Iraq actually had anything. (It was only in the fall of 2002 that Colin Powell and Tony Blair prevailed upon Bush to go to the United Nations and go through the motions of inspections.)
However, Bolton and company faced an immediate obstacle: the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and its Brazilian diplomat leader José Bustani.
The OPCW had been formed in 1997, and is headquartered at the Hague in the Netherlands. It exists to administer a 1993 arms control treaty prohibiting the manufacture and use of chemical weapons.
Iraq had informed the OPCW in late 2001 that it wanted to sign the treaty. This would require Iraq to provide the organization with a list of any chemical weapons stockpiles it possessed — and submit to intrusive OPCW inspections.
This set off loud alarm bells in the Bush administration, since inspections could not just delay their desired war, but undermine the case for it in the first place. As Bustani put it years later, his willingness to consider inspecting Iraq “caused an uproar in Washington,” and it quickly “became evident that the Americans were serious about getting rid of me.”
According to Bustani, “Everybody knew there weren’t any [banned chemical weapons]. An inspection would make it obvious there were no weapons to destroy. This would completely nullify the decision to invade.”
The U.S. was not about to let this happen. Bolton took the lead in ousting Bustani and replacing him with someone more pliable. After the Bush administration failed to win a March 2002 no-confidence vote from OPCW’s executive committee, it threatened to cut off its funding of the OPCW, which accounted for 22 percent of its budget.
This got everyone’s attention. The next month, with Bolton in the Netherlands to supervise, the OPCW voted to fire Bustani with 48 countries voting yes, seven voting no, and 43 abstaining. A European diplomat commented at the time that “I think a lot of people swallowed this because they thought it was better for Bustani to be removed than have the U.S. pull out and see the organization collapse.”
Bustani could not immediately be reached for comment. In response to an interview request sent to his assistant, Bolton told her to pass along the message: “no comment — he can read my book!”
Bolton’s 2008 memoir, “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations,” states that Bustani was “a management disaster, whose performance called into question the OPCW’s credibility and indeed the [Chemical Weapons Convention] itself. State’s arms controllers complained repeatedly about Bustani’s incompetence.” Bolton’s book does not provide any details about Bustani’s purported poor performance and incompetence.
While Bolton’s wing of the administration won that round, they were unable to prevent later inspections of Iraq under the auspices of the U.N. Those inspectors then failed to find anything — since Iraq did not actually possess any banned weapons — and the U.S. and its allies went ahead and invaded anyway in March 2003.
Bolton went on to make the bogus case for war in other ways, pushing some of the administration’s key WMD lies. In 2005, he became Bush’s ambassador to the U.N., though it took a recess appointment to do it. Bustani became Brazil’s ambassador to France, and the OPCW won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013.
If Bolton becomes part of the Trump administration, he’ll be an extremely loud voice for war with Iran. In November, he said that overthrowing Iran’s government is the “only long-term solution” to the country’s supposed threat to the U.S., and he subsequently added that he hoped Trump would “move very quickly in the early days of his presidency to abrogate” the Iran nuclear deal.
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esterday was the day Donald Trump was going to hold his first press conference in 5 months. He abruptly cancelled it on Monday with no explanation. Well, I have one...
