quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:


I'd agree except the rules state a minimum of one member of the minority party must be present for a vote. Think the Sargeant at Arms could drag one of these jackwads kicking and fighting to make a quorum?

Seriously?

Senators are the most important, powerful, egomaniacal, self-satisfied creatures on earth. They have no duties, no working hours, no attendance requirements, are free of liability, criminal or civil, for whatever they might say on the Senate floor. There are only 100 of them. No mere Sargent at Arms would dare lay a finger on these magnificent, powerful creatures.

Easy solution: Set up what looks like a TV interview and the dims will stampede to the room. Hold vote. Win.

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:


I'd agree except the rules state a minimum of one member of the minority party must be present for a vote. Think the Sargeant at Arms could drag one of these jackwads kicking and fighting to make a quorum?

Seriously?

Senators are the most important, powerful, egomaniacal, self-satisfied creatures on earth. They have no duties, no working hours, no attendance requirements, are free of liability, criminal or civil, for whatever they might say on the Senate floor. There are only 100 of them. No mere Sargent at Arms would dare lay a finger on these magnificent, powerful creatures.

Easy solution: Set up what looks like a TV interview and the dims will stampede to the room. Hold vote. Win.

Ahh, that would certainly work for Schumer, but I think the Senator in the room would have to be a member of that committee.

It has been said of Schumer for years that the most dangerous place in Washington DC is between him and a tv camera.

The Democrats abused the rules and Chairman Hatch suspended the abused rule in response. When your argument is "obstruction" (not an argument at all), the process will go forward without you.

This is looking more like its going to be a Congress of achievement.

It seems like the various Democrat protestors will run out of room on their signs for grievances.

Yet another reason to break out your happy dance...



Trump's Gorsuch pick assures integrity of America's elections process

President Donald Trump’s pick of Neil Gorsuch to succeed the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia shows the rule of law is back in style. Gorsuch considers the Constitution a document that limits the power of government, not as a mere suggestion to be argued around. For that, Trump’s pick is delightfully restorative.

The Gorsuch pick came just in time. A mix of cases are heading to the Supreme Court and will impact the federal design over elections. From voter ID to redistricting to obligations to keep clean voter rolls, the Court is primed to decide how we vote in the 21st century.

In an array of voter ID cases, the Court may decide if the treasured Voting Rights Act has morphed into a tool not to protect civil rights, but to protect the interests of Democrats. North Carolina enacted measures designed to preserve the integrity of elections, including voter ID and limits on the registration of voters on Election Day before their eligibility could be verified. Newfangled theories of the Voting Rights Act led one appeals court to graft disparate impact tests onto the law that formerly required actual victims of racial discrimination in order to win a case.

That appeal is now moving toward an evenly divided Supreme Court — divided no more when Gorsuch is confirmed.

Make no mistake, Gorsuch will be confirmed. The vacancy on the court drove Catholic and evangelical Protestants to the polls in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa. The prospect of picking a man like Neil Gorsuch was a prime mover behind Trump winning the White House. The Republicans will win this fight even if they must use the nuclear option.

Neil Gorsuch is Trump’s grandest promise to a supportive electorate and will not be stopped.

Naturally, the Washington establishment will be reflexively opposed to Gorsuch. One former Justice Department colleague of Gorsuch told me, “he understands that the radical expansion of the federal bureaucracy is reaching and often exceeding its permissible limits, and that deference to that bureaucracy is frequently unwarranted. He is the dream of conservative thinkers and will bring great honor to the Court.”

When it comes to how states run their own elections, Gorsuch should be refreshing. Consider how states ensure non-citizens aren’t registering to vote. The court may hear if states can ensure only citizens are voting — again.

In 2013, the court held that states could petition the federal commission that creates the federal voter registration forms to include state citizenship rules. In that ruling, the late Justice Scalia paved the way for states to verify citizenship, but the Obama Justice Department lawlessly interfered and blocked these efforts — going so far to as refusing to defend the independent federal agency that had approved state citizenship verification. Sound familiar?

A federal appeals court sided with the Obama DOJ and left states unable to verify citizenship of voters using the federal forms in the 2016 election.

Ohio has been blocked from removing inactive voters from the rolls, another issue that is working its way to the Supreme Court. In 2012, Cincinnati election official Melowese Richardson exploited bad voter rolls and cast four ballots for President. The power of Ohio to keep rolls clean, amazingly, is a case the Court may decide after Gorsuch is confirmed.

