ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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MoFo Schumer Has Votes to Filibuster Gorsuch, McConnell Needs to Step Up

McConnell vs. Schumer. The tortoise and the nose hair. Mitch the bitch needs to get to work.

Chuck Schumer Has Enough Democrats to Filibuster Neil Gorsuch

WASHINGTON,D.C.—Monday it became official that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has the necessary 41 senators publicly committed to filibuster Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court, meaning that now the future of the nation’s highest court hangs on Republicans getting 50 votes for the constitutional option.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In conjunction with the committee vote on Gorsuch—who was recommended favorably to the Senate by a party-line 11-9 vote—Coons announced that he would join Schumer’s filibuster.

Coons is a liberal Democrat, but had previously signaled that he might consider some sort of negotiated outcome regarding the way forward for the high Court. So while his announcement was not unexpected, it was still vitally important.

With Coons, there are now 41 votes for a filibuster. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster in the 100-member Senate, so Coons became the magic number that puts Schumer over the top.

Under current Senate practice, that body’s rules are interpreted such that President Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch would now die, despite having a bipartisan majority of at least 55 senators who would vote for him if his confirmation comes to a final vote.

Now all eyes are on Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), to see if he can keep enough of his 52 Republicans together to invoke the constitutional option, and restore the 200-year Senate practice of judicial nominees only requiring a simple majority vote to be confirmed to their lifetime appointments.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/03/chuck-schumer-has-enough-democrats-to-filibuster-neil-gorsuch/

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Hungary and Poland Must Accept Mooslims or Leave EU. AYFKM?

Tell Angela Merkel to fuck off. Leave the EU and her fat ass.

France and Germany, along with a host of up to 21 other countries, are set to demand Hungary and Poland either accept migrants under the quota system or leave the European Union (EU).

The two nations have ignored Brussels’ insistence that they take migrants presently residing in great numbers in Italy and Greece. Public opinion in Hungary and Poland is also strongly against being forced to accept thousands of migrants from non-European cultures.

Poland’s conservative Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – PiS) swept to victory in 2015, partly due to voter anger over the previous government agreeing to take migrants under the quota system.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been a vocal opponent of the scheme from its conception, asserting that forcing member countries to take a compulsory quota of migrants is unlawful and will “spread terrorism around Europe”.

Later this year, the two countries will be given an ultimatum and have to decide whether they are willing to maintain an anti-mass migration stances if it puts their membership of the EU at threat, a senior diplomatic source from one of the bloc’s six founding member states told The Times.

The source said: “They will have to make a choice: are they in the European system or not? You cannot blackmail the EU, unity has a price.”

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is expected to hold a hearing on the legality of migrant quotas in the coming weeks, with a judgement — widely expected to be in favour of the scheme — likely by the end of the year.

“We are confident that the ECJ will confirm validation,” the source said. “Then they must abide by the decision. If they don’t then they will face consequences, both financial and political. No more opt-outs. There is no more ‘one foot in and one foot out’. We are going to be very tough on this.”

Hungary challenged the court, insisting that it is culturally and constitutionally unreasonable to impose asylum seekers on unwilling member states.

In December, referring to policies of importing large numbers of people from the third world, Orbán stated that Hungary and other countries in Central Europe “have had the opportunity to learn from Western Europe’s mistakes”.

“Hungary is a stable island in the turbulent western world because the people were consulted on their opinions here, and we defended the country against illegal immigration.”

In 2015, when European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans demanded Eastern and Central EU nations undergo similar demographic transitions as in Western Europe, Hungary was singled out for special mention.

“Any society, anywhere in the world, will be diverse in the future — that’s the future of the world,” Timmermans said. “So [Central European countries] will have to get used to that. They need political leaders who have the courage to explain that to their population instead of playing into the fears as I’ve seen Mr Orbán doing in the last couple of months.”

Breitbart London reported that the European Union is to open asylum processing centres in west Africa and countries on the southern shore of the Mediterranean because the continent “needs six million migrants”, the European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos said last month.

