Hahahahaha!

You are a 2900-level practitioner, <nimrod>.

<California attorney regulators said on Thursday they will seek to disbar attorney John Eastman over his involvement in former US president Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The state bar of California charged Eastman, a former personal lawyer to Trump, with 11 counts of ethics violations, including misleading courts and making false public statements about voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Eastman participated in a strategy “unsupported by facts or law” to obstruct the count of presidential electors in Congress following Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory, the bar’s complaint said.

George Cardona, the bar’s chief trial counsel, said his office will ask a court to revoke Eastman’s law license.

An attorney for Eastman, Randall Miller, disputed the allegations on Thursday, saying it was Eastman’s responsibility as a lawyer to provide Trump with a range of legal options to contest the election results.

Eastman, a former law professor at Chapman University in California, drafted legal memos suggesting then vice-president Mike Pence could refuse to accept electoral votes from several swing states when Congress convened to certify the 2020 vote count. Pence rebuffed his arguments, saying he did not have legal authority.

Eastman also represented Trump in a long-shot lawsuit at the US supreme court seeking to invalidate votes in four states where Trump had falsely claimed evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Eastman repeated many of those claims at a rally outside the White House on 6 January 2021, after which a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol and delayed the congressional certification of the election.

Look on this page earlier in the day. perfidious was picking on people again as usual, so I set him straight. perd's act is so old, tired, BORING....>>

<fra diavolo>, as you well know, pathological liar that you are, the only poster who had anything dealt their way was you--why would I have bothered anyone else, tool?

<....He got his ass spanked today. He's probably crying in his forum w/Zee.....>

Try posting here, drunken liar.

Indeed you are.

<Former President Donald Trump's lengthy rants on Truth Social indicate that he "knows what's coming" from the Department of Justice (DOJ), according to former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on Friday.

"Donald Trump's deranged rants on his third-rate social media platform signal he knows what's coming," read the title for Kirschner's Justice Matters video on YouTube.

Trump has repeatedly targeted the FBI and the DOJ in his social media posts, mostly to claim that he is being scrutinized by the federal government. He is currently being investigated in a number of criminal probes, including the mishandling of hundreds of classified documents that were seized by the FBI last summer at his Mar-a-Lago residence, and his alleged involvement in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The former president, however, has denied any wrongdoing.

Despite the evidence and the testimonies gathered against him in the Capitol riot probe, Trump still hasn't been held accountable for his alleged involvement in the insurrection on January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol building in an effort to stop Joe Biden's Electoral College certification.

Kirschner on Friday said that he is concerned that the DOJ hasn't held Trump accountable for the riot yet, adding that the current lack of action in holding him accountable for over two years sends a message that his actions will go unpunished.

"[The] DOJ has not held a single suit of the insurrection accountable for the violent attack on the government that they launched to try to keep Donald Trump in power unlawfully, unconstitutionally," he said. "Here's my grave concern, there's a message that has been sent by the Department of Justice to the next aspiring dictator, to the next wanna-be autocrat who might consider trying to violently overthrow our democracy if he loses an election, the message that has been sent by the Department of Justice that if you do what Donald Trump did, if you try to violently overthrow our government, you will have more than two years to plot your next move."

Despite being the subject of state and federal criminal investigations, Trump announced his 2024 presidential bid this past November. However, Kirschner doesn't think he stands a chance of reelection.

"I am not a political analyst or expert but I don't think Donald Trump has a snowball's chance in hell of being elected president again," he said on Friday.

In a video posted to his Truth Social account on Wednesday, the former president said that the "weaponization" of law enforcement and intelligence agencies is the "greatest threat to American freedom in generations."

He also expressed hopes that the House members, who will serve on the newly launched Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, would investigate federal agencies such as the FBI and the DOJ.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy released a list on Tuesday of House members who will serve on the new panel. All of those appointed to the committee are Republicans, including chairman Jim Jordan, Representative Elise Stefanik, Representative Chip Roy, Representative Thomas Massie, and others.

While announcing his picks for the weaponization panel and another subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, McCarthy said that the government "has a responsibility to serve the American people, not go after them."

"Unfortunately, throughout Democrats' one-party rule in Washington we saw a dangerous pattern of the government being used to target political opponents while they neglected their most basic responsibilities," he added.>

<Donald Trump has been accused of many things over the years - sometimes unfairly. But does this latest accusation mean Trump could finally be charges with a crime? It seems like he came pretty close: CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig’s new book claims that as then-President Donald Trump was preparing to leave the White House in 2021, federal prosecutors in New York were debating whether to charge Trump with campaign finance crimes the moment he left office.

The prosecutors, from the Southern District of New York that oversees New York City, apparently accumulated sizable evidence against Trump as a collateral effect of efforts to prosecute former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in 2018.

