Houston council joins #SB4 lawsuit on 10-6 vote

The good news -- beyond what's revealed in the headline -- includes the fact that no conservative had the stones to tag it (postponing the vote a week), and that the mayor cast his ballot in favor even though that's typically done (by rule of Roberts) only when there is a tie.  Jack Christie got up and left before the counting, marking him an abstention.

The noes were Greg Travis, Mike Knox, Michael Kubosh, Brenda Stardig, Dave Martin, and Steve Le.  All but Le were easily predictable.  The vote was purely and politically symbolic; the constitutionality of the law will be decided in the courts, and as Sophie Novack at Texas Monthly has shown, this is why the Legislature overreaches (on voter ID, on women's reproductive freedoms, and all the rest): it takes years for the judges to slap them down.

Let's join this topic to another; the pending decision by the Supreme Court of Texas as to the scheduling of Houston's municipal elections this year, or in two years.

As Charles pointed out yesterday, it's getting to be late in the game for city elections to happen in 2017.  What he didn't mention is that should the SCOTX rule on a writ of mandamus filed by Republican attorney and city council gadfly Eric Dick, on behalf of his client PP Bryant, then we may actually get those elections this year.  Or not.

The November 2015 voting cycle in Houston included one ballot result that surprised many: the decision to extend the term limits of city officials from three two-year terms to two four-year terms. The result was so unexpected, it immediately raised controversy, eyebrows, and the question, “Did the voters of the City of Houston actually mean to extend term limits?”

Phillip Paul Bryant filed a lawsuit to invalidate Proposition 2 because he believes the ballot language misled Houston voters. Annise Parker and the City of Houston have a rich history with misleading voters when it comes to ballot language. Indeed in 2015 alone, Texas Supreme Court has found that Annise Parker and the City of Houston have used inappropriate ballot language twice.

On November 3, 2015, registered voters of the City of Houston were asked to vote on several propositions, including a proposition extending term limits (“Proposition 2”). The ballot language for Proposition 2 reads:

• (Relating to Term Limits for City Elective Office) Shall the City Charter of the City of Houston be amended to reduce the number of terms of elective offices to no more than two terms in the same office and limit the length for all terms of elective office to four years, beginning in January 2016; and provide for transition?

The voters of the City of Houston passed Proposition 2 on November 3, 2015.

Phillip Paul Bryant’s attorney argues that the language of Proposition 2 was misleading for several reasons:

• The ballot language suggested that it would “limit” term length instead of extending it from two year terms to four year terms;
• The ballot language read as if it was shortening the total amount of time an elected official could stay in office when it actually extended it from six years to a total of eight or ten years;
• The ballot language omitted a chief feature of the proposition -  it suggested that it shortened the amount of times an elected official can serve to two terms when in fact there were hidden exceptions that unfairly benefited incumbents.

Indeed, Mayor Annise Parker literally said:

• "There may have been some voter confusion out there. I don't know that they realized that they were giving council members more time in office.”

As further evidence that the City of Houston misled voters, the Houston Chronicle reported that the underlying ballot language was obscured:

• “Political scientists were not convinced Tuesday's result was proof of radically shifting attitudes, however. The ballot language did not spell out the effect on incumbents or that the item would loosen the existing restrictions.
• ‘It was ballot confusion or obfuscation,’ Texas Southern University political scientist Michael Adams said. ‘The way it was written, some people may have thought they were voting to limit the terms rather than extend them to two four- year terms.’
• That take made sense to Rice University political scientist Bob Stein, who added, ‘Nobody reads the ballot when they walk in there. They don't have to read it to vote.’” 

In addition, Houston Public Media reported that the ballot language didn’t tell the whole truth:

• “’When we informed voters that the adoption of the two four-year (terms) would take place immediately in 2016 and advantage incumbent council members, support swung the other way and it was a deficit of 17 points against,’ Stein said.
• But that information was not in the ballot language. In fact, it didn’t even mention that it would actually extend term limits.” 

On June 2, 2016, a writ of mandamus was filed with the Texas Supreme Court asking them to invalidate Proposition 2. If you would like clarity as to whether Houston has municipality elections in 2017, please contact the Texas Supreme Court justices and encourage that they rule on the pending writ of mandamus. We are not asking for a specific ruling, we are only asking for a decision to be made so we know whether or not we have City of Houston elections in 2017. 

Contact Barrister Dick and he'll explain how to ask the Court to rule, and while you're there, order one of his Sixties-era T-shirts.

With respect once more to yesterday's vote on SB4: Turner didn't have to give Council a say.  He could have just exercised his authority, like mayors in all the other Texas metros (save Cowtown) did two weeks ago, as the regular legislative session ended and the bill outlawing sanctuary cities was signed into law by Greg Abbott.  Let's give Sly the benefit of the doubt and presume he was playing three-dimensional chess with those who would be running whenever elections are held, giving some bold Democrat somewhere ammunition to use against dem dat voted against joining the SB4 lawsuit.  In other words, against the conservatives who aim to replace Stardig and Christie, and also the conservatives seeking to replace the Democrats who voted 'aye' yesterday, all of whom are term-limited off Council: Jerry Davis, Ellen Cohen, Mike Laster, and Larry Green.  (Only Cohen's and Laster's seats appear so much as mildly vulnerable in this scenario, from my POV.)

So we wait now for the first hearing on the SB4 lawsuit, a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the law filed by the city of El Cenizo and to be heard by US Judge Orlando Garcia on Monday morning, June 26.  (More on the legal maneuvering from Gus Bova at the Observer.)  We'll watch how that matriculates through the courts, eventually up to the Fifth Circuit and perhaps the SCOTUS, while we also play a parlor game about who might file and where if the SCOTX rules favorably on holding Houston city council elections this year.

Seems boring as hell, so perhaps it will get a little more exciting as it plays out.

Wednesday Morning Quarterbacking

-- Democrats are now 0-4 in special election bids.

Democrats tried an inoffensive moderate message in Georgia. They ran a banjo-strumming populist in Montana. They called in the cavalry in South Carolina and tried to catch their foe sleeping through a long-shot in Kansas.

None of it worked.

