Looks like it is about sex offenders.
But this caught my eye at the bottom of the page:
Are you sure about that?ok but the fact is the bill still leaves it up to the judge if a 14yr old has sex with a 24yr old, like I said they slowly normalize shit, that’s what you are seeing
That doesn’t sound right but I don’t know enough about the history of sex offender registry to argue about it....any sources proving this(btw, which you can thank Biden for writing the law that created a sex offender register in the first place).
You mean other than the one linked into that sentence? Or was that humor, it it was a joke it was funny.That doesn’t sound right but I don’t know enough about the history of sex offender registry to argue about it....any sources proving this
He's trolling you with bullshit, Man!You mean other than the one linked into that sentence? Or was that humor, it it was a joke it was funny.
He's trolling you with bullshit, Man!
Why do you engage him?
The great “unmasking” scandal has fizzled, though please do not tell viewers of the Fox News program “Hannity.”
Surely the host of that program doesn’t want to. On Tuesday night’s broadcast, Sean Hannity discussed Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s appearance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the presidential race, former vice president Joe Biden’s mental acuity and Hunter Biden. On Wednesday night, the topical lineup was pretty much the same. Everything, in other words, except for one of Hannity’s favorite stories:
“‘Unmasking’ probe commissioned by Barr concludes without charges or any public report,” reads the headline on a Tuesday Washington Post story by Matt Zapotosky and Shane Harris. The story capped more than three years of froth and speculation. It all began during the presidential transition, when officials in the Obama administration requested that a person who turned up in foreign intelligence reports be revealed — or “unmasked.” That person ended up being Michael Flynn, a close Trump ally who ended up serving for a few weeks as President Trump’s national security adviser. He resigned from his White House post under pressure in mid-February and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential transition.
Conservative lawmakers and media decided the “unmasking” was part of a nebulous “Obamagate” scandal — the details of which the president himself couldn’t define. In May, the Justice Department announced that Attorney General William P. Barr had assigned U.S. Attorney John Bash to investigate whether the “unmasking” was improper. As The Post reported, Bash found nothing.
That’s not surprising: By all accounts, “unmasking” has long been a standard practice in the national security realm. Intelligence reports redact names of U.S. citizens who get swept up in foreign surveillance, the better to protect their privacy. Yet U.S. officials who later read the surveillance reports may seek a more detailed understanding of the conversations. So they can make a request to provide the identity of such a person.
But there’s no one like Hannity when it comes to turning standard procedure into dastardly conspiracy. “If you have rogue intelligence people, and they’re intercepting, illegally intercepting phone calls of Americans, that’s illegal,” said Hannity in a chat with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) shortly after Flynn’s departure. Nunes pushed the focus toward the Obama White House: “What I’m assuming is, is that this was picked up as they were tracking someone else. And if that’s the case, that would have had to go up to the highest levels of the Obama administration to get approval to unmask who that person is. And in this case, it was General Flynn,” said the congressman.
Once a conspiratorial notion this juicy finds its way into the Hannity narrative rotation, it sticks. “Hannity,” after all, is an accretive jumble of half-baked slams against liberals and Democrats. In December 2017, he warned of “all the attempts to take this president down. For example, the surveillance, unmasking of Trump and associates by the Obama administration.” The following April, he decried “unmasking, leaking, surveillance, FISA abuse, exonerations before investigations, felonies just not being prosecuted. Every one of these stories is unbelievable.” That October he declared, “And by the way, those leaks, we knew from the get-go were illegal, because that was — we all know surveillance unmasking that, never shouldn’t have happened or leaked in the first place.” And in March 2019, he wailed that “they all must be now put under oath, investigated because they weaponized the powerful tools of intelligence and resources and they literally broke the law.”