Cohen, you may remember, was under investigation for his role in providing hush money to two women claiming affairs with Trump, one of whom was adult film star Stormy Daniels. The prosecutors did not consider bringing charges against Donald Trump at the time because he was still the sitting president and the sitting president cannot be indicted.

Yet as Trump prepared to leave office, the acting US attorney, Audrey Strauss, led discussions with other prosecutors to discuss the evidence that had been gathered against Trump. “They decided to not seek an indictment Trump for several reasons,” CNN reported, “including the political ramifications and the fact that Trump’s other scandals, such as efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the January 6, 2021, insurrection, “made the campaign finance violations seem somehow trivial and outdated by comparison.””

As one person familiar with the Strauss discussions told Honig, “we were well aware of the prudential reasons why you wouldn’t charge a president, even after he was out of office.”

Could Donald Trump still be prosecuted?

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg seems to be reconsidering whether to charge Trump for the hush money scheme. Bragg hosted Cohen recently – for the first time in over a year – indicating that there may be movement against Trump on the hush money front.

A lot of the leg work toward a Trump prosecution has already been carried out. Prosecutors had created a draft indictment of Cohen that included “exhaustive detail of Trump’s central involvement in the hush money scheme,” Honig wrote.

“The draft Cohen indictment was a full accounting, running over fifty pages in one iteration – essentially both a formal indictment of Cohen and a public excoriation of Trump, only without charges attached,” Honig wrote. “The SDNY’s draft indictment left no doubt: Trump wasn’t merely a bystander or an unwitting beneficiary of the campaign finance crime. He was the driving force behind the scheme, and likely criminally liable for it.”

The final draft of the indictment against Cohen scaled back the language against Donald Trump, however – who was referred to only as “Individual-1.” Although, for a time, the prosecutors debated whether to list Trump as “Co-conspirator 1,” which would have been inflammatory.

Actually, the DOJ’s principal deputy associate attorney general said the “co-conspirator” label would have been “unfair to Trump” because he was not being charged with a crime and that his reputation would be harmed and challenged, without giving him “a formal mechanism to defend himself.” So, prosecutor’s settled for the “Individual-1” label.

Cohen did ultimately plead guilty, stating that he worked “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” The New York prosecutors were eager to take on Trump then – but hindered by political considerations (and the DOJ).

Maybe the prosecutors will “circle back” and take another look at bringing charges against Donald Trump – it seems like just about everyone else is.>

<I'd certainly like to know why <stone free or die> is allowed to constantly rate and bash any and all members in the forums. sfod is the town crier! It's a non-stop problem. Who gives a hoot what sfod's opinion is of others. sfod needs to worry about his own lacking character. sfod's statements are personal attacks -- constant degrading of paying members. Honesty has never been in sfod's realm for long, often manipulating for rules changes to take advantage of them against other members, or simply for political preference (which is a whole nother issue that CGs should avoid)....>

Where does <zed> engage in this 'rating' of others?

Perhaps you should tend to your own personal failings before assailing others. You cry about others' personal attacks--yet you routinely come out with both barrels when someone provokes your ire.

<<stone free or die> is a well-known long-term troll plain and simple. Always has been, always will be. Struggles to post anything intelligent about chess unless it was copied from another source. Stone's behavior has not changed since operating dozens of sock puppet accounts to harass others under multiple guises; it continues, but at least it's limited to the same few accounts....>

What qualifies you to judge others' contributions? You pander to beginning players and routinely post in the manner of <uluseless>, who also believes no-one on this site possess a scintilla of skill. You also spam game pages with pointless lists of opening lines which in no way pertain to the game in question.

<....This maligning of members in the forums is so very wrong by ANYONE of ANYONE. People should not have to read this garbage on a daily basis just to defend themselves from a troll and political buddies....>

Except, of course, when you feel wronged--then the hammer is their lot.

<....If you want to allow people to freely post their concerns and outright lies publicly -- fine. It's wrong to degrade people in public, but the administration seems to enjoy this nonsense. Let these cons post their hatred, read their post, and then DELETE their post. You got the message, so DELETE IT. It's total bunk that low class people are allowed to spew their hatred of others and it remains in print for days, weeks, permanently....>

While it is more'n okay for you to disgorge your latest round of vitriol against your target of puerile outrage.

<....Read it, and GET RID OF IT. Such backstabbing should never remain in print. FOLLOW YOUR OWN DAMN GUIDELINES!!>

You surely do fancy yourself in charge of CG, a site which would not last overlong if you ran things.

<....Take the garbage out -- clean up this website!>

<NBC host Chuck Todd confronted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) after he suggested there is a two-tier justice system for Republicans and Democrats because a search warrant was used to search former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate after he refused to cooperate with the Justice Department.