In the special elections for House seats vacated by Republicans who wound up in President Donald Trump's Cabinet, Democrats went 0-for-4.

What follows there is the predictable gloating from Republicans and excuse-making from people like Kos.  Think Progress offers more of that 'better luck next time' for the Donkeys.

Some of us have lived through this before.  And some of us are so old that we can remember when a Blue Dog managed to win a special election in a deep red suburban Congressional district.  Does the name 'Nick Lampson' ring a bell?

-- "Most expensive race in House history cost $60 million — but there’s little evidence minds were changed".

For months, the district has been flooded with every kind of campaign advocacy imaginable: phone calls, mailers, television commercials, lawn signs and ads showing up on every online platform you can think of. Most households have been receiving multiple phone calls every day and multiple home visits from canvassers every week, and everyone has been exposed to more advertising than they can ever remember seeing. I counted 31 pieces of campaign related mail in just one week. Some residents are even getting campaign texts on their cell phones.

This is because of the astonishing amount of money spent on the race. A typical competitive House race sees a total of about US$5 million spent, and the previous record for the most expensive House race ever was $20 million. During the Georgia 6th special election, the two candidates together spent about $33 million, and outside groups added about another $27 million on top of that. That nearly $60 million total represents almost $100 for every man, woman and child who lives in the district. It is the most expensive U.S. House race in the country’s history.

What’s interesting is what all this money and activity did, and didn’t do.

-- Original: "Most expensive race in House history turns out nearly 58 percent of Georgia district’s voters".  (Interesting for those who don't click on links how the different headlines create an instant bias, isn't it?)

Democrats have some reason to be optimistic.

In the special election that took place in South Carolina’s 5th District on the same day as Georgia’s, Republican Ralph Norman received 51.1 percent of the vote in a district where Trump got 57.3 percent just five months earlier.

In April, Kansas Republican Ron Estes received 52.5 percent of the vote in a district where Trump got 60.4 percent.

In May, Montana Republican Greg Gianforte got 49.9 percent where Trump had won 56 percent.

And in a New York state legislative district where Trump won 60 percent of the vote, a republican candidate polled only 42 percent last month.

On the other hand, the Georgia 6th special election bucks that trend. The 10 Republicans collectively beat Trump’s district vote share of 48.3 percent by two points in the first round of voting, and Handel beat it by four points in the runoff.

Did all that caysh the DCCC and MoveOn and the rest of the Democratic establishment pour into southwest Atlanta motivate Republicans (in an R+21 district) as well as Democrats to vote?  Did they -- in what would be a stunning verdict against them and their strategy and tactics -- deliver a narrow victory for Karen Handel?  The SC outcome tells the tale (and so does No More Mister Nice Blog):

Here was Dave Wasserman of FiveThirtyEight not long before the race was called, on the site's live blog of today's two House special elections:

It’s ... legitimately possible that South Carolina’s result could wind up closer than Georgia’s, which would be astounding.

Here was Wasserman about an half hour before that:

If [Democrat Archie] Parnell loses South Carolina by 4 or 5 points, lots of Democratic activists will point fingers at the party’s hierarchy for not getting more involved.... But it’s possible that Parnell is doing well tonight because he wasn’t hyped, not despite it.

Parnell has also been declared a loser of his race -- but he lost by only 3.2 points in a deep-red district. Right now, Ossoff is trailing Republican Karen Handel by 5.2 points in a district that's also solidly red, but where Hillary Clinton made it a squeaker last November.

To be clear, NMMNB blames the media.  Specifically the conservative media, which is certainly at the root of the problem for Democrats, but sadly not something they can overcome in the next 18 months with a certain generation of voters inculcated on Rush Limbaugh.

If Democrats actually did better in the race that didn't get national attention, I worry that it means Democrats struggle to overcome the relentless, 24/7/365 demonization of their party in the right-wing media, which is basically the mainstream media in much of white America. The South Carolina race was ignored by the rest of the country, which means that allegedly nasty nationwide Democrats were never a factor.

-- Josh Marshall has thoughts.  They're more cautiously optimistic for Team Blue's chances of taking back the House in 2018, but echo much of what's been said above.

-- Playing a different blame game, Matthew Sheffield at Salon points toward the GOP's late tactic in GA-6 in suggesting Ossoff's loss might in part be on Nancy Pelosi.

Thankfully, nobody that I can find has publicly accused the Russians for hacking the election.  Update: But others besides Brad Friedman and Greg Palast have picked up the hacked voting machines angle.

-- David Atkins at Washington Monthly thinks Dems should abandon the Romney Caucus and go back after the Obama voters who voted for Trump.  With aggressively populist and progressive politics and candidates.

In July of 2016, Senator Chuck Schumer made a statement that will go down as one of the greatest political miscalculations in modern history: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

This strategy undergirded every decision of the doomed Clinton campaign, from ignoring the white working class in her Rust Belt firewall, to chasing suburban Republican women in Missouri and the South. It is a strategy that establishment Democratic operatives continue to pursue to this day.

That same strategy may well have cost Democrats a House seat in last night’s special elections, where Democrat Jon Ossoff underperformed expectations in a loss in Georgia’s 6th district, while the more ideologically aggressive Democrat Archie Parnell dramatically overperformed expectations in a loss in South Carolina’s 5th.

The two districts in play last night that could not have better mirrored the dilemma facing Democrats over whether to pursue Trump-averse Republican suburban voters, or working class whites and Obama-Trump switchers. Georgia’s 6th District is full of the former: a traditionally heavy Republican district, it veered away from Donald Trump because its residents are less attuned to Trump’s economic populism and—it was believed—his appeals to bigotry. These are the very voters Clinton and Schumer salivated over, and the national Democratic Party pushed very hard for the seat, spending upwards of $5 million.

South Carolina’s 5th district is much more rural and hardscrabble, and was much more favorable to Trump. Establishment Democrats mostly ignored the race, spending no money there.

In GA-06, Jon Ossoff ran a deliberately anti-ideological campaign. Centrist think tank Third Way bragged that Ossoff used a “centrist message aimed at attracting disillusioned Republican voters.” South Carolina’s Parnell, despite his Goldman Sachs background, ran a much more hard-charging campaign of Democratic values.

