Pressed on why he won't say MBS was responsible for Khashoggi's murder even though his intelligence community has, Trump says "I cannot comment on intelligence" and goes on to commend Saudi Arabia for doing "a great job from the standpoint of women." pic.twitter.com/LvqECtdMm8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 29, 2019

Yes, he really does say that.

Donald Ayer, who was Deputy Attorney General under George H. W. Bush before William Barr, says it’s been Barr’s lifetime goal to make the powers of the president all but infinite.

[I]n securing his confirmation as attorney general, Barr successfully used his prior service as attorney general in the by-the-book, norm-following administration of George H. W. Bush to present himself as a mature adult dedicated to the rule of law who could be expected to hold the Trump administration to established legal rules. Having known Barr for four decades, including preceding him as deputy attorney general in the Bush administration, I knew him to be a fierce advocate of unchecked presidential power…

And not so much the rule of law, at least not when it’s the president breaking it.

For many decades, Barr has had a vision of the president as possessing nearly unchecked powers. That vision is reflected in many OLC opinions, and in arguments advanced and positions taken since the 1970s. But the most compelling source for present purposes is Barr’s memorandum submitted just a year ago. Notable near its beginning is his statement that he was “in the dark about many facts,” followed immediately and repeatedly by vehement assertions that “Mueller’s obstruction theory is fatally misconceived,” and if accepted “would have grave consequences far beyond the immediate confines of this case and … do lasting damage to the Presidency.”

Because it’s imperative for the presidency to be indistinguishable from a dictatorship.

As this introduction suggested, Barr’s memo rested not on facts, but on a much more sweeping claim that as a matter of law, the obstruction-of-justice statute, 18 U.S.C. Section 1512, cannot possibly apply to any conduct by the president that is arguably at issue. In a five-page section, Barr’s memo advanced arguments based on interpreting the words of the statute. Then in a much longer second section, he got to the meat of the matter. He claimed that, regardless of whether the statute is correctly understood to have been intended to apply to actions by the president to interfere with an investigation of himself—as the Mueller report concluded it was—it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president’s Article II powers to apply that law to the president.

The vehemence of Barr’s memo is breathtaking and the italics are all his: “Constitutionally, it is wrong to conceive of the President as simply the highest officer within the Executive branch hierarchy. He alone is the Executive branch. As such he is the sole repository of all Executive powers conferred by the Constitution.”

That’s stated as if it were a fact but it’s actually an interpretation – and one that Ayer considers wack.

Thus, “the Constitution vests all Federal law enforcement power, and hence prosecutorial discretion, in the President.” That authority is “necessarily all-encompassing,” and there can be “no limit on the President’s authority to act [even] on matters which concern him or his own conduct.” Because it would infringe upon the total and utterly unchecked discretion that Barr believes Article II confers on the president, “Congress could not make it a crime for the President to exercise supervisory authority over cases in which his own conduct might be at issue.” Indeed, according to Barr, “because the President alone constitutes the Executive branch, the President cannot ‘recuse’ himself.” Thus, in Barr’s view, the only check on gross misconduct by the president is impeachment, and the very idea of an independent or special counsel investigating the president is a constitutional anathema.

So, it’s impeachment or nothing, and if impeachment is impossible because a pack of sleazy party loyalists control the Senate, then too bad, you’re stuck with a criminal committing crimes as president and there’s not a single thing you or anyone can do about it, soz, sucks to be you.

It is not at all surprising that Bill Barr, with this vision of the law in mind, could reach his ultimate conclusion on obstruction in just a few days, or that in subsequent public appearances he has never offered to explain his conclusions by referencing what Trump actually did. The facts simply don’t matter under Barr’s understanding of the Constitution, in which “the President alone is the Executive branch … the sole repository of all Executive powers conferred by the Constitution,” and Congress may not restrict his exercise of discretion in using those powers. Why worry about facts if, as Trump has claimed repeatedly, the president has unlimited power to direct or terminate any investigation, including of himself?

