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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7110 on: September 18, 2018, 10:24:19 AM »
There are several strikes against Kavanaugh, having a list of 65 people prepare beforehand against these allegation ahead of time, and the blocking of most of his record of performance as a judge. Then there is this mad rush to push him thru with only 13 hours to even examine the record that they did put out before the hearing. All of this highly irregular for any confirmation ever put forth in our govt.

This victim's story is just the icing on the turd cake that is this nomination. The Republicans' mad dash to force his nomination through, even with all of these other, more recently-documented red flags, is a dereliction of duty on their part. They're trying to get a "win" for their "side", while decimating everyone else. A lifetime appointment should be taken seriously, and not done like this. And this is not a partisan sentiment on my part either. If Chuck Schumer had been the one to prevent the nomination process of a Republican president's SCOTUS pick the way Mitch McConnell did to Merrick Garland, I would have been equally up-in-arms about it.
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rtpoe

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7111 on: September 20, 2018, 09:03:03 PM »
Here's what really irritates me about this latest thing with Kavanaugh.

(And I keep saying it, and I keep getting slammed by people. But I'm standing by it)

Look, I don't agree at all with his political views. But that, in and of itself, isn't enough to justify keeping him off the Supreme Court. What does is his (very) possible perjury in various Congressional testimony, questionable finances, and his inability to give a straight answer to even the simplest of questions about his judicial philosophy.

OK?

What ought to make all of us decent folk nervous is that Dr. Ford's accusation is (at the moment) unprovable and impossible to defend against.

Say you'd like to see some - ANY - supporting evidence, and people roll up their sleeves and angrily go "You callin' her a liar?" Remind people of the venerable legal principle of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty", and they point out how much of a frat boy he was in college and consider that sufficient proof of guilt. Note that he was a teenager at the time, and that society with good reason treats juveniles differently from adults, and they bring out some line about how sexual predators never change.

You (like me) can deeply hope that Kavanaugh never gets confirmed to the Supreme Court. But you can also be (like me) very worried that he's being railroaded here and not being given the chance to respond fairly to a very serious accusation from a credible source.

And those who are of a similar age as Kavanaugh (like me), and were somewhat of a frat boy in college (unlike me) and "sowed our wild oats" thirty years ago (when it was perfectly understood that college boys would do that, and if you did do something really stupid, it stayed a local matter and didn't become a national outrage), ought to be very worried that someone, somewhere, is going to remember something they did way back then and think, "You know, that is totally unacceptable according to current social mores", and come forward and ruin their life.

Can we at least step away from the tar and feathers and suspend our judgment in this matter until we have better information? Can we be better than the Republicans?
rtpoe

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3deroticer

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7112 on: September 20, 2018, 11:31:54 PM »
I think we all want better information before comfirmation of Kavanaugh to the highest bar of the govt. The only one that doesn't want better information is the president, only he can order a FBI investigation.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/the-yale-secret-society-brett-kavanaugh-joined-was-mostly

Interesting to note that Kavanaugh **94** days were just getting started in HS and he joined a group that went by the name "Tit and Clit" in college.
"Yesterday, Reince Priebus called this whole story a 'nothing burger,'" he said. "Well these emails have turned it into an all-you-can-prosecute buffet."

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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7113 on: September 24, 2018, 11:44:09 PM »
A third woman is about to come forward to testify that KKKavanaugh and his friend were running trains on women at college, among other things. And yet McConnell and co. still want to ram this heavily compromised nominee through, without at least having the FBI determine the truth or otherwise of the accusations. It makes no sense.
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rtpoe

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7114 on: September 27, 2018, 06:56:33 PM »
I've got a theory as to why some men might be supporting Kavanaugh (or others accused of similar offenses), or at least not joining in the condemnation.

There are so many instances of sexual offenses of one sort or another filling the press these days that it's getting hard to separate them. And the rhetoric is making it seem as if all men are guilty, and if you don't join in the fight, you're an accomplice.