[...]

The lesson of the special elections around the country is clear: Democratic House candidates can dramatically outperform Clinton in deep red rural areas by running ideological, populist campaigns rooted in progressive areas. Poorer working class voters who pulled the lever for Trump can be swayed back to the left in surprisingly large numbers—perhaps not enough to win in places like Kansas, Montana and South Carolina, but certainly in other more welcoming climes. Nor is there a need to subvert Democratic principles of social justice in order to accomplish this: none of the Democrats who overperformed Clinton’s numbers in these districts curried favor with bigots in order to accomplish it.

Don't look for most Congressional Democratic candidates running in 2018 to get it.  It would be great if some Green candidates would take this ball and run with it, but in Texas they have to get back on the ballot first.

#GA6th special election today (and some digressions thereof)

It's been the Democrat's to lose, and it looks like he's going to lose it.

-- The polling starts to tip away:

This is the first legit poll that has Handel ahead in over a month. Has her up 2. https://t.co/9Hr3QwzLGX

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) June 19, 2017

-- The candidate's mistakes get amplified.

The night before the election, Jon Ossoff has banned a publication critical of his candidacy — the Free Beacon — from an event. That’s not OK! It’s not OK when Republicans do it, and it’s not OK when Democrats do it. Which is why it’s not OK that Karen Handel banned ThinkProgress from an event, either. Both of these candidates need 1) a refresher on The First Amendment, 2) thicker skin, and 3) to go to their rooms and sit in their shame. We expect this sort of thing from the GOP, but not from the Dems. Not cool, bro.

Tonight @thinkprogress has been banned from Handel's event and @FreeBeacon from Ossoff's. Bipartisanship!

— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) June 20, 2017

This was long after Ossoff outed himself as an opponent of single-payer, which makes him the kind of Democrat a lot of people who used to vote for Democrats can no longer vote for.

If he loses, it's all our fault, as we know if we just listen to the establishment.  That is, when it isn't Jill Stein's fault.  (This chronic obsession of the Donkeys compels me to make the previous link the subject of its own post in the very near future.)  But something fundamental is revealed here: Democrats seem to believe that it will be easier to convince Republicans to switch over than it would be to capture the votes they have lost, or the voters who don't.  Some of that premise is supported by this data.

-- The ridiculous amount of money being spent in this contest -- over $26 million, the most expensive Congressional election ever -- should demonstrate clearly that campaign finance reporting only means something to professional political whores consultants and those who crave access to them.  But it won't.  What it will demonstrate to those who are running for office in 2018: toe the neoliberal line and they'll make it rain for you.  Step outside the orthodoxy and they won't.  And Ossoff's strategy, ladies and gentlemen, is what passes for Democrat orthodoxy, especially in the purple-hued suburbs; you know, the places where Rahm Emanuel and Mike Collier say they have to win.

Bucking the left, Ossoff said in an interview that he would not support raising income taxes, even for the wealthy, and opposed “any move” toward a single-payer health care system. Attacked by Republicans for his ties to national liberals, Ossoff said he had not yet given “an ounce of thought” to whether he would vote for Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, in a future ballot for speaker.

Not going to be down with these kind of Democrats personally.

And I'm not of the opinion that unity for its own sake is going to work out well, particularly with people like Joy Reid at the megaphone.  It's long past time for Bernie Sanders to take the hint and split away from the Blues, but he understands that's what he'll go down in history as: a divider and not a uniter or even a revolutionary.  He's unlikely to live, in vigor and and in health, long enough to see the fruits of an electoral harvest a people's party may produce in the elections to come.

So he soldiers on within a system he does not care for, to the scorn of those who have no intention of modifying their behavior based on his urging.  Because that is the lesser of two evils done to his legacy.  Must be very unsatisfying.

I don't hold the respect I once did for Sanders because of his compromising on defense spending -- Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report pulls no punches, calling Sanders an 'imperialist pig' over his war lust -- guns, and even women's reproductive freedom as a means to an electoral end himself, but his lack of courage to do anything beyond simply criticize Trump and the Democrats, and not take the action the country needs at this time, has sort of sealed the deal for me.  Without me, that is.

-- It may all be moot for Ossoff the Blue Dog anyway, if Brad Friedman's latest tale of electronic machine voting woe is accurate.

In advance of Tuesday's (special election), Politico Magazine's Kim Zetter offers an absolutely chilling bombshell of a report headlined "Will the Georgia Special Election Get Hacked?"  She reports that gigabytes of unsecured data -- including passwords for e-voting system central tabulators, voter registration databases and much more -- were kept on a wholly unsecured web server, potentially for years, at Kennesaw State University's Center for Election Systems.

-- Are we still more concerned about the Russians hacking elections than we are about votes being suppressed via photo ID?  If so, why?

-- A bright spot: in the next Supreme Court term, perhaps we'll be able to get these asinine gerrymanders addressed.  This Slate piece by Mark Joseph Stern cogently reveals Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote the Democrats are hoping for, as well as the connection to the two First Amendment cases the SCOTUS decided yesterday.  It's an intriguing legal argument for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing.

But a favorable decision next year by the Supremes ordering redrawn maps probably won't be implemented until the 2019 Texas legislative session, too late for some of these Lone Star so-called libruls clogging themselves into the 2018 March primary in hopes of being the Chosen One, by both the voters and the DNC/DCCC/D$CC.

Enduring that mediocrity fortunately seems like a lifetime away.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance celebrates the 152nd anniversary of Juneteenth with this week's lefty blog post roundup.

Off the Kuff looks at the latest approval ratings in Texas for Donald Trump.

SocraticGadfly takes a much more extensive look at universal basic income, finding it one tool — one nice tool, yes — but only one in a full arsenal of what working Americans need.

Maybe he's just a little crazy from the heat and a slowly-forming tropical disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico, but PDiddie at Brains and Eggs arrived at the conclusion that voting might not be making enough of a difference in our country's future direction.

Grits for Breakfast applauds Samantha Bee's takedown of junk forensic science.

