Credible News Sources

[Robert]

Ditto with Fox.

I find Bret Biar and a few other from the straight news side of Fox News to be quite credible and honest. You can feel they are biased, but I do not find it all that way. Even the biased commentators are not as bad as the straight news of MSNBC and CNN.

I watched the Barr Press Conference today and found it quite insightful and well done.

[temporal1]

Ditto with Fox.

I find Bret Biar and a few other from the straight news side of Fox News to be quite credible and honest. You can feel they are biased, but I do not find it all that way. Even the biased commentators are not as bad as the straight news of MSNBC and CNN.

for most of my life, i listened to the CBS, NBC, ABC folks, definitely PBS+NPR.
the evening news, the 10 PM news, not 24/7 drivel.

in recent years, they sicken me. to the point i unplugged ALL TV in 2016.

so, i recognize the names. i just cannot understand how anyone can listen or read presently without being appalled.

Ted Koppel, Lara Logan, and Tom Brokaw have recently spoken to it.
it’s pretty bad.

for COMMENTARY, which now makes up the vast majority of what is presented as news,
i enjoy Herman Cain. he is not high-brow or scholarly, but he is informed, experienced,
and he’s not a liar.

[Bootstrap]

Ditto with Fox.

I find Bret Biar and a few other from the straight news side of Fox News to be quite credible and honest. You can feel they are biased, but I do not find it all that way. Even the biased commentators are not as bad as the straight news of MSNBC and CNN.

The straight news of Fox is definitely better than their commentators. I'm more likely to put them in the same category as the straight news of MSNBC and CNN. But I just don't find any of them helpful when I want in-depth information. And of course, the "latest" news is never the most reliable, reliable emerges over time.

I watched the Barr Press Conference today and found it quite insightful and well done.

I didn't watch it, I have read the transcript.

Bill Barr's Press Conference (transcript)

I want to see how it compares to the Mueller Report itself, which I have only begun to read.

The parts of the Mueller Report that describe "what happened" are pretty easy to read, incidentally. The parts that describe legal analysis are mostly in separate sections, which are harder to read. So you can easily look up the name of any person you are interested in and read what the report says about them.

Mueller Report (searchable PDF)

[Josh]

I'm sure everyone will go read the report and obtain objective information, instead of just finding things to confirm the biases they already have... hey I can dream, can't I?

[Bootstrap]

I'm sure everyone will go read the report and obtain objective information, instead of just finding things to confirm the biases they already have... hey I can dream, can't I?

Let's try!

[Robert]

I want to see how it compares to the Mueller Report itself, which I have only begun to read.

Reading and picking out parts of the Mueller Report are only a political game now. The DOJ has said this is DOA. Case closed. They will not proceed any further. I think they have good legal grounds to stand on for this, but I am no lawyer. The only thing left is for The House to use it for political gain. Once the IG report hits in May or June, we may get much more info on the start of all this.

[Bootstrap]

I want to see how it compares to the Mueller Report itself, which I have only begun to read.

Reading and picking out parts of the Mueller Report are only a political game now. The DOJ has said this is DOA. Case closed. They will not proceed any further. I think they have good legal grounds to stand on for this, but I am no lawyer.

Under these rules, the case would have been closed before it even started. DOJ policy says that a sitting president cannot be indicted. The Mueller Report makes it clear that the process did not allow him to decide that the President had committed a crime - "we determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes". It did allow him to clear the President of a crime - "if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state".

Now that the Mueller Report is out, it's pretty much out of their hands. The Mueller Report could have cleared the President of all charges. It did not. Now it's time to read the report carefully and see what it says.

The only thing left is for The House to use it for political gain. Once the IG report hits in May or June, we may get much more info on the start of all this.

If you read the Mueller Report, an awful lot of things are redacted because they are related to ongoing investigations. Some of these are other investigations in the Justice Department. Some of these are in the Southern District of New York, Washington DC, or Eastern District of Virginia.

Some of this will be investigated in the House and the Senate, which may have competing narratives. I doubt that they would try to impeach Trump during his first term. Neither Nixon nor Clinton were impeached in their first term.

A lot more information is available now. And this information is useful for looking back to see which news sources were accurate.

When the IG's report comes out, we can read it, just as we can now read the Mueller Report. But the Mueller Report says an awful lot about how the investigation started.

[ohio jones]

I doubt that they would try to impeach Trump during his first term. Neither Nixon nor Clinton were impeached in their first term.

Given the rarity of presidential impeachments, it's difficult to draw any conclusions from that. Johnson was impeached during his first term. Nixon was not impeached in either his first term nor his abbreviated second term, though things were headed in that direction. The most we can say is that no president has been re-elected following an impeachment, though one did come fairly close to being elected First Gentleman. So the historical trend would suggest, in the event of a Trump impeachment: Melania 2036!

[JimFoxvog]

Some read the Mueller report reads like a referral to Congress for impeachment. At this point, that makes sense to me. I don't think the House should wait.

[Bootstrap]

Some read the Mueller report reads like a referral to Congress for impeachment. At this point, that makes sense to me. I don't think the House should wait.

I'm not sure. I don't yet understand what the House can do to investigate if they don't impeach.

Lawfare represents a range of opinion. Here's an article that agrees with you.

I think it would be better if the initial investigations did not have the word "impeachment" associated with them. But they do need the authority to get people to talk with them, and that might require them to call the initial investigations an "impeachment inquiry" before deciding what to do with the result of the investigation.

... under the current system, the options for checking a president who abuses his power to the degree that Trump has are functionally impeachment proceedings or nothing.

There are many factors here, but the main culprit is the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)’s 2000 memo against the indictment of a sitting president—which itself builds on a 1973 OLC memo, drafted during Watergate, which reached the same conclusion.

The 2000 memo played a key role in shaping Mueller’s decision not to reach a traditional prosecutorial judgment on the issue of presidential obstruction of justice. But while it was reasonable for the special counsel’s office to consider itself bound by OLC’s reasoning, it produces a baffling end result: Mueller is barred, as he understands it, from reaching the point in his analysis at which he would make a call as to prosecution or declination of obstruction. Indeed, he will not even say explicitly whether he believes that the president has committed crimes. He is clear, however, that if he could exonerate Trump on the basis of the available evidence, he would do so. And he isn’t doing so. This means that, by Mueller’s read, it is only possible for an investigation to exonerate the president consistent with the OLC memo—he cannot be charged and uncharged crimes must remain unspoken.

Mueller’s solution is to pass the question to Congress. He isn’t especially subtle in doing so. He notes that “a federal criminal accusation against a sitting President would … potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct,” then flags in a footnote the Constitution’s clauses on impeachment and the OLC opinion’s discussion of the “relationship between impeachment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.” In other words, he is saying that while he is not permitted to determine if the president committed a crime, Congress can judge the president’s conduct itself.