‘When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s gotta be. … The federal government has absolute power.’

It started with these tweets this morning: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1249712413219397632 Then boy did he just dig the deepest constitutional hole in the world with this one. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1249834932513505280 Lady reporter kept asking him, "Who told you that? That's not true." Then Pence took the podium, was asked if that's what he thought too, and cited the "national emergency." Mostly they were just bullshitting. They're not going to try to order the governors to obey any lifting of the lockdowns. But it does go to show how easy it is for them to reach...

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4/11/20 Ray McGovern on the World’s Most Heroic Journalist

Scott talks to Ray McGovern about the heroic Julian Assange, who is still languishing in solitary confinement during his extradition trial to the U.S. on charges that he coordinated with Chelsea Manning to steal classified documents from the U.S. government. McGovern reminds us of how many important truths have been exposed to the American people thanks to WikiLeaks, and wonders what calamities could have been avoided had WikiLeaks been around sooner, such as 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. In both cases—much like in the current coronavirus crisis—there were officials who tried to warn...

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4/10/20 Chip Gibbons on the FBI’s Abusive Surveillance of Nonviolent Activists

Scott talks to Chip Gibbons about his research into FBI spying on nonviolent pro-Palestinian activist groups. Although these activists are made out to be dangerous terrorist sympathizers, Gibbons says that the actual evidence against them amounts to criminalization of political speech and some very questionable guilt by association. Unfortunately, these abuses of surveillance power are far from rare, as the FBI has almost no oversight from other branches of government. Political will to reform the Bureau is also practically nil, given that everybody wants to preserve the ability to use them...

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