Of course the Versailles Villager Narrative is that Impeaching Unindicted Co-Conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is “unpopular” and “electoral doom” for Democrats.

First of all, some stuff you do because it’s your damn job, not because it’s personally beneficial except in maintaining, improving, or establishing your reputation for DOING YOUR DAMN JOB!

Dammit.

Secondly it’s not as “unpopular” among Democrats as you think.

Black Voters Challenge House Members: Why Is Trump Still in Office?
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times
May 30, 2019

Moments after the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, wrapped up his appearance at the Justice Department on Wednesday, Representative Dwight Evans stepped out of his district office in a black working-class neighborhood here to visit with local business owners. They had one question on their minds: Why is President Trump still in office?

Mr. Evans, a Democrat who began calling for Mr. Trump to be impeached long before Mr. Mueller issued his report, was not surprised: “The issue that I hear constantly here is, ‘We sent you for one reason only: to get rid of the president, right? Why haven’t you gotten rid of him yet?’”

In cities around the country, black Democrats like Mr. Evans — and other House members who represent majority-black districts — are hearing much the same from their African-American constituents, as well as from white liberals who have moved into the nation’s urban core. Those views are translating into action on Capitol Hill, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi is under increasing pressure from her rank-and-file to hurry up her time frame for what many see as an inevitable impeachment inquiry.

A number of prominent African-American lawmakers, including Representative Maxine Waters of California, the powerful chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, are leading the charge to impeach the president. On Wednesday, after Mr. Mueller declined to clear Mr. Trump, three more signed on: Representatives Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Danny K. Davis and Bobby L. Rush of Illinois. All are veteran Democrats.
…
Here in Philadelphia, where African-Americans account for about 55 percent of Mr. Evans’s district, Mr. Trump evokes both fear and loathing in West Oak Lane, a leafy neighborhood of brick and stone houses in the northwest part of the city. This year, Mr. Evans brought Tom Steyer, the billionaire liberal activist who is pressing for impeachment, to the commercial strip of black-owned businesses along Ogontz Avenue.

“I agreed with everything he said,” exclaimed Paulette Beale-Harris, 60, who owns a florist shop, referring to Mr. Steyer. “It’s time for Congress to do something. It’s time for them to stop being afraid to do what has to be done for the country.”
…
(I)n one conversation after the next, the story was the same. “They’ve got to get him out of the way before he destroys this country,” said James Gaines, 66, a barber.

Sabriya Bilal, 64, a school bus driver, asked, “I don’t think he’s mentally stable, do you?”

So strong is the sentiment against Mr. Trump that Art Haywood, an African-American state senator who represents this area, has introduced a resolution in the Pennsylvania General Assembly calling for the president’s impeachment. Last week, he held a town-hall-style meeting to rally public support; in an interview, Mr. Haywood compared House Democrats to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who sought to avoid war with Hitler.

“This appeasement policy of Nancy Pelosi is a tremendous mistake,” Mr. Haywood said. “The risks to our nation are bigger than the risks to the Democratic Party.”

African-Americans are a critical component of the Democratic base; they make up slightly more than 13 percent of the population but account for nearly one-quarter of Democratic voters, according to Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster. They are also an outsize force in the House Democratic caucus, which has more than 50 African-Americans; there is only one black Republican in the House, Will Hurd of Texas.

Black voters turned out in droves to help elect Barack Obama, and younger African-American voters were part of “a huge surge group for Democrats” in the 2018 midterms, motivated by their antipathy toward the president, said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster and expert in the African-American vote. A recent poll by Quinnipiac University found that 87 percent of African-Americans disapproved of Mr. Trump’s performance as president, compared with 63 percent of Hispanics and 48 percent of whites.

Their disdain goes far beyond his policies; they view him as a racist and an “existential threat,” Mr. Belcher said. Many still mock his 2016 plea for their support: “What the hell do you have to lose?”

And those voters’ representatives are taking up their cause — not only African-American House members like Mr. Evans but others who represent substantial black populations, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who is of Puerto Rican descent, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who is Palestinian-American, and Steve Cohen of Tennessee, who is white but whose Memphis district is two-thirds black.
…
Last week, another caucus member, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, introduced a resolution that would authorize the House Judiciary Committee to “investigate whether sufficient grounds exist” to open an impeachment inquiry. That is one step short of an outright call for impeachment. But last year, Ms. Jackson Lee voted in favor of an impeachment resolution introduced by another black lawmaker, Representative Al Green of Texas, and she said her view had not changed.

Mr. Evans, 65, who served in the state legislature for 36 years before being elected to Congress in 2016, also voted for the Green resolution; he believes Mr. Trump abused his power when he fired both Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general, and James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, early in his term.

If black voters are passionate about getting rid of Mr. Trump, liberal whites “are even more rabid,” he said. That was evident in another corner of his district, the gentrifying bohemian neighborhood of Cedar Park, where Sandy DeVito, 31, a fiction writer and barista, was shopping Wednesday for a lemon-ginger echinacea drink at a food co-op.

“The media made such a big deal of it, and Washington made such a big deal of it,” she said of the Mueller report. “And then nothing happened.”

Mr. Evans said the report, which detailed at least 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by the president, “only confirmed what I already knew.” In the weeks since its release, as Mr. Trump has instructed government officials to refuse Congress’s requests for witnesses and documents, Mr. Evans’s outrage has only grown. And as a black man, he takes particular umbrage at what he regards as the hypocrisy of the criminal justice system as it relates to the president.

The electoral argument goes- Impeachment will simply energize Republicans and motivate their base.

So what?

I am happy to report only 25% of the country is composed of Deplorable, Hopeless, Racist, Bigoted, Misogynous, Hypocritical Republican Greedheads. Who cares what they think?

What about the Independents? Swing voting is a lie. Everyone has a Party and they either come out or stay home. Truth is Non-Affiliated (my preferred term) Voters hate the Unindicted Co-conspirator almost as much as Democrats do.

So if you want to pander to the worst, most horrible and smallest minority be my guest. You may fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time but you don’t fool me.

The craven, cowardly Institutional Democrats are perfectly happy with the current state of affairs because, after all, it has benefited them personally with money and power.

Why fix what ain’t broke?

I am tired of Jeff Daniels and To Kill A Mockingbird. Atticus is a disappointing character. Besides, this really happened.

Ok, so you think I’m just a Lin-Manuel Miranda fanboy.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

The Johnstown Flood kills more than 2,200 people in Pennsylvania; Israel hangs ex-Nazi official Adolf Eichmann; Bombing suspect Eric Rudolph caught in North Carolina; Actor-director Clint Eastwood born.

To cure the violence, we must identify and heal the causes of hatred and violence. If we don’t deal with the causes we will never be safe.

Peter Yarrow

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US President Donald Trump has announced tariffs on all goods coming from Mexico, demanding the country curb illegal immigration into the US.

In a tweet, Mr Trump said that from 10 June a 5% tariff would be imposed and would slowly rise “until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied”.

Jesus Seade, Mexico’s top diplomat for North America, said the proposed tariffs would be “disastrous”.

Mr Trump declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border in February.

He said it was necessary in order to tackle what he claims is a crisis at the US southern border.

Border agents say they are overwhelmed, but critics say they are mishandling and mistreating migrants.

Tiananmen Square protests: crackdown intensifies as 30th anniversary nears

Authorities expand detention of activists and censorship ahead of 4 June

Helen Davidson in Hong Kong

Fri 31 May 2019 05.13 BST

Chinese authorities have detained dozens of people as part of a ramped-up annual crackdown ahead of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Tuesday will mark 30 years since the bloody event, which saw Chinese authorities brutally shut down long running student protests, killing thousands of people in and around the central square in Beijing.

Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), a US-based organisation for domestic and international activists, said the Beijing government’s “pre-emptive strikes” against anyone who might try to mark the anniversary had started in early May.

British far-right extremists being funded by international networks, report reveals

Research warns authorities are ‘overlooking’ far-right funding networks because of focus on Islamist terrorism

Lizzie DeardenSecurity Correspondent @lizziedearden

Far-right extremists are building international funding networks allowing them to spread hatred while being “overlooked” by authorities, new research has warned.

Analysts at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) found that despite an increase in extreme right-wing attacks, efforts to disrupt terrorist financing was still focused on Islamists.

A report said a lack of work to find the source of money flows and stop them had allowed prolific extremists and groups to build huge platforms in the UK, US and Europe.

Sudan’s military rulers say protests threaten stability

Tens of thousands of Sudanese demonstrators converged on central Khartoum on Thursday night demanding civilian rule amid increasing tensions with the country’s military rulers who accused a protest encampment of threatening stability.

Iran rejects Saudi Arabia’s ‘baseless’ allegations at Arab summit

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson denounces Saudi King Salman’s accusations of Tehran meddling in the region.

Iran has rejected what it calls “baseless” accusations made at an Arab summit, saying Saudi Arabia had joined the United States and Israel in a “hopeless” effort to mobilise regional opinion against Tehran, state media reported.

Saudi Arabia’s king told an emergency Arab summit on Thursday that decisive action was needed to stop Iranian “escalations” in the region following attacks on oil assets in the Gulf, as American officials said a US military deployment had deterred Tehran.

Narita airport to use facial recognition in boarding from 2020

NEC Corp said Friday Narita airport will use the company’s artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition technology to ease congestion from 2020, with the number of travelers expected to spike as the Tokyo Olympics approach.

The Japanese electronics manufacturer said if a passenger registers an image of his or her face during check-in, they can advance through baggage drop-off, security check and boarding procedures with the systems at the gate and kiosks automatically verifying their identity.

However, passengers will still need to present a passport at immigration screening.

The background is the Republican plan to insert a citizenship question into the 2020 Census so they can disenfranchise Hispanics and Gerrymander more effectively. The new news is that when Thomas Hofeller, Republican operative out of North Carolina, died in August all his computer stuff went to his “estranged” daughter who promptly turned to Common Cause and said “rip it and ditch it.”

He was deeply involved in this Institutional Republican Conspiracy and of course there is “smoking gun” documentation all over his storage.

From Common Cause the information went to the ACLU which happens to have a case before the Supreme Court seeking to block the policy and they have filed an amended brief in the Court of Original Jurisdiction and notified the Supremes of the filing.

I’m not holding my breath based on the integrity of this Court. The only way Republicans can win is to cheat and they are all so depraved and corrupt they do it openly and without shame.

Gore v. Bush, do you think the Court has improved since then?

Despite Trump administration denials, new evidence suggests census citizenship question was crafted to benefit white Republicans
By Tara Bahrampour and Robert Barnes, Washington Post
May 30, 2019

Just weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the Trump administration can add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, new evidence emerged Thursday suggesting the question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to white Republicans.

The evidence was found in the files of the prominent Republican redistricting strategist Thomas Hofeller after his death in August. It reveals that Hofeller “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census in order to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, ‘Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites,’ ” and that Trump administration officials purposely obscured Hofeller’s role in court proceedings, lawyers for plaintiffs challenging the question wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman. Furman was one of three federal judges who ruled against the question this year.

The letter drew on new information discovered on hard drives belonging to Hofeller, which were found accidentally by Hofeller’s estranged daughter. Stephanie Hofeller Lizon then shared them with the organization Common Cause for a gerrymandering lawsuit it is pursuing in North Carolina.

