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THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty's
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2021-08-26 at 5:27 AM UTCMake
All
GOP lawyers be
Advised
Judge sanctions pro-Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and several others who brought 'frivolous' election fraud lawsuits
By Tierney Sneed, CNN
A federal judge ordered sanctions Wednesday for Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and several other lawyers who worked on Trump-aligned lawsuits seeking to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
US District Judge Linda Parker, of the Eastern District of Michigan, said the lawyers had "engaged in litigation practices" that were "abusive and, in turn, sanctionable."
"Sanctions are required to deter the filing of future frivolous lawsuits designed primarily to spread the narrative that our election processes are rigged and our democratic institutions cannot be trusted," the judge wrote in a 110-page opinion.
Parker is ordering the lawyers to reimburse the attorneys' fees that the city of Detroit and Michigan state officials paid in seeking the sanctions. The lawyers must also take legal education classes, the judge said, and she is referring her decision to the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, and "the appropriate disciplinary authority for the jurisdiction(s) where each attorney is admitted," for potential disciplinary action.
Wood referred CNN to his attorney when asked for comment. Powell and the attorney who was representing them in the sanctions dispute did not immediately respond to emails from CNN requesting comment.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, praised the judge's ruling on Wednesday, saying in a statement that it "sends a clear message: those who seek to overturn an American election and poison the well of American democracy will face consequences."
The lawsuit filed in Parker's court last November by Powell, Wood and others was one of dozens of suits brought last year as part of an early, major attempt by then-President Donald Trump to claim that the presidential election results in November were illegitimate. His team and supporters lost all of their attempts in court to gain traction on voter fraud.
Last month, Parker grilled the attorneys over their election fraud claims during a six-hour hearing in which her line-by-line questioning yielded a painstaking recounting of the thinness of those claims.
The city of Detroit -- whose lawyer had argued that the Trump lawsuit was solely meant to spread lies about the election -- as well as the state of Michigan had asked the federal court to sanction the lawyers who had brought the case.
The punishments handed down on Wednesday are not the first for a pro-Trump attorney who brought election-related lawsuits. Earlier this summer, Washington, DC, and New York state temporarily suspended Rudy Giuliani's law license for pushing election lies. -
2021-08-26 at 9:26 AM UTCAh yes, using the courts for political suppression. Imagine going on and on about "muh democrecy" and being proud of that.
Compare and contrast: was anyone sanctioned for the "Russian hacker" lie?The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-08-26 at 10:50 AM UTC
Only thing I disagree with is the use of the terms "left" and "right". There's not much traditionally left or right about either those two things, but you can kinda get what is being meant. -
2021-08-26 at 1:56 PM UTC
Originally posted by Donald Trump Ah yes, using the courts for political suppression. Imagine going on and on about "muh democrecy" and being proud of that.
Compare and contrast: was anyone sanctioned for the "Russian hacker" lie?
That's just what dishonest hypocrites do. It's who they really are. Ratbags. -
2021-08-26 at 1:58 PM UTCSeptember
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TRUMPSeptember
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TRUMPSeptember
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TRUMPSeptember
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TRUMPSeptember
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TRUMPSeptember
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TRUMPSeptember
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TRUMPSeptember
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TRUMP -
2021-08-26 at 3:55 PM UTCThe New York Times
Capitol Police Officers Sue Trump and Allies Over Election Lies and Jan. 6
Alan Feuer
A group of seven Capitol Police officers filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing former President Donald J. Trump and nearly 20 members of far-right extremist groups and political organizations of a plot to disrupt the peaceful transition of power during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
The suit contends that Former President Donald J. Trump and his co-defendants violated the Ku Klux Klan Act.
The suit, which implicated members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers militia and Trump associates like Roger J. Stone Jr., was arguably the most expansive civil effort to date seeking to hold Mr. Trump and his allies legally accountable for the storming of the Capitol.
While three other similar lawsuits were filed in recent months, the suit on Thursday was the first to allege that Mr. Trump worked in concert with both far-right extremists and political organizers promoting his baseless lies that the presidential election was marred by fraud.