…

Trump and his endless assertions of power offer countless opportunities to pick and choose those executive-power claims with the best chance to succeed in court. Thus, in the Trump administration, Barr may have found the ideal setting in which to pursue his life’s work of creating an all-powerful president and frustrating the Founders’ vision of a government of checks and balances. His strange pursuit of an investigation of the investigators—on the supposition that the FBI may have been improperly “spying” on the Trump campaign when they investigated Trump associates who were found to have met with various Russians—may be the opening public chapter in that endeavor.

We’re so screwed.

She was there why, again?

The abiding image from this year’s G20 summit will not be Donald Trump sharing another chuckle with Vladimir Putin. It is the clip of his daughter, Ivanka, inserting herself into an awkward circle of world leaders. The video, released by the French government, shows varying expressions of tortured politeness as Ms Trump intrudes on a discussion between France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Theresa May, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF. Ms Lagarde, in particular, was unable to conceal her irritation.

It’s not as if they’re gathered in Trump’s personal living room and Ivanka is an adorable toddler who has escaped from Nanny for a moment.

What they were discussing is secondary. Mr Macron made a point about social justice. Mrs May replied that people notice when the economy is brought into it. Ms Trump then interrupted with a non sequitur about how the defence industry is male-dominated. The real point is that America’s self-named “First Daughter” is rarely out of the frame at global summits.

Photobombing is her one skill.

And speaking of censorship – the San Francisco school board has decided to go ahead and destroy a mural in a high school because some people don’t understand it.

The fresco was painted in 1936 by Russian emigre Victor Arnautoff, a Communist artist who also painted some of the murals in Coit Tower and other locations in San Francisco.

I’ve seen the Coit Tower ones, and loved them. Think Diego Rivera type of thing.

The “Life of Washington” 1,600-square-foot mural at the high school, part of the federal Works Progress Administration’s art commissions, features scenes from the first president’s life, including images of slavery and white settlers stepping over a dead Native American.

Supporters of the mural say it’s a historic piece of art and painting over it is the equivalent of a book burning. The artist meant the work to be subversive, they say, showing an ugly side to Washington’s life. Critics say the images are offensive and violent, depicting African Americans and Native Americans only as victims. Students shouldn’t have to see that every day, they argue.

Well you could always blindfold them.

Freedom of the press? Don’t be silly.

A cartoonist says he has been dropped from a series of newspapers after his image depicting Donald Trump ignoring dead migrants to play golf went viral.

Michael de Adder, a freelance political cartoonist in Canada, says he was let go by all major newspapers in the southeastern Canadian province of New Brunswick after his cartoon was shared by thousands on Twitter and Facebook.

This is the cartoon in question. I think it’s brilliant. Harsh, obviously, but that’s the point, and isn’t harsh called for?

Cartoon for June 26, 2019 on #trump #BorderCrisis #BORDER #TrumpCamps #TrumpConcentrationCamps pic.twitter.com/Gui8DHsebl

— Michael de Adder (@deAdder) June 26, 2019

On Friday, Mr de Adder said on Twitter he had been let go from various employers.

“The highs and lows of cartooning. Today I was just let go from all newspapers in New Brunswick,” he tweeted.

He said major newspapers in New Brunswick, including the Telegraph Journal, The Daily Gleaner and The Times & Transcript all said they would no longer accept his work, but gave no reason for his dismissal.

Some criticised the Irving family, which owns the newspapers and is also involved in the forestry, shipbuilding and oil industries.

“It’s simple really,” Wes Tyrell, the president of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists, said in a statement.

“Trade has been an issue since Trump took office, trade that affects the Irvings directly, not to mention a host of other issues. And the president himself is an unknown quantity who punishes those who appear to oppose him.”

More like a known quantity, surely. He’s reliably monstrous.

What’s the difference between saying “Biden gropes little girls” and “Biden’s behavior is creepy”?

Is there any real difference?

