Black Cat Bone

Jimbo wrote:

Snarfyguy wrote:Jimbo, are you trying to tell me you think Julian Assange is a journalist?

Publisher.

Snarfyguy wrote:

Jimbo wrote:

Snarfyguy wrote:Jimbo, are you trying to tell me you think Julian Assange is a journalist?

Publisher.

I guess I can't argue with that!

Why Your Hatred Of Assange Is Completely Irrelevant

It does not matter how your feelings feel. Your feelings are irrelevant to this conversation. Only facts matter here. And the facts say that everyone, regardless of how they feel about Assange, must defend him against the US government’s attempts to prosecute him for publishing inconvenient truths. Not because it’s the right thing to do, not because anyone expects you to behave in a moral way, but out of sheer, garden variety self-interest. We all need the ability to hold power to account, and the prosecution of Assange will necessarily cripple our ability to do that. This is a fact. Regardless of how your feelings feel.

Jimbo wrote:You couldn't argue with an avocado pit.

Count Machuki wrote:Can you believe Donald Fucking Trump is President?! THAT guy?!

What the ever lovin' fuck??

(sorry, every once in a while I just have to get that out)

Five intelligence assets were thus hounding Papadopoulos at every turn while a sixth was compiling the dossier that would send Russia-gate into overdrive. It added up to the greatest propaganda campaign since the furor over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and, like those nonexistent WMDs, turns out to have been manufactured out of thin air.

Snarfyguy wrote:On a lighter note, yours truly is now personally benefiting from the Investigation, as the firm has taken on a client who's implicated in a criminal matter involving loans to a guy whose name rhymes with "Fanamort." We almost never do criminal law and I get to work on the case; should be interesting.

On Friday the thirteenth October 1989... news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in “unusual secrecy” and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama’s leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.

Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar?

Snarfyguy wrote:Well, tomorrow's the day we get...something.

This is how democracies die. The rule of law is slowly strangled. The unthinkable becomes commonplace. The illegal becomes accepted—from violations of the emoluments clause to self-dealing to federal election law crimes to serial sexual abuse.

What once was black and white blurs into gray. Right and wrong, old principles, enduring values, fade from memory. Authoritarians arrive in our midst not in tanks but in bad suits and worse haircuts.