“Hannity” viewers might have thought this hype train was headed somewhere as recently as this spring. On May 7, then-acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell arrived at the Justice Department carrying a briefcase; a Fox News camera was pre-positioned to catch this newsy moment. The goods in transit: a declassified list of Obama administration officials who’d sought to unmask the person who ended up being Flynn. Two weeks later, Hannity devoted a “‘Hannity’ history special” to this alleged controversy. After declaring that he spurned the approach of the “media mob,” the host declared, “We got it right, they got it wrong. Now, we start three years ago in 2017 when we first sounded the alarm about unmasking, leaking raw intelligence and surveillance.” On May 27, DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec joined Hannity to discuss the decision to sic Bash on the “unmasking” allegations. This particular inquiry, noted Kupec, was adjacent to the inquiry of John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut who’s reviewing the Russia investigation.
Then in June, Hannity sounded exasperated with how long this whole thing was taking. “Now, I know tonight, many of you have been frustrated because the wheels of justice move painfully slow. Yours truly as well. The first — we first started on this with unmasking, illegal surveillance, leaking raw intelligence in March of 2017,” he said.
Well, this week his impatience has been rewarded. The Post’s scoop on Tuesday has now been matched by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, with the so-called straight news side of Fox News carrying the story on Tuesday evening.
We know how much Hannity likes to cite such publications — when they confirm his priors. Yet Hannity’s segment on the Bash “unmasking” review is nowhere to be seen. Why? The findings of Bash’s review have been passed along to Durham, according to reports — so perhaps Hannity is waiting for the outcome of the Durham probe to assess his approach to “unmasking?” But waiting isn’t Hannity’s style.
So why the delay in updating his viewers? Because Hannity has no respect for those viewers — the very people who’ve turned him into a millionaire many, many times over. They exist to absorb his nightly rants and boost his ratings. That’s it. Their loyalty doesn’t entitle them to honesty, integrity or introspection. Not even close.
And it’s not as though “Hannity” as a propaganda product suffers, either. There are, after all, plenty of other topics that Hannity can promote, now that “unmasking” has been all but torn from him. The cogency of Biden and the actions of his son Hunter, for example, are elastic standbys, available to fill however many minutes the host might need. Then there’s the Russia “hoax,” the sins of the Democrats and the “media mob,” and so on. In this he’ll be joined by many other voices across the network: CNN’s Oliver Darcy noted that the “unmasking” controversy permeated other precincts at Fox News.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump White House has installed two political operatives at the nation’s top public health agency to try to control the information it releases about the coronavirus pandemic as the administration seeks to paint a positive outlook, sometimes at odds with the scientific evidence.
The two appointees assigned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Atlanta headquarters in June have no public health background. They have instead been tasked with keeping an eye on Dr. Robert Redfield, the agency director, as well as scientists, according to a half-dozen CDC and administration officials who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal government affairs.
The appointments were part of a push to get more “politicals” into the CDC to help control messaging after a handful of leaks were “upsetting the apple cart,” said an administration official.
When the two appointees showed up in Atlanta, their roles were a mystery to senior CDC staff, the people said. They had not even been assigned offices. Eventually one, Nina Witkofsky, became acting chief of staff, an influential role as Redfield’s right hand. The other, her deputy Chester “Trey” Moeller, also began sitting in on scientific meetings, the sources said.
It’s not clear to what extent the two appointees have affected the agency’s work, according to interviews with multiple CDC officials. But congressional investigators are examining that very question after evidence has mounted of political interference in CDC scientific publications, guidance documents and web postings.
The White House declined to comment. A CDC spokesperson confirmed that Witkofsky and Moeller were working at the agency reporting to Redfield, but did not comment further.
Moeller said in an email to The AP, “I work for Dr. Redfield who is 100% committed to the science and the thousands of incredibly dedicated employees at the CDC working on behalf of the American people.”
During previous pandemics such as Ebola or SARS, the CDC was the public face of the U.S. response, offering scientifically driven advice to doctors and patients alike. The agency played the same role at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but stumbled in February when a test for the virus sent to states proved to be flawed. Then, in late February, a top CDC infectious disease expert, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, upset the administration by speaking frankly at a news conference about the dangers of the virus when the president was still downplaying it.