The files show that Hofeller concluded in a 2015 study that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and benefit white Republicans in redistricting. Hofeller then pushed the idea with the Trump administration in 2017, according to the lawyers’ letter to Furman.

The evidence, which was first reported by The New York Times, contradicts sworn testimony by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s expert adviser A. Mark Neuman and senior Justice Department official John Gore, as well as other testimony by defendants, the letter said.
…
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion in district court Thursday morning for “sanctions and any other relief the court deems appropriate, because of apparently untruthful testimony” by Trump administration officials in the earlier trials, said Dale Ho, who argued the case at the Supreme Court on behalf of the ACLU.

It is unclear how the information might affect deliberations at the Supreme Court. The ACLU Thursday afternoon filed a letter with the court to “respectfully inform” it of the motion filed in the New York district court and that a hearing was scheduled for next week.

The letter repeated the charge contained in the earlier letter to Furman that Hofeller played a significant role in adding the citizenship question to the 2020 Census to give white Republicans an advantage in redistricting “and that Petitioners (the government) obscured his role through affirmative misrepresentations.”
…
“Witnesses misrepresented the origin and purpose of their effort to add a citizenship question to the census,” Ho said in a statement accompanying release of the letter. “Their goal was not to protect voting rights, but to dilute the voting power of minority communities. We look forward to Wednesday’s hearing and will keep the Supreme Court aware of any further developments.”

The Supreme Court heard the case on April 23. Evidence in the case concluded with oral arguments that day, and it appeared the conservative majority seemed inclined to agree with the government that the decision to add the question was within the authority of the commerce secretary.

If the court followed normal procedure, it voted that week on the outcome of the case, and the justices are now writing the opinion.

The ACLU also asked the district court to allow previously redacted testimony from Neuman to be made public. On Thursday, Furman ordered that the government must provide a response by 10 a.m. Friday and called a hearing on the matter for Wednesday.

The new information indicates that blueprints for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census predated the Trump administration, but Donald Trump’s election allowed them to become a reality, Ho said.

“It just shows that there was a long-standing plan to weaponize the census to dilute minority voting power to try to forestall the electoral effects of the demographic changes that this country is undergoing,” he said.

Ho said sanctions could include fines imposed on witnesses or the government, a reopening of the case or an amendment of the final judgment to account for new evidence.
…
Hofeller’s files also reveal that in August 2017, he helped ghostwrite a draft Department of Justice letter to the Commerce Department requesting a citizenship question and coming up with a rationale — to help enforce the Voting Rights Act, the plaintiffs’ lawyers said. He then gave this letter to Gore, the principal deputy assistant attorney general, in October 2017, they said.

The gen­esis of that request and the rationale behind it were key questions in trials challenging the question. Ross initially had told Congress that the request was initiated by the Justice Department in a December 2017 letter, but administration documents released in the case later indicated that it came at Ross’s urging, starting months earlier. Census and voting rights experts have said the question is not needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

The Justice Department letter “bears striking similarities to Dr. Hofeller’s 2015 study, stating that a citizenship question on the Census was essential to advantaging Republicans and white voters,” the letter to Furman said. It added: “Based on this new evidence, it appears that both Neuman and Gore falsely testified about the genesis of DOJ’s request to Commerce in ways that obscured the pretextual character of the request.”
…
“Republican political operatives plainly want to deny communities of color the health care, education and other services they need in order to consolidate GOP power and a whiter electorate,” said Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “We call on Congress to hold Trump administration officials — including Secretary Ross — accountable now and not to wait until after the Supreme Court ruling to do so.”

Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director of the House census oversight subcommittee, said the new information undercut bureau’s years of work to plan a nonpartisan count.

“Revelations that this administration threw a grenade into that process in order to achieve partisan goals must be a gut-punch to every career Census employee whose goal is to earn the public’s trust and confidence in the 2020 Census,” she said.

In April the high court’s five conservatives seemed to lean toward allowing the question, citing the Voting Rights Act rationale and focusing not on Ross’s motivations, but rather on whether he was simply using the power he was authorized to exercise.

