The GOP has TDS for sure. They just have to have some more Deplorable Donnnie, and nobody else will do.

"The DOJ isn't supposed to be political."

Oh, the irony:

Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy F.B.I. director and a frequent target of President Trump's, will not face charges in an investigation into whether he lied to investigators about a media leak, his defense team said on Friday.

The decision by prosecutors in Washington ends a case that had left Mr. McCabe in legal limbo for nearly two years. It also appears to be a sign that Attorney General William P. Barr wants to show that the Justice Department is independent from the president: The notification came a day after Mr. Barr publicly challenged Mr. Trump to stop attacking law enforcement officials on Twitter and said the criticisms were making his job more difficult.

"McCabe lied multiple times under oath to congress. These lies were directly material to what congress was investigating. He ultimately gets rewarded for lying to congress."

That's your spin. Here's another perspective:

The investigation into Mr. McCabe grew out of findings from the Justice Department inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz. He faulted Mr. McCabe in 2018 for misleading investigators when asked about the disclosure of information in 2016 to a Wall Street Journal reporter about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. . . .

A key witness testified that Mr. McCabe had no motive to lie because he was authorized as the F.B.I.'s deputy director to speak to the news media, so he would not have had to hide any discussions with reporters. Another important witness testified he could not immediately remember how the leak unfolded. Both would have been crucial to any prosecution.

Additionally, people who are charged with lying to the F.B.I. are typically accused of committing the offense in the course of a criminal investigation, not an administrative inquiry. For example, Mr. Horowitz determined last year that a senior Justice Department official committed wrongdoing by viewing pornography on his work computers and then providing false statements to investigators, but prosecutors declined to bring charges.

Mr. McCabe's lawyers made the case to Mr. Rosen that other former officials were not prosecuted after they were caught lying to the inspector general's investigators.

"Find someone else to torture."

Torture? Hardly. FYI Bannon likes the attention. Plus, in addition to raising his profile and his street cred among his right-wing followers, he's got one more thing to rant and rave about.

"You should sue sue SUE!"

Yeah, sue Sue and leave me out of it.

Andrew McCabe Got His Pension and His Cufflinks -- But Is that Adequate Recourse for the Country?

"You said you where a political operative. How much did you make off it Gal?"

Nope and nada.

Hard to talk to someone who doesn't want to talk:

'Person A' In His Own Words: On The Record With Shadowy Operative In Russia Probe

April 06, 2018

Kilimnik, who has not been charged with a crime, has kept his head down since media started making the connection to Person A. But before he emerged in the Trump-Russia investigation, Kilimnik did go on record -- denying, for example, having ties to Russian spy agencies.

In February 2017, this RFE/RL reporter conducted the first in-person interview with Kilimnik. The interview led to an additional face-to-face meeting, several phone calls, and dozens of text messages over the course of nine months in 2017.

Kilimnik cut communication in late September, as Mueller's investigation ramped up and shortly after RFE/RL's publication of his comments in a story about Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin who was involved in business ventures with Manafort, and whom Manafort offered private briefings on the 2016 presidential race, via Kilimnik.

"It was shocking to learn that nobody in the Mueller investigative team, the Senate committee or the media even bothered to talk to Kilminick"

He Says He's an Innocent Victim. Robert Mueller Says He's a Spy.
April 6, 2018

Asked in the interview about the allegation of ties to Russian intelligence agencies, Mr. Kilimnik said, "I vehemently deny it."

"His claims (yes, he could be lying but we have almost zero proof that he is lying) are that, A) he has no meaningful connection to Putin;"

How about to a Russian oligrach like Oleg Deripaska, who does have close ties to Putin?

"B) the nefarious polling data was nothing more that a couple of numbers that were publicly available via RCP polling averages."

I don't know what was in the polling data, but it sounds like more than just "a couple of numbers":

Paul Manafort Gave Konstantin Kilimnik 75 Pages of Polling Data, Docs Suggest

Redacted court filings suggest that Paul Manafort gave Konstantin Kilimnik--whom Special Counsel Robert Mueller has alleged is a Russian spy--75 pages of recent polling data.

"In this case (this thread) the argument is narrow - a HUGE deal was made over the fact that Manafort shared polling data (our media inserted "sensitive" without any attribution) with Kilminick. "

The use of "sensitive" to describe the polling data comes from two sources, emphasis mine:

The U.S. Treasury Department said Thursday that Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate and ex-employee of Paul Manafort, "provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy," during the 2016 election, an apparently definitive statement that neither Special Counsel Robert Mueller nor the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation made in their final reports.

and:

The 966-page Senate Intelligence Committee report, for its part, stated that[:]

The Committee was unable to reliably determine why Manafort shared sensitive internal polling data or Campaign strategy with Kilimnik or with whom Kilimnik further shared that information. The Committee had limited insight into Kilimnik's communications with Manafort and into Kilimnik's communications with other individuals connected to Russian influence operations, all of whom used communications security practices. The Committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU's hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election.

My feeling is Durhman wants to take down Marc Elias because he is the one who has brought so many successful election-related cases against Trump and the GOP in recent months. Nobody in the Republican party cares about Hillary anymore as she will never run again and has no power in Democratic circles or elsewhere.

"The Republican incompetence is by design"

But only on the federal level? Once power is restored to the states everything will be hunky-dory, and GOP incompetence by design will cease to exist? Please.

"It was also revealed that Hillary's team informed the Obama administration that the Steele Dossier was to try and distract from her own email scandal. Three days later the FBI launched "Cross Fire". That timing is awfully convenient."

