Attorney General Jeff Sessions calls Charlottesville attack an incident of domestic terrorism and vows to pursue "the most serious charges that can be brought." That leaves him wiggle room, of course -- by which I don't necessarily mean farming the case out to the state of Virginia, because that might work out worse for the suspect -- but I won't lie to you and say it's utterly meaningless that he said it, since he is Attorney General, after all, and he has a pulpit.
But just as one hand giveth: Department of Justice has been trying to get IP addresses for over 1 million Americans who may have visited an anti-Trump website. I'm stunned, frankly, that the DOJ could get such a broad warrant, apparently in connection with the 200 folks still being held on felony riot charges in connection fo Inauguration Day protests. If judges are showing that much deference to the Executive branch (particularly this Executive branch), that's not a good sign.
Ho hum, CBO estimates that if President Trump cuts off Affordable Care Act subsidies, premiums will go up 20 percent by next year for those who use subsidies to get health insurance, and 25 percent by 2020. Note to the President: it's not "letting Obamacare fail" if you actively work to make it fail, any more than it's an "accident" if you set fire to your own house.
Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept reminds us that the ACLU shouldn't get slammed for representing people we don't agree with. Not just because rights are even for Nazi wannabes, and not just because news items saying ZOMG TEH ACLU DEFENDEDZ TEH NAMBLAZ!!!! tend not to tell the whole story, but because, as the ACLU itself puts it, "once you chip away at one person’s rights, everyone else’s are at risk...Free speech doesn’t belong only to those we agree with, and the First Amendment doesn’t only protect speech that is tasteful and inoffensive. In fact, it is in the hard cases that our commitment to the First Amendment is most tested and most important." Another way of putting it: if your values only tell you what you want to hear and never inconvenience you, they're bad values.
Finally, President Trump finally leveled specific condemnations at Nazi wannabes a mere 48 hours after the Charlottesville attacks, though not without also bragging about the economy and pretending he'd already condemned them. I'm sure his votaries aren't offended -- after all, they heard him the first time, and are pretty sure he was "made" to say what he said the second time. How long before they finally get tired of a President who struts around like that but can so easily be "made" to do things against his will? Probably about the same time they get tired of feeling sorry for themselves, so that could be a while. In the meantime, how about Democrats run some actual populists for office, so Trump votaries can have a real model of better behavior?
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