Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stops UCLA from posting video of event after protesters heckle him

Why are U.S. election systems vulnerable?

Trump Thought the Rules Didnt Apply and Now Hes Paying the Price

Soon after Donald Trump became president, he began running into a whole set of rules about how government works, like demands that he divest assets or put them in a blind trust, and rules about whether he could hire family members for top jobs. For Trump, who had just won election while disregarding most of the rules of political campaigning, these rules seemed antiquated at best and punitive at worst.

The Trump team treated these rules and norms as artifacts of a hidebound and ineffective Washington, obstacles that had kept qualified, inventive people from the business sector out of public service on mere technicalities. The president-elect also clearly viewed the hue and cry of ethics experts—from Norm Eisen and Richard Painter to Walter Shaub—as efforts to delegitimize his presidency.

What the last few weeks, and especially the last few days, have brought home is that the rules exist in part to protect the people who are supposed to follow them. Just like your elementary-school teacher told you not to run in the hallways not because she was a martinet but because you’re liable to trip and hurt yourself, ethics rules and norms can help an administration protect itself and the country. This week, the cases of White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson show what happens when they aren’t followed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/554486/

Bill Kristol...

WTF....

Top Armed Services Republican Hits Trump on Russia Sanctions

The chairman of the House armed services committee on Wednesday became the highest-ranking congressional Republican to declare that the Trump administration should have implemented mandatory sanctions against Russia last month, adding to a growing bipartisan movement to put pressure on the White House to more aggressively punish the Kremlin.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), the committee’s chairman, said he shares concerns relayed by Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, who told Thornberry’s Senate counterparts on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay” for Moscow’s cyber-attacks aimed at disrupting elections in the United States and elsewhere.

“An aggressor will always push forward and do more until he meets resistance,” Thornberry told The Daily Beast. “There has to be a price to be paid.”

https://amp.thedailybeast.com/top-ranking-armed-services-republican-hits-trump-on-russia-sanctions

Two enter, Only One survives....

Malcolm Nance...

The Deep State Takes Out the White Houses Dark Clown Prince...Rick Wilson

If you’ve ever filled out a form SF-86 for a U.S. government security clearance, you’ll know the hassle of dealing with the sheer volume of information it entails. Listing contacts, personal, financial, and travel information in enormous, painstaking detail isn’t trivial, and even small errors will get the form kicked back to you or your clearance rejected. Applicants are required to spell out in great detail the specifics of foreign travel and overseas contacts. Investigators need to know where you’ve made your money and to whom you have debts.

I did it in my early twenties when my life was relatively uncomplicated, and it was still a pain in the ass. It’s not easy, and it’s not supposed to be.

It’s even harder when you’re a corrupt, entitled snake who repeatedly lies about your finances to federal investigators and serves as a living, breathing poster child for privileged venality. It’s even harder when you’ve rather clumsily attempted to use both your familial relationship and proximity to the president of the United States to save your family’s failing real-estate empire.

https://amp.thedailybeast.com/the-deep-state-takes-out-the-white-houses-dark-clown-prince

NRA heads are exploding...