You seem to be rather incapable of distinguishing lying in the generic sense and lying under oath, which is the only circumstance when it is a crime. "Johnny told Mommy Susie did it" is a lie, but it's not a crime. I generally refrain from calling anyone a liar unless/until I know all the facts first hand.
General / Off-Topic Trump: Legal Issues (was The Testimony of James Comey)
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You seem to be rather incapable of distinguishing lying in the generic sense and lying under oath, which is the only circumstance when it is a crime. "Johnny told Mommy Susie did it" is a lie, but it's not a crime. I generally refrain from calling anyone a liar unless/until I know all the facts first hand.
Nuance, good sir, Nuance.
Lying and speeding are not just wrong when you get caught doing it. I know your political leadership and your news-entertainment industry kinda educates you that way, which explains the 40,000 fatal car accidents and metric tonne of class lawsuits.
But it makes you the laughing stock of real conservatives.
A man stands by his word and follows the law. No parental intervention required after the age of 18.
A stretch by all analysis I've read so far.
From the Washington Post - not exactly in the Trump camp.
"Americans have the right to receive information even from speakers who are entirely abroad. See Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301 (1965). Can Americans — whether political candidates or anyone else — really be barred from asking questions of foreigners, just because the answers might be especially important to voters?The Supreme Court did affirm (without opinion) a federal court decision in Bluman v. FEC, 800 F. Supp. 2d 281 (D.D.C. 2011), that upheld a ban on contributions and independent expenditures by non-citizen non-permanent-residents, on the theory that the government can use such a ban to limit foreign influence on American elections. But the panel decision expressly stressed that it was limited to the restriction on spending money. And it seems to me that restrictions on providing information to the campaigns — or on campaigns seeking such information — can’t be constitutional. Can it really be that the Clinton campaign could be legally required to just ignore credible allegations of misconduct by Trump, just because those allegations were levied by foreigners?
Now this whole controversy is of course arising as to Donald Trump Jr.’s willingness to get unspecified information that came from the Russian government, and was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Maybe it should and could be made illegal for a campaign to solicit or accept information that directly or indirectly came from a foreign government — though even that’s not clear to me: If a Canadian government official had informed the Clinton campaign of some possibly illegal conduct in the development of one of Trump’s Canadian properties, I don’t think it could be made a crime for the Clinton campaign to accept that information and ask for more. (It certainly is illegal to deliberately conspire with anyone, foreign or domestic, to hack into someone’s computer; but so far I haven’t heard evidence that Donald Trump Jr. was doing that. UPDATE: Just to clarify, as best I can tell there was no indication from the e-mails that Trump Jr. thought the information was the result of a hack; this happened before the hack of the DNC was revealed, and the Russian government could have many sources of “official documents and information” — for instance, dealings between Clinton and Russian officials — that would come through means other than hacks or other crimes.)
But in any event, that’s not what the rules that people are discussing say. Rather, those rules ban contributions of “things of value” by all foreign citizens (except those who are also U.S. citizens or permanent residents), and the argument is that politically useful information about a candidate’s opponent is in general a thing of value. If that is the right way to construe the statute banning foreign contributions, then the statute does cover all the examples that I gave, and is therefore “substantially overbroad” and thus facially unconstitutional (at least as to such information), regardless of whether a narrower statute could ban the particular kind of speech involved here. But if we avoid the overbreadth by construing “things of value” as not including information (or as not including one-off information that isn’t in the form of a standard commercially distributed product, such as poll results or prospective contributor lists), then Donald Trump Jr.’s expression of willingness to accept such information from foreigners (including ones linked to foreign governments) wouldn’t be covered by the statute."
Hope that's not too deep for this crowd.
You still seem to suffer under some delusion that I either have or do condone lying. For the purposes of this discussion, I merely have pointed out the distinction of when it is and isn't a crime.
Again, I will state clearly that I do not support, condone or defend lying.
I also don't rush to make accusations when I do not know all the facts.
People in politics as a career are very well versed in "To the best of my recollection, not that I can recall" statements that are not normally used by most people not familiar with the "gotcha" media and political "haha, we got ya" crowd. People not used to that sort of scrutiny may actually not recall a specific event or all the details of it after some time has passed and may naively make an erroneous declaration that at the time may not have constituted conscious lying.
I don't know all the facts, and I don't know everyone's state of mind when things that were said may have been inaccurate.
Obviously, many here seem to have that kind of omniscience, but I confess I'm just not that well qualified to pass judgement on these events and refrain from doing so. If you somehow construe that as condoning lying, then I guess there's not much I can add.
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Nothing to do with "all the facts" or "omniscience".
First meetings with Russians were denied.
Then it was "a single lady".
Then it turns out that there were 8 people in the room, half of them Russians with obscure ties to Russian government and a mail mentioning Russian government as source of the information.
This is not the end of the story, as much as Trump and his loyal followers want it to stop and while all this was speculation and allegations mere weeks ago, we do have facts up there. Don Jr. isn't even the interesting part. It's Kushner. Can't wait to see how he plays into this.
And yes, the WaPo article is quite in depth and nails the "things of value" point.
There is a narrow and a broad application. Just as in the 1st and 2nd amendment.
The more I read American's view on those, the funnier it gets. You can really apply 3 different ways of reading a text to suit the agenda on the same source.