"You keep talking about this raid on Donald Trump," Todd told Jordan during an interview on Sunday. "There was nine months between the initial action the archives made for a request of documents before they even turned it over to the Justice Department. The subpoena was issued 60 days before they actually executed the subpoena. And more importantly, the only time the public found out about it is because Donald Trump told the public about it."

"It was actually a year and a half of Donald Trump not complying with any of the requests from the National Archives," he noted. "A year and a half! This is not some sort of proof that somehow they've weaponized and are playing politics [at the Justice Department]."

"They raided Trump's home; they haven't raided [President Joe Biden's]," Jordan replied.

"Because Biden didn't defy a subpoena!" Todd shot back.

Jordan argued that Trump's documents were protected by a locked room and the Secret Service while Biden's were not.

"You do not seem to ever see the same conspiratorial problems when it's a Republican," Todd concluded.>

<While the focus on Donald Trump's influence on the judiciary is normally centered on the three associate justices he appointed to the Supreme Court -- Amy Coney Barrett, Brent Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch -- his real impact is being felt in New Orleans where the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals resides and has been cranking out rulings so extreme it has created tension amongst the justices.

According to a deep dive by the Washington Post, Trump's imprint on the courts is on full display since he appointed a half dozen judges to that court who are described as "young, ambitious and outspoken" and have shaken things up with their disdain for previous rulings.

As the Post's Ann Marimow wrote, "Their rulings have at times broken with precedent and exposed rifts among the judges, illustrating Trump’s lasting legacy on the powerful set of federal courts that operate one step below the Supreme Court. Even some veteran conservatives on the court have criticized the newcomers for going too far."

Noting that four of the six served as advisors to Texas lawmakers, Marimow added, "With their provocative, colloquial writing styles, the judges are elevating their profiles in far-reaching opinions and public appearances, calling out 'cancel culture,' wokeness and sometimes even one another."

Chief among them is Judge James C. Ho who has called for a boycott of Yale Law School students as law clerks because of free speech policies at their school that he finds deplorable.

According to the report, the 5th Circuit has now become the go-to court for conservative activists looking for a sympathetic ear.

In an interview, Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas School of Law professor, explained, "These are the most conservative federal judges in the country having cases specifically brought so that they can decide them at a time when the Supreme Court is reversing some of their decisions, but not all of them. There’s nothing to lose."

A former 5th Circuit law clerk who now works at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution at Georgetown Law agreed.

“The reason it seems like there’s so much fire coming from the 5th Circuit is that they are getting really divisive cases,” explained Alexa Gervasi. “If you send controversial cases to the 5th Circuit, you’re going to get controversial opinions.”

"Of the 17 full-time spots on the 5th Circuit bench, 12 are held by judges nominated by Republican presidents and four by judges picked by Democratic presidents. One seat remains unfilled by Biden. The appeals courts almost always hear cases in three-judge panels drawn mainly from the court’s full-time judges, making the odds of having more than one Democratic pick on any panel unlikely," the Post report notes. "But the combination on the 5th Circuit of big personalities and aspirations — and the large volume of highly charged cases — makes the New Orleans bench a standout."

Gervasi added that there is stiff competition when it comes to writing opinions, explaining, "Everyone wants to have their say. I don’t think that’s just posturing for the Supreme Court.”

The report added, "Just as the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, with a trio of justices picked by Trump, has gravitated away from the restrained, go-slow approach of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., so too has the 5th Circuit issued rulings that depart from precedent or the decisions of other appeals courts. Two of the new judges used to work for members of the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc: Oldham is a former clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the opinion eliminating the nationwide right to abortion, and Ho, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas.">

<House Republicans, brash and cocky, think they’re on the offense in demanding huge spending cuts in order to pass an essential debt ceiling measure — expecting President Biden will chicken out, back down.

It’s more likely they will end up on the defense, scrambling to devise a budget/spending plan acceptable to the most right-wing fringe of the GOP House conference and that can muster 218 votes to pass.

The worst case is they replicate “Buzz Gunderson,” the cocky tough guy in the classic movie, “Rebel without a Cause,” who challenged James Dean to a game of chicken, a car race approaching a cliff to see who jumped out first.

Gunderson went over the cliff.

With this crew of Republicans, it’s more like Wile-E-Coyote going over the cliff … except the real consequences could be dire.

To satisfy the demands of the hard core, calling in the chits and private deals that enabled Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to squeak into the Speakership, a debt/budget proposal would have to be big and include cuts to Social Security and/or Medicare, which comprise a third of the federal budget. That’s what they’re talking about; it’s a political loser, especially if tied to the debt ceiling.

“If we can’t win that fight, we ought to be in another business,” says Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget committee.

The debt limit battle probably won’t be fully joined until this summer. And the GOP already is talking about postponing any showdown.

