RandySF
RandySF's JournalMichigan SoS Jocelyn Benson seeks to settle gerrymandering suit by redrawing House seats
New Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced Friday she wants to settle a federal lawsuit alleging Michigan’s political districts were illegally gerrymandered by redrawing 11 state House seats for the 2020 election.
The proposed settlement, which must be approved by the court and is already drawing fierce objections from Republicans, would end a contentious case brought by the League of Women Voters that alleged egregious efforts in 2011 by Republican lawmakers to skew House and Senate seats as well as U.S. congressional seats in that party’s favor.
The announcement by Benson, a Democrat, is limited to state House seats and does not involve state Senate or congressional districts, which the suit has also challenged. A trial in the suit is set to begin in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Feb. 5.
“I have a responsibility to ensure our elections operate in a manner that is fair, accessible and in compliance with the constitutional mandate of one person, one vote.” Benson said in prepared remarks.
Michigan Republicans — Speaker of the State House Lee Chatfield, state Rep. Aaron Miller and the Republican Congressional delegation — submitted a formal request to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor Friday night requesting the high court stay Benson's settlement proposal until they can review similar cases from Maryland and North Carolina.
https://www.bridgemi.com/public-sector/jocelyn-benson-seeks-settle-gerrymandering-suit-redrawing-house-seats
They Might Be Giants - Women and Men (VIDEO)
The motherfucker's TelePrompTer just froze
https://twitter.com/maggienyt/status/1088880833920974848?s=21Florida Man Arrested
Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump, was arrested Friday by the FBI in Florida on charges that he lied and tried to tamper with a witness to hide his efforts to learn about releases of Democrats’ hacked emails during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Stone was charged with seven counts, including one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements and one count of witness tampering.
With Stone’s indictment, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has struck deep inside Trump’s inner circle, charging a long-standing friend of the president. The court filing charges Stone sought to gather information about hacked emails at the direction of an unidentified senior Trump campaign official, and then engaged in extensive efforts to keep secret the details of those efforts.
The indictment centers on Stone’s efforts to find out when potentially damaging emails internal to Hillary Clinton’s campaign would be released by Julian Assange, the leader of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. U.S. officials say Russian intelligence agents hacked Democrats and their email accounts and then shared them with WikiLeaks, which publicized them during the final months of the 2016 election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/longtime-trump-adviser-roger-stone-indicted-by-special-counsel-in-russia-investigation/2019/01/25/93a4d8fa-2093-11e9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.de2bba47627e
People screaming at Joe Biden for praising a single House Republican are ignoring a key fact
Washington (CNN)Joseph "Beau" Biden III, an Iraq War veteran who served as the attorney general of Delaware and was a son of Vice President Joe Biden, died Saturday at age 46, the White House said in a statement.
He died after battling brain cancer, according to the vice president's office.
"Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known," his father wrote in a statement.
Biden had suffered known health problems dating back to 2010, when he experienced a stroke that did not affect his motor skills or speech.
In 2013, Beau Biden was treated at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after he became disoriented and weak while on vacation. He was diagnosed with brain cancer, and after undergoing surgery was given a clean bill of health.
The cancer returned this spring and Biden pursued aggressive treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, the vice president's office said. He died Saturday evening, surrounded by his extended family.
Aside from Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden, Beau Biden is survived by his wife, Hallie; two children, Natalie and Hunter; a brother, also named Hunter; and a half-sister, Ashley.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/30/politics/obit-vice-president-son-beau-biden/index.html/div]
Officials REJECTED Jared Kushner for top secret security clearance, but were overruled
WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner's application for a top secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him — but their supervisor overruled the recommendation and approved the clearance, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The official, Carl Kline, is a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. Kushner's was one of at least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top secret clearance for incoming Trump officials despite unfavorable information, the two sources said. They said the number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented — it had happened only once in the three years preceding Kline's arrival.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said the Trump White House attracted many people with untraditional backgrounds who had complicated financial and personal histories, some of which raised red flags.
Kushner's FBI background check identified questions about his family's business, his foreign contacts, his foreign travel and meetings he had during the campaign, the sources said, declining to be more specific.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/officials-rejected-jared-kushner-top-secret-security-clearance-were-overruled-n962221?cid=public-rss_20190125
Bonus Tweet of the Day
https://twitter.com/daviddtss/status/1088060593834213376?s=21'I think he's scared': Trump biographer calls Trump caving into Nancy Pelosi 'shocking'
Researcher and writer Michael D’Antonio thinks that President Donald Trump is getting “scared.”
In a conversation with CNN, the Trump biographer listened as host Don Lemon read the president’s tweet caving into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hold on the State of the Union.
“Have you ever heard this president write something like that?” Lemon asked. “It seems like a normal presidency.”
“It’s shocking,” D’Antonio said. “This sounds like something that maybe Ivanka wrote or Jared Kushner. It really doesn’t sound like Donald Trump’s language. This is a fellow who has troubles stringing three words together in the right order.”
D’Antonio noted it’s also respectful, which isn’t exactly Trump’s style. Lemon asked what it meant his guest had a shocking assessment.
“I think he’s scared. He’s afraid,” the biographer continued. “He’s politically afraid the Senate Republicans are probably telling him this is a disaster. He sees that people are suffering and are fed up with maybe he’s going to act presidential because he’s being forced to act presidential.”
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/think-hes-scared-trump-biographer-calls-trump-caving-nancy-pelosi-shocking/#.XElQlmwSDDg.twitter
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