Sandpoint Indivisible

If you are living in a bubble (which is sometimes necessary to maintain sanity in the modern era and please do it whenever you need to take care of your mental health), you may not have heard that yesterday James Comey was fired by Trump’s administration.  Comey was the FBI director who took flack for publicizing Clinton’s email investigation in the last days of the presidential election, but was also leading the investigation into Trump’s cabinet’s ties with Russia.

If this sounds suspicious to you, THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS.

Was this designed to cover up some wrong doing in the Trump Administration?  Was this designed to distract us from the abomination that is Trump-Care, the tiny-hands replacement for the ACA that will un-insure millions of Americans?  Probably.

TODAY  we need you to call or write your members of congress and DEMAND A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR to take over the investigation of the Trump Administration’s ties to Russia.  Go to 5calls.org right now and do it.  It will take less than 5 minutes.  You’ll feel better then, because you’ve taken action.  The monster of outrage that is eating your heart will lie down after you make this call.  Stop reading and do it now.

TODAY we need you to write a letter to the editor of your local paper and DEMAND HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS.  Write the Bonner County Daily Bee at clobsinger@bonnercountydailybee.com

Our representative Raul Labrador became the unwilling spokesman for everything Congress DOESN’T understand about healthcare, when he said at his Lewiston, ID town hall last Friday that “No one dies from lack of health care.”  Do not let this debate whither.  The ACA has changed the debate.  This is one thing we can and will win in our lifetimes: universal health care for all Americans.  But we have to keep it in the headlines. We can’t let them distract us with shiny news of the corruption we have always known would rear its head in this white house.

We are amazing.  We have done so much.  And we are not done.

In Service,

Rachel

More about the ACA changing the debate in health care here.

More musings about Comey’s firing from the Facebook front from historian Heather Richardson:

“Very quickly, before I have to run to my next meeting, an answer to a question I keep getting. What does President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey mean?

My guess is that Trump’s people learned something new yesterday when former director of national security James Clapper testified. Clapper said that he did not know that Trump was under FBI investigation until Comey said so in March. For months, Trump has cited Clapper’s suggestion that Trump was not under investigation as proof that Trump was not under investigation over his ties to Russia.

But here’s the thing: the FBI investigates cases involving national security, and if Trump were under investigation for something involving that, Comey would have told Clapper. But there was no reason to investigate Trump for colluding with Russia while Clapper was in office– he resigned last November. So what was the FBI investigating? The FBI does not just investigate national security issues; it also investigates criminal activity. And there would have been no reason to tell Clapper about such an investigation.

Anyone listening to Clapper’s testimony must have worried that the FBI has President Trump under active investigation for criminal activity. It seems likely that those involve his financial connections to Russia, which we know he has had for a decade or more.

Trump’s tweets yesterday support the idea that he is worried about Clapper’s testimony and what it says about Comey’s investigation. The president cannot keep himself from publishing his innermost thoughts on Twitter. He repeatedly attacked yesterday’s testimony, and last night he even briefly changed his Twitter background to one of his own tweets, reading (inaccurately): “Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows- there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.” If Trump is fixated on Clapper and testimony, it’s important to him.

So, quite unexpectedly, the president axed Comey, trying to make it sound like he was punishing the director for mishandling Secretary of State Clinton’s emails, although he praised him for that same action just months ago. Clearly, he hopes to replace Comey with someone who will stop the ongoing FBI investigation.

Will it work? Well, I guess it’s up to us.

President Nixon tried the same gambit in 1973, firing Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox after Cox subpoenaed tapes pertaining to the Watergate investigation. On Saturday, October 20, 1973, Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned rather than carry out the order to fire Cox. Then his deputy, William Ruckleshaus did the same. Finally, the third man at the Justice Department, Robert Bork (who would be nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan), was willing to carry out the order. With the housecleaning, Nixon seemed safe from investigation.

But the public outcry over what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre was so great that Nixon was forced to allow Bork to appoint a new special prosecutor. Within a month Nixon had to go on television and reassure the American people “I am not a crook.” But all his bluster couldn’t keep the truth at bay. On August 9, 1974, just ten months after the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon became the first president in American history to be forced to resign.”