Immigration

Stephen Miller’s Outsized Radical Influence: A Threat We Should Have Seen Coming

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My son-in-law just reminded me that Stephen Miller, a co-author of Trump’s unconstitutional and racist ban on Muslims entering America, was John Shadegg’s press secretary during my race against him. Which makes for perhaps the easiest exercise in dot connecting ever. Dots we should have connected years ago.

Although under-reported by the media, Shadegg was a raging Islamaphobe. I learned this about midway through the campaign, when he used his two-minute speech at the annual AIPAC breakfast in 2008 to tout two books: Knowing the Enemy and America Alone. Later that day, a Google search revealed that Shadegg was pimping those books every chance he got. Although I was inundated with reading material related to the campaign, I felt compelled to read them.

I’m glad I did. I could never have known who I was running against without doing so. I never understood, however, that he was under the spell of a 23 year-old monster.

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Stephen Miller subs for Kellyanne Conway on the Sunday morning bobblehead shows, it does not go well

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Kellyanne “alternative facts” Conway was not available this weekend for the Sunday morning bobblehead shows because she violated ethics rules by promoting Ivanka Trump’s clothing line in a Thursday morning interview with Fox News — “I’m going to give a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody; you can find it online” — for which she is allegedly being “counseled” (a “time out”?) Kellyanne Conway Promotes Ivanka Trump Brand, Raising Ethics Concerns:

Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Ms. Conway’s comments were ‘wrong, wrong, wrong, and there’s no excuse for it.’ Chaffetz and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings, formally asked the Office of Government Ethics for an inquiry.

For a brutal takedown of Kellyanne Conway, you have got to watch Saturday Night Live’s “Fatal Attraction” parody entitled Jake Tapper. Wow!

With Kellyanne in “time out,” the Trump administration trotted out the other half of its updated version of The Daily Show’s Even Stevphen act, Steve Bannon’s counterpart Stephen Miller, who was featured in unflattering background pieces over the weekend in both the New York Times, Stephen Miller Is a ‘True Believer’ Behind Core Trump Policies, and the Washington Post. Stephen Miller: A key engineer for Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda.

I happened to catch Miller on ABC’s This Week with George “Snuffleupagus.” (He also appeared on NBC’s Meet Chuck Todd). What a raging asshole!

This guy was like a pez dispenser spewing out lie after lie with an angry attitude of “how dare you question my alternative facts!” Whenever “Snuffleupagus” pointed out he had presented no evidence to support his lies, Miller had a look on his face that said “how about I come over there and kick your ass!” This guy needs anger management.

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Trump’s Muslim Ban Executive Order Reveals an Administration Ready to Lie About Absolutely Everything

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By Michael Bryan

Many have identified the reasons why Trump’s Executive Order (EO) suspending travel from seven Muslim majority counties is ineffective, illegal, and just plain stupid: it is clearly discriminatory toward Muslims, it harms our counter-terror efforts made in conjunction with those nations’s governments, it is a propaganda win for the terrorists, and there haven’t actually been any terror attacks in America by visitors from the targeted countries since 1975, among many other reasons.

But what I find most disquieting about the EO is something that I have not seen a lot of commentary on, thus far: it demonstrates that this Administration is ready and willing to take ill-considered and deleterious actions regarding national security for purely political reasons, and then blatantly lie about classified intelligence to justify it.

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BREAKING: 9th Circuit Court panel unanimously upholds injunction of Trump’s Muslim travel ban executive order

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The Washington Post reports this breaking news, Federal appeals court maintains suspension of Trump’s immigration order: A federal appeals court has maintained the freeze on President Trump’s controversial immigration order, meaning previously barred refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries can continue entering the U.S. Read the Per Curiam order HERE. A panel with the U.S. … Read more

Hold Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III accountable as the new Attorney General

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Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) — Geezus! You can almost hear the Confederate flags snapping in the breeze, can’t you? — was approved on a near party-line vote with only one Democratic defection, to become the next Attorney General of the United States after a contentious Senate vote. Jeff Sessions Confirmed as Attorney General, Capping Bitter Battle:

Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, an Alabama Republican, survived a near-party-line vote, 52 to 47, in the latest sign of the extreme partisanship at play as Mr. Trump strains to install his cabinet. No Republicans broke ranks in their support of a colleague who will become the nation’s top law enforcement official after two decades in the Senate. [Joe Manchin (D-WV) broke ranks with Democrats.]

But the confirmation process — ferocious even by the standards of moldering decorum that have defined the body’s recent years — laid bare the Senate’s deep divisions at the outset of the Trump presidency. At the same time, the treatment of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was forced to stop speaking late Tuesday after criticizing Sen. Sessions from the Senate floor, rekindled the gender-infused politics that animated the presidential election and the women’s march protesting Mr. Trump the day after his inauguration last month.

Sen. Sessions cast his final vote as a senator to note that he was present for Wednesday’s tally. His confirmation was met by applause from his colleagues, including a few Democrats, on the Senate floor.

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