Deceased G.O.P. Strategist’s Hard Drives Reveal New Details on the Census Citizenship Question
By Michael Wines, The New York Times
May 30, 2019

Thomas B. Hofeller achieved near-mythic status in the Republican Party as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering, the architect of partisan political maps that cemented the party’s dominance across the country.

But after he died last summer, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father’s home that revealed something else: Mr. Hofeller had played a crucial role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Files on those drives showed that he wrote a study in 2015 concluding that adding a citizenship question to the census would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to stymie Democrats. And months after urging President Trump’s transition team to tack the question onto the census, he wrote the key portion of a draft Justice Department letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act — the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision.

Those documents, cited in a federal court filing Thursday by opponents seeking to block the citizenship question, have emerged only weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the citizenship question. Critics say adding the question would deter many immigrants from being counted and shift political power to Republican areas.

The disclosures represent the most explicit evidence to date that the Trump administration added the question to the 2020 census to advance Republican Party interests.

In Supreme Court arguments in April over the legality of the decision, the Trump administration argued that the benefits of obtaining more accurate citizenship data offset any damage stemming from the likely depressed response to the census by minority groups and noncitizens. And it dismissed charges that the Commerce Department had simply invented a justification for adding the question to the census as unsupported by the evidence.

Opponents said that the Justice Department’s rationale for seeking to add a citizenship question to the census was baldly contrived, a conclusion shared by federal judges in all three lawsuits opposing the administration’s action.

But a majority of the Supreme Court justices seemed inclined to accept the department’s explanation the question was needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act, and appeared ready to uphold the administration’s authority to alter census questions as it sees fit. The justices are expected to issue a final ruling before the court’s term ends in late June.

The filing on Thursday sought sanctions against the defendants in the lawsuit, led by Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr., who were accused of misrepresentations “on the central issues of this case.” Judge Jesse M. Furman of United States District Court in Manhattan set a hearing on the issue for Wednesday.

In nearly 230 years, the census has never asked all respondents whether they are American citizens. But while adding such a question might appear uncontroversial on its face, opponents have argued that it is actually central to a Republican strategy to skew political boundaries to their advantage when redistricting begins in 2021.

I just, no fooling, got off the phone with a solicitor (in the mendicant sense) who wished me to contribute to an advertising campaign proclaiming Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio “Exonerated!”

Sometimes I think that whatever malware monitors me is sadly confused about my political leanings. I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist, not a Republican, and to the extent I highlight Democratic flaws it’s because I think they’re feckless, ineffectual, and not nearly Left enough.

Today’s object of ridicule and derision is Steny Hoyer who finally, after decades, has decided D.C. Statehood is a good idea.

I was hesitant about D.C. statehood. Now I believe it’s the only path forward.
By Steny H. Hoyer, Washington Post
May 30, 2019

I have been hesitant in past years to call for statehood for the District because I believed that we could achieve voting rights for its residents without having to take the politically difficult steps statehood would entail. That’s what I tried to do in 2010 by pursuing a deal on legislation proposed years earlier by Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) to give House representation to the District and an additional House seat to Utah. Sadly, that effort to achieve a compromise fell short.

I now believe the only path to ensuring its representation is through statehood. Legislation granting representation in the House could be revoked in the future; statehood would bring D.C. residents a permanent voice in our elected institutions. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting delegate from the District in the House, has introduced a bill to admit the District as a state, and I will cosponsor it.

Americans in the District have been denied not only a member with full voting rights in the House of Representatives but also two U.S. senators – simply because of where they live. This continues even while the District is larger in population than two states and comparable to two others.

As an advocate for voting rights throughout my life and my career in public service, I have been proud to stand on the front lines of protecting and expanding access to the ballot box and equal representation in our democracy. That’s why, for more than 20 years, I’ve stood shoulder-to-shoulder with those calling for D.C. residents to gain equal representation in Congress. As majority leader, I helped institute House rules allowing Norton to vote on amendments and participate fully in committee business.

