At 5:40 AM, I was doing two things.  I was eating breakfast (Corn Chex, cherries, sausage links, and apple juice).  More important, I was watching Jerry Nadler [D-NY] give his opening statement to the House Judiciary committee.  I am including the complete video below.  So far, it’s not completely unproductive and the Democrats are doing a more professional job than I expected.  The Republicans are demonstrating their PhD in Bullshitology.

It’s easy to ignore a witnesses’ opening statement, but Mueller’s may have provided the Rosetta stone to his thinking on whether the president committed obstruction of justice.

A few minutes after he delivered a statement in his hallmark anodyne tone, Mueller was asked a series of questions by Nadler, D-N.Y.

“Is it correct that if you had concluded that the president committed the crime of obstruction, you could not publicly state that in your report or here today?” Nadler asked.

“Well, I would say you – the statement would be that you would not indict and you would not indict, because under the OLC opinion, a sitting president cannot be indicted,” Mueller responded. “It’d be unconstitutional.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NBC News>

Of course, the Reich is up to their normal obfuscation.

Mueller is allowing the Republicans to mischaracterize aspects of his investigation without responding, which could have the result of furthering a narrative that will reach millions of Fox viewers and other consumers of right-wing media.

The former special counsel notably did not push back when:

• Jim Jordan said the FBI “spied” on the Trump campaign, and suggested that Joseph Mifsud (the Maltese professor who told Papadopoulos the Russians had dirt on Clinton) was a U.S. agent, not a Russian agent.
• Ratcliffe (and later Rep. Buck) argued that Mueller did not follow the special counsel regulations by not making a decision on obstruction and that it was improper for Mueller to say the president had not been exonerated.
• Gaetz suggested the Russia investigation might have been the result of a set-up of the Trump campaign by Russian intelligence.
• Gohmert said Mueller hired people who didn’t like Trump, and that FBI agent Peter Strzok “hated Trump.”

All of these assertions are either false or debatable and are designed to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the investigation… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NBC News>

Here is the video.

We’ll have to see how people react to it.

RESIST!!

The Fuhrer of the Republican Reich. Resident Collusion and Obstruction, and his personal lawyer, Sycophant Barrf, are worried.  Barrf spun the Mueller Report so well that many Americans think the report cleared Trump, and most have no idea what is actually in the report.  The Fuhrer and his lackey want to keep it that way, and Mueller’s testimony before The House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees tomorrow could threaten their lies.  Their solution is to put a muzzle on Mueller.

In a letter to Mueller, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer said his testimony set for Wednesday “must remain within the boundaries of your public report because matters within the scope of your investigation were covered by executive privilege.”

The letter said “these privileges would include discussion about investigative steps or decisions made during your investigation not otherwise described in the public version of your report.”

Mueller completed in March his nearly two-year-long probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Reuters>

It also forbid the discussion of the actions of all unindicted persons.

Lawrence O’Donnell has a detailed analysis.

The unfortunate thing is that Mueller will follow orders.  He could just ignore the letter, legally, but that’s not his way.  Democrats on those committees need to avoid beating their heads against a wall.  They need to find out what he will say and get it on the record.  Two questions I think he will answer are: “Did your report clear Trump of collusion and obstruction of justice?” and “Is ‘No collusion, no obstruction’ an accurate summary of your work?”  We could use that clip until election day.

Hope for the best.

RESIST!!

It’s not often that we get as good an example of RepubliCare as this.  When the treatment fleeces the recipients of everything they have and kills them, that’s the RepubliCare Death Benefit.  The Republican Reich provides death at no extra charge.  In this example, greedy Republican corporate criminals intentionally addict millions to opioids.  Then they feed them more and more pills, via the black market, until it kills them.

The Walgreens employee was bewildered by the quantity of opioids the company was shipping to just one store. Its pharmacy in Port Richey, Fla. (population 2,831) was ordering 3,271 bottles of oxycodone a month.

“I don’t know how they can even house this many bottles to be honest,” Barbara Martin, whose job was to review suspicious drug orders, wrote to a colleague in a January 2011 email. The next month, the company shipped another outsized order to the same store.

The email was among thousands of documents from corporations across the pharmaceutical and retail industries — internal memos, depositions, sales and shipping reports, experts’ analyses, and other confidential information — filed Friday in federal court in Cleveland by lawyers for cities, towns and counties devastated by addiction. They lay out a detailed case of how diverse corporate interests — far beyond the familiar players like Purdue Pharma — fed a deadly opioid epidemic that persisted for nearly two decades.

Little-known manufacturers of generic pills, superstores like Walmart and chain retailers like Rite Aid also flooded the country with billions of pills, according to the filings. The devastation was so extreme that one Ohio county resorted to a mobile morgue to handle all the corpses of people who died from overdoses… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Rachel Maddow did a superior job of bringing this crisis to light.

Let me be clear.  Opioids are not the problem.  I use Oxycodone for phantom limb pain.  I very seldom need one and average one pill every month or two, but when I do, it’s the only thing that stops severe pain in a limb that no longer exist.  The problem is sales and marketing by Republicans that is so abusive that they are murdering people for profit.  These Republicans need to do hard time, and lots of it!

RESIST!!