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CIA Officer: Obama and Rice Spied to Hurt Trump Campaign

Trump, time for you to be Trump and get these pieces of shit

Scott Uehlinger: Susan Rice Unmasking ‘Abuse of Power’ Violates ‘Spirit of the Law,’ Should Be ‘Further Investigated’

Former CIA operations officer Scott Uehlinger, co-host of The Station Chief podcast, talked about the Susan Rice “unmasking” story with SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Tuesday’s Breitbart News Daily.

“I think it’s an issue which deeply concerns people like myself and other people, working-level officers in the intel community,” Uehlinger said. “Even though at this point, there seems to be no evidence of breaking the law, this ‘unmasking’ of people was ill-advised at best. I think it really shows that abuse of power and the fact that many people in the Obama administration were willing to violate the spirit of the laws designed to protect Americans, perhaps rather than the law itself.”

“As a working-level CIA officer, we were always told by upper authority, you’re always told to – and the quote is – ‘avoid the appearance of impropriety,’” he said. “Well, this does not pass that smell test, definitely.”

Uehlinger said another thing that concerns working-level officers in the intelligence and military communities is “the American people, average Americans like myself, are tired of seeing two sets of rules followed by the higher-ups and then the working-level people.”

“This is just part of that again. A working-level officer would have gotten into big trouble doing anything remotely like this,” he observed. “But now, we have a lot of people saying that she should just be given a pass.”

“While I understand, you know, it’s important that the Trump administration has to move forward with its domestic agenda, but these allegations demand to be further investigated,” he urged.

Kassam proposed that Democrats and their media would not allow the Trump administration to move forward with any part of its agenda until this “Russia hysteria” is cleaned up. That will be a difficult task since, as Kassam noted, the hysteria has been burning at fever pitch for months without a shred of evidence to back up the wildest allegations.

Uehlinger agreed and addressed Kassam’s point that media coverage alternates between “no surveillance was conducted” and “we know everything about Trump’s Russia connections.”

“The Obama administration relaxed the rule that allowed raw intelligence that was gathered by the NSA to be shared throughout the government,” he pointed out. “First of all, to relax that, there is absolutely no operational justification for doing that. With all of the counter-intelligence problems, with espionage, with Snowden, all these things we’ve had, to raise by an order of magnitude the access to this very sensitive information makes no operational sense at all.”

“So for someone to approve that, it’s clear they had another intent, and I believe the intent was to allow for further leakage,” he charged. “To give more people access, thus more leaks, which, in fact, would hurt the Trump administration. It seems very obvious when you put that together and combine it with the actions of Susan Rice and other people in unmasking people. That is the true purpose behind this.”

“I say this as somebody who – you have to remember, when I was a station chief overseas, this is what I was reporting on. I was in countries like Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kosovo – countries which constantly had the offices of the prime minister or president using the intelligence services to suppress the domestic opposition. So I’ve been to this rodeo before, many a time. I saw the storm clouds gathering several weeks ago, and everything I’ve suspected has so far come to fruition,” Uehlinger said.

He pronounced it “very disappointing” that such transparent abuse of government power for partisan politics would occur in the United States.

“An intelligence service has to have the trust of the people and the government in order to function effectively,” he said. “With all of these scandals happening, and with the name of perhaps the CIA and other intelligence community elements in the mud, this makes the object of protecting our national security more problematic. The agencies have to have the trust of the American people, and they’re losing it, because it seems as though they’ve been weaponized –  perhaps, like I said, not breaking the law but playing very close to the line.”

Kassam suggested that leaking the information might have been illegal, even if Rice was legally entitled to request information on Donald Trump’s campaign and unmask the U.S. persons monitored during surveillance of foreign intelligence targets.

“That’s absolutely the case,” Uehlinger agreed. He went on to argue that the absence of hard evidence for any wrongdoing by the Trump campaign in all of these leaks was highly significant.