And btw. the parliamentary investigation into the NSA spying came to a unsatisfactory closing over here, but our opposition (mainly the far left, with which I politically have the least in common) doesn't actually let it slide. They do fight shady government dealings at every corner. So that's what I expect from the opposition .. to oppose the status quo and lead the discussion and give the citizen insight into the workings of the government.
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All well and good. You seem comfortable accusing someone of lying who misstates facts. I don't pretend that this didn't occur. I just don't automatically conclude that being incorrect is automatically evidence of conscious effort to evade or mislead. I just don't know.
The fact remains that assuming the worst, it doesn't constitute a crime unless/until it occurs under oath or under interrogation by the FBI.
Ah, that's my 'in dubious pro reo' conclusion.
The other option is that he's so earthshattering dumb and incompetent, I wouldn't want him to mow my lawn, let alone run a business or have any role in government.
Well, that's to be seen.
My little 'speculation' that the cruise missiles strike on Syria with the Russian-U.S. escalation that gets resolved quickly (G20 meeting) and letting both look 'strong' while screwing Syria over (quadruple civilian casualties) wasn't all that inaccurate.
And "making America great again" and Trumps "successful visits abroad".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...e-become-world-leader-soft-power-survey-finds
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"Um, the Russian investigation — it’s not an investigation, it’s not on me — you know, they’re looking at a lot of things."
-Trump
A must read, if just for the laughs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-interview-transcript.html
“In America, anybody can be president.
That's one of the risks you take.”
― Adlai E. Stevenson II
“A librarian for president is exactly what this country needs.”
― Richard Castle
-Trump
A must read, if just for the laughs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-interview-transcript.html
“In America, anybody can be president.
That's one of the risks you take.”
― Adlai E. Stevenson II
“A librarian for president is exactly what this country needs.”
― Richard Castle
Watching Americans talk about healthcare is really much like watching 40 year olds discuss tying your shoes.
-le sigh-
"TRUMP: You had an opera..."
Beethoven's 9th is a Symphony and the Elbphilharmonie a concert hall.
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That's good... can I frame that and stick it on my wall?
Minonian
Banned
Minonian
Banned
Lying is lying whenever or not you are under oath.
Minonian
Banned
Just the amount of illegally acquired data what's thrown at Hillary? But it's nothing i guess...
Minonian
Banned
Intentionally misstating facts, is lying.
It's very suspicious when the Whitehouse writes a release that a meeting didn't happen, and the next day it was "oops, my bad, it did happen". If this is not actively dishonest then it's fantastically incompetent. I cannot see a 3rd option.
Lying to Congress, the Senate or otherwise under oath is perjury, IIRC.
The business with Kushner's ever-changing SF-86 form is also potentially problematic.
What'll be fun is when Mueller pulls Manafort, Trump Jr and maybe Kushner in to testify under oath as witnesses. As you say that Trump Jr isn't a government employee (but was part of the Trump campaign) then this should be fine, yeah?
If you let go of the position that Trump must be a good, righteous man, you may understand things more easily.
Because your default position is that Trump is a good guy, you can't seem to notice any of the dodgy stuff he's doing.
Isn't it bizarre that Russia is the go-to good guy for a large segment of right wing Americans these days? John McCain was at least old enough to remember the Cold War, and to maintain a healthy distrust towards the successor state of the Soviet Union.
Minonian
Banned
By adding up to everything we already know it's really hard to explain he is not committing high treason, and as an addition helps a murderous homicidal maniac to remain at power whom in multiple cases committed crimes against humanity. because that's Assad is even by his own words.
And let me get things straight before anyone says a word. What makes the russophiles think we have problem with America interfering Syria politics, We don't! Not really! Al trough it's a little preposterous situation i must admit this much. We just not going to debate with a bunch of hopeless idiots.
Removal of Kadhafi? Humanly was the right thing because he was not any better than Saddam. Al trough strategically not the wisest decision, i must admit this much.
But in all 3 cases? You either removing these sort of dirtbags as fast you can, and with it take the risk short term havoc and mid term instability. Or? They are becoming even greater problem like N Korea did, and Saddam was.
This is, IMO, what CNN got wrong, and probably the Democrats as well.
They seem to believe that politics is like some kind of exercise in Archimedean logic; if your policies are 'good' or 'correct' you tell the people and you win the election. For many it's more like following a sports team: you want your side to win.
Personally speaking, there's absolutely nothing that Trump could say now that would make me approve of him - and I suspect many on the left would say likewise. That's not logical either - to say we'll reject him regardless of his policies or actions. What would it take for you to vote for (or support) Trump or the Republicans?
To me, this gets to the heart of human behaviour: "We're better than you because we're X and you're Y". If you view human behaviour like that, it's much more predictable and easier to understand.
(For X and Y, use Republican/Democrat, or vice versa.
Liberal/Conservative, or vice versa.
Well educated and intellectual / decent, hard working real people or vice versa.
Religion A / Religion B.
Atheist / Religious or vice versa.
Nation A / Nation B.
Rich and successful / poor ignorant and lazy.
Good honest hard-working / rich greedy and corrupt.
Beautiful and fashionable / unfit, ugly with poor taste.
Real people with depth and priorities right / stupid superficial people.
Team A supporters / Team B supporters.
Game A players / Game B players.
Tech gadget A owners / Tech gadget B owners.
Four legs good / Two legs bad.
Big endian / little endian.
etc..etc..etc..etc..)
Great "out of context" quote Frank
You can do whatever you want with it, but I'm sure you wouldn't want my recommendation.
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