All I’m askin’…

The word is not collusion. It’s misprision and it’s just as bad.

Yes, oh best beloveds, it’s time to learn yet another SAT word we never thought we’d ever use in a a sentence. Collusion seems so nebulous. What does it mean? Is it even illegal? Fuck if I know.

But misprision definitely is illegal and it’s a remarkably low standard to meet. Let’s take a look at the Wikipedia entry, shall we?

Misprision (from Old French: mesprendre, modern French: se méprendre, “to misunderstand”) is a term of Englishlaw used to describe certain kinds of offence. Writers on criminal law usually divide misprision into two kinds: negative and positive.

It survives in the law of England and Wales and Northern Ireland only in the term misprision of treason.

Ok, from this paragraph we learn that it is a legal term that in the UK refers only to treason these days. That means there are still ordinary non-treasonous varieties of misprision that the law doesn’t use but the original meaning that is still maintained refers specifically to treason. It doesn’t say that misprision is treason. It’s more like knowing that treason or a traitorous act is going on. For example, Donald Trump didn’t have to be the traitor. He only had to know that Paul Manafort, Don Jr. or <one of the other indicted campaign officials or administration members of Mueller’s investigation> were.

Let’s take a deeper dive into misprision. There are two types of misprision:

Negative misprision is the concealment of treason or felony. By the common law of England it was the duty of every liege subject to inform the king’s justices and other officers of the law of all treasons and felonies of which the informant had knowledge, and to bring the offender to justice by arrest (see Sheriffs Act 1887, s. 8). The duty fell primarily on the grand jurors of each county borough or franchise (until the abolition of grand juries in 1933[1]), and is performed by indictment or presentment, but it also falls in theory on all other inhabitants.[2] Failure by the latter to discharge this public duty constitutes what is known as misprision of treason or felony.[3]

Misprision of treason, in the words of Blackstone, “[consists] in the bare knowledge and concealment of treason, without any degree of assent thereto: for any assent makes the party a principal traitor”.[4]

…

In the United States, misprision of treason (18 U.S.C. § 2382) is defined to be the crime committed by a person owing allegiance to the United States, and having knowledge of the commission of any treasonous crime against them, who conceals and does not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the president or to some judge of the United States, or to the governor, or to some judge or justice of a particular state. The punishment is imprisonment for not more than seven years and a fine of not more than one thousand dollars.

The United States Code also includes misprision of felony (18 U.S.C. § 4).[5]

So, negative misprision would be like knowing a hostile foreign power was trying to interfere with your government with the help of other Americans and not informing the FBI. Or something like that.

What about positive misprision?

Positive misprision is the doing of something which ought not to be done; or the commission of a serious offence falling short of treason or felony, in other words of a misdemeanour of a public character (e.g. maladministration of high officials, contempt of the sovereign or magistrates). To endeavour to dissuade a witness from giving evidence, to disclose an examination before the privy council, or to advise a prisoner to stand mute, used to be described as misprisions (Hawk. P. C. bk. I. c. 20).

Did you notice the inclusion of the word “misdemeanor”?
Now, I am not a lawyer but here’s what I think is going on here with respect to Russiagate and the fate of this president. The Constitution allows the citizens of the United States to remove their president in the case that he or she has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors”

High crimes are obvious. It would be like Trump opening the front door to the Russians to let them do what they wanted or helping its army hit targets with the intention of overthrowing the government. Or human right violations. Mass murder. Incarceration of political opponents as an act of suppression. Shutting down the media. A coup using the military. Something like that might be considered a high crime.

A misdemeanor would be like misprision. That would be knowing that the hostile foreign power is doing something against the country with the aid of American traitors but looking the other way instead of reporting it. It should be noted that English law makes a big deal of forfeiture of land or fortune as a punishment of this kind of misprision which suggests that the guilty party may have benefitted materially from the act of betrayal even if he didn’t directly participate in it.

Positive misprision is like witness tampering or interfering with an official investigation or prosecution.

So, misprision is a misdemeanor, a very serious one, and I don’t think there is any doubt whatsoever that Trump has and is currently engaging in it.

The Republicans know this and in a very real sense are also guilty of misprision because they continue to look away and allow it.

The recourse is impeachment. The acts meet the threshhold of the misdemeanor of misprision beyond a reasonable doubt. But impeachment is a political act and relies on the will of the people. The majority of us do not want Trump as our president. We were full of trepidation when he won his party’s nomination and horrified when he won the office. He couldn’t be worse for our standing in the world. In spite of the economy, it won’t be long before we start feeling the effects of his stupidity and most of us will find ourselves robbed when we are ready to retire. He needs to be impeached and removed.