El Jefe at the Beauty Salon links to that Rolling Stone piece, and refers to the prevailing condition as the "disaster of the Democratic Party".

jobsanger passes along the statistic that there is no state in the Union in which a person earning minimum wage can afford a two-bedroom apartment.

State Reps. Ron Simmons and Pat Fallon held a town hall meeting in Lewisville and answered pre-submitted questions about abortion, sanctuary cities, and GOP legislative priorities, as detailed in the Texan-Journal.

Neil at All People Have Value asked for citizens to consider in advance their response if Trump fires special counsel Robert Mueller. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

================

More news items from around the Lone Star State!

The Tribune shared their most recent survey results of Texans who were asked about immigration laws and bathroom bills.  Deep partisan splits were revealed.

Even as Quorum Report saw the Texas Parent PAC holding open rehearsals for a challenger to Dan Patrick, the Austin Statesman was on the scene as Mike Collier became just the second Democrat to announce for a statewide office in 2018.

The San Antonio Express News opines about the demise of one-punch straight-ticket voting in requiring the electorate to exercise preparation and forethought ahead of casting their ballot.

RG Ratcliffe at Burkablog strapped on his helmet to report from the front lines of the battle Greg Abbott is waging on your local government.

The Beaumont Enterprise, via the Associated Press, took note of the Texas companies who have jobs they cannot fill because of immigration fears.

The Somervell County Salon passes along news on her former state representative and now state agriculture commissioner Sid Miller's latest foible: fined by the Ethics Commission for violating campaign finance laws.

Sen. Kirk Watson invites Greg Abbott to take a deep whiff of Austin.

Paradise in Hell finds the transcript to that Trump cabinet meeting.

Kyle Shelton and Yujie Hu at the Urban Edge identify what makes some intersections dangerous.

Lone Star Ma suggests an old school tactic for pressuring lawmakers on Trumpcare.

And Houstonia scooped the traditional media with news of the birth of Beyonce's twins.

Sunday Funnies

Voting presents few options, mostly bad, and little confidence in the system

-- Read this post from David Collins regarding the Texas Green Party's internal strife at their annual meeting over the weekend in Corpus, then read titular matriarch kat gruene's spleen-venting about the same on her Facebook wall.

The dysfunction bled out into the open months ago (scroll down), when I tried to save the local chapter's lone minority executive member from a coup orchestrated by the Old Guard (and failed).  One of the county steering committee members who defeated me in the elections held that night has already stepped down.  Sadly, these folks can't organize their way out of a paper bag at a time when the Democratic Party is all but crashing and burning right alongside them.

Don't believe that?  Think 2018 is going to be a blue wave?  Read what Tom Wakely -- the Berniecrat who gave Lamar Smith the closest run for his money ever last November -- had to say, as published at Down With Tyranny, following the People's Summit in Chicago also last weekend.  Bold emphasis is mine.

The Summit, as far as I could ascertain, was heavily weighted to reforming the Democratic Party on the East Coast and West Coast. Very little was said about the rest of the country and what we should do in deep red states, like Texas, where I live. When I got a chance to button-hole Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal after she spoke at one of the working group sessions, "Transforming the Democratic Party," I asked her this question. What kind of strategy (should) those of us in deep red states use? Her response, "I don’t know, you have a better idea than I do as to what needs to be done."

I also spent a considerable amount of my time just mingling with people, introducing myself and listening to why they were at the Summit. I must have met and talked to a least 200 people over the course of the 2½-day event and this is what I came away with. Keeping in mind that I spoke to less than 5% of the attendees, maybe even less, without exception none of them was up to the task of transforming the Democratic Party. Every one of them wanted to form a 3rd party. Whether it was joining the Green Party or the People’s Party or forming a new party, it didn’t really seem to matter to any of them. What mattered to them was electing progressives to public office and they just didn’t see the Democratic Party willing to do that.

That general feeling, (that) spending the time and energy to transform the Democratic Party was a waste of time, seemed to be confirmed by my conversations with the individuals I met who had actually run for political office like me. All of us were inspired to run by Bernie Sanders last year and all of us had the same story to tell. The Democratic Party didn’t left a finger to support us. Those of us in red states all agreed, at least in the short-term, we needed to run progressive independents, like Bernie Sanders, instead of looking to the Democratic Party for institutional support.

Following up ...

Tom sent me a note yesterday telling me he had withdrawn as a candidate for 2018 for the seat occupied by Lamar Smith. It's a crowded race with lots of candidates, many of them pretty bad. We like Derrick Crowe. Tom has endorsed Rixi Melton. In 2016, Tom (did) something no one else has been able to do in over 30 years -- he managed to drop Lamar Smith's percentage vote total to 56.9%, the lowest of his career. In addition, Wakely’s campaign garnered more votes in 2016 than any Democrat in the State of Texas running against an incumbent congressional Republican.

There is no home for progressives in Texas -- or in the states that aren't in New England or on the west coast -- to go.  And the Democrats are counting on you to come slinking back, tails between your legs, and vote for the shitty neoliberals they nominate.  The next one up who fits this description is Jon Ossoff, who as it turns out is opposed to single-payer.  But because his opponent is Karen "I do not support a livable wage" Handel, the lesser of two piles of crap is all the voters of Georgia's 6th Congressional District get to pick between.  Phillips or Standard?  Your choice.

At this moment, there is no place for independent progressives in Texas to turn.

-- We can't let the week end without mentioning Russia and the election.  Naturally.

In North Texas:

Russian hackers took aim at Dallas County's Web servers, possibly trying to access voter registration rolls, before the November presidential election, officials said Wednesday.

"They didn't infiltrate our system," said Toni Pippins-Poole, the county's elections administrator. "They couldn't get in."

If the hackers had been able to manipulate or delete the county's registered voter database -- which contains names, dates of birth and addresses for 1.3 million voters -- that could have caused chaos on Election Day, said Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price.

It's unclear whether Russians targeted other Texas counties. Collin and Tarrant county officials said they found no such attempts.

This fits with everything I have read and understand, with a handful of exceptions.

Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.

In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.

Have you taken your Valium?  Given it time to kick in?  You'll be okay even if it hasn't.