“This is probably the most comprehensive account of Jan. 6 in terms of civil cases,” said Edward Caspar, a lawyer who is leading the suit for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It spans from the former president to militants around him to his campaign supporters.”
Several police officers who served during the Capitol riot have come forward with stories of the insults and injuries they faced that day, most prominently at a congressional hearing in July. But the lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in the District of Columbia, was the first time that the seven defendants, five of whom are Black, offered details of their ordeals.
One of officers, Governor Latson, was helping to secure the Senate chamber when a mob of rioters broke in and shoved him, beat him and hurled racial slurs at him, the lawsuit says. Another, Jason DeRoche, was caught in a melee on the west front steps of the Capitol, where, according to the suit, rioters pelted him with batteries and doused him with mace and bear spray, causing his eyes to swell shut.
The suit contends that Mr. Trump and his co-defendants violated the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 statute that includes protections against violent conspiracies that interfere with Congress’s constitutional duties. It also accuses the defendants of committing “bias-motivated acts of terrorism” in violation of District of Columbia law.
The use of civil litigation to hold Mr. Trump — and many in his orbit — accountable for the events of Jan. 6 has taken place even as the Justice Department has undertaken the largest criminal investigation in its history into the Capitol attack and a select committee of Congress has opened its own inquiry into the riot. On Wednesday, members of the committee made far-reaching requests to federal agencies for detailed records of Mr. Trump’s movements and meetings on the day of the attack.
The first of the lawsuits was filed in February by the N.A.A.C.P. on behalf of Democratic lawmakers who accused Mr. Trump, his former lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers of conspiring to prevent certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6.
In March, Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, filed a similar complaint against Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, a Trump ally. That same month, two Capitol Police officers filed a suit against Mr. Trump.
In each of those cases, Mr. Trump has sought to have charges dismissed by arguing that he was acting in his official capacity as president on Jan. 6 and therefore cannot face civil litigation. Other defendants, like Mr. Giuliani, have claimed that they were exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech when they spoke at rallies before the storming of the Capitol.
Several police officers who served during the Capitol riot have come forward with stories of the insults and injuries they faced that day.
While the new lawsuit appears to largely rely on news reports and details gleaned from criminal cases filed by the Justice Department, it takes a broad view of the origins of the attack. It argues that the conspiracy to disrupt the election started as early as May 2020, when Mr. Trump began complaining on social media that mail-in voting could “lead to massive fraud.”
The suit accuses Mr. Stone, Mr. Trump’s longtime aide and ally, of echoing those and other claims, sometimes on right-wing news outlets like Infowars. Mr. Stone, who faced scrutiny early in the Justice Department’s investigation, has long denied any role in the riot.
At a presidential debate in September, the lawsuit notes, Mr. Trump appeared to summon members of the Proud Boys by telling them to “stand back and stand by.” The following month, according to the suit, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, appeared on Infowars, predicting an impending civil war and vowing to post armed members of his group outside Washington in order to “save the White House.”
Mr. Rhodes is also under investigation in connection with the riot and recently acknowledged that he answered questions from the F.B.I., against the advice of his lawyer.
A few weeks after the election, the lawsuit says, a key organizer of the Stop the Steal movement that promoted false claims of election fraud, Ali Alexander, appeared at a rally outside the State Capitol in Georgia with the leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio. “We’re going to stop the steal,” the suit quotes Mr. Alexander as saying. “But first we’re going to stop the certification.”
Mr. Alexander’s lawyer, Baron Coleman, has repeatedly said his client is not under investigation in connection with the riot. Mr. Tarrio was not in Washington on Jan. 6 but was sentenced this week to five months in prison for possessing illegal weapons and burning a Black Lives Matter flag stolen from a historic Black church in Washington after a separate pro-Trump rally in December that also descended into violence.
The suit mentions other steps along the path to Jan. 6: In late November, it says, a California-based political organizer named Alan Hostetter, who believed the election was stolen, posted a video on the internet claiming that people “at the highest levels” needed to be “made an example of with an execution or two or three.”