If you search Google images for “Biden gropes little girls” you get no shortage of results. The behavior the pictures show is indeed creepy, but is it creepy in some way that has nothing to do with being sexual?

Not that I can see. They look creepy precisely in the sense of lecherous elderly dude copping a feel. Normal adult men do not stick their hands all over little girls that way.

See that tilt of her body? See that pained expression? See that wrap-around clutch on her arm? That’s not creepy as in he’s wearing a Halloween monster outfit. That’s creepy as in he’s being way too handsy and she’s trying to pull away from him. Yes we do get to call that groping.

Fox News host asks if it’s really all that cool for Trump to be sucking up to Kim given Kim’s record of atrocities, and Tucker Carlson (on the phone) gets all realpolitik on us.

Tucker Carlson justifies KJU's murderous regime: "You've got to be honest about what it means to lead a country, it means killing people. A lot of countries commit atrocities, including our allies."

Carlson adds, 'it's silly and stupid to point out KJU is 'so mean'' pic.twitter.com/FpAKFQUB3c

— Lis Power (@LisPower1) June 30, 2019

Updating to add: the piece is from 2015. I saw that but then did other things before posting, by which time…

Politico does a backgrounder on Biden and school busing to correct for generations of racial apartheid.

Though the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision had outlawed “separate but equal” schools, it wasn’t until the court’s lesser-known 1969 ruling in Alexander v. Holmes County that many Southern school districts actually implemented desegregation plans. In response to these legal mandates, judges started to order busing plans in some Southern cities.

For fifteen years – more than the sum of kindergarten through 12th grade – Brown v Board might as well have been a poem on The Rose for all the good it did in most places. A whole generation got nothing from it. Little Rock was the exception rather than the rule.

Meanwhile, Northern schools still remained thoroughly segregated. Housing segregation frequently produced segregated schools, and many urban school boards enacted transfer and redistricting policies to keep them that way.

One solution is to desegregate neighborhoods, but even if the will is there (which it wasn’t), that takes time. The other is to bus students into other neighborhoods.

The first busing case to reach the Supreme Court was Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. A district court had ordered busing in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the plan in April 1971, on the grounds that the Constitution required “the greatest possible degree of actual desegregation.” The court admitted that the remedies for segregation might be “awkward, inconvenient, and even bizarre in some situations and may impose burdens on some.” But the Constitution clearly required such impositions.

And so a grievance was born.

Busing was indeed “awkward” and “inconvenient” for students. Today, the anti-busing arguments guide our policies. In many cities, the “neighborhood school”—itself a product of redlining, housing segregation and discriminatory school transfer policies—remains sacrosanct. But we forget that through the 1960s and 1970s, local school boards and urban whites often resisted every other attempt at school and housing integration. With their resistance, they narrowed the options down to two: busing or segregation.

And white people kept choosing segregation.

Each year from 1966 to 1977, the U.S. House of Representatives passed at least one new law designed to restrain school integration—often in the guise of anti-busing legislation. Until 1974, the Senate rejected those bills. But as white resistance to busing escalated in many cities across the country, the House’s anti-busing majority began to pull more senators to their side.

Where was Biden at the time? His first term in the Senate?

Biden had begun to develop a convoluted position in which he supported busing as a remedy for “de jure segregation” (as in the Jim Crow South), while he opposed busing in cases of “de facto segregation” (as in Northern cities). Through his first two years in the Senate, he supported most—but not all—of the anti-busing legislation.

Then he faced an angry crowd of anti-busing constituents. He adjusted his position.

Biden launched an anti-busing screed. “I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept.” The Senate should declare busing a failure and focus instead on “whether or not we are really going to provide a better educational opportunity for blacks and minority groups in this country.” He praised Ed Brooke’s initiatives on housing, job opportunities and voting rights. In one breath, Biden seemed to reject busing in the North and the South, and claimed that he was committed to equal opportunity for African Americans.

…

Brooke asserted that the federal government should attempt other integration remedies before resorting to busing. “But if compliance with the law cannot be achieved without busing, then busing must be one of the available desegregation remedies.” Brooke introduced a motion to table Helms’ amendment. Brooke’s motion passed, 48-43. Biden wouldn’t budge, and voted with Jesse Helms and the anti-bussers.

Brooke had fought this fight before, but he would face a more formidable adversary in Joe Biden. When a Southern conservative like Helms led the anti-busing forces, Ed Brooke could still rally his troops. But it would be tougher to combat the anti-busing faction when its messenger was a young liberal from a border state.

And that young liberal stuck with his position.

You can say that was a long time ago and surely it’s not all that relevant now. But why say that? It’s not as if Biden is the only possible candidate, much less the best. He shafted Edward Brooke, he shafted Anita Hill, he stole a campaign speech from Neil Kinnock, he gropes little girls, he doesn’t treat his staff well, and he apparently still thinks we owe him the presidency. Why him? No reason, that I can see.

How progressive.

City kids can now change their gender status on school records without any legal documentation — and play for the sports teams of their preference, the Department of Education announced Friday.

With parental permission, students can alter their genders, change their names and join sports teams regardless of what appears on their birth certificate, officials said.

Isn’t that sweet. How many Joes and Bills and Daves will rush to join the girls’ teams in order to win everything, I wonder. How many girls will lose their chance to win anything ever, I wonder.

“Schools are safe havens for students to develop their passions and discover their true identities, and these new guidelines celebrate and affirm all students,” said Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza in a statement.

Actually they’re not. Schools have nothing to do with discovering “true identity” in the sense of something that contradicts one’s physical body. Schools are places to discover interests and aptitudes and how to get better at them, but they’re not about identity. Schools do need to protect students from bullying, and bullying is often around things that can be called identities, but beyond that it’s pretty much none of the schools’ business what “identity” students have, just as it’s not their business what daydreams students have.

“With this updated policy, which allows students to change their name and gender on school records without legal documentation, we are signaling our support for all students regardless of gender identity,” City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said in a statement celebrating the changes.

Kids and their families will also be able to self-report names and genders when enrolling in a DOE school.

The regulations will permanently modify how schools calculate their demographics. Instead of tabulating gender numbers through birth certificates, administrators will now rely on self-reported information.

So demographic information will no longer be accurate. Awesome.

“These new guidelines additionally specify that puberty education classes must be inclusive and affirming to all genders, gender identities, and sexual orientations, and use gender-inclusive language throughout,” the department said.

The DOE added that LGBTQ-related subject matters will become mandatory for all city kids so that “multiple forms of diversity, including gender and sexual orientation, are recognized, understood, and regarded as indispensable sources of knowledge for rigorous teaching and learning,” the DOE said.

“New York City is proud to be leading on policies that allow New Yorkers across the gender spectrum to be themselves in every single area of their lives, especially our schools,” First Lady Chirlane McCray said in a statement.

We have achieved Utopia at last.

More on the new birtherism:

Just as Barack Obama’s US citizenship and background became a full-fledged conspiracy theory — promoted at the time by Donald Trump — Harris has also been targeted with disinformation questioning her race and legitimacy as a US citizen. Obama birther conspiracy theorists and prominent neo-Nazis, including Andrew Anglin, have questioned her eligibility to run for president, and she’s been labeled an “anchor baby.”

Then isn’t Trump an “anchor baby”? His mother was an immigrant. Or does it not count because she immigrated from Scotland?

Last night’s tweets, some of which were amplified by bots and in one case by Trump Jr., gave a new level of exposure to earlier claims propagated by fringe websites and discredited figures such as Jacob Wohl and the virulent neo-Nazi Anglin.

As documented by social media researcher Caroline Orr, Harris’s presence in the debate led to an onslaught of tweets that claimed she isn’t black, was not born in the United States, and was raised in Canada. (Harris went to high school in Canada, but otherwise lived in the US.)

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1144461081189875712

Friday Trump mockingly told Putin not to interfere in the election, while Putin and Pompeo smirked. Haha, so funny.

