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By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet

While arguing that President Donald Trump's recent tweet directing Attorney Jeff Sessions to end special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation constituted obstruction of justice, former GOP ethics attorney Richard Painter added that the evidence that Trump has broken the law has been clear for over a year.

Painter discussed the issue Wednesday on MSNBC's “The Beat with Ari Melber.”

“It was quite clear [Trump] fired James Comey in order to obstruct the Russia investigation, and he admitted to that in front of the Russian ambassador and in several TV Interviews,” said Painter, who served under President George W. Bush and is now running for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota. 

“We should have had hearings in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees at the same time that Robert Mueller was hired,” he continued. “And that's the way it was done in the Nixon days. They had the House and Senate actually doing their jobs and investigating. This is, and has been, evidence of obstruction of justice going back to the Comey firing, at least.”

He continued: “It's shameful it's not being investigated. He ought to be out of office by now.”

Watch the clip below:

“It's shameful it's not being investigated, he ought to be out of office by now” – @RWPUSA on Congress not investigating obstruction of justice pic.twitter.com/j94JzUS9OV

— TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) August 1, 2018

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…read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Kerry Eleveld, Daily Kos

They ballooned the deficit by a trillion-plus, gave billions in tax breaks to the mega-rich, but when it comes to securing the nation’s democratic elections, that’s just a bridge too far for Senate Republicans. Only one GOP senator voted for a measure that would have provided an extra $250 million in election security funding in the lead up to the 2018 midterms. The Washington Post writes:

The 50 to 47 vote fell far short of the needed 60 votes to include the $250 million amendment, proposed by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), in an appropriations package that the Senate was set to approve Wednesday. Only one Republican senator — Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), who frequently prioritizes deficit concerns — voted for the additional funds.

Three other Republicans didn’t vote: Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Arizona Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona (who’s in Africa) and John McCain (who’s battling cancer). Burr chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee that has concluded Russia attacked the 2016 elections and did so to the benefit of Donald Trump. Congress recently granted $380 million in funding to help secure the election but the Post reports a general “bipartisan consensus” that it isn’t enough to shore up U.S. elections given the current threat level.

The vote also occurred one day after Facebook disclosed discovering a disinformation campaign on its network targeting the elections, and one week after Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri became the first documented target of Russian hacking. 

So much for GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s empty threats that Russia “better not do it again.”

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Source: ALTERNET

By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet

MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace fumed Wednesday about the lies and hypocrisy emanating from the White House, showing particular disdain for press secretary Sarah Sanders' defense earlier in the day of President Donald Trump's attacks on the media.

“While we certainly support freedom of the press, we support freedom of speech and we think those things go hand in hand,” Sanders said in a clip played on Wallace's show “Deadline: White House.”

After the clip finished airing, Wallace had a look of disgust on her face.

“We're not going to air that anymore,” Wallace said. “Let's make that the last Sarah Huckabee Sanders clip at 4 o'clock. That is it. You know, that makes me sweat! That is vile!” 

“That made me sweat!” she repeated, actually wiping her brow. “This is someone who complains about a restaurant that exercises their First Amendment right to kick out someone 'obliterating democratic norms' — that made me sweat.”

John Heilemann then chimed in:”The prepared answer where she talked about the responsibilities of the press and talked about Osama bin Laden was just a pack of lies. So the prepared answer was a pack of lies, and then we got that”. 

“I'm gathering myself,” Wallace said, before introducing a clip recounting some of Trump's bogus claims. “Let's watch some lies.”

Watch the clip below:

“Let's make that the last Sarah Huckabee Sanders clip at 4 o’clock” — @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/B8zzRtaZ6o

— AlterNet (@AlterNet) August 1, 2018

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Source: ALTERNET

By Alex Henderson, AlterNet

Applying for immigration to a foreign country can be a cumbersome and bureaucratic process even under the best of circumstances. And thanks to the Trump administration, immigrating to the U.S. could become much more difficult for anyone who lacks a high income. 

Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Homeland Security is considering an immigration plan that would place much more emphasis on applicants’ income and assets as well as the condition of their health. The plan would revive the antiquated “public charge” test, which started with the Immigration Act of 1882.

When the Immigration Act of 1882 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur—the Republican who had become president after President James A. Garfield’s assassination a year earlier—the term “public charge” was used to describe someone who was likely to need some type of help from the government. And under the Trump administration’s immigration plan, many people would fit the definition of a “public charge.” 