Mr. Hostetter, who was charged in June with conspiring to storm the Capitol with members of the Three Percenter militia movement, also said in the video that he was going to return to Washington “with a million patriots, and we’ll surround that city.”
As for Jan. 6, the suit paints a picture of Stop the Steal activists riling up the mob of Trump supporters gathered in Washington with lies about the election, which the president then echoed in a speech near the White House. Members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenter movement, it claims, led the mob on the ground in the Capitol assault.
Mr. Trump, the lawsuit says, knew that “the situation at the Capitol was dire” but did not condemn the rioters. Instead, it says, he released a video two hours after the initial breach repeating his lie that the election and been stolen and telling the attackers that he loved them. -
2021-08-26 at 4 PM UTCLawfare. The definition of vexatious suits. Will any judge dare censor anyone for it?
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2021-08-26 at 4:02 PM UTC
Originally posted by POLECAT ashly babbit was not trying to enter she was up in the arms of 3 or 4 guys shoving her through a broken window, the first time they tried she saw the gun and tried to push back and managed to get back the moment she saw the gun and at that point she was trying to get out of the hands of the guys shoving her through the window but they managed to shove her up into the window again and thats when she got shot, I wasnt there but I was witnessing the first up close shooting death I ever saw I pretty mush watched her life expire right on the tv I was watching
Funny, I don't seem to remember your rage about the up close and personal footage of George Floyd's life ebbing from his body slowly over 8 1/2 minutes while he pleaded for his life just last year.
Where is your outrage there? -
2021-08-26 at 4:07 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 Funny, I don't seem to remember your rage about the up close and personal footage of George Floyd's life ebbing from his body slowly over 8 1/2 minutes while he pleaded for his life just last year.
Where is your outrage there?
There's a difference between someone dying from a pulmonary edema and shooting someone in the throat.
I'm sure you think one justifies the other. You're so sick nothing would surprise me. -
2021-08-26 at 4:08 PM UTCMake them
All
Go
And share the responsibility
Business Insider
Trump's ex-national security advisor John Bolton says it's 'impossible' for Mike Pompeo to 'rewrite history' on his negotiations with Taliban
oseddiq@insider.com (Oma Seddiq)
Trump's ex-national security advisor John Bolton slammed Mike Pompeo over his negotiations with the Taliban.
Bolton said it's "impossible" to "rewrite history" about the Trump administration's role in the Afghanistan pullout.
Pompeo and Trump have come under attack over their deal with the Taliban in February 2020.
Donald Trump's ex-national security advisor John Bolton criticized former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for distancing himself from the Afghanistan withdrawal when he negotiated the deal with the Taliban.
"Trying to extricate yourself from this withdrawal is I think difficult if not impossible to do, especially to rewrite history about what actually happened," Bolton told Politico in a report published Thursday. "I think that's a prescription for Democratic attack ads that would be fatal to someone's credibility."
Pompeo and Trump have come under attack over their February 2020 agreement with the Taliban, which stipulated that US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 14 months on the condition that the militant group not turn the country into a terrorist base. At the signing ceremony in Qatar, Pompeo posed for photographs alongside Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is anticipated to head the next Taliban government in Afghanistan.
At the time, critics blasted the Trump administration for excluding the Afghan government, claiming it undercut its legitimacy. That criticism has been renewed amid the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan and the collapse of the US-backed Afghan government on August 15.
Bolton, who served as Trump's national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, has said both the Trump administration and President Joe Biden are responsible for the chaotic and ongoing removal of US troops from the country.
Other Republicans who have criticized Trump and Biden over the pullout include Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump's national security advisor from 2017 to 2018, H.R. McMaster, denounced Trump's Taliban deal as a "surrender agreement."
Pompeo and Trump have attempted to absolve themselves of the current situation in Afghanistan and have blamed Biden for the fallout.
