Monday, July 04, 2016

The Weekly Fourth Wrangle

As the Texas Progressive Alliance brings you the Independence Day blog post roundup, we ask you to be cautious about your planned explosions today.


Off the Kuff credits Wendy Davis for getting it right on HB2.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos is hardly shocked to learn that our state is run by a group of misogynist swine. Will the Texas GOP Apologize for its Unconstitutional Anti-Abortion Bill and its Sexist Piggery?

Socratic Gadfly notes how chunks of the mainstream media tried to create Scalia-connected false drama on the Supreme Court's abortion ruling.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme warns Texans that a far right group wants to purge Starr County voter rolls so that you don't get a vote.

Neil at All People Have Value supports Ann Harris Bennett for Harris County Tax Assessor/Voter Registrar. She will do a very good job in that important office. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

The Lewisville Texan Journal reports on a community loan center as an alternative to the predatory auto title/payday lenders.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston translates Trump's Social Security plan.

Dos Centavos reviews the first Intocable album in three years.

Upon suggesting that Hillary Clinton modify some of her positions to attract Bernie Sanders supporters, Egberto Willies got the predictable response.

And Cheeto Jesus (Donald Trump) begged Saul Relative (PDiddie at Brains and Eggs) for a campaign donation.

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More posts from other great Texas progressive blogs!

Better Texas Blog reminds us that the Zika virus is fast approaching and outlines some preventative measures.

Lawflog takes note of the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement's investigation into the head of the TABC and her husband.

Prairie Weather reads the NYT's review of George W. Bush's forthcoming biography as a scathing indictment.

Steve Bates at Yellow Doggerel Democrat marks today's holiday with a song from the soon-to-be-retired Paul Simon.

The Houston Press peeks behind the scenes at Houston's thirty-year-old Freedom Over Texas, the city's fireworks on the Fourth celebration.

Carol Morgan has a point of view regarding the rendezvous on the Phoenix airport tarmac.

Ashton Woods at Safety in Numbers says, "Pride Houston, we have a problem".

Andrea Ferrigno celebrates the SCOTUS decision striking down HB2.

Keep Austin Wonky criticizes that city's road bond proposal.

The TSTA Blog takes exception to Texas exceptionalism.

The Makeshift Academic explains why Medicaid expansion was such a key component of the Affordable Care Act.

Drew Blackburn wonders why Austin is having such a hard time with regulations on sharing economy companies.

Paradise in Hell looks at the sinkholes of West Texas.

idiotprogrammer tells a tall tale about zombies.

Saturday, July 02, 2016

Clinton email investigation in its last throes

After 3.5 hours answering questions posed by FBI investigators, Hillary Clinton has just about finished skating over the thin ice.

Given what we know now, an indictment doesn’t seem likely. As Vox’s Dylan Matthews noted, prosecutors would need evidence not just that Clinton sent classified information outside secure government networks, but that she did so knowing that it was supposed to be classified.

Clinton has denied this, insisting any classified material in the emails was either classified after the fact or she did not realize it had been classified — a position she likely reiterated today to the FBI.

This would contradict my 'murder/manslaughter' post, and doesn't really explain exactly why she'd be in the clear if some of those emails were "born classified".  But hey, they're probably lawyers and know more than I do.

Despite the right wing media's obsession with false accounts regarding the Clinton email server, most credible accounts state the chances of the former Secretary of State facing any legal action or an indictment are miniscule.

Others are saying the same thing.  With the Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton chat on the Phoenix tarmac earlier this past week, the matter got unnecessarily murkier.  One person has the power to clear it all up.

FBI Director James Comey is now firmly in the driver’s seat of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, after Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged she would accept whatever course of action his bureau and career prosecutors recommend.

[...]

“Comey is the center of gravity on this thing,” said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director and president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.

“There is a growing expectation that we the public need to hear the FBI, Jim Comey version of whether or not charges will be brought,” he added. “There has probably been increasing recognition by her that that’s true, that she is viewed as — regardless of her prior reputation as an effective prosecutor — she’s now the head of Obama’s DOJ, a political position in a Democratic administration that is deciding on the prosecution or not of the leading Democratic candidate.”

[...]

The decision (by Lynch to accept the recommendations of investigators) puts the spotlight squarely on Comey, a Republican who is widely respected by GOP lawmakers and known for a streak of independence.

“He is a pro’s pro,” said Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney and head of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a watchdog group. “And I think this takes the pressure off of him that whatever the FBI recommends will be followed, where before I am certain he would be concerned that there will be political interference from the attorney general.”