The Immigration Act of 1882 specified what types of types of immigrants were considered undesirable—specifically, “any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.”

At the time, there was considerable prejudice against Irish-Catholic immigrants. Ireland was much poorer back then, and opponents of Irish-Catholic immigration argued that immigrants arriving from Dublin or Cork were likely to become “public charges.” The Immigration Act of 1882, they hoped, would curtail Irish-Catholic immigration just as the Chinese Exclusion Act (also signed into law by President Arthur that year) would curtail Chinese immigration.   

These days, however, Ireland is much more prosperous than it was in the 19th century—whether it’s the Republic of Ireland in the south or the UK-associated Northern Ireland—and it is immigrants of color that the Trump administration fears could become “public charges.” 

Using the Trump administration’s proposed “public charge” test, a one-person household applying for immigration would need to be …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet

CNN's Jake Tapper denounced President Donald Trump's most recent attacks on the special counsel's Russia investigation, arguing that his battle with the probe has reached Nixonian levels.

“President Trump [is] escalating his attacks on the Russia investigation, going even further in his calls to shut down a law enforcement investigation into his own team, farther than we've ever seen before from this president or any president since Richard Nixon,” Tapper said. “Trump tweeting, 'Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further.'”

Tapper continued: ”This is now official White House language for describing a law enforcement investigation — signed off on by the president's own Justice Department and defended by the president's own FBI director as not a witch hunt.”

He then played a clip of White House press secretary Sarah Sanders speaking earlier at a press briefing: “It's ridiculous that all of the corruption and dishonesty that's gone on with the launching of the witch hunt,” she said. “The entire investigation is based off a dirty, discredited dossier.”

“All right,” Tapper said. “That last statement from Sanders is a lie, of course. The investigation was launched before the dossier was drafted. It has continued gathering evidence since, including during the Trump presidency. Special counsel Mueller is, of course, also investigating the degree to which the President and his team have tried to stop the investigation, with potential obstruction of justice charges at play.”

Watch the clip below:

President Trump is escalating his attacks on the Russia investigation; going even further in his calls to shut down a law enforcement probe into his own team than we’ve ever seen before, from this President or any President since Nixon https://t.co/NWkE881POX pic.twitter.com/i1xswLhekt

— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) August 1, 2018

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• 'Collusion Involves …read more

  Source: ALTERNET

By Elliott Negin, Independent Media Institute

ExxonMobil executives just had another opportunity to convince skeptics that their support for a carbon tax is genuine.

They blew it.

On July 23, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL-26) introduced a bill that would place a $24 per ton tax on carbon emissions and dedicate 70 percent of the revenue to rebuilding U.S. infrastructure.

ExxonMobil’s reaction? “We appreciate Rep. Curbelo’s effort to help generate a constructive discussion on this important issue” was all a company spokesman was willing to say.

ExxonMobil’s reluctance to seriously engage, however, should not come as a surprise.

Yes, the company has consistently paid lip service to a carbon tax since 2009. And yes, it is a founding member of the Climate Leadership Council—which supports a $40 per ton carbon tax—and it recently endorsed Americans for Carbon Dividends, a new bipartisan lobby group promoting a carbon tax that would return revenues to taxpayers.

But more telling is the fact that the oil giant has never publicly supported a carbon tax bill and consistently funds members of Congress who oppose a carbon tax.

How does that square with the company’s avowed position?

It doesn’t.

Just say no

Curbelo’s bill is hardly the first carbon tax legislation that ExxonMobil has snubbed. When Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA-33) asked ExxonMobil lobbyists to support a carbon tax bill in 2015, they refused. And when Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the “American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act” in 2016, the company would not endorse their bill or lobby on its behalf.

“Regarding ExxonMobil’s alleged seven years of support for a carbon fee, we’ve seen no meaningful evidence of that,” the senators wrote in a letter they sent to the company in August 2016. “None of the top executives that make up ExxonMobil’s management team has expressed interest in meeting with any of us to discuss the Whitehouse-Schatz proposal or any carbon fee legislation.”

Besides ExxonMobil’s unwillingness to support actual legislation, it rewards members of Congress who oppose a carbon tax by consistently funding their reelection campaigns.

The most recent example of ExxonMobil’s upside-down funding priorities was a nonbinding carbon tax resolution in the House, …read more

Source: ALTERNET