Link?

"Genius levels of stupid."

LOL Love the oxymoron.

Memo reveals dossier wasn't the origin of FBI investigation

There's one sentence in the last paragraph of the GOP memo that could thwart President Trump's efforts to discredit the Russia probe, the Washington Post points out. "The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok."

Why it matters: This line undermines the argument that the FBI counterintelligence investigation happened because the Trump dossier set it in motion. Instead, it points to a former Trump campaign associate (who has since been charged in Mueller's probe) as the reason.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee wrote as much in their response to the Devin Nunes memo: "This ignores the inconvenient fact that the investigation did not begin with, or arise from Christopher Steele or the dossier, and that the investigation would persist on the basis of wholly independent evidence had Christopher Steele never entered the picture."

"#48 Interesting angle. Feels a bit too much to ask of Trump in the big brain dept., but not beyond Putin.
Mix some facts with some lies and the Deplorables will also dismiss the truth."

Yes to Putin being behind the scheme:

The idea that the Steele dossier represents an exercise in Chekist provokatsiya gets more plausible the more you look at it. It's very much in the habits of Russian intelligence to disseminate a great deal of accurate information, sometimes muddied, in the service of a greater lie. The KGB's successors are highly adept at assembling disinformation that results in more questions than answers for Western investigators. There's no doubt that the dossier created enormous political churn in Washington--including murky assertions that haven't been resolved yet and perhaps never will be.

The largest increases in vaccine uptake between July and September were among Hispanic adults and those ages 18-29, and similar shares of adults now report being vaccinated across racial and ethnic groups (71% of White adults, 70% of Black adults, and 73% of Hispanic adults). Large gaps in vaccine uptake remain by partisanship, education level, age, and health insurance status.

Uninsured Adults, Republicans, Rural Residents, White Evangelicals, Those Without College Degrees, And Younger Adults Continue To Lag In COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake

On behalf of Hillary? More likely on behalf of Trump (emphasis mine):

Last week, in the midst of his opening remarks in the congressional impeachment hearings, the House Intelligence Committee's ranking Republican, Devin Nunes, Republican of California, went off on a tangent that was almost unintelligible to anyone not steeped in Trumpworld's alternative narrative, claiming that Democrats "got caught defending the false allegations of the Steele dossier, which was paid for by them."

Probably just a coincidence:

Out of the Shadows, new documentary by @GStephanopoulos on Christopher Steele, airs October 18th on Hulu.

"It was shocking to learn that nobody in the Mueller investigative team, the Senate committee or the media even bothered to talk to Kilminick."

Well, he can come on in now and talk to the FBI. They'd like to have a little chat with him:

Konstantin Viktorovich Kilimnik is wanted by the FBI for obstruction of justice and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct justice which occurred in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere from in or about and between February 23, 2018, and April of 2018. A 2018 indictment issued by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia alleges that Kilimnik knowingly and intentionally attempted to corruptly persuade another person, with intent to influence, delay, and prevent testimony in an official proceeding. Kilimnik worked and served as a liaison to Ukrainian and Russian politicians and businessmen. Kilimnik, who is assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian Intelligence, allegedly assisted with a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign in the United States which was allegedly conducted at the direction of the Ukrainian Government without providing disclosures required by law.

On June 8, 2018, a federal arrest warrant was issued for Konstantin Viktorovich Kilimnik in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after he was charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Also bears repeating:

#10-that's the other half or the problem. Dems think they can reason and talk "common sense" with Republicans and all will be fine. They have the power to make changes at the moment but they are disorganized and frittering away what time remains fighting over policy and not uniting against the greatest threat to our nation in my 70 year lifetime.

Here's how Josh Marshall put it:

But they're arguing over how to do the house renovation while the house is ...

4/ starting to burn down. There's a lot of negotiating and legislating logic to all this. But the future is going to be decided in by-elections and the midterm. On that front it's urgent. I see little sign they get the urgency.

"perhaps more accurate to say that Republicans would
rather end democracy, than give up on their beloved
racism..."

It's not about racism for those in power. It's about power itself, which they don't wish to relinquish even if it means the end of democracy. Racism, however, is one of the tactics they are using to rile up a certain segment of their base.

Bears repeating:

Republicans are laying the groundwork for them not to fail next time.
They are laying the groundwork for states to set aside the will of the voters and have the state legislatures choose their electors.
Wake the ---- up! Policies won't win the election. Believe it or not voting most likely won't matter, because the republican legislatures will set aside unfavorable results! And they are actively taking steps to do that!
You have been warned.
What can be done? Probably not much at this point, dems fumbled the 2nd impeachment, so there is not much that can be done to make ------- ineligible to run. Dems seem incapable of passing meaningful election protection legislation.

I thought Biden and Democrats needed to focus on controlling the pandemic and getting Biden's appointments in place when he first took office, but I strongly believed that securing future elections and, therefore, democracy was of the highest priority after that. TH is right--policy won't win future elections, and the Democrats in Congress are fools for thinking it will when Republicans are relentlessly and methodically putting in place all the "infrastructure" they will need to steal future elections. I don't understand why the Biden/Harris adminstration and Democrats in Congress refuse to see that, but it will be their final downfall and, more importantly, the downfall of democracy in the US.

"I thought the intent was to prevent wokeness from being a mandatory field of study in public schools.
I'm good with that."

That's what people are claiming the intent is, but if these bans are instituted, it seems to me the effect will be far more reaching and harmful.