of even reading a 7-page document, much less writing one.

Or who didn't.

Depends on if it includes the best bigly words.

A brand-new, bright, shiny WAR.

One of the things that used to boost presidents standing in wartime was the limited bandwidth of the TV news media. It used to be so few hours in a day devoted to news broadcasts that it was easy for a war to dominate the time. But now with the 24 hour news networks and the internet in everyone's pockets, we still see the gaffes and corruption right along with the stories about bombings and more vets coming home without limbs.

Now, I still think that plenty in this regime would press a war to preserve their agenda, I just don't think it would work as well as they think it will.

As more and more of us rely on being able to download entertainment or participate in open discussions such as DU, the internet will become a throttle point as has been demonstrated in other dictatorial regimes.

Many of the actions that I've seen, and not just the Pai battle against net neutrality, are pointing to the ability of an "interested group" to start to limit accessibility to free speech and to start to change content as needed.

This may already be happening. ATT and other major long-haul vendors have already been found complicit in privacy violations against their customers. The large cable and wireless companies have been caught throttling content that didn't meet their standards.

DU and other similar sites may start to experience unexplainable interruptions.

I'm not sure how we can counter this corporate/statist takeover of our communications.

these bizarre memos? I don't remember a time when "memos" carried such weight and consequences.

Then "The Kings Thoughts".

I was reading a meh article today on how the ADA (not "disabilities", but I forget what the D stands for), the law that supposedly prevents government employees from working in the absence of appropriations funding their jobs, came to entail a government shut down. Apparently there was a memo by Garcetti in the early 1980s concerning how to interpret that law, already over a decade old at the time the memo was written. A memo maybe 8 years later added to that interpretation--and the government shutdown was born.

(At no point did the article mention whether there was a prior incident of non-appropriation with federal employees still working. The reason I mention this at all is because two memos interpreting a law allegedly not relevant to the situation were crucial to the current interpretation and implementation of the law.

It's also worth remembering that DACA is just a "memo" with bureaucratic machinery added later to help implement it: https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/s1-exercising-prosecutorial-discretion-individuals-who-came-to-us-as-children.pdf

It's not that we don't remember the time when memos carried such weight and consequences; it's just that many things we know about we simply don't remember as being the direct result of memos.

other countries. He wouldn't know on his own. This means others have legalized it such that it is as broad as possible, I'm sure.

With no oversight.

This crap has to stop. We don't need another war. We're still in the ones that Bush/Cheney started over a decade ago.

of having the whole country live in fear of what the asshole and his asshole party might do. Goddamn lives are at stake.

Seriously, does anyone think he'd have the stones to go after sitting Senators over this?

The US is in no condition to go to war. It's in shambles politically and the government is tearing itself a new one.

If the US goes to war it will sadly be with itself. Something I never thought I'd ever have to say.