But we cannot stop there. No doubt, there are obstacles that must be overcome before statehood can be achieved; nevertheless, that ought to be our goal. Statehood would provide those in our nation’s capital with the best chance of attaining what residents of every other national capital in our fellow democracies enjoy: full representation in their national legislature. Moving forward with the process of statehood would remove obstacles that have proven difficult in prior efforts to give D.C. residents the vote.

The House endorsed the concept of statehood for the District in the For the People Act, the first major piece of legislation passed by the Democratic majority this year. I was proud to bring that legislation to the floor and vote for it. I will also be proud to bring legislation to the floor making statehood a reality. I look forward to working with Norton and others who believe strongly in equal representation for those in our nation’s capital.

So, a good idea after patronizing scraps and empty gestures. Steny, if it’s taken you this long to figure it out (which I don’t for a moment believe) you’re a moron.

It ain’t even “new”. Instead it’s a smokescreen intended to distract from the Democratic Leadership’s larger violation of their oaths to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution because of their craven cowardice on Impeachment.

Next up- Puerto Rico. Part of the United States folks, for over 100 years. People who are born there are citizens even if they speak Spanish.

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Clean-up ends at New York’s Ground Zero, months after the Sept. 11th attacks; France’s Joan of Arc burned at the stake; Baseball’s Cal Ripken, Jr. begins his games streak; Bandleader Benny Goodman born.

The system under which we live is owned and operated by people who do not deserve to run the world.

Tom Morello

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Don’t say we didn’t warn you:’ Chinese state media issues ominous warning to US

By Ben Westcott and Serenitie Wang, CNN

Updated 0611 GMT (1411 HKT) May 30, 2019

Revealed: women’s fertility app is funded by anti-abortion campaigners

Samuel Osborne @SamuelOsborne93

At least seven people have died after a sightseeing boat with South Korean tourists on board capsized on the Danube river in Budapest, Hungary.

The boat was carrying 33 passengers and two crew members when it collided with another vessel and sank on Wednesday night.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said the tourists in the deadly collision weren’t wearing life jackets.

Israeli parliament votes to hold new election in September

Israeli lawmakers have voted in favor of dissolving parliament following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to form a coalition government. The move comes after weeks of difficult negotiations.

Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, has voted to dissolve itself, sending the country to an unprecedented second snap election this year after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unable to establish a majority coalition by a midnight deadline.

Parliament voted 74-45 in favor of dissolving itself and setting elections for September 17.

Questioned by French intelligence, ‘Le Monde’ journalist refuses to reveal sources

French intelligence on Wednesday questioned a Le Monde journalist who broke the story that became a scandal involving a security aide to President Emmanuel Macron, the latest reporter to be questioned by French authorities.

Footage of Kawasaki knife attack recorded by school bus dashcam

Footage of a recent mass stabbing attack in Kawasaki that left a schoolgirl and a man dead and more than a dozen others injured has been recovered from a school bus dashcam, police said Thursday.

The video shows the assailant, Ryuichi Iwasaki, 51, approaching a group of Caritas Elementary School students from behind as they waited for their school bus. It also captured the attack and its aftermath, the police said.

Iwasaki, who later died of self-inflicted wounds to his neck, wielded two 30-centimeter-long knives in the assault that occurred Tuesday in the city near Tokyo.

Mueller Speaks! He sounds different than I thought he would.

Mueller just made it crystal clear: Only Congress can hold Trump accountable
By Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent, Washington Post
May 29, 2019

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III just opened his mouth in public for the first time in years, and though what he said was careful, precise, and restrained, it nonetheless amounted to a new statement, one that underscored a stark reality:

Members of Congress are the only ones with the power to hold President Trump accountable for his efforts to obstruct justice.

