Are Iran and Al Qaeda allies? Prove it.

This story sounds very familiar:

Administration officials are briefing Congress on what they say are ties between Iran and Al Qaeda, prompting skeptical reactions and concern on Capitol Hill that the White House could invoke the war authorization passed in 2001 as legal cover for military action against Tehran.

Why skeptical? Well, remember...

  Iran is a majority Shiite Muslim nation while Al Qaeda is a hard-line Sunni group whose members generally consider Shiites to be apostates. The two have often fought on opposing sides of regional conflicts, including the Syrian war.

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember how the Bush Administration tried so very hard to connect Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was completely false. Some Republicans, naturally, choose to believe it anyway. But asserting that connection helped the administration make the case for the unnecessary and disastrous invasion of Iraq. Given that history, there's every reason to make the U.S. government prove this latest allegation beyond a reasonable doubt.

 For the moment: I sure as hell don't believe it.

Pelosi won't even officially *criticize* Trump

Washington Post:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday ruled out a congressional censure of President Trump, a move some lawmakers have suggested as a less divisive alternative to launching impeachment proceedings. “No. I think censure is just a way out,” Pelosi told reporters. “If you’re going to go, you’ve got to go. In other words, if the goods are there, you must impeach, and censure is nice, but it is not commensurate with the violations of the Constitution, should we decide that’s the way to go.”

Great! Let's get the impeachment process started, then! Right?

On Wednesday, Pelosi cautioned against a scenario where Trump is impeached by the Democratic-led House only to be acquitted by the Republican-led Senate. “I don’t think you should have an inquiry unless you’re ready to impeach,” she said. “What I believe is that when we go forward, if we go forward, it has to go deep. It can’t be the Democrats impeach in the House; the Senate, in his view, exonerates. . . . This president must be held accountable."

Let's be clear: Pelosi is offering paralysis and prayers, essentially, as opposition to Trump's presidency.

She's made it clear that she believes the president is in violation of the law and Constitution, but won't impeach because Senate Republicans won't convict. Censure would be a half-measure, to be sure, but it would at least put Congress on record noting the president's transgressions and criticizing him for it. Pelosi says full measures are the only way to go, but won't pursue them or half-measures. That leaves Americans with nothing but an outlaw president and a Congress to feckless to face him head-on.

Me @TheWeek: Trump is not a nationalist

My latest:

The president claims to put "America first." But in the most important sense — defending the integrity of this country's governance and elections from foreign interference — the man is a good old-fashioned globalist. There is no such thing as a "sh--hole country" if Trump himself is the beneficiary; the president will do business with anybody willing to help him profit, personally or electorally.

Me @TheWeek: Elizabeth Warren's polarizing plan to make college free

My latest:

Today's rising student debt is largely a result of policy choices. The short version of the story is that student debt is rising because college tuition is rising — and college tuition is rising, in large part, because state legislatures across the country have slowly been abandoning their commitment to fund public colleges and universities.

The Great Recession is one of the villains of this story; it prompted legislatures to cut their funding commitments to higher education, and for the most part, those cuts were never restored. According to one analysis, state funding for public colleges and universities in 2018 was $7 billion below its 2008 levels — and that is after adjusting for inflation. One way public four-year institutions have stayed in business is by raising tuition by an average of 36 percent during that decade. It is no coincidence that student debt in the United States quadrupled, from $345 billion to nearly $1.4 trillion, between 2004 and 2017.

Today's young students aren't less responsible than their predecessors. They're just getting far less help.

Me @TheWeek: Reacting to the Mueller report

My take:

The Trump White House is just a high-level version of a sleazy pawn shop where the owner traffics in stolen goods. Everybody knows the owner is profiting from crime — including the owner — but as long as as he keeps his fingerprints off the precise moment the goods are stolen, he's allowed to keep making his living off the fruits of other people's wrongdoing. 

It may not be technically illegal. But it sure isn't right.

Please read the whole thing!

John Bolton's purple prose

Man, this is some speechwriting from John Bolton, announcing new sanctions on Cuba.

I have expected him to continue: "Who knows what evil lurks within? ONLY THE SHADOW KNOWS!"

Mueller preview: Maybe the president is innocent. So why does he keep acting like a thug?

There’s a reason so many people think Donald Trump is corrupt: He keeps giving them reason.

On Thursday, a redacted version of the Mueller report will be released to the public. Perhaps the president is right: Maybe the document will exonerate him of accusations of colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election, and maybe it will further offer reason to believe that Attorney General William Barr was correct when he decided not to pursue allegations the president obstructed justice by firing then-FBI Director James Comey.

It could happen.

But if that is the case, Trump and Barr have done the worst possible job laying the ground for the president’s innocence. Instead, they’ve seemingly done everything possible to make the release of the report look like a cover-up.

For example: The principles of transparency would usually suggest that the public — or, at least, the media — have a chance to look at the report and begin to digest its findings before Barr holds his press conference.

But that’s not the plan. As of Wednesday evening, Barr’s press conference is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. ET. The report is scheduled to come out 90 minutes later, at 11 a.m. ET. That means the attorney general’s time before the press is not designed to enable accountability or to answer any tough questions that arise from reading the report itself — it is, instead, a preemptive strike, a chance to start spinning the public before the public has a chance to see and hear the facts for itself.




The release of the Mueller report, in other words, seems expertly designed to raise suspicions instead of calm them.

It doesn’t help that Barr has taken weeks to release the report. It doesn’t help that the attorney general has been giving the Trump Administration a sneak preview of its findings. It doesn’t help that the president, who has spent weeks proclaiming Mueller’s investigation found him innocent, has in recent days waged an angry campaign criticizing its release. And it won’t help if the report released to the public appears to be overly redacted.

It’s reasonable to ask: Are these the actions of an innocent man running an honest administration?

If the president has somehow avoided committing a crime during the last two years, congratulations to him. But that falls short of the standard we typically expect of our leaders: We don’t expect them merely to avoid transgression, but also to avoid the very appearance of avoiding transgression. The reason is simple: Even the appearance of wrongdoing shakes the faith of citizens in their leaders and government. Americans don’t have to believe that their leaders are good men and women; they do deserve not to have to wonder constantly if those leaders are on the wrong side of the law.

No, it’s not always the case that where there is smoke, there is fire. But the president is constantly enveloped in a smog of lies: As of March 17, he had told more than 9,000 documented lies since ascending to the Oval Office.

With regard to the Mueller inquiry: He lied during the campaign about his business ties with Russia. He orchestrated a false press release about his son’s meetings with Russian officials. He tried suggesting there were listening devices in the Oval Office when he met Comey — there weren’t. At every step of public inquiry and official investigation, he has thrown a bundle of untruth in the path of those seeking the truth.

Simply put, he keeps acting like a thug. If the Mueller report does exonerate Donald Trump, that’s too bad. Sure, it’ll keep him out of court. But the public will keep having every reason to believe in his corruption.