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[Sheb]

Spicer on Nunes: "The “obsession with who talked to whom, and when, is not the answer,” Mr. Spicer said. “It should be the substance.”". But I though the real story was all the leaks!

[palsch]

A good argument that Flynn's immunity request is a sign he doesn't have anything good.

The fact that Flynn and his lawyer have made his offer publicly suggests that he has nothing good to give the prosecutors (either because he cannot incriminate others or is unwilling to do so). If he had something good, Flynn and his lawyer would approach the prosecutors quietly, go through the proffer process in confidence, and reach a deal. Why? Because prosecutors have an interest in keeping their investigation secret, and Flynn’s lawyer knows that. The last thing Flynn’s lawyer would do if he thought he had the goods would be to go public, because that would potentially compromise the criminal inquiry and would certainly irritate the prosecutors, the very people Flynn’s lawyer would be trying to win over.

I suspect that Flynn’s lawyer is really targeting Congress. He is hoping that one of the Congressional committees will take the bait and grant him immunity in exchange for his testimony. If that happened, it would be extremely difficult to prosecute Flynn after he testified. Remember Oliver North? North testified to Congress under a grant of “use immunity,” and even though Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh took stringent measures to wall off his prosecution staff from any information about North’s immunized testimony, the D.C. Circuit overturned North’s conviction, finding that Walsh could not establish that the witnesses who testified against North had not been tainted by exposure to North’s widely publicized testimony. Flynn’s lawyer appears to be hoping for the same result here: Flynn gets immunity, his testimony in Congress gets aired and reported everywhere, and it becomes virtually impossible for prosecutors to bring a case against him.

[Neonivek]

There is another more insidious theory.

Flynn might have done this publically in order for his friends in high places to justify his immunity.

"Ohh sorry, we were totally fooled!"

Which could be argued happened to Oliver North too.

---

As for Pence I actually have a quote for another person who doesn't let themselves be alone in a room with another woman... What was it? ohh right

TRIPLE bonus that the guy in the movie refusing to let himself be alone in a room with another woman makes him sound like a recovering rapist

And I wrote this 9 months ago.

[smjjames]

It's more likely that it's simple survival, since he likely feels threatened on several fronts as theres various things he could be in trouble with.

[sluissa]

As someone who has been through sexual harassment training(mandatory for all employees) of which a large section consisted of "don't be alone with the opposite gender". It might just be that taken to extremes. I know I have a habit now of propping office doors open if I have to meet with a woman alone. If necessary to close it, I ask first. And that's just me worried about extreme outlier scenarios where someone I work with everyday and know fairly well might turn completely off kilter and accuse me of something. I can imagine how paranoid politicians could end up being with the public and media constantly looking for even the slightest hint of impropriety.

[Gizogin]

On Flynn, I wouldn't be willing to gamble on Flynn having anything worth immunity. I can't think of a good reason for him to go public with his proposal before the fact, especially in light of the arguments made in the article linked by palsch. It would be one thing if he'd been approached with an offer of immunity in exchange for testimony and then publicly agreed, or if it came out after the fact that such a deal had been made. The fact that he's requesting immunity before we even know if he has anything worth knowing doesn't strike me as the hallmark of a strong case. At best, it looks like there's something in there which could implicate Flynn himself; at worst, he has nothing at all.

On Pence, I don't like the guy, but I don't know if this is something that there's really a good answer to. I can understand not wanting to give fuel to any allegations of impropriety, hence not wanting to put yourself in a situation like that; I don't see it as that far removed from needing at least two-deep adult supervision in youth groups. It's to protect both the children from inappropriate contact and the adults from any implication of misbehavior. I'd still question why he seems to apply this policy exclusively to women, though, if the goal really is to avoid bad press.

Edit: A great BBC article on the Republican Party's difficulty in overcoming its obstructionist momentum: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39447912
favorite quote:
'Representative Tom Rooney of Florida, who before entering Congress in 2009 served as a military lawyer, delivered an even more withering assessment of his own party.
"I've been in this job of eight years," he told The Atlantic, "and I'm wracking my brain to think of one thing our party has done that's been something positive, that's been something other than stopping something else from happening."'

Edit2: 'Anti-transgender' bus in Boston is met by protests.
The message this bus is attempting to portray is confusing. The point it looks to be making should have nothing to do with the right to free speech, and yet there are prominent slogans like "#FreeSpeechBus" and the URL of a similarly-named website.

If I had to guess, I'd say these slogans are meant to appeal to a very specific type of person. These people are accustomed to a certain set of rules and expectations about how the world works. To them, the wave of new ideas that challenge these rules are nonsense, because they fly in the face of a lifetime of experience in how things work. When they try to correct and educate others, they are attacked for uttering "hate speech" and being bigots, when that was far from their intention. It's not hard to see how they might feel like their right to free speech is being infringed on.