Despite warnings from the court that race cannot be the “predominant” factor when drawing legislative lines, we have seen quite the opposite.

The Voting Rights Act has been leveraged by the Obama DOJ and activist groups to pack racial minorities into ink blot jurisdictions to distribute partisan advantage. Radical new theories of civil rights have emerged in these legislative plans, such “black-brown” political coalitions being entitled to legislative seats under the Voting Rights Act. These new tools to bolster Democratic Party power using civil rights litigation will also reach the Court.

Race, power, federalism, state sovereignty and more race. This is the battlespace that makes elections and how they are run a year-round fight in the courts, not just something experienced on Election Day. Neil Gorsuch, unlike the nominees of the previous president, has a sensitivity to the unique, precious and delicate compromise that created the greatest constitution the world has ever seen.

J. Christian Adams the President and General Counsel for the Public Interest Legal Foundation and a former Justice Department lawyer.


http://thehill.com/blogs/pundi...f-americas-elections

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:

quote:

Originally posted by Excam_Man:

quote:

Originally posted by BRL:
These whiney fucks are pissing me off beyond belief. Though I do get a charge out of the liberal head pyrotechnics, I think I'm more pissed than I was before the election.

A good example is todays vote, or what was supposed to be a vote for what I think was supposed to be the AG, the libs did not show up. You fucking pussies. If you do not show up to vote, you should have to forfeit your vote. Assholes.

100% agree with ya... if we don't show up to vote, the results are still tallied.

I'd agree except the rules state a minimum of one member of the minority party must be present for a vote. Think the Sargeant at Arms could drag one of these jackwads kicking and fighting to make a quorum?

What's the intent of the rule? I agree if it's to assure that the minority party is aware of the vote, etc. But the rule should be disregarded if the minority decides to just not show up. In this case, they are clearly aware of the topic and vote. The rule should not be used as a blocking tactic -- allow the government to move on and take action. By deciding not to show up, your vote is implicit - it's against the majority vote of the majority party.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
What's the intent of the rule? I agree if it's to assure that the minority party is aware of the vote, etc. But the rule should be disregarded if the minority decides to just not show up. In this case, they are clearly aware of the topic and vote. The rule should not be used as a blocking tactic -- allow the government to move on and take action. By deciding not to show up, your vote is implicit - it's against the majority vote of the majority party.

The intent is to keep the majority party from calling a meeting and excluding the minority, either intentionally or by design.

Let them pitch their hissy fit like the dems in Wisconsin did. After they ran from the state Walker won his 3rd statewide vote. They will eventually be forced to attend and the vote will take place.

Nope; they changed the rules and voted without dissent. Both Price and Mnuchin are out of committee.

Whining little leftist shits.

"Define the word betrayal."

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

God bless Sean Spicer. I admire his composure and patience in the face of ridiculous children.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Whining little leftist shits.

"Define the word betrayal."

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

God bless Sean Spicer. I admire his composure and patience in the face of ridiculous children.

Yes, I watched the entire presser. I too have admiration for Sean Spicer in his constant battle against the infantile press.

they might as well not "fill in the blank" and just keep the signs generic, that way they can reuse them every day for the next 8 years.

It would be "greener", wouldn't you think?

They need to institute a rule to have master at arms eject forceably from meeting they are obviously unqualified to attend.
Watching that news briefing was painful.

How in the hell does Sean Spicer put up with those idiots who want to constantly interrupt him?

White House ices out CNN


The White House has refused to send its spokespeople or surrogates onto CNN shows, effectively icing out the network from on-air administration voices.

“We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,” said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent.

A CNN reporter, speaking on background, was more blunt: The White House is trying to punish the network and force down its ratings.

“They’re trying to cull CNN from the herd,” the reporter said.

Administration officials are still answering questions from CNN reporters. But administration officials including White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and senior counselor Kellyanne Conway haven't appeared on the network's programming in recent weeks.

Spicer, speaking at an event at the George Washington University on Monday, denied that CNN was being frozen out, pointing out that he’s answered CNN’s questions in the regular daily briefings.

But, he added "I'm not going to sit around and engage with people who have no desire to actually get something right."

The last time an administration official was on CNN’s Sunday public affairs show “State of the Union” was Conway on January 8. She also appeared on CNN the following Wednesday with Anderson Cooper, the same day as then President-elect Trump's press conference where he derided CNN for publishing a report that intelligence officials had briefed both Trump and former President Barack Obama that the Russians may have negative information about Trump. At the press conference, the president-elect refused to take a question from CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, who shouted out to him to answer his question since he was attacking his news organization.