"I hope this Administration comes to understand that apologizing, placating, appeasing, being weak, only presents risks to American security," Pompeo tweeted on Thursday. -
2021-08-26 at 5:18 PM UTCMcCarthy
Again
Gassing
All
CNN
Fact check: Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy makes at least 5 false claims in 7-minute Fox News interview
By Daniel Dale
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy made at least five false claims during a seven-minute Sunday interview on Fox News.
McCarthy uttered inaccurate statements to host Maria Bartiromo about a wide variety of topics -- oil prices, inflation, prisoners released in Afghanistan, the behavior of Democratic state legislators, and the content of an elections bill supported by congressional Democrats.
Here is a fact check.
Oil prices
Trying to liken President Joe Biden's tenure to the 1970s era of former President Jimmy Carter, which was beset by inflation and oil-related challenges, McCarthy claimed that oil prices are now "the highest that we have seen."
Facts First: McCarthy was wrong. Oil prices under Biden are not even close to the highest we have ever seen. Crude prices peaked in 2008 under Republican President George W. Bush -- more than double their level at the time McCarthy's interview aired Sunday. Crude prices were also higher at various points under Republican President Donald Trump than they were on Sunday.
On the Friday before McCarthy made this claim, the price of benchmark Brent crude fell below $66 a barrel. That is less than half of the all-time high of more than $147 a barrel in 2008. Further, Brent crude was well above $66 a barrel at various points in 2018 and 2019 under Trump, briefly exceeding $84.
At under $63, West Texas Intermediate crude, a US benchmark, was also going Friday for less than half of its 2008 peak and for less than it did on various days under Trump; it briefly topped $75 under Trump. (The prices of both Brent and West Texas Intermediate increased early this week, after McCarthy's comments, but remained below their Trump-era highs, let alone their all-time highs.)
McCarthy could have correctly said that oil prices have spiked this year as global demand has rebounded from the pandemic lows of 2020. But he was plain incorrect to suggest that this year's prices are unprecedented. And, regardless, it's important to note that US presidents have a limited role in oil prices, which are governed by a complex global dance of supply and demand factors.
Tom Kloza, a longtime energy analyst with Oil Price Information Service, said that "nothing that President Biden has done has had much impact" on the current prices of either crude oil or gasoline. Kloza said this year's prices have been affected by a combination of supply "discipline" from the OPEC+ group of producer countries and "the unprecedented recovery in world oil demand."
Inflation
McCarthy claimed that there is now "inflation at a number we have not seen." He then described the Biden era as "Jimmy Carter on steroids."
Facts First: McCarthy was wrong again. While inflation was at a 13-year high in June and July, at a seasonally adjusted 5.3% on a year-over-year basis, it is not even close to the highest we have ever seen and not even close to the level of the late Carter era. Inflation was more than twice as high in every month of 1980 than it was in June and July of this year; its 1980 peak was 14.6%.
You don't have to go as far back as the Carter presidency to find inflation as high as that of June and July of this year. Inflation hit a slightly higher level, 5.5%, in July 2008, under Bush.
Inflation has also exceeded the current level at other points outside the Carter era. For example, it was above 7% for the entirety of 1974 and 1975, under Carter's Republican predecessors Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, peaking at 12.2% during that period.
It's important to note that current inflation is being caused at least in part by pandemic-related factors that might not last. Businesses that cut prices or kept them flat during the crisis of 2020 are raising them to conventional levels; consumers helped by federal relief funds have money to spend and have strong demand for many products; businesses are facing supply pressures from production shortages and shipping problems.
Whether or not inflation is temporary, though, it definitely isn't the highest we have seen.
Afghan prisoners
Speaking about congressional Democrats, McCarthy asked, "Why aren't they protecting the border from those 5,000 prisoners who have just left Afghanistan and -- have the hope of coming across our borders?"
Facts First: There is no basis for McCarthy's claim that 5,000 former prisoners have "just left Afghanistan" with the hope of coming to the US. And McCarthy neglected to mention that it was President Donald Trump's own 2020 deal with the Taliban -- a deal McCarthy had positive words about at the time -- in which the US agreed to let up to 5,000 Afghan prisoners go free.