Evil puke praises murderous Mohammed bin Salman to his face:

Donald Trump has praised Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, saying he was doing a “spectacular job” as the pair met on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

“You have done a spectacular job,” Trump told the powerful crown prince on Saturday, calling him “a friend of mine”.

Like Kim, and Putin, and Bolsonaro.

Trump also said he appreciated Saudi Arabia’s purchase of US military equipment, praising the crown prince for working to open up the country with economic reforms.

Trump praised the crown prince, who has moved to loosen some social restrictions in the kingdom but also cracked down on activists, including women pressing for the right to drive.

“It’s an honour to be with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia … a man who has really done things in the last five years in terms of opening up Saudi Arabia,” Trump said.

“It’s like a revolution in a very positive way.”

And who would know better than Donald Trump?

You can see his gruesome fawning for yourself if you have the appetite for it.

JUST IN: President Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman at G-20 in Japan, calls him "a friend of mine" and says that he's done "really a spectacular job" and that it's a "great honor" to meet with him. pic.twitter.com/cKvZ8qWFQc

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 29, 2019

No accountability for for-profit colleges please.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is rescinding an Obama-era rule that was created to protect students from abusive for-profit colleges.

The rule, known as Gainful Employment, required for-profit colleges and career certificate programs to post debt-to-earnings ratios, proving that their students could find good-paying [well paid] jobs upon graduating. If the average ratio did not meet government standards, the school’s federal funding would be revoked.

…

Consumer advocates slammed DeVos on Friday for rolling back the student safeguard.

“Again and again, Secretary DeVos proves she only cares about protecting for-profit colleges, no matter how many students they swindle,” said Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network.

DeVos has been widely criticized by Democrats for hiring department officials with ties to the for-profit industry.

The industry is mostly a massive swindle. For-profit colleges offer vocational training at enormous prices, and advertise heavily. Vocational training is available at community colleges for a fraction of the price.

Just one more item on The List of Squalor.

Oh fabulous, we get to have another round of birtherism.

Kamala Harris broke out from the other nine Democrats onstage during the second Democratic presidential primary debate on Thursday, calling on her personal experiences of racial injustice as a black woman.

“As the only black person on this stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race,” Harris said.

That’s when she was attacked on Twitter by a conservative provocateur for not being an “American black.” It’s a play straight out of the racist birther playbook used against Barack Obama when he ran for president a decade earlier. This time, though, those kinds of allegations don’t have to circulate for years on obscure right-wing forums before they reach a mainstream audience. On Thursday night, spammers and even one of President Trump’s sons spread the attack to millions of people within hours.

Harris, 54, was born in Oakland, California to a father from Jamaica and a mother from India. She spoke of her experience growing up black in the debate, recalling a story about neighbors who wouldn’t let their children play with Harris and her sister because of the color of their skin.

But it doesn’t count, see, because Jamaica and India are FOREIGN.

The attacks on Harris’s background started Thursday when Ali Alexander tweeted she is not an “American black.”

“She is half Indian and half Jamaican,” Alexander wrote. “I’m so sick of people robbing American Blacks (like myself) of our history. It’s disgusting. Now using it for debate time at #DemDebate2? These are my people not her people. Freaking disgusting.”

Here’s the thing, though. Racism doesn’t make that distinction. Racism doesn’t care; racism just racisms because that’s what it does. How very superficial, right? Well were we expecting racism to be profound?

Alexander’s claim was picked up by Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted it to his nearly 3.6 million followers.

“Is this true?” Trump Jr. wrote. “Wow.”

Of course he did. He’s dim like his father, and mean like his father, and down in the muck like his father.

At least one known network of bot accounts was found spreading Alexander’s original tweet, BuzzFeed reported.

Has anyone explained why it is that Twitter can permaban Meghan Murphy from Twitter but is helpless to deal with networks of bot accounts?

