[QUOTE=kladner;509746][URL]https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/55246-mueller-says-he-has-obtained-trumps-sat-scores[/URL]

I had to add the picture of Mueller, even though it is at the head of the article. I have never seen any representation of this guy smiling, and it's scary![/QUOTE]

Prepare to be frightened out of your wits! The picture you posted is the one with the caption [i]Mueller prepares to face questions from the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing Sept. 16, 2008[/i] in the slide show [url=https://www.politico.com/gallery/2018/08/07/robert-mueller-fbi-photos-birthday-002952?slide=0]here[/url] (change the slide=0 to slide=8 in the URL).

The one [url=https://www.politico.com/gallery/2018/08/07/robert-mueller-fbi-photos-birthday-002952?slide=12]here[/url], captioned [i]Mueller smiles before the start of a briefing with reporters at FBI headquarters on July 26, 2006.[/i], makes him look positively angelic, thanks to a photographic oopsadaisy
:-D

Trump Storms Out of McDonald's After Failing to Close Six-Dollar Meal Deal
 

[URL]https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/55300-trump-storms-out-of-mcdonalds-after-failing-to-close-six-dollar-meal-deal[/URL]
[QUOTE]At approximately 12:30 P.M., Trump took a break from his designated “executive time” to travel to the nearby McDonald’s, where he placed an order for a Meal Deal consisting of a Quarter Pounder with cheese, fries, Coke, and an apple pie.

Tracy Klugian, the McDonald’s employee who took Trump’s order, said that he was aware of Trump’s difficulty in closing deals and therefore hiked the price of the Meal Deal to twelve dollars.
[/QUOTE]

March 4 is the anniversary of most US presidential inaugurations before 1937. Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural was the one mentioned in the "On this day" feature today.

One reason is almost certainly Lincoln's second inaugural address, which may be found [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_second_inaugural_address]here[/url].

I've seen bumper stickers bearing his likeness with the caption, "It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to." The line comes from a 1960's popular song.

God Offers People of Alabama New Bibles to Replace Ones Trump Signed
 

[URL]https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/55439-god-offers-people-of-alabama-new-bibles-to-replace-ones-trump-signed[/URL]
[QUOTE]God has offered to give the people of Alabama brand new Bibles to replace the ones that Donald J. Trump signed during his visit to the state on Friday.

In a rare public statement from the famously mysterious deity, God said that He was furious at Trump “for defacing My book,” calling Trump’s signature “a wanton act of vandalism.”
[/QUOTE]

Locked in a Cold War Time Warp
 

This post is just intended to show how many deranged and deluded folks there are who ever even suspect that the "Saintly" NYT ever even shaded the truth, even a little bit. Poor fools.

[QUOTE]Burns and Ember [of the NYT] editorialized that Sanders often “walked a line between fostering kinship with a foreign people and admiring aspects of a repressive system.”

If Sanders walked a fine line, however, what about the frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination, Joe Biden whom [I]The Times[/I] has never questioned for supporting repressive systems?

During the Arab Spring protests in Egypt, even National Public Radio (NPR) considered Biden to be on the “wrong side of history” when he rejected the term “dictator” to describe Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak who had at that point been in power for over 31 years.

When asked by PBS Newshour anchor Jim Lehrer whether the time had come for Mubarak, who mercilessly attacked demonstrators, to step aside, Biden said “no,” adding only that he hoped Mubarak would “be more responsive to some of the needs of the people out there.”
[/QUOTE]

A Stain on the Honor of the Navy
 

[URL]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/uss-john-s-mccain-scandal-stains-navy/590575/[/URL]
I thought I would give Electile Dysfunction a rest, though this post might have fit there, as well. I will leave aside arguments about the honor of professional killers, in an organization, the US military, which bleeds the country white even in "peace" times.
[QUOTE]One prays to the “[URL="https://www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=172"]Eternal Father, strong to save / Whose arm hath bound the restless wave[/URL]” that [I]The Wall Street Journal[/I] has got it horribly wrong. The newspaper [URL="https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-wanted-uss-john-mccain-out-of-sight-during-trump-japan-visit-11559173470?emailToken=ca887c08f025f5a5b7a01dbde32c838etBzq0FwbTXJrUQ8MUigaUjoAwWzGVOHT66U4wF7JggEVN49VMPJcywDwL4QIC90yIeTde53bioBxoijKFGMKce+lggzjkFmquqfBI+eoiwkN6qJGKPyIRwCj2ZtjqkkRe2VMQFp9bRWUdJs0k7z4QA%3D%3D&reflink=article_imessage_share"]reports[/URL] that the United States Navy, under orders from the White House and with the approval of the acting secretary of defense and the compliance of a chain of naval officers in the Seventh Fleet, did its efficient best to conceal the name John McCain from President Donald Trump’s sight when he recently visited Yokosuka Naval Base.

The ship is under repair, so it could not be moved. But sailors hung a tarp over the ship’s name, and other measures (a strategically positioned barge) helped obscure the offending words. Sailors were told to remove all coverings that might indicate that the ship is the USS John S. McCain. They were, according to the article, given the day off, lest the name John McCain, embroidered on their caps, give offense. On the day of the presidential visit, some of the sailors present wore “Make Aircrew Great Again” patches, with something that resembled Trump’s profile on them. Subsequent stories in [I][URL="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/us/politics/uss-mccain-navy-ship.html"]The New York Times[/URL] [/I]and [I][URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/meghan-mccain-hits-out-at-trump-over-report-white-house-wanted-uss-john-s-mccain-covered-up/2019/05/29/3ad314b2-8272-11e9-933d-7501070ee669_story.html"]The Washington Post[/URL] [/I]amended the [I]Journal[/I]’s story somewhat, to include the assertion that naval leadership intervened at the last minute to have the tarp removed. But the basic account remained intact.