Within weeks, the agency was pushed offstage as President Donald Trump and other administration officials, during daily news briefings, became the main sources of information about the U.S. epidemic and the attempts to control it.
Still, CDC persisted in assembling science-based information that conflicted with the White House narrative. In May, a series of leaked emails and scientific documents obtained by The AP detailed how the White House had buried CDC’s detailed guidelines for communities reopening during a still-surging pandemic. The emails revealed that the administration was vetting CDC’s science through the Office of Management and Budget, rather than relying on its medical experts on the White House coronavirus task force. The resulting news stories of the shelving of the documents angered the administration, and sparked renewed efforts to exert control over CDC, according to current and former officials.
On a Monday in June, the new faces arrived at CDC’s Atlanta offices. One was Witkofsky, who according to federal election records had a minor role in Trump’s presidential campaign.
Witkofsky was installed initially as a senior adviser to Redfield. In a few weeks, she would take over as the agency’s acting chief of staff and gradually become the person at CDC headquarters who has the most daily interactions with him, the CDC officials said.
Senior CDC staff found out about the appointments the week before they happened, according to a CDC official who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency affairs. They had no office, and no one knew their role.
“They just showed up on a Monday,” the official said.
Presidential administrations appoint CDC directors. And there’s nothing new about a White House seeking a better handle on information released by the CDC, said Glen Nowak, a University of Georgia professor who ran the agency’s media relations for more than a dozen years. But past administrations placed overtly political appointees at HHS in Washington; the Trump administration has taken it to a new level by placing other people in CDC’s Atlanta headquarters, Nowak said.
Before Witkofsky and Moeller, the Trump administration had appointed others at CDC in Atlanta who were viewed by staff with some suspicion. But none of the predecessors’ roles was so clearly to report internal agency business up to Washington, according to officials who talked to The AP.
And Witkofsky seemed a particularly strange fit for the nation’s top public health agency. She studied finance and business administration in college and graduate school, and at one point worked as a publicist and talent booker for Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network. Her political work included being an events director during the George W. Bush 2000 presidential campaign. As a State Department official, she developed an international engagement program for U.S. athletes and coaches.
Her lack of familiarity with the CDC, and how it worked, quickly became clear in meetings, according to multiple agency officials. At one, Witkofsky expressed surprise that the CDC had a supporting foundation, one agency official recalled.
Though Witkofsky was largely unknown, she had met a few CDC workers months earlier. In March, on behalf of the administration, she had worked communications when Trump visited a CDC lab. Clad in a red “Keep America Great” baseball cap, Trump had praised the CDC and assured the public “we’re prepared for anything.” Trump asserted that he has a terrific grasp of public health. “Maybe I have a natural ability,” he boasted.
In her new role, Witkofsky communicated regularly with Michael Caputo, chief of communications for CDC’s parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, two administration officials said. At the time Caputo’s office was attempting to gain control over the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, or MMWR, a CDC scientific weekly known for publishing authoritative and unvarnished information about disease-fighting efforts, according to multiple accounts.
Witkofsky’s deputy, Moeller, who began work on the same day, is a longtime GOP supporter who worked on the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign in 2004. The most recent post on his Facebook page was a “Make America Great Again” Trump campaign banner.
They wanted him to sit in meetings and “listen to scientists,” said a former CDC official.
Witkofsky was added to CDC’s website when she became acting chief of staff, but Moeller’s name appears nowhere on either the HHS or CDC sites.
An HHS spokesperson said both Witkofsky and Moeller report to Redfield but refused to comment further on personnel matters.
Some CDC officials noted that a pandemic like this involves many parts of the government, and the political people sent to Atlanta have at times helped speed the flow of information coming to the agency from Washington.
But there has been a huge downside, public health experts and former CDC staffers say: damage to the once-venerated CDC.
The agency’s guidance for how to reduce viral infections has been largely ignored by the Trump White House, where officials have refused to wear masks and continued to hold large gatherings with few protective measures.