This spring the Republicans will unveil a budget, short of many specifics and long on gimmicks — wildly optimistic economic assumptions, big savings through rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse.” To achieve their promise of a balanced budget in ten years, they have to come up with some real humongous reductions, almost inevitably with cuts in entitlements — even while dressing them up as “reform” and vowing not to touch current recipients.

They can fuzz up the first exercise enough to create an “imaginary” budget, but “They can’t get there because the math is impossible,” suggests Boyle.

The debt ceiling is being used only as a vehicle for political leverage. It covers previous obligations and has nothing to do with future spending.

It does represent the full faith and credit of the United States.

If a crucial deadline is missed and there’s a government shutdown, the U.S. credit rating may be downgraded. If it’s a long stalemate, it could be an economic catastrophe.

With only a four-vote margin and enough members insisting anything more than token defense cuts are off the table, this is McCarthy’s dilemma: Do enough to satisfy the right-wing nuts and not too much to alienate the usually “timid twenty,” the members who won by less than 1 percent last year or represent districts carried by Joe Biden in 2020. That will be a very elusive fault line....>

<....There are a couple other complications.

Republicans have promised to consider major legislation under an open rule that allows numerous proposed amendments; that could result in chaos.

If a congressional leader loses a major legislative floor vote, it’s usually devastating. McCarthy’s predecessor, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), with a similarly narrow margin, never lost a major vote.

Moreover, if McCarthy fails to satisfy the hard-core right, one of them might offer a privileged motion to dump him; if all the Democrats oppose McCarthy, it would only take five Republicans to oust him.

If the Republicans try to really slash discretionary domestic spending — and not touch Social Security, Medicare, Defense or taxes — it will be daunting. That leaves only a relatively small fraction of the budget, and there are political untouchables like veteran benefits, border security, or much of the now popular affordable health care measure.

They may have to recycle the old gambit of creating a commission to study entitlements; Democrats will insist it look at taxes too, which the Republican right will reject.

The White House needs to do a better job of committing to negotiations over long-term budget issues, but not tied to the debt ceiling.

Senate Republicans — so far — are content to sit back and let their House counterparts take the heat.

The most probable scenario later this year, close observers fear, is with a zealous band of right-wingers and a weak Speaker, there’ll be a government shutdown and some sort of default with ugly consequences.

This is another reminder of what a travesty the debt ceiling is.

There are legitimate spending and budgetary battles. They should be fought out in regular order: the authorizations and appropriations process.

Some day, maybe a sensible Congress will enact the reform proposal by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Boyle. It would give the Treasury Secretary authority to set the debt ceiling subject to a two house congressional veto.

It would go a long way to ending these dangerous games.>

<United States Representative Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, claimed during an interview on Sunday's edition of This Week that President Joe Biden snuck classified documents from Washington "on the train back home" to Delaware while he was serving in the Senate and then as vice president.

The conversation was focused on how and why sensitive materials keep turning up at the homes of high-level elected officials such as Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. While no crimes have been alleged, Turner nonetheless believes that Biden acted suspiciously. And ABC moderator Martha Raddatz was deeply skeptical of that assessment.

Biden "clearly was taking them repeatedly on the train back home and putting them in boxes in his garage. That repeated action is certainly concerning, but the overall evidence that it was a repeated action, these are classified," Turner said.

When Raddatz requested proof to substantiate that accusation, Turner had none to provide.

"Do you have any evidence it was a repeated action? Sir, do you have evidence or anything about the train, for instance?" Raddatz asked.

What you actually have reported yourself, that some of these documents relate back to when he was a senator and some of these documents relate to the time when he was vice president. That's over several decades and over a great deal of time, and he famously tells us he was on the train going from Washington DC to his house. We know they didn't just fly there on their own. He would have had to have taken them. And having done so over a series of decades certainly is of a concern because it's a practice. But the point that you're making, which I think is the, the one we need to focus on, is that these classified documents contain information that we don't want anyone else to see, that we don't want anyone else to know, because they put at risk our country. They put at risk, as you reported – with great report, by the way – about the concerns of classified documents, that these actually put people's lives at risk who are working to try to protect our country and to keep our secrets safe.

Raddatz, however, was still curious about the origin of Turner's train tale – which she pointed out was not herself.

"And I just want to go back to the train? Because I certainly didn't report that he did that on the train," Raddatz noted. "Do you think Mike Pence brought those documents to his home just the same way you're saying that Biden did, or we just don't know?"

