Just when you thought the Barr couldn’t get any lower

From Vox:

For anyone concerned that President Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr are politicizing the criminal justice system, Friday afternoon has been a real roller coaster.

First, news broke that Justice Department prosecutors had closed one politically controversial case, a lengthy criminal investigation into former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, without bringing any charges. McCabe had been under scrutiny for potentially lying to internal investigators about his role in leaks concerning an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation — though many wondered whether the investigation was truly about pursuing someone President Trump had deemed an enemy.

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Biden Their Time

From Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post:

It’s long past time that media outlets stop hyping the story line that former vice president Joe Biden did something untoward regarding Ukraine. Last week New York Times reporter Ken Vogel called Ukraine a “significant liability” for Biden and teased that “there is a story here.” Vogel added: “We’ve told some of it. There is more to be told. We are going to continue to sort of pull that back.”

In fact, there never was any “liability” whatsoever and the “more to be told” has turned out to be “nothing to be told.” When it came time to put the facts in print, Vogel reported: “As The New York Times reported this spring, no evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor’s dismissal. In fact, some of the vice president’s former associates said he never did anything to deter other efforts to go after the oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky.” Vogel omits mention that the spring report came under a misleading headline and that the admission there was no “there there” only came after paragraph upon paragraph suggesting Biden had some kind of problem.

At any rate, the jig is up, and it’s time for reporters without any proof to cease attempting to convert this into a Biden scandal.

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Pact-Man

From New York Magazine:

Morongate (or, if you prefer, the Moron-Contra scandal) has left President Trump’s relationship with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson understandably tense. Axios reports that not only is Trump’s confidence in Tillerson “broken beyond repair,” the president is floating a succession plan to move CIA director Mike Pompeo into Tillerson’s job. There is, however, one catch.

Earlier this week, John Hudson reported that the firing of Tillerson would trigger the exodus of two other Trump cabinet officials. Hudson’s source, he wrote, “expressed confidence in Tillerson’s status due to a so-called ‘suicide pact’ forged between Defense Secretary James Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Tillerson, whereby all three cabinet secretaries vow to leave in the event that the president makes moves against one of them.”

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Only Label They Need: Gonifs

From Money:

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had requested the use of a government jet for his European honeymoon with his wife Louise Linton earlier this year — a mode of travel that would have incurred $25,000 per hour of flight, according to estimates provided by the U.S. Air Force.

Mnuchin’s request, confirmed by the Treasury Department and first reported by ABC News on Wednesday , was later withdrawn but sparked an inquiry from the Department’s Inspector General.

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Stand by your man

So, I am sure that all you kids saw the abomination of a press conference today at Twitler Tower. There is plenty of consternation across the board for the asshole-in-chief, but I have noticed that there is a severe lack of condemnation for those who support him and those who were literally standing by him.

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Toady Foster

From VANITY FAIR:

On Monday, Trump convened his first full Cabinet meeting since taking office, gathering the heads of every major government agency for a press gaggle around the elliptical mahogany table that occupies a prominent place in the West Wing. Traditionally, the media is present only at the beginning of such meetings, during which the president makes a brief statement and a few photos are snapped before a review of the administration’s progress continues behind closed doors. Trump tried something a little different.

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They’re Munstrous!

From Salon:

During a rare public appearance in Houston Wednesday, Dick Cheney expressed his feelings about Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman whose budget blueprint — which calls for turning Medicare into a voucher program — has become a lightning rod for controversy.

“I worship the ground the Paul Ryan walks on,” said the former vice president, Politico noted via the Houston Chronicle.

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Lindseypoo Through the Looking-Glass

From the National Journal:

A top Senate Republican signaled on Sunday that GOP lawmakers are ready to engage in brinkmanship over the federal government’s debt ceiling, threatening to let the Treasury default on its obligations if Democrats don’t agree to drastic cuts in spending.

…snip…

[Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.], who often positions himself as a bridge builder between Republicans and Democrats, laid out demands on Sunday that were much closer to the tea party wing of the new Congress.

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