That's what makes this story so irritating. Maybe the groups who paid for this ad had the best intentions, but what they've done is automatically divide everyone who sees the ad and hears about the protests into one of two camps. The first sees this ad as a triumph of common sense in a world increasingly concerned about "political correctness". The second sees this ad as an attack on the rights of a group of people who have only recently come into the public eye and who are very much struggling to enjoy the civil rights that everyone is entitled to. Each group sees the other as an aggressor infringing on their own rights.

By coupling the ad with "free speech" slogans, the advertisers are all but outright saying that anyone offended by the rest of the ad has no right to complain, since the advertisers have a right to say what they want. It looks like they don't care about what their message actually says, but rather that they want people to protest it so they can capitalize on the controversy. They're making a vital conversation about individual rights and freedoms impossible to have.

[Frumple]

Heh. Pretty sure they wouldn't have much trouble finding stuff done that was something other than stopping something from happening. Something positive, on the other hand, would take a bit more effort :V

Particularly if it was actually them alone. There's plenty that passes through congress that's a'ight that just gets no objection from either side. Plenty that's less than a'ight that does, too, but eh.

... not like the two are mutually exclusive, though, for what that's worth. The GOP certainly gives a game effort of making it that way, but it's not a necessity.

E: In other news, looks like the intelligence committee rejected flynn's offer of testimony in exchange for immunity. No word on if the DoJ has too, near as I can tell.

[Starver]

Edit2: 'Anti-transgender' bus in Boston is met by protests.

Am I bad by noticing that the "XY" figure, obviously intended to be a boy (although only because the XX one has pigtails and a dress-like clothing flare... in all other regards they are both genderless figures) has the "Y" positioned perfectly to depict a stereotypical feminine pubic/thigh area..?

[nenjin]

That's what makes this story so irritating. Maybe the groups who paid for this ad had the best intentions, but what they've done is automatically divide everyone who sees the ad and hears about the protests into one of two camps.

It is sponsored by conservative action groups the National Organization for Marriage, Citizen Go and the International Organization for the Family.

PACs? Best intentions? Lol.

[misko27]

As someone who has been through sexual harassment training(mandatory for all employees) of which a large section consisted of "don't be alone with the opposite gender". It might just be that taken to extremes. I know I have a habit now of propping office doors open if I have to meet with a woman alone. If necessary to close it, I ask first. And that's just me worried about extreme outlier scenarios where someone I work with everyday and know fairly well might turn completely off kilter and accuse me of something. I can imagine how paranoid politicians could end up being with the public and media constantly looking for even the slightest hint of impropriety.

It's necessary for me in the summer when I work with kids with disabilities. We were told rather explicitly that to avoid any danger of being accused of either physical or sexual abuse, we had to be vilgilant to never be alone with them. Of course as mandated reporters we had a bit more work: we also had to watch out for bruises and anything along those lines, and had to be able to identify precisely whenever something like those appeared; whether they came into the camp with those bruises (which is, obviously, then worth immediately mentioning just purely for our own defense), or otherwise when and where in the camp the kind was injured.

[Frumple]

Though yeah, somehow most politicians seem to be pretty capable of managing the occasional dinner or whathaveyou. Seems to suggest more than a little bit that it's possible to not go so far as pence does.

... or in other words, that whatever the primary cause of the behavior is, it's not worry over accusations of impropriety. Given his history and some of what's been told of his wife's behavior, it's almost certainly got more to do with religious issues. To beat around less bushes and drop the slight veneer of charitability, it's probably some kind of bugfuck evangelical insanity, or something related to it, at least assuming some of what's been reported about his wife and him isn't significantly misrepresentative of what's going on.

[PTTG??]

I don't care if Pence pays hookers to join nunneries. It's irrelevant to, you know, Putin's infiltration of the presidency and the spinelessness of the Republican party in general. It's a puff news article not worth even the effort I'm putting in to mock it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't see why this is anything anyway. All the "commentary" on this seems to be trying to demonstrate some massive misogynist conspiratorial social commentary - like, dude stays with as wide an alibi against accusations as possible. Obviously. Most politicians probably practice a soft version of this and don't say anything about it.

If you really want to demonstrate that Mike Pence is misogynist you can just look at the religion he adheres to and his policy decisions, this is just silly.

[smjjames]

I don't care if Pence pays hookers to join nunneries. It's irrelevant to, you know, Putin's infiltration of the presidency and the spinelessness of the Republican party in general. It's a puff news article not worth even the effort I'm putting in to mock it.

True, it pales in comparison in importance to what you said.

[birdy51]

I agree with PTTG and Metal.

It's not all that of a big deal.