Politics Break — Dodgers have an interesting strategic option in post-season. It's not simply using starting pitchers as relievers but using 1 or 2 of them as "2nd starters" in a game or "piggybacking" them, planning to bring them in 5th/6th inning to pitch 4-5 innings
1/ Earlier series w/Phillies supports the idea rather than "convert" a starter & use him like a regular reliever. It gets more innings from someone who usually gives the team 5 innings rather than settle for 1 or 2
Think of it as telling 2 guys they're starting a game BUT…
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THIS is why there's a Unitary Executive Theory — it's not to toy with the idea of giving a Pres the powers of a king. It's so a Pres can't escape responsibility for the actions, or inactions, of Exec Branch. The Buck Stops Here

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https://x.com/craigaroo/status/1288165141033316353

This isn't about Hegseth resigning. They all should be fired. Trump's response, or lack of it, is Constitutional Grounds. It's proof he doesn't care about protecting the Constitution nor that the laws be faithfully executed
We may ask, Does it matter when Congress won't act?
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@CBHessick hoo-boy there's a lot of "but her emails…" replies
Briefly:
• "Top Secret" info was Topics only, no docs/photos/transcripts… or military plans (source Comey testimony)
• emails originated w/ career StateDept/ForeignServ officials doing biz as they do for both R/D admins…
1/ @CBHessick (source FBI report p21-23)
• emails weren't marked w/ classification headers —remember the little "c"s in parentheses? Source Comey testimony under questioning by Rep Matt Cartwright

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This is an important point. Our biggest intellectual failure is our addiction to the news cycle, with its inherent fallacy that the news cycle will solve problems for us, that if there's something bad, the news on it gets worse & worse until it corrects itself
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https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1904313721121652937

There's a famous quote from an "anonymous senior Bush admin official" (reported by Ron Suskind) where he called all of us part of a "reality-based community" whereas his side saw themselves as "History's Actors & the rest of you will be left to just study what we do"
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There's a reason to put forward, right now, the incredible thesis that both sides are largely right about the JFK assassination
Oswald was the Lone Gunman in Dallas
There WAS, however, a CIA plot to assassinate the Pres BUT it was a PHONY PLOT whose purpose was to provide…
1/ …a pretext for assassinating Castro if the US could not maintain plausible deniability
Trump is diverting attention from his aim to destroy democracy & that must be our priority. The present importance of the thesis is less that it may be right but the files might reveal it
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Do not give up on truth
Incredible as it may seem, eyewitness testimony right in front of us almost definitively proves a Lone Gunman
OTOH, we've had proof for >30 years that CIA held an *operational interest* in Oswald during his MexCity trip <2 mo prior to the assassination
1/ Now may not be the moment to devote a lot of time to Kennedy & MLK assassinations. We know Trump isn't interested in truth. He's interested in distracting our attention as he destroys democracy
But even for a moment, we can remind ourselves to BELIEVE IN THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
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A new PARADIGM — Truth is stranger than Fiction. Both sides are largely right
• Oswald was Lone Gunman
• There WAS a CIA plot to assassinate JFK but it was a PHONY plot whose purpose was to provide a pretext to assassinate Castro if US couldn't maintain plausible deniability
1/ This isn't just a new thesis. It's important because it's a new PARADIGM — a paradigm of what a thesis about the assassination can even look like & what it tries to achieve
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One of the most catastrophic failures by Dem leaders & the rest of our political elites is the failure to impeach Trump for ABUSE OF THE PARDON POWER.
(quote from blog by Constitutional law prof @FOBowman3 )

https://twitter.com/DanaScottlo/status/986861644696268800

1/ Trump was ALWAYS going to prove the case against him in real time by abusing the power repeatedly
It was ALWAYS CRUCIAL to show crimes of impeachment did not need to be crimes defined by criminal law & could be for abuses of powers explicitly granted in Art II
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In a best-case scenario, we have let future Trumps know how weak our response will be to a "soft coup" Even after a Capitol Insurrection, we'll let a Congressional leader use parliamentary maneuvers to stall urgent action
1/ We can hope we're through the worst of it. We can hope the Insurrection backfired by scaring Trump allies & making them think he's doomed to fail. We can hope that w/o Hope Hicks in the Führerbunker, Trump will be unwilling to try to hold out past noon 1/20
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Re the pardon power & "in cases of impeachment" clause, I found the article by @ProfBrianKalt pretty convincing that pardons given to a President's "accomplices & adherents" remain valid even if connected to his impeachment & conviction takecareblog.com/blog/regrettab…
1/ Federalist 69 still gives me trouble — reading it is, for me, like one of those optical illusions where it looks like one thing at first then looks like something else if you keep staring at it; but I'm starting to see why scholars have interpreted it the way they do.
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POLL ON THE IMPEACHMENT OF JOHN ROBERTS - Has John Roberts, Chief Clerk & Political Strategist of the McConnell Court, been derelict in his duty by delaying decisions on both the Trump tax return cases & the House subpoena for unredacted Mueller report & Grand Jury testimony?
1/ Commentators, pundits & experts who assured us for 3+ years our institutions would preserve the Rule of Law are breathing a sigh of relief but the Court is allowing Trump to run out the clock
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https://twitter.com/JoePaulson2/status/1278459997224079360?s=20

@jayrosen_nyu It would be a lot simpler if newspapers repeated, every day, about 5 or 6 quotes on propaganda in their stories on Trump's daily lies so that instead of debunking individual, isolated lies, people could start seeing him & his allies as engaged in a campaign of propaganda
1/ @jayrosen_nyu That's the forest for the trees which we are missing. The Newspaper of the Resistance (which will not of course be the NYT under Dean Baquet) would challenge the norms of the daily news cycle, countering Goebbel's "repeat a lie often enough & people will believe it" with...
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@tiediedgiraffe @jayrosen_nyu @Jon_Allsop I've said the NYTimes can at least begin by *reporting* on the Resistance. And by that I don't mean Dem leaders. But maybe the most important thing they could do, but won't, is to break the trap of daily news-cycle & treat propaganda qua propaganda ->
1/ @tiediedgiraffe @jayrosen_nyu @Jon_Allsop Instead of dealing with daily lies in isolation (an endless/exhausting task), treat them as evidence of a larger truth or reality - as proof the Ruling Admin is using propaganda tactics such as the "firehose of lies". Or Goebbels & "repeat a lie often enough & ppl believe it"
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Solution to Nunes memo is a panel led by exPresidents to review underlying intel. Americans have right to know if there is a crisis in which unelected officials are sabotaging ExecBranch. Or if someone's bluffing. 1/ The power of the idea is this - if it was discussed in the news, we'd find out quickly who has something to hide. 2/