Turner steadfastly maintained his speculation:

*Well, we don't know. But what we do know is that the vice president has said that he was not involved in the packing of these, that they were transported to his house after he was vice president. We don't know. Obviously, the chain of custody in each of these issues is going to be important. It certainly should be part of the Department of justice investigation. How did these documents get where they were going and where we ultimately found them, but also what happened to them in the interim? How did they get into the hands of both the vice president/senator, President Biden, the Vice President Pence and, of course, [former] President [Donald] Trump? How did they get into their hands and then how did they get where we ultimately found them?>

<And that message confirmed what 'opponents ' of revocation of ban of <George wallace>/<big pawn> have been saying all along - everyone saw the confrontational/aggressive/defiant tone of that message. This guy wants to fight all the time - and in a dishonest , vile manner. That is what we have seen over the years and his latest message saying loud and clear that leopard not going to change his spots. He not going to change . Always trying his best to antagonize/offend/fight those 'infidels ' who do not follow his religious beliefs.>

Verily, <fagasaurus, otiose offal> should be banned for good and all--he is naught but a menace to the community.

<At the height of the Watergate scandal, as Richard Nixon prepared to resign, the then-president still had a handful of unyielding Republican allies. One of them, Rep. Earl Landgrebe of Indiana, was asked about his perspective the day before Nixon left the White House in disgrace.

“Don’t confuse me with the facts,” the then-congressman told reporters. “I’ve got a closed mind.”

The comments came to mind again yesterday watching House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on “Meet the Press.” NBC News reported:

The Ohio congressman, who’s more frequently seen on media outlets aligned with Republican politics, will lead his party’s new panel on the “weaponization” of federal powers, and he was eager to make the case that his initiative has merit. Jordan noted, for example, the FBI “raided the home of a former president 91 days before an election.”

First, it wasn’t a “raid.” Second, the search was executed at a glorified country club, not a house. Third, it was ahead of an election in which Trump wasn’t on the ballot.

But as the “Meet the Press” host was quick to remind his guest, the contextual details matter, too.

“There was nine months between the initial action. ... the [National] Archives requested documents before they even turned it over to the Justice Department,” Todd explained. “The subpoena was issued 60 days before they actually executed a subpoena.

“And more importantly, the only time the public found out about it is because Donald Trump told the public about it. This was not some sort of new painted as a picture of the FBI did this, this and this within hours of each other, when it was actually a year and a half of Donald Trump not complying with any of the requests from National Archives. This is not some sort of proof that somehow they’ve been weaponized and playing politics.”

Jordan seemingly heard the host, but following Landgrebe’s example from a half-century ago, the powerful far-right lawmaker didn’t want to be confused by facts. “They raided Trump’s home,” the Ohioan responded. “They haven’t raided Biden’s home.”

This, naturally, led the host to again remind Jordan about reality. “Because Biden didn’t defy a subpoena, congressman,” Todd said. “[Trump] defied a subpoena. By the way, he had 60 days to comply.”

Reminded of these important details, which utterly discredited the point he was foolishly trying to make, Jordan — who grinned as the “Meet the Press” host presented him with accurate information — proceeded as if he hadn’t heard a word Todd said.

“They raided Trump,” the committee chairman added in response, returning to the arguments that had been shredded moments earlier.

Earlier in the same interview, Todd noted that if the “weaponization” committee were looking for actual evidence of an administration that tried to use federal agencies against its perceived political foes, it would seemingly have a responsibility to examine the Trump administration’s efforts to abuse the power of the Justice Department. After the host referenced a series of controversies involving abuses of Trump-era law enforcement, Todd asked, “If you are concerned about the weaponization of the Justice Department in the Biden years, why not investigate the Trump years?”

Jordan — who appeared on the “Meet the Press” set, seated just a few feet away from the host — acted as if he literally hadn’t heard the question, and proceeded to talk about Twitter-related conspiracy theories.

At times, watching the Judiciary Committee chairman push ridiculous talking points, it’s only natural to wonder how he’d respond to factual details that debunk his partisan crusades. Yesterday, however, we didn’t have to wonder: Todd tried to make Jordan aware of the truth, and the congressman simply filtered it in such a way as to disregard accurate information he apparently didn’t want to know.

By all appearances, the far-right lawmaker didn’t want to be confused by facts.>

<The Republican Party was once a traditionalist institution that stood for small government, low taxes and conservative social policies. But today’s GOP is a shell of its former self.

The GOP of 2023 is embroiled in chaos and beset by internal strife. Many members who have been elevated to senior positions within the party are not concerned with governing, only with advancing their political agenda and causing disruption for disruption’s sake.

This is not conjecture, rather, it is the view of a sizable share of the American electorate, including many voters who self-identify as Republicans, according to new polling conducted by Schoen Cooperman Research.

Registered voters nationwide believe that the Republican majority in the U.S. House is more focused on pursuing investigations of President Biden and the Democratic Party (49 percent) rather than on passing legislation to address major issues (35 percent). Notably, 4 in 10 Republican voters think that their own party is more focused on investigating Biden and Democrats (41 percent) than on advancing real reforms (47 percent).