In his roundabout way, Mueller made clear that all the statements that he supposedly found “no obstruction” and his investigation exonerated the president are simply false. Instead, he emphasized a few points.

First, Mueller underlined that under Justice Department policy he was forbidden from indicting President Trump and that this is why he did not make a final judgment about whether to bring criminal charges. “Charging the president with a crime,” Mueller said, was “not an option we could consider.”

Second, Mueller underscored that if he had found that Trump was innocent, he would have proclaimed that to be the case. “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said.

Third, the criminal justice system can’t hold a sitting president accountable for his conduct, so someone else has to step up and do it. “The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing,” Mueller said.

“The Special Counsel is making a very powerful statement on his last day of work,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told us. “And members of Congress are going to be taking it to heart over the next couple of days.”

“We have a responsibility to act when the president of the United States engages in criminal conduct,” Raskin continued. “So to my mind, we need to launch an impeachment inquiry to find out what exactly happened and what our response should be.”

Raskin, a constitutional law professor, also said Mueller’s statement today “increases the pressure on the House of Representatives to act forcefully against the president’s lawlessness.”

Asked directly whether this would increase the pressure to launch an impeachment inquiry in particular, Raskin said a majority of members of the Judiciary Committee — which would carry out an inquiry — have already expressed an active interest in launching one, adding: “The sentiment is growing.”

“I feel an impeachment inquiry is indicated,” Raskin said. “Most members are now distinguishing between an impeachment inquiry, which is the beginning of an investigation into high crimes and misdemeanors, and impeachment articles.”

Mueller “made it clear that the only reason the president wasn’t indicted was because it was against DOJ policy,” Raskin said, and that “he clearly believes it is up to Congress to act.”

To be clear, in key ways what Mueller said today is also what he wrote in his report. But views of that report have been shaped by a propaganda effort spearheaded by the president and Attorney General William P. Barr, and carried out with the enthusiastic support of friendly media outlets, an effort meant to deceive the public into believing that Mueller exonerated Trump of any wrongdoing.

In that context, Mueller’s decision to publicly underscore the key points above is plainly a reset of the conversation.

Mueller also offered a somewhat more pointed emphasis in several ways. First, he flatly declared that the reason the obstruction question is important is because it could have frustrated an investigation designed to get to the bottom of an attack on our political system, irrespective of any “collusion” question. Taken alongside Mueller’s confirmation that Trump was not exonerated of obstruction, that adds up to a remarkable indictment of Trump’s overall conduct.

Mueller also went out of his way to emphasize that he found “insufficient evidence” to bring a criminal charge of conspiracy with Russia, which is not at all the same as concluding that “no collusion” occurred. Mueller’s report did not conclude that at all, yet Trump traffics in the “no collusion” lie constantly, and Barr’s presentation of Mueller’s findings dishonestly submerged their seriousness on this front.

“Special Counsel Mueller basically returned us to the starting point,” Raskin said. “This is where the conversation should have been two months ago, before Attorney General Barr misled the nation. The air is clear now. We have the opportunity to act on the Special Counsel’s findings.”

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement today was once again very noncommittal, which suggests how badly she wants to avoid an impeachment inquiry. By contrast, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, the one Republican who allows that Mueller found impeachable offenses, was far more forceful.

Standing Where Barr Cleared Trump on Obstruction, Mueller Makes a Different Case
By Mark Mazzetti and Charlie Savage, The New York Times
May 29, 2019

Robert S. Mueller III delivered a starkly different presentation on Wednesday from the same lectern, saying that charging a sitting president was never an option, no matter the evidence. Instead, his investigators asked another question: Could they clear the president?

On potential obstruction of justice, the answer was no.

“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime,” Mr. Mueller said, “we would have said so.”