After his inauguration, Trump has continued blasting CNN as “fake news."

Since then, Conway, Spicer, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and even Vice President Mike Pence have made the rounds on the major Sunday shows but, notably, CNN’s “State of the Union" has been cut out.

“State of the Union” anchor Jake Tapper said on his show and via Twitter that the White House has declined his invitations to appear.

"We invited the Trump White House to offer us a guest to provide clarity and an explanation of what the president just did, especially given so much confusion, even within its own government by those who are supposed to carry out this order,” Tapper said on Sunday as he introduced a segment about the Executive Order banning visitors from some countries and putting a hold on the United States’ refugee policy. "The Trump White House declined our invitation.”

Tapper said something similar the previous Sunday.

Last week, New York Magazine reported that Trump’s feud with CNN has roots in his relationship with its president, Jeff Zucker, a former NBC president who brought Trump's “The Apprentice” television show to the network. Trump, the magazine reported, has told White House staffers that he feels personally betrayed by Zucker and that Zucker should be programming CNN more favorably toward him because of their long relationship.

In an interview with New York Magazine, Zucker said he’s not worried about getting access to Trump.

“I think the era of access journalism as we’ve known it is over,” Zucker said. “I think our credibility is higher than ever, and our viewership is higher than ever, and our reporting is as strong as ever.”

“One of the things I think this administration hasn’t figured out yet is that there’s only one television network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus — and that’s CNN,” he noted.

Part of the effort to ice out CNN may be related to ratings.

CNN “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter wrote in one of his recent newsletters that an aide in “Trumpworld” told him that his ratings would likely be hurt "because no Trump administration officials had agreed to be interviewed.” Stelter said in that newsletter that his ratings were in fact his highest since last November's election coverage at 1.3 million viewers.

It’s hard to tell whether “State of the Union” ratings have been affected by the lack of Trump officials, considering that it's less than two weeks since the Inauguration. While far behind the broadcast shows and “Fox & Friends” on cable news, the last two weeks of “State of the Union” have seen higher ratings than on Jan. 8, the last time a Trump official appeared. They've also won the demo (the key age group advertisers use) over the last two weeks, and last Sunday the show had 1.25 million viewers during the 9 a.m. broadcast, and 1.42 million viewers in the noon rebroadcast.

It's not unusual for a White House to tangle with certain outlets. The former administration had, at times, a rocky relationship with Fox News, limiting administration officials from appearing on its air in a similar manner. Former Obama White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told the New York Times in 2009 that they were going to treat Fox "the way we would treat an opponent.”

“As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave," she said at the time.

A former official in President Barack Obama's office acknowledged that they had their "battles with Fox," and that there may have been some times where "we sent people on other networks and not on Fox." But as a general rule, the official said, officials would go on the network.

"I think, in my hazy recollection is it would be unusual to do all [the networks] except one. What drives that is sometimes amount of time available to the person doing them," the official said. "If they are stiffing CNN intentionally, that is different than what normally happens."

A spokesperson for Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

http://www.politico.com/story/...ump-cnn-press-234455

Sofa King good!

“They’re trying to cull CNN from the herd,”

'cull' is a great word to use when referring to CNN

Democrats seem to be pushing for the Trump Administration to slow down its pace of activity.

"There's just so much that our brains can handle. We would prefer one executive action every two months", a party spokesman stated. "The world's supply of gingko biloba is dwindling rapidly as we speak." (AP)(FT)

quote:

Spicer, speaking at an event at the George Washington University on Monday, denied that CNN was being frozen out, pointing out that he’s answered CNN’s questions in the regular daily briefings.

But, he added "I'm not going to sit around and engage with people who have no desire to actually get something right."

Oh. My. God.

A white house press secretary who speaks the blatantly honest truth. Thank the lawd baby jeebus!

quote:

Originally posted by signewt:
“They’re trying to cull CNN from the herd,”

'cull' is a great word to use when referring to CNN

And "herd" is a great description of the media mentality.

quote:

Originally posted by GWbiker:
How in the hell does Sean Spicer put up with those idiots who want to constantly interrupt him?

He needs to put them on probation for a week when they misbehave.

41

quote:

Originally posted by jehzsa:

"There's just so much that our brains can handle. We would prefer one executive action every two months", a party spokesman stated. "The world's supply of gingko biloba is dwindling rapidly as we speak." (AP)(FT)

That's too funny. Do you have a link?