Donald Trump

The Trump administration has instructed it's DHS personnel to build a database of journalists and “media influencers.” Presumably since the President equates “fake news” with “said bad stuff about the me” this database will be used to retaliate either through direct punishment or denial of access or both. The Free Speech and Freedom of the Press implications are obvious and are being discussed, but not with the details of implementation. Those details do not make the implications more palatable to anyone who lacks a totalitarian heart.

The whole process of watching Chappaquiddick was painful. Rotten Tomatoes gave this one an 80% rating for reasons I don’t fully understand. I entered the theater and the show was only available in IMAX. There was a bar next to the snack bar with an on duty Columbus cop drinking something from an opaque cup, and he was there when I left. There were no unarmed black children to shoot in the back so he had nothing to do but drink.

Yesterday, April 3rd, The president tweeted about a new, controversial and possibly unconstitutional plan. There was also an avalanche of stories about teenagers snorting condoms. Both are tales of immature minds doing dangerous things as both can be expected to try to do. One of is worthy of logistical examination because it effects innocent people and the other is the hand of the mighty god Darwin in action.

Robert Muller's investigation moves slowly forward, getting guilty pleas and closing in ever so slowly on Donald Trump. In all the allegations, many crimes have been uncovered, and many more will be. Muller, even with his ability to compel testimony and seize documents, has yet to uncover actually effective Russian interference with the 2016 General Election. He is also not the only one with eyes on the events.

A woman I have never met is dead. Heather Heyer was a 32 year old paralegal and she was killed by a speeding car driven into a crowd by a nazi in Charlottesville Virginia yesterday August 12th. The car struck a portion of the crowd that was mostly members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a union for which I was once an organizer and delegate. It is now clear from reports received that she was a member of the IWW.

The Center-Right wing of the Democratic party has maintained that Russian intelligence hacked the something or everything that was responsible for the 2016 election loss of the presidency. They began this tirade of misrepresentation before the actual Democratic National Convention. When Hillary Clinton proved unpalatable to the actual Democratic base as opposed to moderated Republicans and this translated into her narrow defeat last November the unverified claims became so-called “Russian Election Hacking.”

It has been ten days since The Atlantic, a flagship liberal publication since it's founding in 1857 in Boston, was purchased by Laurene Powell Jobs for an undisclosed sum on July 29th. The first issue since this purchase will be lead by a major editorial from their Contributing Editor Peter Beinart. That particular 2200 word screed has already appeared on the Atlantic's website and been boosted on social media at some cost. This can only be seen in context as a declaration of new editorial line, policy and intent.

Yesterday, August 1st a lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York by former Fox News investigator and talking head Rod Wheeler against Fox News. The suit, which is partially constructed as an employment discrimination suit and partially as a defamation suit, alleges that one well connected Trump operative and one Fox news investigator conspired directly with the President to advance the false narrative that former DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered for leaking DNC emails to Wikileaks.

[Editors note: The Mockingbird does not accept unsolicited or unsigned editorial content. Anonymous sources for news articles are still known to us but will never be known to anyone else.]

“Subject to paragraph (3), the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely