I like how they are invoking Trump's desire to elicit "rahmanes" from Comey, it's just compassion for his fallen life long friend  cco-conspirator of roughly two years vintage.

It's almost as if a compassionate President Trump were not able, should the wheels of justice grind fthis "good guy" up and threaten his personal liberty, to grant some kinda clemency...., wait, what?

Oh,right.  That would be AFTER the investigation itself had resulted in a proctoscopic examination (ewww...unfortunate metaphor alert!) of Trump's business history, etc.

Ha! I don't think I get to take credit after conceding your point about Rosenstein's implication in Comey's firing. But I'll accept it on behalf of my former, righter self. ;0)

& the perfect representation of broken English has channeled Natasha Fatale for me from my childhood from the Rocky & Bullwinkle show. Why has no one else noticed that similarity?

Yeah, her allegations are so much worse than MSNBC anonymous sourced pieces defending Pence as completely out of the loop, or NYTimes pre-election headlines screaming Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.

The reason she's getting traction is 1) mainstream press is not only is lazy & useless, it sat on the Steele Dossier among other bits for 6 months without figuring out which parts were reportable and showed no appetite for serious unbiased reporting over the last election cycle, and 2) she's occasionally right (batting .200?), dredges up important angles, and is self-avowedly unhinged, unlike say Alex Jones.

Huh? Everything posted here from NY Times to WaPo to Observer to Wolf Blitzer & CNN to Glenn Greenwald to Morning Joe to Consortium to The Guardian to the Atlantic to Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone has the potential to be completely full of shit, and has frequently been proven to be so. Huffington Post's scatter-brained "head of polling" was claiming Hillary had some 90%+ chance the day before the elections and brazenly chastising Nate Silver for being too careful. How's Hillary's Parkinsons and indictment coming along?

And in case you haven't realized, there are a lot of actual conspiracies going on, so saying "conspiracy conspiracy conspiracy" doesn't per se make it right or wrong.

As I've noted before, if you ask people whether 9/11 was a "conspiracy", most will instinctively say "no", even though we know at least 19 US-based Arabs + Osama bin Laden + undoubtedly a number of other participants took part in an actual "conspiracy". And then they'll get mad and all self-justifying when you point out the absurdity But that word's been coopted to mean "crazy unthinking participant in unfounded witch hunts". Notice Donald immediately appealing to the memory of McCarthy and "witch hunt". We set ourselves up to be misled.

Please note that I almost never put up links without discussing them. You can disagree with my logic and the significance of numerous references, but I'm generally trying to avoid being mindless and knee-jerk about blogging, since what's the point? But EmptyWheel's ripped apart conservative takes on security issues - she regularly reviews Congressional hearings & court cases and Administration releases to do exactly this - something the mainstream media does much less frequently. This goes both directions - a lot of FBI & CIA & NSA claims about how they're following the law have been proven doubtful, whereas other claims go the other way.

But nor did anyone here claim that Louise Mensch/Claude wassisname are right as often or as thoughtful & legally experienced as Marcy Wheeler. But we regularly post tons of WaPo & NYTimes links, ignoring the number of times they've been hugely wrong, fooled, missing key data, tools of a cynical press release or an anonymous administration leak.... Those hard-hitting reporters aren't always so impressively hard-hitting.

Note how they dealt with the Schiller Dossier - they immediately jumped to the sensational "golden showers" bit and ignored the validity of many aspects to the admittedly uncertain allegations. Due to this malfeasance, the public was robbed of months of knowing what was in the works, including knowledge of serious investigations of Trump & co. up to election day & after. That bothers me much more than whether Louise Mensch is obviously potty mouthed and oversure of herself - I'm easily able to parse out the showbiz parts of her performance.

Bullshit on that - false equivalency. Alex Jones is all over the map, now apologizing for pizzagate after a murder and today for a legal case around sexual charges with refugees, elsewhere playing elvis on the moon and terrorists coming to get us etc.

The country's in freakout mode because the administration and the GOP are bizarre and daily astounding us. Nunes' midnight run? Trump meeting with Russians Lavrov and Aslyak (sp?) in the Oval Office the day after firing Comey? Jared's sister pitching real estate-with-visas on an official gov trip to China and removing the press, Trump discussing secret matters about a Syrian bombing with the Japanese PM in front of a crowded banquet at his FL resort?

Mensch isn't responsible for making Truth 2017 bizarre, yet Mensch isnt claiming her Twitter feed is accurate - she's piecing and pasting together docket listings and IP traces and speculation from different quarters, many/most unknown hoping some (20%?) is accurate. I don't think many think of her feed as much more than entertainment, fantasy football except a chance a tidbit here or there might kick the can forward or beat the news cycle.

But it's all about this crooked conspiracy-driven-and-stoking administration anyway. Use it or don't. Enjoy or don't. You folks seem awfully impressed with the state of journalism to ascribe such vaulted expectations. Maybe I should explain what Twitter is vs the starker danger of the background mechanics that ended Dan Rather's career and led us into war - where was our anointed press then? Oh, blindsided. Well done, chaps. So let's play 'kick a blogger' because we've moved on to better stuff. Hey, I get Dan Froomkin's Twitter feed - pretty diluted uninspiring stuff for what started out as a promising career. Etc.

Here's what I think a useful tidbit from Palmer Report, another site I was scolded for referencing, that counter to Pence's denials that he didn't see Cummings letter addressed *only* to him, that there's a receipt and response proving he knew Flynn tainted. Outlandish accusation like pizzagate? Will life stop if not true?

Really, we're all sitting aroung navel-gazing, waiting for the next news blip from the usual pages to eagerly cite, pondering over meanings and discussing likelihoods and significance. What exactly is the big worry about citing something we all agree has questionable accuracy? It's grist for the "what-if" part of the discussion.

I'm curious how people thought Citizen Journalism/crowd sourced news would work in practice - like a perfect cloud version of the newsroom in All the President's Men? I see it as roughly a more chaotic and dodge His Girl Friday, which wasn't too flattering about the news biz to begin with.