There’s still a chance that FBI investigators and Justice Department lawyers, who are working on the case together, arrive at different conclusions on how to proceed.

The FBI has a tendency to be more aggressive with cases, whereas prosecutors might be more reluctant to push a charge they are not absolutely certain will stick — especially if the next presidency might be at stake.

“I could easily envision a scenario in which the FBI concludes there is enough evidence to make a case, but the DOJ prosecutors decide that the case is too weak to risk the legal precedent,” Bradley Moss, a lawyer who handles national security and secrecy issues, wrote in an email to The Hill.
“The DOJ career prosecutors are truly the ones who are under the microscope at this point.”

In the federal case against former CIA Director David Petraeus last year, FBI officials reportedly pushed for him to be indicted on felony charges, but then-Attorney General Eric Holder downgraded them to misdemeanors.

Yet Comey is no shrinking violet. If he is ultimately overruled by officials within the Justice Department, that is unlikely to remain a secret.

Potentially incriminating news has “a way of getting out,” said Whitaker.

“I would imagine ultimately we will know how the investigation was conducted or whether there was interference from the political folks at the Department of Justice,” he added.

“But I don’t know whether it will be in time to have an impact in an election year.”

She's almost out of the briar patch.

Green is the New Blue Funnies


The old Blue is just too Red for me.  (And don't call it purple, please.)




This one's for my pal, Erik Vidor...

Friday, July 01, 2016

Starring Loretta Lynch as Pontius Pilate

So she and Bill Clinton talked about more than just grandchildren the other day at the airport.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch plans to announce on Friday that she will accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director make about whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, a Justice Department official said. Her decision removes the possibility that a political appointee will overrule investigators in the case.
The Justice Department had been moving toward such an arrangement for months — officials said in April that it was being considered — but a private meeting between Ms. Lynch and former President Bill Clinton this week set off a political furor and made the decision all but inevitable.
Republicans said the meeting, which took place at the Phoenix airport, had compromised the independence of the investigation as the F.B.I. was winding it down. Some called for Ms. Lynch to recuse herself, but she did not take herself off the case — one that could influence a presidential election.
Ms. Lynch plans to discuss the matter at a conference in Aspen, Colo., on Friday. The Justice Department declined to comment. The official who confirmed the discussion did so on the condition of anonymity because the internal decision-making process is normally kept confidential.

Washing her hands of the matter is... well, maaybe it's telling.  We'll see how the presser later today goes.  Back here I posted and linked to the fact that investigators on the cases of Sandy Berger and David Petreaus were something akin to pissed over the slaps on the wrist both of those men got for mishandling classified information.

Maybe the water just got hotter.  Hard to tell.  Clinton's fate ultimately rests in the hands of a federal grand jury whose names, political affiliations, etc. we'll never know.  She's still got some bumpy roads to travel over, which is undoubtedly the reason why Bernie Sanders has not suspended his campaign.  If I were a Hillbot, I suppose I'd be nervous and irritable too.

Astrodome parking

I hate to say I told you so (not really) but I told you so.


Harris County commissioners on Tuesday were presented with a $105 million plan to add two levels of parking to the Astrodome to prepare it for future use.
The plan would raise the ground level of the dome two floors and convert those two floors into 1,400 parking spaces, paving the way for the new ground level to be used for events or for an indoor park.

I missed it by about 150 parking spaces, so there's that.  Start the annual revenue estimate with 1400 spaces x $75 per x 10 home NFL games, 20 or so Rodeo concert/barbecue cookoff nights, and whatever number you like for NCAA March Madness weekends, soccer games such as the Copa America tournament going on this month, the OTC, and single-day events (Beyonce' concerts, Free Press Summer Fest, and so on like that) that are capable of consuming most of the parking capacity.  People are already complaining about no air conditioning in the garage, but the selling point is having your car in the shade instead of in the sun.  My calculator grinds out a conservative -- using '10' as the third multiplier -- $4.2 million.  If you think $75 is too much to park -- that's how much Jerry Jones gets for close-in spaces at AT&T Stadium on Cowboys game days -- then cut it by a third to $50 and it's still a tidy $2.8 mil a year.

The fate of the above-ground part of the Dome is still to be determined.  Judge Emmett is stuck on a convention hall, but a park really seems like its most likely fate to me.  It's all about who pays, as always, and the taxpayer isn't going to be paying anything no matter what.

The takeaway here is that I might know what I'm blogging about.  Most of the time.