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The Free Beacon has an interesting story, based on interviews of unnamed Trump administration officials, about the Obama minions, some still embedded in the bureaucracy, who are leaking furiously to the Washington Post and the New York Times:

A new wave of leaks targeting the Trump administration has actively endangered ongoing intelligence and military operations being conducted by the United States and its allies, sparking anger and concern inside and outside the White House, according to multiple conversations with senior U.S. officials intimately familiar with the situation.

The classified leaks, which are being handed to sympathetic journalists by former Obama administration officials who left the government and by holdovers still serving in the Trump administration, have damaged a number of ongoing operations, ranging from American efforts to prevent Russian infiltration of the United States to Israeli efforts against ISIS, sources said.

The Democrats pretend to be concerned about Russia, but have no compunction about interfering with the Trump administrations efforts to deal with the Russian threat (which Obama, to his everlasting shame, didnt). The Obama administration never pretended to be concerned about Israels security, so I guess we cant accuse them of hypocrisy on that one.

Anger is running so high that multiple current U.S. officials have named some of the former Obama officials they believe are behind the unauthorized disclosures, which Trump officials say are aimed at kneecapping the current administration and also rewriting the record of the Obama years. *** The leaks have been traced to a number of former Obama administration officials, including Ben Rhodesthe former National Security Council official responsible for creating an in-house echo chamber meant to mislead reporters and the public about the landmark nuclear deal with Iranand Colin Kahl, former Vice President Joe Bidens national security adviser.

Another source, this one a senior administration official who is also intimately familiar with the situation, confirmed the assessment to the Washington Free Beacon.

Those responsible for the disastrous foreign national security policy of the Obama administration for the last yearsBen Rhodes, Colin Kahlthey provide the marching orders to a broader group of people that are associated with the broader [Democratic Party] Podesta-Clinton network, and now theyre trying to rewrite history at the cost of American national security, the official said.

The leakers and reporters need to be criminally prosecuted. We keep hearing that the Trump administration is serious about doing this, but it is time for action. I am not a criminal lawyer and dont presume to give advice to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a former U.S. Attorney and long time member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But I would think one way to proceed is to impanel a grand jury and subpoena the reporters who have illegally published leaked information, and ask them their sources. There is no federal shield law, so as I understand it, if they refuse they can be imprisoned indefinitely. (This happened to Judith Miller.) The sources dont seem to be much of a mystery, and the reporters and editors obviously arent. So it is time for the law to come down hard on the leakers and their enablers.

See the article here:
Trump Insiders Denounce Democrat Leaks - Power Line (blog)

At least five Republican senators all say they will oppose a key procedural vote expected this week on the GOP health care plan that will repeal and replace Obamacare -- a move that would effectively block the GOP health care bill from reaching the floor.

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Dean Heller of Nevada, Mike Lee of Utah and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have signaled they will vote no, or plan to vote no, if there are no changes made to the legislation ahead of the vote, expected Tuesday or Wednesday.

With only 52 seats in the Senate, Republicans can only afford two defections and still advance the health care bill.

This news comes on the heels of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released Monday that estimates that 22 million more Americans will be uninsured by the end of the next 10 years under the Senate Republican health care plan than under current law, with 15 million more uninsured persons in the next year alone.

Sen. Collins, who earlier today had been uncommitted on advancing the health care measure, tweeted tonight: I want to work w/ my GOP & Dem colleagues to fix the flaws in ACA. CBO analysis shows Senate bill won't do it. I will vote no on mtp. MTP refers to Motion to Proceed, the procedural vote that brings up a bill on the floor for consideration.

Before the Senate can begin debate on most legislation, the senators must either unanimously agree to consider it or the majority leader must offer a motion to proceed to consideration of that bill.

The 22 million figure, which is only a slight improvement from the CBO's estimate of the health care bill passed by the House of Representatives in May, comes in the office's analysis of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, a draft of which was released last week.

The act, which faces staunch opposition from Democrats, could further result in a reduction of the cumulative federal deficit by $321 billion by 2026, largely due to cuts in Medicaid spending, according to the CBO's report.

I wont vote to proceed unless the bill changes, Sen. Paul told reporters Monday. He wants the GOP legislation to go even further in rolling back certain Obamacare measures.

Paul said he spoke with President Trump Sunday evening, but lamented over the lack of communication he has received from GOP leadership.

I had a long conversation with the president last night and I think he's open to negotiations, but we have not had any word from anyone in Senate leadership, he said.

No one from leadership has reached out to us, he added. "I would highly doubt I would support it, Sen. Ron Johnson told reporters of the motion to proceed. Johnson has been adamant in recent days to hold off on a vote on the bill, which leadership is pushing to happen before the July 4 recess.

Sen. Lee through a spokesman confirmed to ABC News that he also intends to vote "no" on the procedural vote unless changes are made.

On Friday, Sen. Dean Heller said he would not support the bill as it is during a press conference with the Nevada governor.

Moments after the CBO score was released Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, said the vote was getting tougher by the minute.

How you put all this together and get to 50 is going to be very tough and the CBO score doesn't help any. If you had problems with the bill before, you're probably going to have more problems now, he said.

Graham said if senators are considering voting no because of how it will affect their states, then stick to it and vote no.