“Since basically the Obama administration has sort of loaded this with these rule changes and all to allow for leaks the fact that there is no ‘smoking gun’ of Trump administration collusion with Russia indicates that there isn’t any. There is nothing substantial here because a juicy morsel like that would certainly have been leaked by the same people that have been leaking everything else. The fact it hasn’t been leaked out means it does not exist,” he reasoned.

Kassam said some of the Russia hysteria came from imputing sinister motives to conventional business dealings, arguing that Trump’s organization made deals around the world, and it is exceedingly difficult to do business with any Russian entity that is not somehow connected to the Russian government.

“That’s an excellent point. You’re absolutely right,” Uehlinger responded. “It shows these people who are doing these gambits are relying on the relative ignorance of the American public of the actual nuts and bolts of intelligence to make their point. Anyone with any background in this stuff can see it for what it is: a desperate attempt to discredit an administration because they were crushed in the past elections.”

http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/04/04/scott-uehlinger-susan-rice-unmasking-abuse-power-violates-spirit-law-further-investigated/

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Susan Rice Ordered Spreadsheets of Trump’s Campaign Calls

Lock her up!

Report: Susan Rice Ordered ‘Spreadsheets’ of Trump Campaign Calls

President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, allegedly ordered surveillance of Donald Trump’s campaign aides during the last election, and maintained spreadsheets of their telephone calls, the Daily Caller reports.

The alleged spreadsheets add a new dimension to reports on Sunday and Monday by blogger Mike Cernovich and Eli Lake of Bloomberg News that Rice had asked for Trump aides’ names to be “unmasked” in intelligence reports. The alleged “unmasking” may have been legal, but may also have been part of an alleged political intelligence operation to disseminate reports on the Trump campaign widely throughout government with the aim of leaking them to the press.

At the time that radio host Mark Levin and Breitbart News compiled the evidence of surveillance, dissemination, and leaking — all based on mainstream media reports — the mainstream media dismissed the story as a “conspiracy theory.”

Now, however, Democrats are backing away from that allegation, and from broader allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, as additional details of the Obama administration’s alleged surveillance continue to emerge.

The Daily Caller reports:

“What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals,” diGenova told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group Monday.

“The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,” diGenova said. “In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.”

The surveillance and spreadsheet operation were allegedly “ordered one year before the 2016 presidential election.” According to a Fox News report on Monday, former White House aide Ben Rhodes was also involved.

Rhodes and Rice were both implicated in a disinformation campaign to describe the Benghazi terror attack in Sep. 2012 as a protest against a YouTube video. Rhodes also boasted of creating an “echo chamber” in the media to promote the Iran deal, feeding stories to contrived networks of “experts” who offered the public a steady stream of pro-agreement propaganda.

On Monday, Rhodes retweeted a CNN story quoting Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) claiming that the alleged unmasking was “nothing unusual.”

To the extent they have reported the surveillance story at all, CNN and other news outlets have focused on Trump’s tweets last month that alleged President Obama had “wiretapped” Trump Tower, describing the claims as unfounded.

CNN continued treating story dismissively on Monday, with The Lead host Jake Tapper insisting allegations of Russian interference in the election were more important than what he referred to as the president’s effort to distract from them.

Later in the day, host Don Lemon declared he would ignore the surveillance story and urged viewers to do likewise.

The potential abuse of surveillance powers for political purposes has long troubled civil libertarians, and could affect the re-authorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act later this year.

 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/04/report-susan-rice-ordered-spreadsheets-trump-campaign-calls/

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Extreme Vetting Looks Good: Trump’s Proposals

No, you’re not welcome. Stay home and tear your own shit up.

Trump Administration Considers Far-Reaching Steps for ‘Extreme Vetting’

Foreigners entering U.S. could be forced to hand over phones, answer questions on ideology; changes could apply to allies like France and Germany

Foreigners who want to visit the U.S., even for a short trip, could be forced to disclose contacts on their mobile phones, social-media passwords and financial records, and to answer probing questions about their ideology, according to Trump administration officials conducting a review of vetting procedures.