I’m not interested in hearing from the Trump voters who think this old, fat, soft, stupid man is some kind of strong leader. He’s not. He’s just a petulant child and bully. But more importantly, winning the electoral college is not like a cloak of invisibility or some other super power for a president. He can and *should* be removed from office if he is found to have committed high crimes and misdemeanors. The fact that he is unfit for office is irrelevant here. Elections can be overturned when a bad, corrupt man of low character wins the White House, especially if his win subverts the will of the majority of voters and is accomplished with the help of a foreign power. There are few instances wherei it would be more appropriate to impeach a president.

Yes, we are trying to get him out of office. We have a right to abort his presidency if he has committed impeachable offenses and if the current Congress won’t do it, the next one most definitely will.

And now a recap from John Oliver on where we are with respect to the Mueller investigation. What I think Oliver leaves out is the reason Trump’s PR campaign appears to be effective is that the other candidate’s voters have been made invisible over the last two years by people like Oliver himself who never misses an opportunity to take a gratuitous swipe at Hillary and by extension all of the rest of us who voted for her. If Oliver is alarmed by Giuliani’s attacks, he might want to stop muting and insulting the majority of us who didn’t vote for Mr. Softy and outnumbered his supporters by over 3 million votes.

If you’re listening, John Oliver, fix your own damn attitude first.

Best Ballet Video Ever.

Blame Canada

💚 #TheResistance #Midterms2018 #StillWithHer https://t.co/DwmO82lGDL

— Dr. V (@ChaliceGarden) June 10, 2018

Angela Merkel's office has released this photo taken today at the G7, which tells you a lot about how things went. pic.twitter.com/IXX6K3ayys

— David Mack (@davidmackau) June 9, 2018

{{facepalm}}

Morning walk: illusion

Happy D-Day

And now a word from Aldo Raine on how deal with Nazis.

Memorable quotes:

Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I sure as hell didn’t come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross five thousand miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily and jump out of a fuckin’ air-o-plane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain’t got no humanity. They’re the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin’, mass murderin’ maniac and they need to be dee-stroyed.

So much for Nazis being “fine people”.

and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they’re tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with. Sound good?

The California primary is over, guys. Time to put on your best D-Day face and squash the GD Germans. We’re only going to disembowel them metaphorically. Then we’re definitely going to beat them soundly in November. Give them a Veterans Day to remember.

Sound good?

Dana Milbank still obsessing about The Clenis

Hello Sweet Things. Yesterday, was a day when a president of infamy made a historic declaration. You’re probably thinking that it was Trump declaring the Divine Right of Kings to absolve himself of sins against the state.

You would be wrong.

It was former President Clinton on his book tour asserting that 20 years ago, the American people sided with him against the excesses of the Whitewater investigation and the Monica Lewinsky affair.

And he would be right. Clinton got away with an act of deception because in *his* mind, a blow job was not “sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky”. If you read the Starr Report in the NYTimes, and all of the salacious, tantalizing details involving a cigar, you were probably appalled. Ok, maybe not YOU personally. I guess it helps to be brought up in a cult where elders feel they have the right to question you on what you did in bed with whom and for long, what orifice, did you enjoy it. (I mean, I’ve heard all about these interrogations). So, I was appalled that a private act, no matter how wrong personally, could be a reason to impeach someone. And let’s be clear, Ken Starr did not have to release his report to the general public.

Well, anyway, Dana Milbank says the Clenis, a contraction of “Clinton” and “penis” (h/t Atrios), is responsible for Trump. That’s right, Milbank points his well manicured finger at Clinton and blames him for Trump being a well known liar, bankrupt, misogynistic, corrupt, lying, liar (it may sound redundant but it’s not) who ever decided to do whatever the f*ck he wanted in office without limit. This is all because Clenis refuses to resign or apologize or self flagellate or something. 🙄

Unlike Trump, Clinton publicly apologized — when caught. But he responded angrily when asked why he didn’t apologize privately to Lewinsky — prompting the previously silent Patterson to jump in: “It’s 20 years ago — come on!” he said, suggesting Melvin might as well be asking about John F. Kennedy’s or Lyndon B. Johnson’s affairs.

Clinton eagerly pursued this non sequitur: “You think President Kennedy should have resigned?” he asked Melvin. “Do you believe President Johnson should have resigned?”

Why does Clinton, 20 years later, still struggle with admitting fault? Perhaps he feels his behavior with Lewinsky is being unfairly equated to that of Harvey Weinstein or Trump. But #MeToo isn’t just about assault. Clinton did just fine after his fling with the intern. She never escaped it.

Melvin said that, off-camera, Clinton acknowledged standards had rightly changed since 1998. Why can’t he say so publicly? If a Democrat behaved today as Clinton did then, it wouldn’t be dismissed as “bimbo eruptions.” He’d be drummed out of office, as former senator Al Franken was for his behavior.

But this is larger than #MeToo. Back then, when Clinton disgraced the office with personal misconduct and lies, we didn’t pause to think what might happen if an utterly unscrupulous man were to attain that position someday.