One of the mysteries about the 2016 presidential election is why Russian intelligence, after gaining access to state and local systems, didn’t try to disrupt the vote. One possibility is that the American warning (coming directly from Obama) was effective. Another former senior U.S. official, who asked for anonymity to discuss the classified U.S. probe into pre-election hacking, said a more likely explanation is that several months of hacking failed to give the attackers the access they needed to master America’s disparate voting systems spread across more than 7,000 local jurisdictions.

[...]

In early July 2016, a contractor who works two or three days a week at the (illinois) state board of elections detected unauthorized data leaving the network, according to Ken Menzel, general counsel for the Illinois board of elections. The hackers had gained access to the state’s voter database, which contained information such as names, dates of birth, genders, driver’s licenses and partial Social Security numbers on 15 million people, half of whom were active voters. As many as 90,000 records were ultimately compromised.

But even if the entire database had been deleted, it might not have affected the election, according to Menzel. Counties upload records to the state, not the other way around, and no data moves from the database back to the counties, which run the elections. The hackers had no way of knowing that when they attacked the state database, Menzel said.

[...]

Thirty-seven states reported finding traces of the hackers in various systems, according to one of the people familiar with the probe. In two others -- Florida and California -- those traces were found in systems run by a private contractor managing critical election systems.

(An NSA document reportedly leaked by Reality Winner, the 25-year-old government contract worker arrested last week, identifies the Florida contractor as VR Systems, which makes an electronic voter identification system used by poll workers.)

In Illinois, investigators also found evidence that the hackers tried but failed to alter or delete some information in the database, an attempt that wasn’t previously reported. That suggested more than a mere spying mission and potentially a test run for a disruptive attack, according to the people familiar with the continuing U.S. counterintelligence inquiry.

So ... it's not the last election you need to concern yourself with; it's the next one.  Do you think President Mango Chaos is going to do anything to establish confidence in our election integrity in 2018, or 2020?

There's lots more at Bloomberg if this sort of thing obsesses you.  Brad Friedman points to a Politico piece that suggests some chicanery is looming in the Georgia 6th special election due to that state's pathetically weak voting infrastructure.

I have just about reached the point where I have decided that voting simply isn't worth the effort, which would put me in with a majority of Americans.

The Weekly Wrangle

With this week's lefty blog post roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance is hoping to squeeze in a vacation before the start of the special legislative session.

Off the Kuff looks at Republican fear of a redistricting ruling and considers the best case scenarios.

Yuge news broke every day last week but PDiddie at Brains and Eggs only had time to blog a few paragraphs about all of it.

Ted at jobsanger marks the anniversary of the Orlando Pulse nightclub tragedy, and observes that it was not just the largest mass shooting in the nation's long bloody history of those, nor only the worst terrorist attack since 9/11, but remains a failure to confront the source of our country's greatest ongoing carnage: a lack of courage to appropriately close the loopholes in gun purchase laws.

High Plains Blogger would remind us that the White House is no place for on-the-job training.

Texas Freedom Network says "Don't let the door hit ya on the way out" to longtime SBOE lunatic David Bradley.

Greg Abbott has mistaken the odor of high percentages of incarceration in the counties north of Travis for 'freedom', writes Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast.

The counter-protesters at the "March Against Sharia" at the Capitol over the weekend far outnumbered those who organized the demonstration against the monsters under their bed the alleged influence of Islamic law in America.  Gus Bova at the Texas Observer filed a report and posted pictures.

SocraticGadfly, channeling Greg Palast's smarter brother, Greg AtLast, talks about Trump v Comey, and how too much Putin Did It conspiracy thinking got Reality Winner arrested, as well as how the Comey testimony was kind of a nothingburger.

The Lewisville Texan Journal offers some tips for those moments when you might encounter wild critters in an urban environment.

The Rag Blog hosts "Demand the Impossible!" with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn next week in Austin.  Sponsors of the event include the Austin chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Neil at All People Have Value blogged that the city of Houston offers hurricane preparedness guides in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese and Arabic.  APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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More Texas news and blog posts from around the state!

Wedding bells and jail cells marked the end of the regular session for some Texas legislators, notes Anna Tinsley at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Politex blog.

This past weekend's Green Party state convention in Corpus Christi marks a turning point for the party's legitimacy in Texas politics, and David Collins detailed how that is, came to be, and goes forward.

Catherine Hunter at Progrexas lists ten bonafide progressive Democrats who're running for office across the Lone Star State in 2018.

The Houston Communist Party posted video from the Nina Turner Show, starring Bernie Sanders (the People's Summit, also this past weekend).

Sanford Levinson at Rivard Report argues that nobody really knows what "sincerely held religious beliefs" are.

Lize Burr at Burnt Orange Report tries to make sense of the special session agenda.

Jay Leeson at Burkablog wonders why so many state senators want to serve Dan Patrick's interests instead of their constituents'.

Andrew Edmonson, in an essay for the Houston Chronicle, thinks Pride parades should return to their protest-march roots.

Paradise in Hell has a modest proposal for Greg Abbott.

Durrel Douglas at Houston Justice provides a way to help the family of Johnny Hernandez, the man who died from a chokehold by a Harris County deputy's husband after an altercation outside a Denny's.

To spotlight the Republic of Texas motorcycle rally this past weekend, All Ablog Austin posted the ten best rides through Central Texas.

And Harry Hamid considers the axolotl.

Lordy Funnies

Scattershooting a week's worth of broken news

About six or so draft status posts need to be condensed to a sentence or two each.  Okay, a paragraph or two.

-- Sylvester Turner is simply weak, folks.  After a dozen Texas cities quickly declared they would legally enjoin the state of Texas from enforcing the sanctuary cities ban, the rest of us have been waiting for Mayor Sly to bust his move.  It's a question Stace at Dos has asked three times now -- in his best passive-aggressive voice -- and finally, after the newspaper of local record along with dozens of immigrants rights activists called him out for his recalcitrance, Turner finally said he'd put it on council's agenda in a couple of weeks.  And the mayor's lickspittles on social media all declared victory in one voice.