Colin Clarke, senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, a nonprofit that studies global security issues, said that "US officials at the airport who are screening and vetting those leaving Afghanistan are obviously not allowing prisoners released through the US-Taliban deal and through various prison breaks to board planes coming to the United States." Clarke said that he hasn't heard "anyone" credibly suggest Taliban members are seeking to infiltrate the US through the Mexican border.
Anthony Cordesman, an Afghanistan expert and the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, called McCarthy's claim "nonsense." Cordesman added: "If they left Afghanistan: to where? Pakistan? Because I doubt very much that they're in Canada, the Bahamas or Mexico."
Because we can't predict the future, we'll add a caveat. It's certainly possible that some former prisoners from Afghanistan will try to cross the US border at some point. But there's still no basis for McCarthy's suggestion of a current problem involving 5,000 former prisoners who "just left" the country and are presently trying to figure out how to get into the US.
McCarthy's office did not respond to a request for an explanation of this claim or any of the others we address in this article.
Democratic state legislators
After Bartiromo pressed McCarthy about making sure future elections are free and fair, and mentioned states that are changing their voting laws, McCarthy said, "We have watched state after state where Democrats have left the state. That is where the real difficulty lies. But now we have got them back into Texas."
Facts First: It's not true that Democrats have left "state after state" to prevent Republicans from passing changes to voting laws. Texas is the only state whose Democratic legislators left the state under Biden or Trump to deny Republicans the minimum attendance needed to pass elections legislation.
It's possible that McCarthy was thinking of how dozens of Democratic lawmakers from other states came to Washington, DC this month to join the quorum-breaking Texas lawmakers. But those lawmakers, unlike the Texas group, didn't cause Republicans "real difficulty" in passing voting laws. In fact, many of the lawmakers were from states were Republicans had already passed new voting laws.
There have been a small number of Democratic walkouts over Republican elections proposals in years past, though not all of them involved legislators leaving the state. Texas Democrats fled to Oklahoma in 2003 over a Republican redistricting proposal. In 2001, Oregon Democrats went into hiding to deny quorum over a Republican redistricting effort there.
Democrats and voter ID laws
McCarthy said Democrats' new elections bill "would ban ID voting." (McCarthy was more explicit on Twitter on Tuesday, tweeting that the Democratic agenda is to "ban voter ID in every state.")
Facts First: It's not true that Democrats' elections bill would ban voter ID. Specifically, the Democratic bill would not prohibit states from having voter identification laws and would not prohibit states from checking the IDs of in-person voters. Rather, it would require states to give voters an alternative to showing the ID the states normally demand -- specifically, to allow voters who do not show that ID to instead submit signed statements under penalty of perjury attesting to their identity and eligibility to vote.
Critics are entitled to argue that this provision of the Democratic bill would weaken or undermine the voter ID laws of states with strict current requirements. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has said, for example, that the bill would mean a "neutering" of voter ID laws.
But it's just not accurate to claim the bill is a total "ban" on voter ID laws. The staunchly Republican state of Idaho allows voters who aren't able to present one of its required forms ID to cast a ballot after signing an affidavit attesting to their identity. Nobody could credibly argue that voter ID is banned in Idaho.
For absentee ballot applications in particular, the Democratic bill says that states can't require any form of identification except for a signature or "similar affirmation." It says, though, that this policy has "no effect" on ID requirements for first-time voters registering by mail. And as the National Conference of State Legislatures notes on its website, state voter ID requirements generally don't apply to mail-in or absentee ballots anyway. -
2021-08-26 at 5:21 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 McCarthy
Again
Gassing
All
CNN
Fact check: Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy makes at least 5 false claims in 7-minute Fox News interview
By Daniel Dale
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy made at least five false claims during a seven-minute Sunday interview on Fox News.
McCarthy uttered inaccurate statements to host Maria Bartiromo about a wide variety of topics – oil prices, inflation, prisoners released in Afghanistan, the behavior of Democratic state legislators, and the content of an elections bill supported by congressional Democrats.
Here is a fact check.