Witkofsky and Moeller are among officials the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis is seeking to interview as part of a probe it launched in mid-September into allegations the Trump administration blocked the CDC from publishing accurate scientific reports during the pandemic.
The subcommittee’s investigators want to know more about Witkofsky and Moeller’s roles in reported attempts by Caputo and administration officials to gain editorial control over the MMWR and other CDC publications. The investigators are also interested in whether Witkofsky and Moeller were involved in making changes to CDC COVID-19 guidance for schools, as well as agency information that has been changed multiple times on how the virus spreads through the air.
Caputo took a leave of absence from HHS after he described government scientists as the “resistance” against Trump in a video posted online. In an HHS podcast, Caputo accused Democrats in the government, along with the news media, of not wanting a vaccine so as to punish the president. After the incidents gained news coverage, one of Caputo’s top advisers, Dr. Paul Alexander, resigned.
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump posted full, unedited interviews that he and Vice President Mike Pence did with “60 Minutes” on Facebook on Thursday before the show’s scheduled broadcast this weekend.
The footage shows Trump growing increasingly agitated as interviewer Lesley Stahl presses him on his response to the coronavirus epidemic, his demeanor on social media, the lack of masks at his campaign rallies and the “Obamacare” replacement plan he has long promised but failed to deliver.
“Are you ready for some tough questions?” Stahl asked at the start of the interview.
“Just be fair,” the president said.
When Stahl asked him about priorities for a second term and Trump talked about having created “the greatest economy in the history of the country,” Stahl immediately broke in.
“You know that’s not true,” she said.
Trump objected and said she wouldn’t address his opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, in the same manner.
In video of Stahl’s later encounter with Pence, she said “you both have insulted ‘60 Minutes’ and me by not answering any of our questions and by giving set campaign speeches that we’ve heard both of you give at rallies.”
She said she was upset by how the interviews had gone.
“Well, Lesley, I appreciate the speech that you just gave,” Pence replied. “But I’ve answered all your questions. And I’ve spoken about the things the American people care about.”
Trump complained about the “bias, hatred and rudeness” by “60 Minutes” and CBS as he tweeted the Facebook link.
The CBS broadcast, the most popular news program in the country, will have the last word Sunday, when it presents edited versions of the interviews, along with talks with Biden and his vice presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.
Throughout the interview, Trump returned to attacks on Biden’s son, based on an unconfirmed New York Post report, and accused the media of being too soft on his Democratic rival.
As Stahl commented at one point that Trump was offering attack after attack, Trump responded: “It’s not attack, it’s defense. It’s defense against attacks.”
“I’m defending myself and I’m defending the institute of the presidency,” he said.
As Trump continued to throw unsubstantiated allegations at Biden and former President Barack Obama, Stahl tried to explain: “This is ‘60 Minutes’ and we can’t put on things we can’t verify.”
But Trump continued to criticize the mainstream media.
“Lesley, you’re discrediting yourself,” he said.
Trump eventually cut the interview short and declined to appear with Pence.
CBS News called the White House’s decision “unprecedented,” but said the interview would air Sunday as planned.
“60 Minutes” is “widely respected for bringing its hallmark fairness, deep reporting and informative context to viewers each week,” the network said in a statement. “Few journalists have the presidential interview experience Lesley Stahl has delivered over her decades as one of the premier correspondents in America and we look forward to audiences seeing her third interview with President Trump and subsequent interview with Vice President Pence this weekend.”
Only when they cry about their lies being called out.Anyone speaks out on your fake news regurgitating bullshit is quickly called a snow flake. FACT
Leave it to cultist Trump crowd to think that a political opinion should override actual facts because they want to pretend to be blind to the actual attack on our nation Trump is allowing and even welcoming.Right? Some of the best humor on the net.
All you have to do is toss out a political opinion that disagrees with theirs and you can count on the 6-8 liberal trolls here to rush on in to jerk each other off. I wonder how their meet ups were pre-COVID.