One CM was heard to say that Turner was still afraid of alienating Republicans in the Lege, even after securing the much-ballyhooed pension reform legislation, which has already been signed by Helen Wheels Abbott, and for which Turner held an instant self-congratulatory press conference.  So what future is he so scared of?  Yes, the fireman are going to fight back a little harder, but if the mayor were really sly he'd just kick that can down the road like all the mayors before him have done. 

If you have nine Democrats out of fifteen CMs, you shouldn't need extra time to whip votes.  But as I have said time and time again, Houston's Democrats are really moderate Republicans in disguise.  Turner's long history in the Lege taught him when to kneel to conservative complaints and when to ignore liberal ones.  And until someone pays Marc Campos to share his secret to turning out the Latinx vote, none of that is going to change.  So hey, maybe this weakness isn't all on the mayor.

And maybe he's just sitting tight, waiting for the courts to take care of it.  That's still not leadership.

-- Dan Patrick forced a special session by getting the Freedom Caucus to kill the sunset bill.

As a key deadline to pass bills out of the Texas House approached last month, a small group of ultra-conservative legislators ensured the demise of a measure that would have prevented the shuttering of several state agencies. In a text message to a lobbyist, Rep. Kyle Biedermann, a member of the self-styled House Freedom Caucus, said Patrick called the group and asked them to stall long enough to keep the bill from passing.

He made Greg Abbott his bitch, and he goat-fucked every single Texas House Republican moderate in the 2018 GOP primary.  Texas Democrats won't be able to to do anything but cry over it; it's all on the Straus Caucus to stop them.  In the special and in next year's elections.

This is among the many reasons why I'm retiring to New Mexico in a few years.

-- James Comey has again gone from being the guy who threw the election to Trump to the guy who's going to get Trump thrown out of the White House.  To hear Democrats tell it.

Some heard bombshells; sounded like eggshells to me.  The actual reveal was Comey having his buddy leak the memo that kneecapped Trump a couple of days before his testimony.  Edward Snowden said it best.

It seems the @FBI Director agrees: sometimes the only moral decision is to break the rules. https://t.co/j1V6xROs9y

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) June 8, 2017

-- It was tantalizing...

Russian intelligence agents hacked a US voting systems manufacturer in the weeks leading up to last year’s presidential election, according to the Intercept, citing what it said was a highly classified National Security Agency (NSA) report.

The revelation coincided with the arrest of Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor from Augusta, Georgia, who was charged with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.

The hacking of senior Democrats’ email accounts during the campaign has been well chronicled, but vote-counting was thought to have been unaffected, despite concerted Russian efforts to penetrate it.

Russian military intelligence carried out a cyber-attack on at least one US voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than a hundred local election officials days before the poll, the Intercept reported ...

The NSA report makes clear that, despite recent denials by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the NSA is convinced that the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) was responsible for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

But ...

The intelligence assessment acknowledges that there is still a great deal of uncertainty over how successful the Russian operatives were and does not reach a conclusion about whether it affected the outcome of the election, in which Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton hinged on three closely contested states.

But ...

But the suggestion that Russian hackers may gained at least a foothold in electronic voting systems is likely to add even more pressure to special counsel and congressional investigations. The Obama administration maintained that it took preventive measures to successfully guard against breaches of the systems in all 50 states.

Someone in position to know says it's worse than is being reported.

"I don't believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes," Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview. "But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far." He said he was pushing intelligence agencies to declassify the names of those states hit to help put electoral systems on notice before the midterm voting in 2018.

I'm again hearing eggshells.

A leaked analysis containing none of the raw data being analyzed in that analysis does not come even remotely close to being the sort of hard evidence that those of us who are skeptical of your conspiracy theory would require. For the many, many reasons listed in the debunkery compendium, nothing but hard evidence will suffice.

The fact is, we’ve already seen analysis reports from intelligence agencies on the alleged Russian election meddling, like this one by the DHS and the FBI in December, and this one by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in January, and like the Intercept’s NSA leak those didn’t contain any raw intelligence either.

[...]

Additionally, the NSA was literally just shown to have been dead wrong about Russia meddling in the French election.  [...] For weeks establishment outlets were reporting as unquestionable fact that Russia was known to have hacked French electoral infrastructure, citing NSA chief Michael Rogers’ confident proclamation that NSA surveillance had “watched” this happen. 

In an even stranger development, Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald are suddenly no longer BFF because of the burning by The Intercept of whistleblower Reality Winner.

-- UK PM Theresa May miscalculated like a Texas GOP boss (well, hopefully), and now she has to go harder right with her coalition.  There was also a remarkably hostile rift opened among Middle Eastern nations, a couple more terrorist attacks, and some other things that slid down the memory hole faster than shit through a goose.  It's not all about Trump, after all.

You all caught up now?

Just one week ago, it was back channels, broken climate accords, and covfefe.  Those were the days.

I din't even have time to opine about Kathy Griffin (Go, girl) or Bill Maher (STFU).

Too much and too fast for me to document on a timely basis.  Taking another break after the Funnies and the Wrangle; any updates after Monday morning will appear in the Twitter feed.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is still debating whether it's pronounced "cov-fee-fee" or "cov-fay-fay" as it brings you this week's roundup.

Sometime the cartoonists really nail it. The toon above appeared a couple of days 
before CNN had champion Ananya Vinay on and stumped her with Trump's gibberish.

Off the Kuff notes the final passage of Voter ID 2.0, which does not and cannot address the issue of the original bill's discriminatory intent, but will make the Texas GOP feel a little better about itself.

In some good news that came out of the legislative session recently concluded, Texas Vox proclaims the extension of TERP (Texas Emissions Reduction Plan) to 2019 as cause for celebration.

There's a case to be made for Russian involvement in the 2016 election; it's just not a convincing one, according to PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

SocraticGadfly sees Hillary Clinton's latest blame-passer about the election and wonders, among other things, if some of the latest complaints about sexism couldn't apply to her own comments.

The Lewisville Texan Journal profiles the large number of Democrats ready to challenge Republican Congress Critter Michael Burgess.

Dos Centavos had a couple of posts wondering why Houston still hasn't signed on to the lawsuit challenging the anti-sanctuary cities law, as several other Texas cities have.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme shows how Bush presided over the death of the GOP.

jobsanger cites a Media Matters poll showing the corporate media has failed the public on its reporting of climate change.