I don't believe in this running off a cliff like our Democratic friends did. They got this herd mentality where we gotta pass this bill or else, he said.

Graham is still leaning yes on voting in support of the bill.

ABCs MaryAlice Parks and Adam Kelsey contributed to this report.

See original here:
GOP health care bill in peril with at least 5 Republican senators in opposition - ABC News

In an uncivil and unproductive move, Seth Meyers called the Senate version of the Republican healthcare bill cartoonishly evil on Monday, saying that the only way it could be worse is if it mandated tying damsels in distress to railroad tracks. Never mind that the bill is terrible for everyone; our nations wheels are greased by a great unwillingness to call murder murder, whether its committed by cops or drones or laws. How are Republicans supposed to feel if Meyers points out on national TV that their signature policy goal is, in his words, a giant tax cut for the wealthy paid for with Medicaid cuts? Should right-wing parents have to explain to their kids what Meyers means when he says the secret Republican bill is, like a Slipknot tramp stamp: you definitely want to hide it, and the people whove seen it are terrible people? How long are we going to shame Trump voters for letting a bunch of rambling old men take a meat axe to health care?

The answers to these questions are, respectively: Republicans should feel fucking terrible, right-wing parents should have to constantly explain Republican savagery to their children, and no one who voted for Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States should be able to watch television without being insulted for at least a decade. That said, Meyers should maybe stop irresponsibly throwing around phrases likecartoonishly evil. Cartoons are funny.

Read more here:
Seth Meyers: The Republican Healthcare Bill Is Cartoonishly Evil - Slate Magazine (blog)

As the Supreme Court makes ready to rule on the blatant gerrymandering in Wisconsin, the AP has conducted a study using "a new statistical method of calculating partisan advantage" to analyze "the outcomes of all 435 U.S. House races and about 4,700 state House and Assembly seats up for election last year" and report "four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones."

Both parties have engaged in gerrymandering, but in many Republican strongholds, the GOP attains majorities and supermajorities despite capturing a minority of the vote, in a way that is unmatched by Democrats in states where they dominate.

As the party pivots away from its post-Romney strategy of finding ways to appeal to Americans from all walks of life, and into an entho-nationalist party that uses white identity politics to secure massive wealth transfers to an aging, tiny block of super-rich financiers, it can only realize electoral power through fraud, because neither of those groups are, on their own, sufficiently large to take and hold political power.

Republicans held several advantages heading into the 2016 election. They had more incumbents, which carried weight even in a year of "outsider" candidates. Republicans also had a geographical advantage because their voters were spread more widely across suburban and rural America instead of being highly concentrated, as Democrats generally are, in big cities.

Yet the data suggest that even if Democrats had turned out in larger numbers, their chances of substantial legislative gains were limited by gerrymandering.

"The outcome was already cooked in, if you will, because of the way the districts were drawn," said John McGlennon, a longtime professor of government and public policy at the College of William & Mary in Virginia who ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in the 1980s.

A separate statistical analysis conducted for AP by the Princeton University Gerrymandering Project found that the extreme Republican advantages in some states were no fluke. The Republican edge in Michigan's state House districts had only a 1-in-16,000 probability of occurring by chance; in Wisconsin's Assembly districts, there was a mere 1-in-60,000 likelihood of it happening randomly, the analysis found.

Analysis indicates partisan gerrymandering has benefited GOP [David A Lieb/AP]

Lauralot points out that the Jesus of the Bible doesnt have much in common with the right-wing, evangelical Christ canon Jesus was a brown Jew in the Middle East, conceived out of wedlock in an arguably interracial if not interspecies (deity and human) relationship, raised by his mother and stepfather in place of his []

The new questionnaire that US visa applicants have to fill in requires them to supply biographical information stretching back 15 years and all their social media handles for the past 5 years.

Hey, who knew? The reporter-beating crazed thug (and now Congressjerk!) Greg Gianforte is part of a long and dishonorable tradition of American Congressional reps who lashed out at the press!

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Even though credit cards now feature an EMV chip for securing transactions, they still have to include the magnetic strip for compatibility with older point of sale systems. Because of this, theres no way for the chips new security capabilities to protect against card skimmers in the wild.How do you protect yourself from legacy-technology-induced fraud? []

The rest is here:
Republicans are the primary beneficiaries of gerrymandering - Boing Boing

Fifty-eight House Republicans signed a letter calling for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse herself from the upcoming travel ban case due to her comments about President Trump during the election.

In the letter, the congressmen call for Ginsburg to recuse herself in the case International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump. The case centers on President Trump's travel ban, which seeks to restrict refugee settlement in the U.S. as well as prohibit travel to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The congressmen argued Ginsburg's previous public comments about Trump, which included calling him a "faker" and saying he has an "ego," merited her recusal from the case.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, scheduling oral arguments for the first session in October. The court also lifted the injunction on the ban except for individuals with a bona fide relationship to the U.S.

Ginsburg subsequently apologized for her comments, though she was criticized by the editorial boards of both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Excerpts from those editorials were included in the letter sent to Ginsburg.

This story has been corrected to reflect that 58 Republican lawmakers signed the letter.

Read more here:
Republican lawmakers want Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse herself from Trump cases - Washington Examiner