The administration also wants to subject more visa applicants to intense security reviews and have embassies spend more time interviewing each applicant. The changes could apply to people from all over the world, including allies like France and Germany.

The measures—whose full scope haven’t yet been publicly discussed—would together represent the “extreme vetting” President Donald Trump has promised. The changes would be sure to generate significant controversy, both at home, from civil libertarians and others who see the questions as overly intrusive, and abroad, with experts warning that other nations could impose similar requirements on Americans seeking visas.

“If there is any doubt about a person’s intentions coming to the United States, they should have to overcome—really and truly prove to our satisfaction—that they are coming for legitimate reasons,” said Gene Hamilton, senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

Administration officials say fighting terrorism is an urgent task that justifies tough rules. The review under way aims to replace what the Trump administration sees as a presumption toward letting people into the country toward a more skeptical outlook.

The review was called for in an executive order Mr. Trump signed last month banning travel from six-majority Muslim countries, which he said was needed to guard against terrorism. The order also directed security officials to implement a vetting program that allows for a “rigorous evaluation” of whether applicants support terrorism or present a risk of causing harm.

While much of the order was put on hold by a federal judge in Hawaii, the work to enhance vetting procedures was allowed to proceed.

Homeland Security officials say the agency is planning to significantly increase demands for information from all visa applicants, including visitors, refugees and others seeking to immigrate.

The changes might even apply to visitors from the 38 countries that participate in the Visa Waiver Program, which requires adherence to strict U.S. standards in data sharing, passport control and other factors, one senior official said. That includes some of the U.S.’s closest allies, such as the U.K., Japan and Australia.

The biggest change to U.S. policy would be asking applicants to hand over their telephones so officials could examine their stored contacts and perhaps other information. Visitors have had their phones examined at ports of entry, but that isn’t routinely requested during the application stage.

The goal is to “figure out who you are communicating with,” the senior DHS official said. “What you can get on the average person’s phone can be invaluable.”

A second change would ask applicants for their social-media handles and passwords so that officials could see information posted privately in addition to public posts. DHS has experimented with asking for people’s handles so they can read public posts, but not those restricted to friends.

“We want to say for instance, ‘What sites do you visit? And give us your passwords,’ so that we can see what they do on the internet,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said at a congressional hearing in February. “If they don’t want to give us that information then they don’t come.”

In response to Mr. Kelly’s hearing, a coalition of about 50 civil liberties and other groups issued a statement that month saying requiring passwords is “a direct assault on fundamental rights,” including freedom of expression. They also complained that the policy could be mirrored by foreign governments demanding passwords from Americans.

In addition, a DHS inspector general’s report this year found that the agency didn’t properly measure the effectiveness of pilot programs that used social media in visa-application reviews, making it hard to determine if they should be expanded.

Former DHS officials who worked on these issues during the Obama administration said that the information gleaned from telephones and social media could be helpful in assessing threats posed by applicants, but they said there are downsides, too. The effort—particularly the social-media hunt—would be time-consuming, they said, and it could drive people with bad intentions to change their practices.

“The real bad guys will get rid of their phones. They’ll show up with a clean phone,” said Leon Rodriguez, who headed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services until January and was deeply involved in refugee screening. “Over time, the utility of the exercise will diminish.”

Still, one Obama official said, telephone contacts could be particularly helpful in identifying terrorist ties, as their phone numbers could be run against various U.S. databases.

Already, the State Department has taken small steps toward tighter vetting, according to cables sent from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to embassies and consulates. In them, he orders officials to identify “applicant populations” that warrant additional scrutiny, according to documents posted by Reuters in March. The department hasn’t disputed their contents. He also directs offices to limit the number of interviews scheduled each day to ensure each application is properly scrutinized.

Mr. Tillerson instructed officials to ask visa applicants additional questions, such as listing all email addresses and social-media handles used in the past five years, as well as the applicant’s travel history, employers and addresses over the past 15 years. But after the federal court put the travel ban on hold, Mr. Tillerson said in another message that to be cautious, those instructions should be put on hold as well.

