Illuminati-R-Us

The Dutch hacked Cozy Bears, warned the FBI, prevented huge damage to the US, so the US intelligence community blabbed to the media, Cozy Bears changed their mo and the Dutch no longer have access. Another source of info for the US intelligence community is burned and pissed off at them.

Point anyone who is still saying there was a huge Moon landing conspiracy to this bit of shitty secret-keeping.

Indeed.

Pity these are sold out.

Well, folks; looks like Mueller should just call it a day. The MEMO has revealed all. The deep state is REAL. Forget kneeling for the anthem, we need to purge the wholly corrupt FBI and re-start from scratch.

In all seriousness, however, the memo does give some exposure to a long-standing problem: the bar for getting and extending a FISA warrant is incredibly low. But this isn't a new thing, it's pretty much been that way from the start. I am not surprised at all that an extension relying on the dossier was approved. I'd wager that there were dozens, perhaps even hundreds of warrants approved on equal or flimsier evidence. FISC, in general, is problematic. Not only is it easy to get warrants, it is next to impossible to wage an adversarial defense in the court. Beyond that, no oversight committee and Congress, in general, have ever seemed all that interested in protecting anyone's individual rights until now.

At any rate, from what I can tell, it is basically the equivalent of a 'fruit of the poisonous tree' argument. Which, again, does not contend innocence, but rather that the evidence gathered should not be used against Trump and company.

MM_Dandy wrote:
At any rate, from what I can tell, it is basically the equivalent of a 'fruit of the poisonous tree' argument. Which, again, does not contend innocence, but rather that the evidence gathered should not be used against Trump and company.

well, except that it isn't the fruit of the poisonous tree. Trump et al contend that the basis of the warrant was Steele dossier. It wasn't, as the dossier didn't factor into the information until some time later. The origin of the warrant was based on an Australian diplomat's information that a Trump campaign worker (Poppodopolous (sp?) had told him in a drunken conversation, that Trumps campaign had gotten leaks on Hilary Clintons email through the Russians. The diplomat didn't believe the conversation until news reports came out that the Russians had, in fact, hacked Clintons email. That source is not 'poisoned'.

Additionally, the 'poisoning' allegation comes from a Steele statement that Trump shouldn't get elected. However, the memo citing that statement doesn't reflect that the statement came as a conclusion Steele came to after evidence suggested that Trumps campaign had colluded with the Russians and that Trump, himself, was compromised by the Russians (ie, that it would be against US interest to elect as president, some one who was compromised by the Russian govt).

I'm with you, wring - I don't think the argument holds up well to the facts and would probably fail if this were a criminal case, but that is the argument, nonetheless.

Edited to add: Parts of the Steele dossier have even been independently corroborated, and it would seem that Steele was not aware that at least some of the funding had come from the Democrats, and so it should not have influenced his results. So, it's not even as flimsy as Nunes would like it to be. But even if it were, I have little doubt that the warrant would have been granted or extended. And now, of course, the very people who wanted to keep the bar so low aren't very happy that the bar was set so low.

I should clarify that I don't mean that the memo tries to say that the dossier is fruit from the poisonous tree, but rather that it argues that any (further) evidence gathered under the warrant would be.

oh and I agree that the bar is set pretty damn low in the case of FISA warrants, it has scared me for quite a while - not just the low bar, but the lack of oversight. I remember thinking there was nothing to prevent some one from getting a warrant on their ex wife or whatever.

Let us not forget, in the GW Bush era, he signed things making it the law that wiretaps needed warrants, even "good-faith" after the fact warrants. But he also then refused to abide by the law he had just signed. Would not even go for the after the fact warrants. W signed many things into law, and added "signing statements" essentially saying he'd be ignoring the law.

Spotted somebody on twitter casually using Trump's fairytale name:

Spotted today, this not bad joke:

What’s the difference between a lentil and a chickpea?

Oh bravo!

Yeah, superb.

"Jimmy, come to the blackboard, hands up, and do your calculations"
Arming teachers - great idea, Mr. Prsident

a friend of mine pointed out that the Secret Service, who are trained specifically to protect the president, are armed and surround him all the time, it's known they're there, armed to protect him and do nothing else but protect him, failed to protect Ron Reagan from getting shot.

I think most of these guys go in knowing they're not coming back out to begin with. I think arming the teachers will just make them go for more devastation, quicker. They would try harder.

How is the response team supposed to know the difference between the shooter and the teachers?

If school shooters escalate to pipe bombs, does that mean we should arm teachers with pipe bombs?

MM_Dandy wrote:How is the response team supposed to know the difference between the shooter and the teachers?

Exactly. Though, if the plan worked, the shooter would be the one who was dead and the teachers would be the ones who killed him. The response team would just have to clean up the mess. Of course, it would never work out that way.

MM_Dandy wrote:If school shooters escalate to pipe bombs, does that mean we should arm teachers with pipe bombs?

Pipe bombs are dangerous and unstable. I think it would be safer to arm them with hand grenades.

Except in the last shooting the killer knew the school and knew the drills. He dumped the gun and tried to escape with the students. I read somewhere that a girl near him as they were leaving the school said something along the lines of “I always thought if someone shot up the school it would have been you . . .”.

The Oath Keepers have said they will guard schools, the schools have said “Nuh uh”.

Uh, oh. What happens when the teacher is the bad guy?

Oh fucking fuck.

D'oh, no-brainer. Arm the studentes so they can get rid of evil teachers. All it takes to end a killing spree is a good guy with a gun.

Arneb wrote:D'oh, no-brainer. Arm the studentes so they can get rid of evil teachers. All it takes to end a killing spree is a good guy with a gun.

of course, recently, the "good guy with a gun" was then killed by the cops.

That only shows that Good Guys with Guns must be prepared to make the Ultimate Sacrifice in defense of the Right to Bear Arms for hundredd of millions of Fine Upstanding Citizens in the Glorious United States of America.

Lance, I read there is a conultancy position open for the NRA's ROW office. Can I use this post as a reference in my application?

Of course!