"Guess who's perpetuating all of these kind of actions? It's the men in this country," Senator Maizie Hirono (D-HI) told reporters. "And I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up."

It should be obvious that the vast majority of men are NOT sexual harassers. But you'd never know that from the media coverage.

Then, there's no distinction being made between different levels of harassment. Judge Kavanaugh has been tossed in the same dumpster as Roger Ailes and Roy Moore. Yes, college assholery more than three decades in the past is the same as a dozen credible accounts of perving on young girls to the point that you get banned from a shopping mall, or letting women in your employ know that if they want to get ahead in the business, they have to let you have your way with them. Want an even stupider example? Ian Buruma, an editor at the New York Review of Books, is now a former editor there because he published an essay by a man who, after a sensational trial in Canada, was acquitted on all counts stemming from multiple accusations of sexual harassment....

And while the "Believe the Women" hashtag/movement/thing is doing good work in encouraging women to speak out, one can also say that it's flipped the venerable legal principle of "Innocent until proven guilty" and is now placing the burden of proof on the accused. And quite often, it's impossible to prove a negative (q.v. Russell's Teapot).

So one could say that what men are seeing here is "We don't care what you say, you are GUILTY!!!! And good luck trying to convince us otherwise." With that attitude, it's easy to see why men aren't adding their voices to the side of good. And in defending Kavanaugh, maybe what they are trying to do is defend their entire gender.
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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3deroticer

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7115 on: September 28, 2018, 12:36:41 AM »
When Lindsey Graham says that Kavanaugh shouldn't be judge for being a teen acting like Bill Cosby, that's basically saying that boys will be boys. except we have a allegation of improper behavior back in 1998. We just prosecute Bill Cosby for spiking alcohol with drugs to **14** a girl. I had someone spike my drink which led to a kidney failure. I now live with 2/3 of one kidney for that joke that's suppose to be funny hah hah. He is in prison now. My kidney now have to be monitor for the rest of my life. So when ask judicial question about the proceeding and he has to ask the committee to what he should do concerns me. When he step into court will he be able to make his own opinion and write a thesis on how he came to that decision without the help of his Republican committee? He hasn't shown the ability to answer these important judicial question without referring back to what the committee want to do.
"Yesterday, Reince Priebus called this whole story a 'nothing burger,'" he said. "Well these emails have turned it into an all-you-can-prosecute buffet."

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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7116 on: September 28, 2018, 06:00:34 PM »
Whether you believe Dr. Ford or not, all of this could have been settled if the Senate Judiciary Committee had called for an FBI investigation into what he did or didn't do. Let the G-men do their job, get to the bottom of this, and either clear his name or get his ass thrown in jail. The SCOTUS seat that the Republicans stole from Merrick Garland is still going to be there if his name is cleared, or if his ass is thrown in jail and then they have to come up with another nominee less prone to sexually-assaulting women, getting belligerent when inebriated and sober, and lying numerous times while testifying before Congress (which, by the way, is a federal crime).

Today is yet another date that shall live in infamy.
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rtpoe

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7117 on: September 28, 2018, 09:25:02 PM »
This has become such a hot-button issue (white male privilege, GOP obstinacy, sexual politics, etc.) that it's almost impossible to find a calm, rational, unbiased viewpoint.

At Politico, they asked a couple of legal scholars their thoughts on the hearing:

Supreme Fiasco: Did the Kavanaugh Drama Just Break the Senate?

"In that light, we’ve asked a team of legal experts to answer two simple, yet revealing questions: Who, between Kavanaugh and Ford, do you find more credible, and what did yesterday's hearing say about how we confirm Supreme Court justices? Those answers may help us understand how we reached this extraordinary moment—and when, and in what form, we may expect the next one." —Derek Robertson

Ilya Shapiro is senior fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review:

Quote
I found both Ford and Kavanaugh extremely credible, but given the denials of all alleged witnesses to the incident in question, the presumption of innocence was not overcome.