The administration is also working to implement an idea first raised by Mr. Trump as a presidential candidate last August for an “ideological test” for people coming to the U.S. Such tests have been used before—for instance, to screen out anarchists, or members of the Communist Party.

“Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country,” Mr. Trump said in an August speech.

The DHS official working on the review said the types of questions under consideration now include whether visa applicants believe in so-called honor killings, how they view the treatment of women in society, whether they value the “sanctity of human life” and who they view as a legitimate target in a military operation.

The goal, he said, isn’t to filter out people with contrary thoughts but people who might act on them.

That notion draws criticism from civil libertarians.

“It could deprive American citizens with the ability to interact and gain knowledge from the full spectrum of individuals and people who hold diverse beliefs world-wide,” said Hugh Handeyside, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security project.

“Our views and beliefs and opinions are protected,” he said. “Those same principles should drive our decisions about whether people would be permitted to visit the United States.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-considers-far-reaching-steps-for-extreme-vetting-1491303602

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Federal Reserve President Lacker Admits to Leaking Economic Secrets. NO Charges Filed. WTF

Lock his sorry ass up damit!

Richmond Fed President Lacker says he was involved with Medley leak, announces immediate resignation

Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker announced his immediate resignation Tuesday, admitting that he discussed sensitive information with an analyst regarding the Fed’s plans for economic stimulus.

Lacker, 61, became president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond on Aug. 1, 2004. He is a member of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. CNBC has learned that the resignation was negotiated with law enforcement officials. Lacker’s attorney told CNBC no charges will be filed.

Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker

Richmond Fed’s Lacker departure result of negotiations with law enforcement officials  

Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker announced his immediate resignation Tuesday, admitting that he discussed sensitive information with an analyst regarding the Fed’s plans for economic stimulus.

Lacker, 61, became president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond on Aug. 1, 2004. He is a member of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. CNBC has learned that the resignation was negotiated with law enforcement officials. Lacker’s attorney told CNBC no charges will be filed.

Lacker, who was not a voting member of the FOMC this year, previously said he planned to retire in October.

In his letter of resignation, Lacker admitted to speaking to an analyst at Medley Global Advisors regarding the September 2012 Fed meeting. Medley publishes analysis for hedge funds and asset managers and is owned by the Financial Times. Lacker said his actions violated Fed communications policies that prohibit “providing any profit-making person or organization with a prestige advantage over its competitors.”

Lacker said he was asked by an analyst about an “important nonpublic detail” regarding the Federal Open Market Committee’s policy options.

“Due to the highly confidential and sensitive nature of this information, I should have declined to comment and perhaps have ended the phone call,” Lacker said. “Instead, I did not refuse or express my inability to comment and the interview continued.”

In addition, Lacker said he was obligated to disclose that the analyst had confidential information, which he did not do.

The Fed was criticized for not referring the leak to the Securities and Exchange Commission or the FBI. Instead, Fed General Counsel Scott Alvarez lead a Fed probe into the matter from October 2012 until March of 2013.

Lacker said he further did not disclose during an internal review into the matter that the analyst had confidential information. He never revealed the information until an April 15 interview with multiple federal authorities including the FBI.

“I deeply regret the role I may have played in confirming this confidential information and in its dissemination to Medley’s subscribers,” Lacker added. “In this episode, as in all of my communications with analysts, journalists and the public, it was never my intention to reveal confidential information.”

The Richmond Fed said it was immediately looking for a replacement. In the interim, Mark Mullinix, who was first vice president, will serve as acting president.

“We are focused on moving forward within our organization — and were already underway with our presidential search, following Jeffrey Lacker’s announcement in January to retire in 2017,” it said in a statement. “This search process will continue as scheduled.”

The Medley investigation involves allegations that confidential information from the Federal Reserve Board committee, which sets monetary policy, was leaked to a private newsletter. Such a leak could have given an unfair advantage to some investors.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/04/richmond-fed-president-lacker-says-he-was-source-of-medley-leak-announces-immediate-resignation.html