There is also a sense among both national voters and Republican voters that the highest-ranking GOP official, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), is ineffective and beholden to the far-right.

Earlier this month, McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House in a pyrrhic victory after an embarrassing four-day-long fiasco and 15 rounds of voting. McCarthy struck a corrupt bargain with the far-right House Freedom Caucus that essentially gives these extremists veto authority over his speakership along with key leadership positions, rendering him essentially powerless.

As a result, only 1 in 5 (21 percent) Republican voters — and a slightly smaller share of the national electorate (16 percent) — believe McCarthy will be a “very effective” Speaker of the House.

Further, a majority of voters nationwide (53 percent) and a plurality of Republican voters (46 percent) agree that “Kevin McCarthy conceded too much ground to the conservative House Freedom Caucus in order to be elected as Speaker, leaving him with little actual authority and beholden to the far-right.” Remarkably, just one-quarter (27 percent) of Republican respondents in our poll disagreed with this statement....>

<....When pressed further on their views of intraparty politics, GOP voters are relatively split on the question of whether McCarthy should’ve been elected speaker (40 percent) or if it should have been someone else (37 percent). Further, less than one-half (46 percent) of this group believes that the fight McCarthy underwent won’t impact his authority, while more than one-third (35 percent) say it indicates McCarthy doesn’t have the full support of his party and thus won’t be able to get things done.

Just weeks into his tenure, a clearly weakened McCarthy is already struggling to articulate — let alone advance — a Republican plan for raising the debt ceiling. This is one of the most pressing matters facing Congress, as the United States is months away from defaulting on its debt, which would trigger catastrophic consequences for the world economy.

The current House Republican caucus is adamant about using spending cuts as a bargaining chip for raising the county’s borrowing limit but has no unified plan for which programs it wants to be cut and no strategy for actual debt reduction.

Last year, McCarthy signaled that House Republicans could take an extreme route and demand cuts to programs, potentially including Social Security and Medicare, in order to raise the debt limit — a scenario that nearly two-thirds of voters (63 percent), including 54 percent of Republican voters, would disapprove of, according to our poll. In an interview with CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday, McCarthy reversed this position and said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “off the table.”

Occurring alongside the intraparty debt ceiling debacle, the Republican National Committee just concluded a bitter contest to elect the organization’s next chair.

Incumbent Ronna McDaniel, who was hand-picked by former president Donald Trump, faced a formidable challenge from Harmeet Dhillon, a California lawyer who positioned herself as being able to offer new leadership for the GOP, which has suffered a string of defeats in recent elections.

Unlike the fight McCarthy endured to become Speaker, the race for RNC chair wasn’t necessarily a battle between the far-right and the establishment, per se. And even though McDaniel was ultimately reelected, the final vote total and Dhillon’s ability to make this race competitive by promoting herself as a ‘change’ candidate reflects the polarization and division that exists inside the GOP.

While The Democratic Party has at times appeared hopelessly divided and bogged down by intraparty feuds, The Republican Party is facing a once-in-a-generation reckoning, as cracks in its coalition are turning into gaping holes, posing real risks to the party’s future electability.>

This from someone who, before it was taken down, dedicated his page to personal attacks on certain 'enemies'. By all means be more hypocritical if at all possible.

<Former President Trump claims he owns the audio rights to interviews conducted by Bob Woodward.

But legal experts say it's unlikely a court will agree with Trump, who claims he's owed $50 million.

It's "a huge reach," one lawyer told Insider.

Donald Trump wants to get paid or, at the very least, he wants to let everyone know that he's mad.

In a lawsuit filed last month, lawyers for the former president argued that he's due a hair under $50 million from journalist Bob Woodward and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, over the release of an audiobook containing more than 8 hours of interviews conducted while he was still in the White House.

"The case centers on Mr. Woodward's systematic usurpation, manipulation, and exploitation of audio of [former] President Trump," states the complaint, filed with a federal court in Florida. Woodward, the suit alleges, was entitled to use that audio for a written book — emphasis on "a," and "written" — but when that book did not sell as well as he'd hoped, the suit claims ("'Rage' was a complete and total failure"), he broke his word and packaged the recordings as a separate work.

The lawsuit hinges on an alleged promise that does not appear to have been made in writing. To support the case that The Washington Post journalist violated a contract with the former president, the lawsuit quotes a December 2019 exchange at Mar-a-Lago in which Trump, asked to speak on the record, responds: "For the book only, right? Only for the book." Woodward responds in the affirmative.

But the next line, from Trump and quoted in his own lawsuit, points to the ambiguity of that verbal agreement, indicating that the underlying issue was not whether The Washington Post journalist intended to publish one book (or two, or three), but whether he intended to use the material for articles in a newspaper: "So there's no stories coming out, okay."