Neil at All People Have Value does not understand why citizens of Houston litter at Stuebner-Airline Park. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

============

As the Lege concluded its regular session -- and everyone waits with bated breath to see if Greg Abbott will call a special -- here's what made news as state legislators took a break.

A case in Wisconsin could send a powerful message about Dan Patrick's unhealthy obsession with who uses which bathroom, posts RG Ratcliffe at Burkablog.

The Dallas Observer names their best and worst legislators from this past session, and Better Texas Blog complains that the Lege is out of sync with Texas values and needs.

The TSTA Blog lets Matt Rinaldi have it.  And Rep. Cesar Blanco is not going to be silent in the face of bigotry.

Grits for Breakfast asserts that Texas gets more credit than it deserves for reducing the state's prison population rates.

================

In news beyond Sine Die ...

After 17 years, the racial discrimination lawsuit between EPA and TCEQ over the pollution emitted by Beaumont's Exxon Mobil refinery that has seen a deleterious effect on the adjacent Charlton-Pollard neighborhood has finally been settled.  To a farthing, as reported by Naveena Sadavisam at the Texas Observer.  (Ed. note: I blogged about one of the public hearings regarding the circumstances involving this lawsuit in 2005.)

Space City Weather gives a primer on when to avoid breathing in Houston.

As Alamo City residents begin voting in their municipal elections, Robert Rivard notices that a majority of San Antonio city council members have taken a stand against incumbent mayor Ivy Taylor with regard to suing the state of Texas over the 'anti-sanctuary cities' law.

Sen. John Cornyn assesses Trump's Twitter 'habit' and scores him a B+ in foreign policy, according to High Plains Blogger.

Trump loyalty played a part in the election over the weekend of a new Texas Republican Party state chairman, and First Reading gave us a peek at the politicking that saw James Dickey prevail over Rick Figueroa by a single vote.

Everybody really is moving to Houston, if you measure it by the reports from U-Haul, says CultureMap Houston.  And The Urban Edge writes that millennials are flocking to the Bayou City's suburbs.

Harry Targ at The Rag Blog writes about neoliberalism, resistance, and a left that yearns to grow.

And when in doubt, Harry Hamid quotes Eugene V. Debs.

Sunday Climate Covfefe Funnies

The case against the Russians

Don't wish to appear recalcitrant about the matter.  I've rounded up some links and excerpted a few bits that have appeared over the past couple of weeks in order to document where things stand today.  As we know, James Comey is to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly next Thursday, and more tantalizing pieces may leak out in the interim.

The lede, exhumed: no evidence is yet publicly available that convinces me that Putin or any of his "patriots" stole the election for Trump.  They stole data from the DNC.  Mounting evidence suggests what has long been suspected by everyone, including me: Russians meddled around the edges of the election, but whatever they managed had no effect on the presidential outcome.

Josh Marshall at TPM has IMO been the sanest and most calm resource, but that isn't saying very much, especially lately, as you'll see at the end here.  Before I get started, Mother Jones (mostly a bunch of Hillbots during the past election season and certainly afterward, FWIW) submits your lineup and its own timeline of events up to May 17.  You can smell their Clinton bias when you see they've published that dinner table photo as well as their prop job of Louise Mensch at the bottom of the second link in my previous sentence.

Okay, here we go.

May 23: Former CIA director John Brennan testifies that Russia may have recruited people in the US to influence the election.

Brennan said he was aware of intelligence and information that revealed contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign. He couldn't say, however, whether that the activities amounted to collusion.

More from Reuters:

... Brennan said on (May 23) he had noticed contacts between associates of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia during the 2016 election and grew concerned Moscow had sought to lure Americans down "a treasonous path."

Brennan, like so many spooks before him, has lied to Congress under oath previously.  His credibility with me is zilch on topics involving insinuation.  If you click on those two links for the full context of his remarks as reported by the media, you might come away with the impression that his most recent public testimony was guarded.  To put it mildly.

May 24: "Top Russian officials discussed how to influence Trump aides last summer".

American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the intelligence.

The conversations focused on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time, and Michael T. Flynn, a retired general who was advising Mr. Trump, the officials said. Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Mr. Trump’s opinions on Russia.

Some Russians boasted about how well they knew Mr. Flynn. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Mr. Manafort.

The intelligence was among the clues — which also included information about direct communications between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russian officials — that American officials received last year as they began investigating Russian attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates were assisting Moscow in the effort. Details of the conversations, some of which have not been previously reported, add to an increasing understanding of the alarm inside the American government last year about the Russian disruption campaign.

The information collected last summer was considered credible enough for intelligence agencies to pass to the F.B.I., which during that period opened a counterintelligence investigation that is continuing. It is unclear, however, whether Russian officials actually tried to directly influence Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn. Both have denied any collusion with the Russian government on the campaign to disrupt the election.

John O. Brennan, the former director of the C.I.A., testified Tuesday about a tense period last year when he came to believe that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was trying to steer the outcome of the election. He said he saw intelligence suggesting that Russia wanted to use Trump campaign officials, wittingly or not, to help in that effort. He spoke vaguely about contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials, without giving names, saying they “raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”

Also May 24: "Fake Russian intel on Lynch-Clinton collusion prompted Comey investigation into Hillary’s emails".

A dubious Russian intelligence document that purported to show coordination between Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Justice Department, and prompted former FBI Director James Comey to disclose the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s emails, was “bad intelligence” and “possibly even fake,” the Washington Post reports.

According to the FBI’s own assessment, the American contacts mentioned in the Russian document -- which described an email exchange between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and officials working on behalf of 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton -- deny having had any conversations “remotely” similar to those described in the memo. By August 2016, the Post reports, the FBI concluded the memo was unreliable.

Fake news about fake documents.  Now do you see why I think Comey went off the rails?

Despite the memo’s dubious origins, sources told the post it was “a very powerful factor” in Comey’s decision to reveal an investigation into Clinton’s email server -- and ultimately determine the bureau should not prosecute her.