Shireen Mitchell, a technologist and founder of the group Stop Online Violence Against Women, said the accusation against Harris plays into a long-running debate that has been used to drive a white nationalist wedge through black communities.

“We are and have always been, for centuries in this country, having this little fight about who gets opportunities as black people and who doesn’t,” Mitchell said. “That includes colorism; that includes distinctions of where the ship actually landed; it includes if you are (and I am) a descendant of a slave who was born here versus a descendant of slavery from another country. Those distinctions, from my perspective, make no sense ever. But what it does is allow for white nationalist and nativist conversations to be planted in my community.”

I don’t think the kids in Harris’s neighborhood growing up interrogated her about where her parents were born.

Biden says it’s not about the past. Oh well ok then. Just wipe that whole thing out then, yeah?

But if it’s not about the past why would anyone even pay attention to Joe Biden? He’s running on his past, specifically on his gig as Obama’s comic relief.

Joe Biden just spoke at an event in Chicago, addressing his exchange at the debate with Kamala Harris about his past comments about segregationist senators.

“30 seconds to 60 seconds on a campaign debate exchange can’t do justice to a lifetime committed to civil rights,” Biden said.

Is that what Biden’s lifetime has been devoted to? That’s not what I hear.

At the debate Thursday night, in response to a question about race and policing, Harris interjected and said that she had a right to respond as the only black candidate on stage. She directed her comments to Biden, denouncing his record on race.

“I do not believe you are a racist,” Harris said, looking directly at the former vice-president. “But,” she continued, “it is personal. And it was actually hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.”

Speaking at a labor luncheon on Friday, Biden said: “Folks, the discussion in this race today shouldn’t be about the past. We should be talking about how we can do better, how we can move forward, how we can give every child in America an opportunity for success stories.”

Meaning, his past might not make him look good, so let’s ignore it.

Spot the irony.

https://twitter.com/RKDasgupta/status/1144355197717831685

A man lost the LGBT Officer post because – oh no – a straight man stood against him.

Much dismay.

https://twitter.com/Lewis_ALee/status/1144521775776063488

Can’t believe this. What on Earth is going on. Ridiculous and appalling. https://t.co/ZZlpMBS709

— Chris Elmore MP (@CPJElmore) June 28, 2019

And yet…who is the Labour Students national women’s officer again? Oh yes, “Lily” Madigan, who identifies as a woman but is not literally a woman. It’s terribly wrong for a straight man to be elected a local LGBT Officer but it’s fabulous for a boy to be elected national student women’s officer. It’s bad to shove gay men aside but it’s good to shove women aside.

Why is that, again?

Funny idea of “entertainment” some people have.

An app that claimed to be able to digitally remove the clothes from pictures of women to create fake nudes has been taken offline by its creators.

…

The team said the app was created as “entertainment” a few months ago.

Why just women then? Why not men too? Wouldn’t that be just as entertaining?

The program reportedly uses AI-based neural networks to remove clothing from images of women to produce realistic naked shots.

The networks have been trained to work out where clothes are in an image, mask them by matching skin tone, lighting and shadows and then fill in estimated physical features.

So, you know, it’s like the crude stuff we’re already familiar with, where people who like that sort of thing put their victims’ heads on goats or chimps or porn stars or mug shots. What’s the point? To mock and humiliate. That’s not what I call “entertainment.”

The fact that it was just women underlines the point. There are a lot of male people who love to humiliate women, and this is a new way to do it. It’s basically upskirting but without having to go to all that trouble. It’s nothing to do with “entertainment.”

Meanwhile the “sex binary” in India continues to flourish.

Two people have been arrested in India’s Bihar state after a group of men shaved the heads of two women as “punishment” for resisting rape.

The group, which included a local official, ambushed the mother and daughter in their home with the intent of raping them, police said.

When the women resisted, they assaulted them, shaved their heads and paraded them through the village.

Can’t win, can we. In France after the Occupation, women had their heads shaved and were paraded through the village for having sex with a German, in India they get it for saying no to unrequested sex. s there a rulebook for  all this?