Experts consulted by Insider suggest that the suit, while not nearly as flimsy as the former president's election-related litigation, is unlikely to succeed — and might just be a way to lend weight to a grievance, legitimate or not, that has no legal remedy.

"It's a press release designed as a complaint," Lloyd J. Jassin, a lawyer who specializes in copyright disputes, said in an interview. Trump styles himself as a savvy businessman — his lawsuit lists all his best-selling books on how to get rich — and yet he got burned by a reporter.

"There's no detriment to him other than injury, in my opinion, to his ego and image," Jassin said.

A Trump win could make reporting harder

Woodward's book "Rage," based on his 20 interviews with Trump, was published by Simon & Schuster in October 2020, selling more than 600,000 copies in its first week — a blockbuster for any other author, but somewhat below expectations for the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. The audiobook didn't go on sale for another two years — after, Woodward says, he decided its release served the public interest.

"You see who this man is, what he cares about, the self-focus, the absence of being concerned about the people out there," Woodward explained in an interview on MSNBC. "This is while he was president in 2020. All this, it is an amazing portrait of a man."

"If Woodward intended to create an oral history in which he could claim rights," the complaint states, "then according to best industry practices, he would have had [former] President Trump as the participant sign over his rights as part of the standard procedures of conducting the interview, after each recording or at the end of the last interview. Woodward did not adhere to this standard and, as such, relinquished any such rights."....>

<....Journalists, however, do not typically ask sources to sign anything before an interview, much less documents outlining potential revenue sharing.

Art Neill, clinical professor and director of the New Media Rights Program at California Western School of Law, said it's unlikely that a judge will want to, among other things, establish a precedent imposing a laborious new requirement on newsgathering.

"A decision in his favor would create more friction, day to day, for journalists who would have to go even further in terms of thinking about what kind of contracts and releases they're going to get signed by sources," Neill said.

To even get to that point, Trump would need to show not only that he had ownership over the interview, but that the two parties explicitly agreed to not release the audio.

Even if Woodward had lied by omission that would likely not be enough for a court to step in and assert that an ambiguous contract had been violated, with the remedy being that a politician — who is once again running for the highest office — is entitled to a share in the revenue generated by a reporter's interview. A judge would also have to rule that, copyright and contract law aside, there is no "fair use" justification for a reporter publishing a president's remarks.

"That's a huge reach," Neill said.

A free press and the public interest

Trump, famously, did not distinguish between himself, the oft-licensed brand, and the office of the presidency. That much is evident in his lawsuit, which asserts personal ownership over statements he made in the White House while being paid a taxpayer-funded salary, complaining that Woodward and his publisher released their audiobook "solely for their own financial gain and without any accounting or recompense to him."

But the argument for monetary damages is undermined, in part, by something else the lawsuit appears to acknowledge. The complaint argues that what is billed by Woodward and his publisher as "raw" audio was in fact lightly edited, implying malice and providing a transcript noting the words that were omitted from the final product — something that could only be done if one had access to the original recording.

Trump could have published and sold this audio himself, then, at least in part. But why would he? The release was generally considered embarrassing for the former president, showing that he publicly downplayed the severity of COVID-19 in order, as he put it, not to "panic the people," and intervened to protect a Saudi crown prince — "I saved his ass" — from being sanctioned over the murder of a US citizen.

Trump, of course, is also not a normal person. He is, rather, a former head of state and, at the time he was speaking with a famous journalist, he was an American president opining on both domestic and foreign policy, often speaking from the Oval Office, in the middle of a pandemic.

A publisher's chief interest may be making money (it could even be an author's), but experts say that would not alter the fact that there is, inherently, a public interest served by releasing what a powerful politician has to say about matters of life and death. Some have even argued that the former president's remarks should have been released sooner, not saved for a book at all.

In a joint statement, Woodard and Simon & Schuster said they are confident Trump's lawsuit is "without merit."

"All these interviews were on the record and recorded with President Trump's knowledge and agreement," the parties told Insider. "Moreover, it is in the public interest to have this historical record in Trump's own words. We are confident that the facts and the law are in our favor."

Free speech advocates are not universally concerned with the case. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression both declined to comment. But some do fear that any ruling in the former president's favor, however unlikely, would set a troubling precedent, enabling a politician to dictate how and when their own words, while in office, can be made public.

"A sitting president knowingly sat down for recorded interviews with one of the most accomplished journalists of our age and talked about matters of great public interest," Seth D. Berlin, an attorney with the firm Ballard Spahr who has represented media clients in copyright and other disputes, told Insider. "Filing a lawsuit over publishing those interviews turns the First Amendment on its head.">

<Is the GOP losing because of... obnoxiousness?: Why have Republicans had so many bad election performances lately? Because many of them are jerks, and they assume voters are jerks too, David Frum argues.