Oil prices
Trying to liken President Joe Biden's tenure to the 1970s era of former President Jimmy Carter, which was beset by inflation and oil-related challenges, McCarthy claimed that oil prices are now "the highest that we have seen."
Facts First: McCarthy was wrong. Oil prices under Biden are not even close to the highest we have ever seen. Crude prices peaked in 2008 under Republican President George W. Bush – more than double their level at the time McCarthy's interview aired Sunday. Crude prices were also higher at various points under Republican President Donald Trump than they were on Sunday.
On the Friday before McCarthy made this claim, the price of benchmark Brent crude fell below $66 a barrel. That is less than half of the all-time high of more than $147 a barrel in 2008. Further, Brent crude was well above $66 a barrel at various points in 2018 and 2019 under Trump, briefly exceeding $84.
At under $63, West Texas Intermediate crude, a US benchmark, was also going Friday for less than half of its 2008 peak and for less than it did on various days under Trump; it briefly topped $75 under Trump. (The prices of both Brent and West Texas Intermediate increased early this week, after McCarthy's comments, but remained below their Trump-era highs, let alone their all-time highs.)
McCarthy could have correctly said that oil prices have spiked this year as global demand has rebounded from the pandemic lows of 2020. But he was plain incorrect to suggest that this year's prices are unprecedented. And, regardless, it's important to note that US presidents have a limited role in oil prices, which are governed by a complex global dance of supply and demand factors.
Tom Kloza, a longtime energy analyst with Oil Price Information Service, said that "nothing that President Biden has done has had much impact" on the current prices of either crude oil or gasoline. Kloza said this year's prices have been affected by a combination of supply "discipline" from the OPEC+ group of producer countries and "the unprecedented recovery in world oil demand."
Inflation
McCarthy claimed that there is now "inflation at a number we have not seen." He then described the Biden era as "Jimmy Carter on steroids."
Facts First: McCarthy was wrong again. While inflation was at a 13-year high in June and July, at a seasonally adjusted 5.3% on a year-over-year basis, it is not even close to the highest we have ever seen and not even close to the level of the late Carter era. Inflation was more than twice as high in every month of 1980 than it was in June and July of this year; its 1980 peak was 14.6%.
You don't have to go as far back as the Carter presidency to find inflation as high as that of June and July of this year. Inflation hit a slightly higher level, 5.5%, in July 2008, under Bush.
Inflation has also exceeded the current level at other points outside the Carter era. For example, it was above 7% for the entirety of 1974 and 1975, under Carter's Republican predecessors Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, peaking at 12.2% during that period.
It's important to note that current inflation is being caused at least in part by pandemic-related factors that might not last. Businesses that cut prices or kept them flat during the crisis of 2020 are raising them to conventional levels; consumers helped by federal relief funds have money to spend and have strong demand for many products; businesses are facing supply pressures from production shortages and shipping problems.
Whether or not inflation is temporary, though, it definitely isn't the highest we have seen.
Afghan prisoners
Speaking about congressional Democrats, McCarthy asked, "Why aren't they protecting the border from those 5,000 prisoners who have just left Afghanistan and – have the hope of coming across our borders?"
Facts First: There is no basis for McCarthy's claim that 5,000 former prisoners have "just left Afghanistan" with the hope of coming to the US. And McCarthy neglected to mention that it was President Donald Trump's own 2020 deal with the Taliban – a deal McCarthy had positive words about at the time – in which the US agreed to let up to 5,000 Afghan prisoners go free.
Colin Clarke, senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, a nonprofit that studies global security issues, said that "US officials at the airport who are screening and vetting those leaving Afghanistan are obviously not allowing prisoners released through the US-Taliban deal and through various prison breaks to board planes coming to the United States." Clarke said that he hasn't heard "anyone" credibly suggest Taliban members are seeking to infiltrate the US through the Mexican border.
Anthony Cordesman, an Afghanistan expert and the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, called McCarthy's claim "nonsense." Cordesman added: "If they left Afghanistan: to where? Pakistan? Because I doubt very much that they're in Canada, the Bahamas or Mexico."
