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[PTTG??]

There is a national day of action tomorrow to demand that the legal release of the full report proceed immediately.

[Hanslanda]

@ earlier joking about closing the thread: There is certainly a possibility that it'll get temporarily closed as a time out measure, but permaclosed and rebooted, hope not.

"Damn the actual truthfulness or validity of the accusation-- WE HAVE OUR MAN!" is how you send innocent people to death row. (In the hundreds.)

That liberals are unwilling to go down that path, (because it is not actually winning, it is losing horribly) is a sign that they actually do have an interest in actually solving societal issues.


It isn't that liberals are uninterested in winning, or incapable of thinking about winning;  It is that there is a different set of "victory conditions."


(This is to say, throwing a temper tantrum and smashing the chess table is not how you actually win at playing chess. The republican mindset says it is, but no. That is not how you can claim to actually win at playing chess.)

Some Liberals at least, certainly the top Democratic leaders, but there are definetly those who want Trump impeached no matter what.

Anyhow, Trump backed out of the border closure threat and then started it up again with a different target. He's also willing to take the economic hit apparently.

If he's so brave or naive/stupid (incidentially, I almost typo'd brave as braive, heh) as to be willing to take the hit, why doesn't he go ahead and do it just so that reality can smack his face at light speed.

Guess we'll start being referred to by the rest of the world as "Behind The Gold-Plated Curtain". Because once the southern border is sealed off, we have to contend with those nefarious moose rustlers and syrup dealers to our north. They're bringing politeness, they're bringing Justin Bieber and Nickelback and Celine Dion. And some, I'm sure, are good people.

I called it. We're gonna start hating Canada and Buddhists next. Get ready to hear "radical Buddhism" a lot.

[Starver]

Get ready to hear "radical Buddhism" a lot.

Well, there's Myanmar...

[Kagus]

There legitimately are radical Buddhists though. They beat people to death.

"It is not my beating you with a club which causes you pain, rather it is caused by your desire to not be beaten with clubs. Let go of your desire." -Buddhist Extremist.

At least that's how I imagine it goes down...


There are plenty of radical Canadians too.

[RedKing]

There legitimately are radical Buddhists though. They beat people to death.

"It is not my beating you with a club which causes you pain, rather it is caused by your desire to not be beaten with clubs. Let go of your desire." -Buddhist Extremist.

At least that's how I imagine it goes down...


There are plenty of radical Canadians too.

I was expecting that link to just take me to the Wikipedia page for Quebecois 

Remember, we've already established that we can slap tariffs on Canada on national security grounds because something something War of 1812 Overture.

[Folly]

Dem's in the House have officially demanded 6 years of Trump tax returns, with a 7 day deadline.
Trump has already responded that he is still under audit, and therefore will refuse to cooperate.
Dem's sound confident that they can get the tax returns from the IRS without Trump's help.

[Telgin]

I thought the white house's official stance now was that Trump wasn't under audit anymore but they weren't going to release his returns anyway.  Also I notice that they keep ignoring when the IRS says that you can release your returns while under audit.

[Frumple]

Yeah, the audit means roughly fuckall, and congressional subpoena and whatnot is... powerful. If the house says gimme' , your pretty much only option is to pony yer shit up as requested. Shouldn't have pissed off the house, folks.

[bloop_bleep]

Shouldn't have pissed off the house, folks.

More accurate to say the pissed off folks became the House.

[hector13]

I mean, surely if he’d been under audit for at least three years that would raise questions about his financial behavior? /knows nothing of audits

[Telgin]

A random thought occurred to me, but can Trump declare his tax returns to be classified materials?  And if so, do members of congress have the authority to look at classified material?  I'm guessing clearances vary from person to person.

[Frumple]

Congressional subpoena is really goddamn broad, and to a large extent just kinda' bypasses other clearance issues. As I understand it, clearance may vary from person to person, but a congresscritter doing congresscrittorial duties has what amounts to de facto clearance for anything a congressional subpoena can put in front of them. Anything, regardless as to if the person would have clearance under other circumstances. And a congressional subpoena can put just about sodding anything in front of them.

Or to put it another way, the extent it'd work out for the executive to hide shit that isn't seriously, seriously, beyond-just-getting-a-president-impeached seriously major is roughly shit fuck all. It wouldn't, and Congress would laugh at them and then maybe set their attempt on fire and piss on the ashes. It's one of those checksy balancey things, or something that arose from them over the years.

E: It's one of those reasons we really should be more careful about who we're putting in congress seats, honestly. Congresscritters may have been pissing around doing jack all a lot for the last while but they actually have quite a goddamn lot of power if they choose to excercise it. If.

[Starver]

If it's finances from before Trump's candidacy, then it surely cannot even be deemed as privileged-by-Presidency. And anything that covers his "no, I'm not taking that salary, and I've not even had a sniff of emoluments" period then surely such a squeaky-clean operator wouldn't be have anything that's got to be sealed because of pesky National Security issues.

(Ok, so nothing actually that clear-cut, but he won't have many good reasons to stall that aren't reasons that are dodgy indicators that dodgier things yet are being dodged from revealing. You could easily argue.)

[Dunamisdeos]

What even are the rules for tax evasion during Presidency? Do we have rules for that?

Like he doesn't get a Presidential salary because he gave that up, what are the consequences for legit criminal activity while sitting as President? Can you convict him? Is he auto-removed? Is it impeachment first, then jail/flogging/a light spanking or whatever?

[Lord Shonus]

The only action that can be taken against a sitting president in response to criminal acts is impeachment. What happens after the President is no longer sitting is more complicated -and largely unexplored, thanks to Ford- territory.