In his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday morning, former CIA director John Brennan bluntly told lawmakers that during the 2016 election, he reviewed intelligence that showed “contacts and interactions” between Russian actors and people associated with the Trump campaign. By the summer of 2016, Brennan said, he was “convinced” that Russia was engaged in an “aggressive” and “multifaceted” effort to interfere in our election — and as a result, he believed “there was a sufficient basis of information and intelligence that required further investigation” by the FBI.
With this testimony, Brennan just made it a whole lot harder — politically, at least — for the GOP to continue in its efforts to protect Trump, even as scrutiny of his campaign intensifies on the part of the FBI, and now, special counsel Robert Mueller. Yet if Tuesday’s hearing is any guide, congressional Republicans are still intent on shielding Trump by undermining the investigation in the mind of the public.This is a party- before- country collection of nihilists; we need to turn as many of them out of office as possible. Here's a start on the state level:
On Tuesday night, Democrats flipped not one but two state legislative seats in special elections—and both came in deep red territory. In New Hampshire, Democrat Edie DesMarais defeated Republican Matthew Plache by a 52-48 margin in the state House’s 6th Carroll District, a seat Donald Trump won 51-44 last fall. Meanwhile, in the New York Assembly’s 9th District, Democrat Christine Pellegrino beat Republican Thomas Gargiulo 58-42, even though Trump romped to a 60-37 victory there in November.Democrats winning at the State and local level over the next 2 - 4 years is extremely important to re-building the party, especially with the 2020 census looming. We've got the special Congressional election in Montana (Rob Quist!) on Thursday and the one in Georgia (Jon Ossoff!) in June, which could be bellweathers for the 2018 mid- term elections.
Margaret Sullivan on the despicable Sean "Heil" Hannity, Newt Gingrich and Fox "News" in their politicizing the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich last summer:
To hear Fox’s Sean Hannity tell it, this was an inside job by the Democratic National Committee, where Rich worked: retribution by the Hillary Clinton camp for his sharing insider emails with WikiLeaks.
The theory has been thoroughly debunked by Oliver Darcy at CNN, among others, and Rich’s family has demanded that Fox retract and apologize. To the reported embarrassment of its own staff, it took Fox days to do the right thing. (Fox finally retracted the story Tuesday afternoon , and Tuesday night Hannity claimed that “out of respect for the family’s wishes, for now, I am not discussing the matter at this time.”)
But the damage has been done. On Sunday, former House speaker and Trump insider Newt Gingrich used Fox’s national platform to spread the lies, squandering what remains of his own credibility to make respectable people think it might be so. (Police think it may have been a robbery gone wrong.)
Decent people should shun both Hannity and Gingrich.There's word this morning that Hannity will stop his conspiracy mongering about Seth Rich, ostensibly in response to this direct, heart- wrenching appeal from Seth Rich's parents:
Imagine living in a nightmare that you can never wake up from. Imagine having to face every single day knowing that your son was murdered. Imagine you have no answers — that no one has been brought to justice and there are few clues leading to the killer or killers. Imagine that every single day, with every phone call you hope that it’s the police, calling to tell you that there has been a break in the case.
Imagine that instead, every call that comes in is a reporter asking what you think of a series of lies or conspiracies about the death. That nightmare is what our family goes through every day. [snip]
... Seth’s death has been turned into a political football. Every day we wake up to new headlines, new lies, new factual errors, new people approaching us to take advantage of us and Seth’s legacy. It just won’t stop. The amount of pain and anguish this has caused us is unbearable. With every conspiratorial flare-up, we are forced to relive Seth’s murder and a small piece of us dies as more of Seth’s memory is torn away from us. [snip]
There are people who are using our beloved Seth’s memory and legacy for their own political goals, and they are using your outrage to perpetuate our nightmare. We ask those purveying falsehoods to give us peace, and to give law enforcement the time and space to do the investigation they need to solve our son’s murder.Reptilians like Hannity and Gingrich are sociopaths who have political agendas that take precedence over facts and human decency. They're wired that way, so it's only a matter of time before they plump another destructive lie into a full- fledged nightmare for another family. Also, let's not forget the collusion of many in the "mainstream media," who delight in "reporting on the controversy," hoping to attract clicks and eyeballs without getting their hands dirty in the process. The sooner this fever dream fades, the better.
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