The GOP's Problem

Why did the Republican Party perform worse than expected in the 2022 midterm elections?

Was it because the issues they concentrated on didn’t have the salience that they thought?

Was it because they were too tied to Donald Trump?

One longtime Republican has another theory: That the GOP is being hurt by “obnoxiousness.”

The Jerk Problem

David Frum, a longtime conservative intellectual who served in George W. Bush’s White House and has since largely broken with his longtime party over Donald Trump, wrote a piece for The Atlantic this week with a blunt headline” “The GOP is Just Obnoxious.”

One example he gave was the Pennsylvania Senate race last year. The Democratic candidate, John Fetterman, suffered a stroke just before the Democratic primary. Ahead of their only debate, staffers for Fetterman’s Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, released a tongue-in-cheek list of “concessions” for the debate, which included that Fetterman would “have all of his notes in front of him along with an earpiece so he can have the answers given to him by his staff, in real time.”

Frum noted that this attitude appears to have backfired on Oz, as Fetterman won the race by 250,000 votes in the only 2022 Senate race in which a seat changed hands from one party to the other. The result helped cement the Democrats’ Senate majority.

It’s not clear how big a part the debate memo played — I live in Pennsylvania, followed that race closely, and I barely remember that – but clearly, voters sympathized with Fetterman after the stroke, rather than considering it disqualifying, even after Fetterman gave a subpar debate performance in which he appeared confused.

“Oz’s decision to campaign as a jerk hurt him,” Frum wrote. "When his opponent got sick, Oz could have drawn on his own medical background for compassion and understanding. Before he succumbed to the allure of TV, Oz was an acclaimed doctor whose innovations transformed the treatment of heart disease. He could have reminded voters of his best human qualities rather than displaying his worst.”

Frum’s point is that, as demonstrated by the 2022 election results, there is mounting evidence that large parts of the electorate are rejecting the modern-day Republican worldview as cruel, bullying, and, yes, obnoxious.

And that went far beyond Dr. Oz, to many other candidates in 2022 who lost in swing states.

“Many of the unsuccessful Republican candidates in 2022 offered voters weird, extreme, or obnoxious personas. Among the worst was Blake Masters, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. He released photos and campaign videos of himself playing with guns, looking like a sociopath. He lost by nearly five points.”

And that will be an issue in the 2024 contest, presuming that it comes down to former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The two candidates bring different things to the table, but both are associated with a certain obnoxiousness.

And it’s clear that this style of politics appeals to the GOP base. Whether it flies with the general electorate is another question entirely.

“A generation ago, politicians invested great effort in appearing agreeable: Ronald Reagan’s warm chuckle, Bill Clinton’s down-home charm, George W. Bush’s smiling affability,” Frum writes. “By contrast, Donald Trump delighted in name-calling, rudeness, and open disdain. Not even his supporters would have described Trump as an agreeable person. Yet he made it to the White House all the same—in part because of this trollish style of politics, which has encouraged others to emulate him.”

Frum noted that the “Citizens for Sanity” ads from a Stephen Miller-affiliated group, which ran heavily in the closing weeks of the race, may have turned off lots of voters.

And Republicans continue to push the Hunter Biden laptop story, despite a complete lack of evidence that it’s a winning political issue.

“It’s all pushing conservatives and Republicans back onto the same doomed path they followed in the Trump years: stunts and memes and insults and fabricated controversies in place of practical solutions to the real problems everyday people face. The party has lost contact with the sensibility of mainstream America, a huge country full of decent people who are offended by bullying and cruelty,” Frum writes.>

I'll be getting back to the chess games now before going to bed. Again, thanks for the response.>

<antichrist> posts little, if anything other than repetitious slagging of his least favourite player--small wonder he gets 'vacations', same as you.

One. More. Time:

You do <not> get to dictate what I post here.

Time to dismantle this, one piece at a time:

<fredthenonentity: I touched a nerve, eh? You were in the same boat last summer. You posted some filthy trash, all kinds of homo stuff....>

Funny how things work; when your pal <bumptious paederast, putin's biyatch> does the deed, you tacitly support him.

<....Those suspensions you received were thanks to my efforts....>

Which 'suspensions'?

Do tell.

<....A full-blown jerk like you should be long gone from here....>

Yew first, <boy>.

<....You gonna give us another one liner of weak game analysis today?>

That would be one more line than you have to offer.

<....At your age, maybe you should back off like Joey B, spend more time in the basement....>

Wot, your favourite spot?

<....Maybe cut-back the stressful analysis to twice a week. You'll make fewer mistakes and fewer enemies that way.>

To me, the best way to deal with the poor guy, is putting him on ignore. He is clearly filled with hard earned inferiority complexes and something in you, seems to tricker them.