Now we know.

I’m disappointed in Milbank. This piece of fatuous scribbling hinges all of the constitutional crisis, trade wars, separated children and every other decline in the American quality of life on whether Clinton apologized to Monica. And let me make this clear as a #metoo participant, Monica was not a victim here. We have got to be more selective on how we define abuse. These two people were attracted to each other. Monica made the first move when she flashed her thong. She was happy to dish with Lucianne Goldberg about her presidential trophy and her blue dress. Whatever came after was due to the reaction of the partisan fanaticism that was instigated by Newt Gingrich and his Language as a Mechanism Of Control. Dana knows this. Deep down inside, before he became one with the church of Broderism and brunches with Sally Quinn, Dana had an authentic self.

Anyway, Monica has a reason to be upset. So does Clinton. Some things shouldn’t be blabbed to a well known right wing gossip monger. Her age was a factor. She should have waited until he left office and then written a tell all complete with Blue Dress. Is nothing sacred?? I’m not saying she brought it on herself. I’m saying that there were people all over the place in Washington who wanted something on Clinton and they didn’t care if they ruined Lewinsky’s like in the process. But to blame Clinton for the Starr report is a stretch.

But that’s besides the point.

To put the blame on Clinton for the Trump excesses ignores some extremely relevant precedents in presidential behavior in the last 30 years. BTW, Dana, Johnson gave up the WH over Vietnam. That was a pretty hefty price to pay. And he was replaced with Nixon. Who lied about Cambodia. Just sayin’.

The first is the whole Iran-Contra debacle. I would have though that would bring down the president. But Reagan claimed he didn’t remember, which may have been the truth but certainly doesn’t mean he wasn’t aware at the time the convoluted deal took place. And there were plenty of indictments and congressional testimonies. So many in fact that Mueller has wisely taken a page from that book and decided to keep it all under wraps so that the investigations are not compromised. The misdeeds went to the top but Reagan and Bush skated away freely.

The second was the outing of Valerie Plame by Scooter Libby who took the fall for Dick Cheney. Well, there was that and the 9/11 thing. And the Iraq War thing where there weren’t any WMD’s and we started a land war in Asia for no good reason. The Kurds are still paying for that. And the Syrians. Ok, ok, let’s move on. It’s too distressing this early in the morning.

And what did we get out of the Plame Affair?

Nothing.

Shrub and Cheney were touchethed not.

I don’t remember either president Reagan or Bush apologizing for any of those executive overreaches and misdeeds.

So, to recap:

Republicans have given us, Watergate, Iran-Contra Gate, Valerie Plame Gate, Imaginary WMD’s and 9/11. There was one resignation for obvious reasons. The rest got off with nothing.

Democrats have given us a mutually consensual blow job.

And that’s pretty much it.

Who is Dana trying to convince here? I mean seriously. Trump is going to burn down the Reichtag and Dana is upset about Clinton apologizing to Monica? Shouldn’t Lucianne Goldberg, Newt Gingrich and Kenneth Starr be apologizing to Monica for ruining her reputations, shaming her and robbing her of her agency in sexual matters in order to take down someone who was presidenting while Democrat?

What about when Trump conspired with the Russians to interfere with the election of 2016? How much you want to bet that there’s something really really ugly that Mueller has that is going to shatter how we think of how robust our elections and system of government are?

But if that happens, we know who we can blame.

That’s right, The Clenis.

🙄

June morning walk music

The rain is clearing out.

Sweet thing.

Yup

I strongly believe that we are heading towards some sort of crisis with Trump and this Russia investigation. Either he will be brought down by the system or he will bring the whole system down. This is not going to be pretty.

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) June 3, 2018

Trump voters need to ask themselves if they really want Trump to burn it all down because Mr. Stamina doesn’t have the balls fo go talk to Robert Mueller.

All he has to do is put on his big boy pants, walk into the FBI building and tell the truth. He said he’s innocent. Of everything. He’s very sensitive to how much this is costing the American taxpayer. So far it’s about 1/3rd the cost of a military parade but ok, whatever. It’s less than Ken Starr’s investigation.

But no, he’s not going to do it and put this whole “witch hunt”. (That has actually found witches- that have plead guilty) behind him. He’s going to whine and cry and send prematurely decomposing Rudy Giuliani to the networks to make his case.

Instead of voluntarily going to answer questions like Hillary Clinton did over her email server or the 11 hours of testimony she gave over Benghazi, Donald Trump is going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming to his FBI interview, he’s just going to pull down the whole edifice of the Justice Department so that NO one gets a fair shake. They’ll all be Trump loyalists and he’ll be the final judge on who gets mercy and who loses their pension.

Is it worth it? Is Donald Trump above the law? Or is he just a balless coward?

Gotta be one or the other and neither one is pretty.

And where the f^ck is Melania??