[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=kladner;518123][URL]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/uss-john-s-mccain-scandal-stains-navy/590575/[/URL]
[/QUOTE]The action of obscuring the ship's name was craven bootlicking.

I doubt the name emblazoned on the ship would have given [i]Il Duce[/i] offense anyway, because I doubt he can read.

I have mixed feelings on [i]Il Duce[/i]'s five draft deferments (including one based on a diagnosis of bone spurs on his heels) getting him out of serving in Vietnam. On the one hand, they make him look like a coward using his family's economic privilege to avoid serving his country. On the other hand, keeping him out of the military was likely in the best interest of good order and discipline.

Trump’s Charges Against Julian Assange Would Effectively Criminalize Investigative Journalism
 

"Ever since the Pentagon Papers case, an Espionage Act loophole has been waiting for [U]a president thuggish enough to make use of it[/U]."
[QUOTE]Isolated in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison, Julian Assange was too ill to attend his own extradition hearing this week—a hearing now postponed to mid-June. This pause in the action is also an opportunity to contemplate the dangerous new path on which the Trump administration has embarked in its pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder, with the 17 new counts of violating the Espionage Act filed by the Justice Department last week. Those new counts make the real targets of the Assange prosecution clear: journalists worldwide.

The new charges against Assange—far broader than the narrow password-hacking charge on which he was first detained for extradition—are unprecedented, politically charged, and consequential. Like the earlier charge, they focus on his 2010 publication of the “Iraq War Logs” document cache and the “Collateral Murder” video showing airstrikes targeting two Reuters correspondents. These new charges accuse Assange of trying to persuade his source, Chelsea Manning, to leak; of helping to protect that source’s identity; and of publishing information that, in government officials’ opinion, could harm national security. All of these charges may well describe how intelligence officials view the leaks in question. But they also describe the routine tradecraft of investigative and national-security journalists—and they would effectively criminalize a wide range of essential reporting practices in the United States.
[/QUOTE]

hehe

What Two Crucial Words in the Constitution Actually Mean
 

"I reviewed more than a thousand publications from the founding era, and discovered that “[U]executive power[/U]” doesn’t imply what most scholars thought."
[URL]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/executive-power-doesnt-mean-much/590461/[/URL]
[QUOTE]After years of research into an enormous array of colonial, revolutionary, and founding-era sources, I’m here to tell you that—as a historical matter—this president-as-king claim is utterly and totally wrong. I’ve reviewed more than a thousand publications from the 17th and 18th centuries for each instance of the word root [I]exec-[/I], and have read most of those texts from cover to cover with the topic of presidential power squarely in mind. I’ve read every discussion of executive power and presidential authority that appears in the gigantic compilation of archival materials known as the [I]Documentary History of the Ratification of the United States Constitution[/I]. And with the help of a team of research assistants, I’m most of the way through flyspecking the full records of the Continental Congress—including committee reports, floor debates, and delegate correspondence—with the same question in mind.

All this work has left me with both the confidence to share this conclusion and the sense of obligation to do so as bluntly as possible. It’s just not a close call: The historical record categorically refutes the idea that the American revolutionaries gave their new president an unspecified array of royal prerogatives. To the contrary, the presidency that leaps off the pages of the Founders’ debates, diaries, speeches, letters, poems, and essays was an [I]instrument[/I] of the law of the land, [I]subject[/I] to the law of the land, and both morally and legally obliged to [I]obey[/I] the law of the land.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=kladner;518513]"I reviewed more than a thousand publications from the founding era, and discovered that “[U]executive power[/U]” doesn’t imply what most scholars thought."
[URL]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/executive-power-doesnt-mean-much/590461/[/URL][quote]The historical record categorically refutes the idea that the American revolutionaries gave their new president an unspecified array of royal prerogatives. To the contrary, the presidency that leaps off the pages of the Founders’ debates, diaries, speeches, letters, poems, and essays was an [i]instrument[/i] of the law of the land, [i]subject[/i] to the law of the land, and both morally and legally obliged to [i]obey[/i] the law of the land.[/quote][/QUOTE]

And this is supposed to be news to whom, exactly? It is one of the ideals on which this country was founded, and that they teach -- or [i]used[/i] to teach -- in grade school Social Studies or Civics. Perhaps not in Texas, though
:-D

When Nixon's subversions of the rule of law became publicly known, people got mad and he had to leave office. Now, it seems that all too many people don't know or don't care how our government is supposed to work. The following excerpt from a [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWcVtWennr0]September 17, 2012 interview with David Souter[/url] is chillingly prescient.

Since you're living in Chicago, I will recommend you read (if you haven't already) a book about the regime of mayor Richard J. Daley entitled [u]Clout[/u] by Len O'Connor. (He wrote a sequel entitled [u]Requiem[/u] IIRC.) One point he makes is that people have to get involved in the political process -- not just vote, but attend public meetings, write their elected representatives, etc for politicians to do their jobs properly.