But we shouldn’t forget that there are no winners here. If Kavanaugh is confirmed, he will carry the same kind of reputational cloud under which Justice Clarence Thomas has lived for 27 years, while a significant chunk of the population will think that he’s an illegitimate justice. If he’s rejected, then forevermore last-minute smear tactics and bad faith will prevail, and an even greater chunk of the population will lose faith in the Senate.

Elizabeth Price Foley is Professor of Law at the Florida International University College of Law:

Quote
In civilized societies that embrace due process of law, rational decision-making—including credibility assessment—can only be achieved by a “preponderance of the evidence” standard. This means that, for a rational determination to be reached, the decision-maker(s) must find that, under the totality of the circumstances, it is “more likely than not” that the allegation is true.

Credibility is not assessed on the basis of gender, the nature of an allegation, or one’s political affiliation. Any rational credibility determination requires unbiased consideration of the totality of the circumstances.

In short, under the totality of the evidence adduced, there is no rational evidence that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted anyone, including Ford. While some may choose to believe Ford for various reasons—such as believing women, believing Democrats, hating Donald Trump or believing all allegations of sexual assault—such beliefs, while passionately held, are not rational credibility determinations but biased ones. They would never be accepted in any court, or in any other fair decision-making process of a civilized society. 

Ilya Somin is a law professor at George Mason University and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is the author of Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter:

Quote
Our judgment may be even more flawed in a case where it is likely to be compromised by ideological and partisan bias. One of the most striking aspects of commentators’ reactions to yesterday’s hearing (and sexual assault accusations more generally) is the extremely high correlation between what people think of the allegations and whether they believe Kavanaugh should be confirmed aside from them.

As a matter of logic, it should be possible to simultaneously believe that Kavanaugh is a great jurist, yet also likely guilty of sexual assault, or, conversely, that his jurisprudence is badly flawed, yet Ford’s accusations are insufficiently proven to be disqualifying. The fact that these two positions have so few adherents is a strong sign that reactions to the accusations and hearing are heavily influenced by “motivated reasoning”—the tendency to interpret evidence in accordance with political and other preconceptions.

---

Andrew Sullivan of New York magazine watched the hearings, and waited a while to digest what he saw before commenting:

Everyone Lost at the Ford-Kavanaugh Hearings

Quote
To the extent that the hearing went beyond the specifics of Ford’s allegations and sought to humiliate and discredit Kavanaugh for who he was as a teenager nearly four decades ago (a dynamic that was quite pronounced in some Democratic questioning of the nominee), it was deeply concerning. When public life means the ransacking of people’s private lives even when they were in high school, we are circling a deeply illiberal drain. A civilized society observes a distinction between public and private, and this distinction is integral to individual freedom.

And it is the distinguishing mark of specifically totalitarian societies that this safety is eradicated altogether by design. There, the private is always emphatically public, everything is political, and ideology trumps love, family, friendship or any refuge from the glare of the party and its public… The cause, which is usually a permanently revolutionary one, always matters more than any individual’s possible innocence. You are, in fact, always guilty before being proven innocent. You always have to prove a negative. And no offense at any point in your life is ever forgotten or off the table.

I note that all of these comments are about the process, and have nothing whatsoever to do with Kavanaugh's suitability or lack thereof for the Supreme Court...
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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StrikezOne

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7118 on: September 30, 2018, 05:00:18 PM »
On clearing SCOTUS by using FBI investigation:

"..next person who refers to an FBI report as being worth anything, obviously doesnt understand anything. FBI explicitly does not in this or any other case reach a conclusion. PERIOD. PERIOD. So judges, no reason why should know this, the reason why we cannot rely on the FBI report, you wouldnt like it if we did, because it it is inconclusive. They say he said she said and they said. PERIOD. So when people wave an FBI report before you, understand, they do not, they do not, they do not reach conclusions. They do not make, as my friend points out, more adequate, they do not make recommendations."