Because we can't predict the future, we'll add a caveat. It's certainly possible that some former prisoners from Afghanistan will try to cross the US border at some point. But there's still no basis for McCarthy's suggestion of a current problem involving 5,000 former prisoners who "just left" the country and are presently trying to figure out how to get into the US.
McCarthy's office did not respond to a request for an explanation of this claim or any of the others we address in this article.
Democratic state legislators
After Bartiromo pressed McCarthy about making sure future elections are free and fair, and mentioned states that are changing their voting laws, McCarthy said, "We have watched state after state where Democrats have left the state. That is where the real difficulty lies. But now we have got them back into Texas."
Facts First: It's not true that Democrats have left "state after state" to prevent Republicans from passing changes to voting laws. Texas is the only state whose Democratic legislators left the state under Biden or Trump to deny Republicans the minimum attendance needed to pass elections legislation.
It's possible that McCarthy was thinking of how dozens of Democratic lawmakers from other states came to Washington, DC this month to join the quorum-breaking Texas lawmakers. But those lawmakers, unlike the Texas group, didn't cause Republicans "real difficulty" in passing voting laws. In fact, many of the lawmakers were from states were Republicans had already passed new voting laws.
There have been a small number of Democratic walkouts over Republican elections proposals in years past, though not all of them involved legislators leaving the state. Texas Democrats fled to Oklahoma in 2003 over a Republican redistricting proposal. In 2001, Oregon Democrats went into hiding to deny quorum over a Republican redistricting effort there.
Democrats and voter ID laws
McCarthy said Democrats' new elections bill "would ban ID voting." (McCarthy was more explicit on Twitter on Tuesday, tweeting that the Democratic agenda is to "ban voter ID in every state.")
Facts First: It's not true that Democrats' elections bill would ban voter ID. Specifically, the Democratic bill would not prohibit states from having voter identification laws and would not prohibit states from checking the IDs of in-person voters. Rather, it would require states to give voters an alternative to showing the ID the states normally demand – specifically, to allow voters who do not show that ID to instead submit signed statements under penalty of perjury attesting to their identity and eligibility to vote.
Critics are entitled to argue that this provision of the Democratic bill would weaken or undermine the voter ID laws of states with strict current requirements. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has said, for example, that the bill would mean a "neutering" of voter ID laws.
But it's just not accurate to claim the bill is a total "ban" on voter ID laws. The staunchly Republican state of Idaho allows voters who aren't able to present one of its required forms ID to cast a ballot after signing an affidavit attesting to their identity. Nobody could credibly argue that voter ID is banned in Idaho.
For absentee ballot applications in particular, the Democratic bill says that states can't require any form of identification except for a signature or "similar affirmation." It says, though, that this policy has "no effect" on ID requirements for first-time voters registering by mail. And as the National Conference of State Legislatures notes on its website, state voter ID requirements generally don't apply to mail-in or absentee ballots anyway.
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2021-08-26 at 5:36 PM UTCNow, there's an intelligent comeback, you big baby.
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2021-08-26 at 6:39 PM UTCThank fuck I have a mouse with a fast scroll wheel.
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2021-08-26 at 6:53 PM UTC
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2021-08-26 at 6:55 PM UTC
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2021-08-26 at 6:56 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 I assume you are referring to the 60 thrown out bogus Trump lawsuits designed to overturn the legitimate election of Joe Biden.
No, if you want to use the courts for political suppression you target individuals, not organisations. That's Saul Alinsky's rule, people can be hurt way easier than institutions. -
2021-08-26 at 7:01 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-08-26 at 7:02 PM UTCTrump didn't target Biden?
The hell you say. -
2021-08-26 at 7:06 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 Funny, I don't seem to remember your rage about the up close and personal footage of George Floyd's life ebbing from his body slowly over 8 1/2 minutes while he pleaded for his life just last year.
I watched the cops give him everything he wanted except unarresting him, while he was overdosing from the drugs he swallowed.. no big deal really,, just a nig niggin
Where is your outrage there?