The power of Mr. Mueller’s brief appearance came from his attempts to cut through a lengthy and dense report to give his own voice and imprimatur to a damning set of findings both about Mr. Trump and the Russian sabotage campaign. His carefully chosen phrases stood in sharp contrast to Mr. Barr’s portrayal of the investigation as vindicating Mr. Trump from accusations of the crime of obstruction.

After weeks when Mr. Barr had served as the public face of the Mueller report, Mr. Mueller reclaimed the document as his own with his first, and perhaps last, public statement about the investigation since being appointed special counsel two years ago. He made clear that it was for others to decide whether to accuse Mr. Trump of breaking the law — perhaps members of Congress, perhaps future prosecutors. Mr. Mueller’s delivery was sometimes halting, but his message was firm.

Mr. Barr, at a news conference shortly before he released the Mueller report last month, repeatedly emphasized that the special counsel had not established “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mr. Mueller opened with a sobering account focused on Russia’s “concerted attack on our political system” that was meant to “interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.”

While he also said that the evidence did not add up to a conspiracy, his emphasis, unlike Mr. Barr’s, was on the “paramount importance” of figuring out what Russia had done — an argument that built into an implicit censure of Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine and impede the investigation.

“When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators,” Mr. Mueller said, “it strikes at the core of their government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.”

But in a crucial respect, Mr. Mueller remained as coy as he was in the report. He refused to unambiguously state what he and his team thought should be done with their findings, leaving his intentions and conclusions open to interpretation.

For instance, he listed his reasons for stopping short of deciding whether to accuse Mr. Trump of the crime of obstruction: namely, that the Justice Department has forbidden charging a sitting president with a crime, and it would be unfair to accuse someone of wrongdoing without giving them the opportunity to clear their name at trial.

But he offered only hints about what he thought should happen instead, emphasizing that a sitting president can still be investigated “because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents available.”

“Among other things,” Mr. Mueller said, “that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could be charged now.”

His use of the pregnant phrase “among other things” was a deflection. It implied — but left unsaid — the far more important thing for which the Justice Department can use all that preserved evidence: In the future, after Mr. Trump leaves office, other prosecutors could decide then whether to charge the former president with a crime.

Similarly, Mr. Mueller noted that the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that forbids indicting a sitting president “says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.” Yet he stopped short of saying the explosive word he was clearly referring to: impeachment.

Mr. Mueller is “being as direct as he can be” about the possibility that Mr. Trump committed a crime and that Congress should act, said Glenn Kirschner, who worked with Mr. Mueller as a homicide prosecutor.

“Mueller is the king of circumspection, and that’s a blessing and a curse because the American people are not good with circumspection,” Mr. Kirschner said.

Mr. Mueller’s aversion to delivering quotable sound bites denied the president’s critics the chance to use his words as partisan ammunition in the months ahead, preserving his above-the-fray credibility and the integrity of his findings. But it came at the cost of risking that the public may fail to fully grasp his implications — confusion that Mr. Trump and his allies exploited almost immediately.
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Indeed, the ambiguity in Mr. Mueller’s report left an opening for Mr. Barr to exploit, jumping in to claim that the special counsel had left the decision to him, as attorney general, about whether to accuse Mr. Trump of committing crimes.

Mr. Barr declared that “the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.” In doing so, he ignored that the report lays out several episodes in which Mr. Trump took actions that appeared to meet all three criteria for the crime of obstruction based on the special counsel’s analysis of them.

In the weeks after he delivered his report, Mr. Barr took jabs at both Mr. Mueller and his team. He described Mr. Mueller’s decision not to make a definitive judgment on the obstruction of justice issue as inscrutable. He pointedly declined to defend the special counsel against charges from Republicans that Mr. Mueller had been engaged in a witch hunt. He described a letter Mr. Mueller had written in the days after the delivery of the report as “snitty,” and said it was likely written by a member of his team.

Democratic dithering is unacceptable! Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is a criminal and a traitor! Impeachment is a Constitutional necessity, not an option.