- Joe Bidden
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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7119 on: September 30, 2018, 10:39:13 PM »
"...Let’s leave aside the procedural questions about if and how an investigation should proceed. Given what we know now, after the hearings, what can we conclude for certain? Let’s just say we do not know whether to believe Ford or Kavanaugh, that we found both of their testimonies equally likely to be true. In a state of uncertainty, we’d be left with a tricky situation. The truth or falsity of the allegation against Kavanaugh is extremely important; if it’s true, not only did he attack a woman three decades ago, but he lied shamelessly about it under oath, f0rcing Ford through a humiliating public process that led to her receiving death threats. If what Ford says is true, then not only should Brett Kavanaugh not be confirmed to the Supreme Court, but he should be impeached and removed from the federal judiciary entirely, disbarred, and prosecuted for perjury.

The stakes here are high: If Kavanaugh did it and is confirmed, then a sexual assailant and sociopathic liar will be given one of the most powerful offices in the country (wouldn’t be the first time). If he didn’t do it, then his indignation and disgust is justified. Republicans have argued that Ford’s allegation is completely unproven, uncorroborated, and totally inconsistent with known facts, and that presenting it to the country represents an abandonment of the “presumption of innocence” (which it is refreshing to hear them care about).

What is the best way, then, to figure out the truth? It’s absolutely the case that Christine Ford has no eyewitnesses to support her. She cannot remember exactly where the assault happened, or exactly when. She can’t remember all the people who were at the house, and the people she does say were there have said they have no memory of the event. She told nobody about it at the time. Looking at these facts, we can see how someone strongly committed to due process might think the allegation extremely weak. (Just for the moment, let’s leave aside the two other serious sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh.)

However, while these aspects of Ford’s allegation might lead us to demand more proof, they in no way make it inconceivable. In fact, they’re exactly what we might expect if the allegation were true. A girl attacked by two jocks at a party may not tell anybody, precisely because she knows there are no eyewitnesses, they’d back each other up, and even if there had been physical evidence they could never be convicted of anything. It’s not surprising that attendees other than Ford don’t remember this gathering; she says it was small and informal, and remembering who was at every small and informal gathering you were ever at in high school three decades ago is impossible. Ford (and the alleged perpetrators) is the only one it was a significant night for. So the lack of corroboration doesn’t itself make the allegation dubious, and if we demand eyewitnesses before believing victims, most of the time someone who did this would get away with it, because most of the time people are sexually violated in private. Of course there is a serious risk to the “believe all accusers” approach—it leads to wrongful convictions. But there is also a risk to a “never believe an uncorroborated charge” approach—it means that you can attack someone if you’re alone with them, and as long as you leave no marks, you’ll get away with it forever...

The existence of a “he said, she said” does not mean it’s impossible to figure out the truth. It means we have to examine what he said, and what she said, as closely as possible. If both parties speak with passion and clarity, but one of them says many inconsistent, evasive, irrational, and false things, while the other does not, then we actually have a very good indicator of which party is telling the truth. If a man claims to be innocent, but does things—like carefully manipulate words to avoid giving clear answers, or lie about the evidence—that you probably wouldn’t do if you were innocent, then testimony alone can substantially change our confidence in who to believe.

In this case, when we examine the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford honestly, impartially, and carefully, it is impossible to escape the following conclusions:

  • Brett Kavanaugh is lying.
  • There is no good reason to believe that Christine Blasey Ford is lying. This does not mean that she is definitely telling the truth, but that there is nothing in what Kavanaugh said that in any way discredits her account.

I want to show you, clearly and definitively, how Brett Kavanaugh has lied to you and lied to the Senate. I cannot prove that he committed sexual assault when he was 17, and I hesitate to draw conclusions about what happened for a few minutes in a house in Maryland in the summer of 1982. But I can prove quite easily that Kavanaugh’s teary-eyed “good, innocent man indignant at being wrongfully accused” schtick was a facade. What may have looked like a strong defense was in fact a very, very weak and implausible one."