“The point is that the bureau picked up hacked material that hadn’t been dumped by the bad guys [the Russians] involving Lynch,” a source told the Post. “And that would have pulled the rug out of any authoritative announcement.”

May 25: A Florida Republican political consultant reveals that he 'colluded' with Guccifer 2.0 -- one of the highest-profile Russian hackers of DNC servers -- to disseminate some of their purloined data.  Not emails but voter demographics, turnout strategies, and the like.  First, TPM (because most of us cannot access the WSJ):

A Republican political operative in Florida asked the alleged Russian hacker who broke into Democratic Party organizations’ servers at the height of the 2016 campaign to pass him stolen documents, according to a report Thursday by the Wall Street Journal.

In return, that operative received valuable Democratic voter-turnout analyses, which the newspaper found at least one GOP campaign consultant took advantage of the information. The hacker went on to flag that same data to Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of Donald Trump’s who briefly advised his presidential campaign, and who is currently under federal investigation for potential collusion with Russia.

The Wall Street Journal’s report presents the clearest allegations to date of collusion between people connected to Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Cybersecurity experts were sounding the alarm as early as last July that Guccifer 2.0, which had tapped into both the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic National Campaign Committee, was connected to the Russian military intelligence apparatus. However, in September, Florida GOP consultant Aaron Nevins wrote to Guccifer 2.0 to tell the hacker to “feel free to send any Florida-based information,” according to the Journal.

Guccifer 2.0 ended up passing Nevins 2.5 gigabytes of stolen documents, including information about Democrats’ get-out-the-vote strategy in Florida and other swing states, the Journal reported. Nevins then posted the documents on his blog, HelloFLA.com, under a pseudonym.

The stolen documents Nevins published on his blog and then passed along to Florida journalists included detailed analyses commissioned by the DCCC of specific Florida districts -- reports that revealed how many dependable Democratic voters, likely Democratic voters, and frequent-but-not-committed voters resided in each area.

Salon:

“I just threw an arrow in the dark,” Nevins, who set up a Dropbox account for Guccifer 2.0 to transfer data, told the Journal. “If your interests align,” the operative concluded, “never shut any doors in politics.”

Stone told the Journal that while he did receive a link to Nevins’s blog from Guccifer 2.0, he didn’t share the stolen data published on the blog with anyone.

In addition to receiving hacked information about Democratic races in Florida, Nevins also received internal details about congressional districts in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC with close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan, eventually used the material that was stolen by hackers in attack ads against several Democrats.

Anthony Bustamante, a Republican campaign consultant for Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., told the Journal that he used the stolen information to plan ad buys and better target a mailer effort: “I did adjust some voting targets based on some data I saw from the leaks.”

Did I mention 'tantalizing'?

Do you see anything that suggests Trump was assisted?  Look again at the states listed above: not exactly swingy.  And these were Congressional races anyway, so the leap of faith necessary to bridge this to Trump and the presidential election is a chasm too far.

May 26: Comey knew the Lynch email document was a fraud but used it anyway.

This isn’t necessarily quite as crazy as it sounds. Comey’s apparent reasoning was that if the document was later released in a Russian/Wikileaks document dump, the fact that it was fake wouldn’t necessarily matter. The Bureau wouldn’t necessarily be able to publicly prove it was a phony without disclosing sources and methods, or perhaps not at all. The point being, whether or not the document was real didn’t really matter. Its release would potentially discredit the integrity of the DOJ/FBI decision making either way.

Two points seem worth noting.

Go read them.  Josh Marshall concludes ...

The big takeaway here is that the Russian interference and subversion campaign appears to have gone much deeper and reached much higher than we’ve heretofore known. Whichever version of events you credit, Russian disinformation operations seem to have reached to the very top of the law enforcement and national security state and driven critical decisions at that level. Remember, the October 28th letter to Congress flowed directly from commitments Comey made because of that July press conference. The impact of this decision was quite simply vast.

I heard dramatic music playing, interspersed with a few "Law and Order" dunh-dunhs in the background as I read that post.  Did you?

Maybe it's as ominous as Marshall believes but it still smells like Red-scaring to me.

Also May 26: Trump's most trusted advisor and son-in-law enters the fray, and Josh Marshall seems more stunned.  But this might not have much, if anything at all, to do with election meddling.

... (I)n secret meetings in December, Jared Kushner proposed to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak setting up a “back channel” so the Trump team could communicate secretly and securely with Moscow. But this use of the phrase “back channel” does a serious disservice to back channels. A back channel is secret and unofficial communication through trust intermediaries that goes around the national security and diplomatic bureaucracy and provides some plausible deniability. Kushner proposed using the Russian government’s own secure communication facilities, presumably housed in Russian diplomatic facilities in Washington and New York, to communicate with Moscow behind the back of the US government, state, intelligence apparatus, military, etc.

Why exactly would you want to do that?

Here are key passages from the Post.

Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

[...]

Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.

This is truly extraordinary. As the Post notes, even Kislyak seems to have found it shocking, not least because under normal or even abnormal circumstances the Russians (or any other government) would never let the US government see or have any contact with these facilities and hardware.

Think Progress explains it with less melodramatic flair.

I took the Memorial Day weekend off from this shit, came back to more Kush.  Now we've got cocktail napkins with Venn diagrams mentioning "troll farms" and "bot armies".  Sad!

In doing my catchup reading, I found this from a fresh young face named Z. Byron Wolf at CNN.  He references Comey's handling of the fake Lynch email and ties a few other things to it; despite its tenuousness, it is the best argument for Russian meddling that may have influenced the election that I have read.  No excerpt does the argument justice, read it through.  Here's Wolf's very sustainable conclusion.

(I)f it is true that a fake Russian intelligence memo, led Comey to act the way he did -- and if the academic study and polling suggest that those actions kept her emails in the news -- and if those actions hurt her public standing, then how is it possible to still say that there's no way to say if Russian meddling had any impact on the outcome?

It's not possible to say that credibly.  But there's still no evidence -- make that no public evidence, and certainly not enough rumored, suggested, or insinuated -- to demonstrate sufficient causality to me that the election was tipped away from Her.  As the lawyers say, correlation is not causation.

Your mileage may vary, as always.