The Goat Pen

The Hollywood "casting couch" was en vogue long before TKAM was written. Then came the sexual revolution and feminism and supposed empowerment for women. You have to think all those young actresses Weinstien abused never saw it coming (until he opened his bathrobe that is). Then they had to make a split second decision on having their career made or broken. And apparently he made good on his "you'll never work in this town again" threats. Just another rich powerful hedonist mofo.

eCat wrote:At the same time, women were rallying behind a woman who stood by this man, dismissed his attackers and continued to enable him - and people wanted this woman to be president.

She did get 3 million more votes than the other guy. Melania should keep that in mind (and continue to work on her Engrish)...7 years from now, you never know.....

that kind of abuse is not taken very seriously by the voters as evidenced by our current president.

The threshold of lying in office was set sooo high by the Clintons, anybody can be prez now.

bluetick wrote:

eCat wrote:At the same time, women were rallying behind a woman who stood by this man, dismissed his attackers and continued to enable him - and people wanted this woman to be president.

She did get 3 million more votes than the other guy.


just shows the hypocrisy of the voters

Maybe Weinstein can share a jail cell with Wiener. They'd have a lot to talk about.

Hillary was asked if Weinstein's behavior was worse than Bill's, she said "Close, but no cigar"...

That's funny right there.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/sarah-sande ... ons-death/

Cross-eyed Huckleberry apparently forgot who brought up the subject of Kelly's dead son in the first place.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... a4538de1b7

I said you wanna be startin' somethin'
Got to be startin' somethin'

Im not taking the guns off my drone

“They can have my drone when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”

Just catching the tail end of this drone chat. Has it been mentioned that Obama killed American citizens abroad with a drone (and without due process)? Talk about your slippery slopes.

Tree wrote:Just catching the tail end of this drone chat. Has it been mentioned that Obama killed American citizens abroad with a drone (and without due process)? Talk about your slippery slopes.

we had a pretty healthy debate around here when that happened.

The man who won the Nobel Peace prize no less

Not that any Trump haters will actually care about integrity but this should be concerning. It won't be as long as Mueller finds something , regardless of whether its Russian related or not

Apparently with his choice, its doesn't even have to be real.

-------------------------

Much has been written about the prosecutorial prowess of Robert Mueller’s team assembled to investigate allegations of Russia’s involvement in the Trump campaign. Little has been said of the danger of prosecutorial overreach and the true history of Mueller’s lead prosecutor.

What was supposed to have been a search for Russia’s cyberspace intrusions into our electoral politics has morphed into a malevolent mission targeting friends, family and colleagues of the president. The Mueller investigation has become an all-out assault to find crimes to pin on them — and it won’t matter if there are no crimes to be found. This team can make some.

Many Americans despise President Trump and anyone associated with him. Yet turning our system of justice into a political weapon is a danger we must guard against.

Think back to April 1, 1940, and a world awash in turmoil, hate and fear. Revered Attorney General Robert H. Jackson assembled the United States attorneys. In remarks enshrined in the hearts of all good prosecutors, he said, “the citizen's safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.”



Yet Mueller tapped a different sort of prosecutor to lead his investigation — his long-time friend and former counsel, Andrew Weissmann. He is not just a “tough” prosecutor. Time after time, courts have reversed Weissmann’s most touted “victories” for his tactics. This is hardly the stuff of a hero in the law.

Weissmann, as deputy and later director of the Enron Task Force, destroyed the venerable accounting firm of Arthur Andersen LLP and its 85,000 jobs worldwide — only to be reversed several years later by a unanimous Supreme Court.

Next, Weissmann creatively criminalized a business transaction between Merrill Lynch and Enron. Four Merrill executives went to prison for as long as a year. Weissmann’s team made sure they did not even get bail pending their appeals, even though the charges Weissmann concocted, like those against Andersen, were literally unprecedented.

Weissmann’s prosecution devastated the lives and families of the Merrill executives, causing enormous defense costs, unimaginable stress and torturous prison time. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the mass of the case.

Weissmann quietly resigned from the Enron Task Force just as the judge in the Enron Broadband prosecution began excoriating Weissmann’s team, and the press began catching on to Weissmann’s modus operandi.

Mueller knows this history. Is this why he tapped Weissmann to target Paul Manafort?

As Attorney General Jackson foretold: “Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.”

Manafort, a Trump associate, is simply a small step in Weissmann’s quest to impugn this presidency or to reverse the results of the 2016 election. Never mind that months of investigation by multiple entities have produced no evidence of "collusion." Mueller’s rare, predawn raid of Manafort’s home — a fearsome treat usually reserved for mobsters and drug dealers — is textbook Weissmann terrorism. And of course, the details were leaked — another illegal tactic.

Weissmann is intent on indicting Manafort. It won’t matter that Manafort knows the Trump campaign did not collude with the Russians. Weissman will pressure Manafort to say whatever satisfies Weissmann’s perspective. Perjury is only that which differs from Weissmann’s “view” of the “evidence” — not the actual truth.

We all lose from Weissmann’s involvement. First, the truth plays no role in Weissmann’s quest. Second, respect for the rule of law, simple decency and following the facts do not appear in Weissmann’s playbook. Third, and most important, all Americans lose whenever our judicial system becomes a weapon to reward political friends and punish political foes.

It is long past the due date for Mueller to clean up his team — or Weissmann to resign — as a sign that the United States is a nation of laws that are far more important than one Weissmann.

eCat wrote:Not that any Trump haters will actually care about integrity but this should be concerning. It won't be as long as Mueller finds something , regardless of whether its Russian related or not

Apparently with his choice, its doesn't even have to be real.

-------------------------

Much has been written about the prosecutorial prowess of Robert Mueller’s team assembled to investigate allegations of Russia’s involvement in the Trump campaign. Little has been said of the danger of prosecutorial overreach and the true history of Mueller’s lead prosecutor.

What was supposed to have been a search for Russia’s cyberspace intrusions into our electoral politics has morphed into a malevolent mission targeting friends, family and colleagues of the president. The Mueller investigation has become an all-out assault to find crimes to pin on them — and it won’t matter if there are no crimes to be found. This team can make some.

Many Americans despise President Trump and anyone associated with him. Yet turning our system of justice into a political weapon is a danger we must guard against.

Think back to April 1, 1940, and a world awash in turmoil, hate and fear. Revered Attorney General Robert H. Jackson assembled the United States attorneys. In remarks enshrined in the hearts of all good prosecutors, he said, “the citizen's safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.”



Yet Mueller tapped a different sort of prosecutor to lead his investigation — his long-time friend and former counsel, Andrew Weissmann. He is not just a “tough” prosecutor. Time after time, courts have reversed Weissmann’s most touted “victories” for his tactics. This is hardly the stuff of a hero in the law.

Weissmann, as deputy and later director of the Enron Task Force, destroyed the venerable accounting firm of Arthur Andersen LLP and its 85,000 jobs worldwide — only to be reversed several years later by a unanimous Supreme Court.

Next, Weissmann creatively criminalized a business transaction between Merrill Lynch and Enron. Four Merrill executives went to prison for as long as a year. Weissmann’s team made sure they did not even get bail pending their appeals, even though the charges Weissmann concocted, like those against Andersen, were literally unprecedented.

Weissmann’s prosecution devastated the lives and families of the Merrill executives, causing enormous defense costs, unimaginable stress and torturous prison time. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the mass of the case.

Weissmann quietly resigned from the Enron Task Force just as the judge in the Enron Broadband prosecution began excoriating Weissmann’s team, and the press began catching on to Weissmann’s modus operandi.

Mueller knows this history. Is this why he tapped Weissmann to target Paul Manafort?

As Attorney General Jackson foretold: “Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.”

Manafort, a Trump associate, is simply a small step in Weissmann’s quest to impugn this presidency or to reverse the results of the 2016 election. Never mind that months of investigation by multiple entities have produced no evidence of "collusion." Mueller’s rare, predawn raid of Manafort’s home — a fearsome treat usually reserved for mobsters and drug dealers — is textbook Weissmann terrorism. And of course, the details were leaked — another illegal tactic.

Weissmann is intent on indicting Manafort. It won’t matter that Manafort knows the Trump campaign did not collude with the Russians. Weissman will pressure Manafort to say whatever satisfies Weissmann’s perspective. Perjury is only that which differs from Weissmann’s “view” of the “evidence” — not the actual truth.

We all lose from Weissmann’s involvement. First, the truth plays no role in Weissmann’s quest. Second, respect for the rule of law, simple decency and following the facts do not appear in Weissmann’s playbook. Third, and most important, all Americans lose whenever our judicial system becomes a weapon to reward political friends and punish political foes.

It is long past the due date for Mueller to clean up his team — or Weissmann to resign — as a sign that the United States is a nation of laws that are far more important than one Weissmann.

Wonder if this spin job includes a happy ending.

There is actually REAL evidence of a US president and presidential candidate colluding with the Russians, manipulating official US foreign policy in their favor and against America’s, and taking cash payments from the Russians for personal enrichment. But the last name of the president who colluded with the Russians was Obama, and the last name of the presidential candidate who received cash payments from the Russians was Clinton.

Uranium One.

So he's disparaging one of these guys by saying he was overly harsh in his prosecution of the Enron case? Not going get a lot of sympathy from me on that one. Also, I found this laughable: "Next, Weissmann creatively criminalized a business transaction between Merrill Lynch and Enron. Four Merrill executives went to prison for as long as a year.... Weissmann’s prosecution devastated the lives and families of the Merrill executives, causing enormous defense costs, unimaginable stress and torturous prison time." I kinda got a chuckle at "up to a year" in Club Fed being characterized as "torturous". The real joke of this article, however, is that they are implying that this Weissman guy single-handedly did all these things. He prosecuted the cases, got his verdict, and then had some of them overturned. That's how the court system is supposed to work...

"Next, Weissmann creatively criminalized a business transaction between Merrill Lynch and Enron."

Yeah, again, I don't think a prosecutor had to be terribly creative to assess that criminal transactions had occurred with Enron. Ironically, the legitimate complaint you usually hear is that rich white collar guys almost always get off, if they're even prosecuted in the first place. Now this guy has the temerity to go after a couple of those guys and he's being pilloried for it...

Finally: "Mueller’s rare, predawn raid of Manafort’s home — a fearsome treat usually reserved for mobsters and drug dealers — is textbook Weissmann terrorism." Again, the implication seems to be "Hey, these guys weren't mobsters of drug dealers, why should they have warrants issued against them?" And it's not like this Weissmann guy issued the warrant himself, he presented it to a judge who obviously found it valid enough to issue a search warrant. Again, that's how our legal system is supposed to work. Sounds like everything was done by the book to me. For this writer to characterize that as "terrorism" is needlessly hysterical. Now then, this is the first time I've heard of this Weissman guy, maybe he is a total asshole and has no regard for the law, I don't know. But I'm certainly not going to form any opinion of him based on this hysterical article...