-- "How We Know Kavanaugh Is Lying", by Nathan J. Robinson
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3deroticer

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7120 on: September 30, 2018, 11:24:28 PM »
Interesting that Biden speech was brought up, because Clarence Thomas nomination hearing went very differently. He stayed calm and collected and made an argument that can be said sounded like a calculated thoughtful judge with his answer that didn't slip into a Alex Jones conspiracy anger rant against a political party! He lied that he was impartial like a independent judge that isn't a political mouth piece for one party. He can't even have his own opinion without referencing to what the committee wanted. He stated that he wants a investigation but when ask to submit his request for the investigation, he didn't not to........

But the weirdest part of all this is that he was a crying sniffing sad angry man and quickly smiled when asking if she ever black out from too many beers. My first thought was, is he fantasizing about getting her into bed if she happen to be a easy **92**? Asking a female if she is an easy **92** is the sure fire way to stay a virgin. That part of his life that he stated to being a virgin, I can believe!
"Yesterday, Reince Priebus called this whole story a 'nothing burger,'" he said. "Well these emails have turned it into an all-you-can-prosecute buffet."

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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7121 on: October 04, 2018, 01:13:03 AM »
Quote

"The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse more than 193,000 American chi!dren of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration, that the Department of Homeland Security had lied about creating a database of chi!dren that would make it possible to unite them with the families the Trump administration had arbitrarily destroyed, that the White House was considering a blanket ban on visas for Chinese students, and that it would deny visas to the same-sex partners of foreign officials. At a rally in Mississippi, a crowd of Trump supporters cheered as the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford, the psychology professor who has said that Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump has nominated to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, attempted to r4pe her when she was a teen4ger. 'Lock her up!' they shouted.

Ford testified to the Senate, utilizing her professional expertise to describe the encounter, that one of the parts of the incident she remembered most was Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge laughing at her as Kavanaugh fumbled at her clothing. “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,” Ford said, referring to the part of the brain that processes emotion and memory, “the uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.” And then at Tuesday’s rally, the president made his supporters laugh at her.

Even those who believe that Ford fabricated her account, or was mistaken in its details, can see that the president’s mocking of her testimony renders all sexual-assault survivors collateral damage. Anyone afraid of coming forward, afraid that they would not be believed, can now look to the president to see their fears realized. Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain.


The cruelty of the Trump administration’s policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected. As Lili Loofbourow wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in Slate, adolescent male cruelty towards women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. The white men in the lynching photos are not merely smiling because of what they have done, but because they did it together...

...A blockbuster New York Times investigation on Tuesday reported that President Trump’s wealth was largely inherited through fraudulent schemes, that he became a millionaire while still a chi!d, and that his fortune persists in spite of his fumbling entrepreneurship, not because of it. The stories are not unconnected. The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty.

Trump’s only true skill is the con, his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."

-- The Atlantic: Ideas: "The Cruelty Is the Point", by Adam Serwer



This is not normal.
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3deroticer

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"Yesterday, Reince Priebus called this whole story a 'nothing burger,'" he said. "Well these emails have turned it into an all-you-can-prosecute buffet."

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StrikezOne

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7123 on: October 10, 2018, 02:49:40 PM »
*Looks left*

*Looks right*

*Grins*

*Shrugs shoulders*

Dark Brandon quietly doing his job:

Highest Inflation in 40yrs
Highest Gas Prices Ever
Forced Vax on Millions of healthy Americans
Highest Mortgage rates in 15yrs
Most Illegal Border Crossings in US History
Loss of Energy Independence
High Taxes
High Crime
Afghanistan Disaster
Nordstream 2 Pipeline
Hunter Corruption/Treason
Vacations > Ohio Train Derailment, Maui Fires
WW3
America LAST

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3deroticer

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #7124 on: October 10, 2018, 03:12:30 PM »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHPH3grlgSk

interesting and troubling situation. I think that all people need to be protected from both side, if justice is blind on one side then its blind for everyone.
"Yesterday, Reince Priebus called this whole story a 'nothing burger,'" he said. "Well these emails have turned it into an all-you-can-prosecute buffet."