James Madison said...
1.   Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, “that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.”2 The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the General Authority; much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no mans right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.3


https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163

Roger Stone, a Donald Trump confidante and longtime Republican dirty trickster, communicated privately with a Russian hacking group identified by U.S. intelligence officials as the culprit in the theft of emails related to the Democratic presidential campaign.

Stone, who is under FBI investigation for his alleged ties to Russia, communicated through private Twitter messages with the “hacktivist” known as Guccifer 2.0 during the presidential campaign, reported The Smoking Gun.

Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be a lone activist committed to “fight all those illuminati,” and Stone promoted those claims, but U.S. intelligence officials believe with “high confidence” that Russia’s intelligence service, GRU, operated the hacker’s Twitter, WordPress and “burner” emails used to communicate with the media — including The Smoking Gun — and other individuals.

A source told the website that Stone, who admitted over the weekend to back-channel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, exchanged private direct messages with Guccifer 2.0, in addition to exchanges on their public Twitter accounts.


https://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/fbi-has-records-of-trump-trickster-roger-stone-communicating-with-russians-behind-dnc-hacks-report/


Lots of trouble for Trump.

As CEO of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson was accustomed to going where he wanted, when he wanted, with whomever he wanted. It comes with being the CEO of one of the most valuable companies in the world.

He doesn't seem compelled to act much differently as Secretary of State — at least in the early going.

It's why news bureau chiefs will hold a conference call this morning to discuss Tillerson's initial decision to not allow press to travel with him on his government plane for an upcoming trip to Asia. On an initial invitation list were the major broadcast and cable networks, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, BBC, Thomson Reuters and Voice of America, among others. ..


In the early days of the administration, Tillerson is operating rather differently than his high-profile, tweeting boss, Trump. Access has been minimal and there have been no on-camera briefings. There's the understanding that the tradition of daily press briefings at the State Department may well change, to as few as two a week.

It's still early. But, so far, it appears Tillerson is not more given to deal with the media as he was in confronting the realities of climate change as a Big Oil chief who long questioned the science behind the obvious.


http://www.poynter.org/2017/as-rex-tillerson-considers-ditching-the-press-news-organizations-plan-a-response/451431/

Mwanwhile, as the world watches the dead squirrel on Trumps head....

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has kept a low-key profile — arguably even a no-key profile — and it is apparently undermining confidence in his abilities within the State Department.

It’s been reported since last month that Tillerson has been sidelined within the Trump administration, as foreign policy power seems to have been handed to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief strategist Steve Bannon. In the meantime, the State Department has been left in disarray, its future importance uncertain because of its loss of influence and Team Trump’s planned series of massive funding cuts.

Even though on Monday the State Department is restoring its press briefings, which traditionally were held daily with rare exceptions, Tillerson is not expected to appear, according to Politico. State Department sources also told Politico that Tillerson’s anticipated absence, combined with the budget cuts or Tillerson’s inability to use the State Department to set a clear foreign policy agenda, has caused a significant loss of faith in his leadership within the agency.

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/06/rex-tillersons-low-key-performance-as-secretary-of-state-is-worrying-the-department/


Tilleraon seems to have vanished from the news cycle.

I Googled " Tillerson - Russia, and the last news entry was from mid February.

I wonder if Tilllerson is the fox the press should be watching while Trump distracts?

THE BIG IDEA: It is easy to pooh-pooh Donald Trump’s predawn Saturday tweetstorm – accusing Barack Obama of the worst political crimes since Watergate while offering no evidence – as an undisciplined rant from someone who has long embraced conspiracy theories.

That neither gives the president enough credit nor reflects the gravity of his unfounded accusations.

It is past time to dispense with the fiction that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to distract us. And, at least this weekend, he succeeded.

<snip>

ALWAYS ATTACK, NEVER APOLOGIZE

-- Trump’s approach to crisis management continues to be guided by the Roy Cohn playbook. “This is McCarthyism!” Trump said, as he attacked Obama for supposedly wiretapping him, on Saturday. There was great irony to this. Cohn, after all, was Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations during the early 1950s. Two decades later, he became one of Trump’s biggest mentors during a formative phase of his life.

-- Cohn’s creed was to always be on the attack, to counter-punch whenever punched and to never apologize. Never, ever, ever apologize. He believed that you never yield an inch, even if you’re in the wrong, because your opponents will take a mile.

-- “The man who showed Trump how to exploit power and instill fear” is how The Post’s Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Shawn Boburg described him in a story last June: “Trump was a brash scion of a real estate empire, a young developer anxious to leave his mark on New York. Cohn was a legendary New York fixer, a ruthless lawyer in the hunt for new clients. They came together by chance one night at Le Club, a hangout for Manhattan’s rich and famous. Trump introduced himself to Cohn, who was sitting at a nearby table, and sought advice: How should he and his father respond to Justice Department allegations that their company had systematically discriminated against black people seeking housing? ‘My view is tell them to go to hell,’ Cohn said, ‘and fight the thing in court.’ It was October 1973 and the start of one of the most influential relationships of Trump’s career.”

<snip>

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/03/06/daily-202-wiretapping-allegations-accomplished-what-trump-wanted-but-may-backfire-bigly/58bca8bde9b69b1406c75d42/

This is a MUST READ EYE OPENER!

(CNN) President Donald Trump is extremely frustrated with his senior staff and communications team for allowing the firestorm surrounding Attorney General Jeff Sessions to steal his thunder in the wake of his address to Congress, sources tell CNN.

"Nobody has seen him that upset," one source said, adding the feeling was the communications team allowed the Sessions news, which the administration deemed a nonstory, to overtake the narrative.

On Thursday, Sessions recused himself from any current or future investigations into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign after it was reported he had met with the Russian ambassador to the US, something he had previously failed to disclose.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/03/04/politics/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-reince-priebus/index.html

Edit -

HOLY SHIT!


"Trump reportedly went 'ballistic' over Sessions recusal amid Russia firestorm

President Donald Trump was outraged Friday over Attorney General Jeff Sessions' recusal from investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, according to media reports.

Trump hauled his key advisers into the Oval Office on Friday afternoon before he departed for Palm Beach, Florida, and went "ballistic" over Sessions' recusal, ABC News reported, citing senior White House sources....

After the meeting, Bannon and Priebus offered to stay behind in Washington, rather than accompanying Trump to Florida as planned, according to ABC News. Trump reportedly agreed they should remain behind, and their names were removed from the passenger manifest."



http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ballistic-over-sessions-recusal-russia-ties-in-meeting-2017-3

The rallies also intended to show unity in the face of what organizers call "a seditious fringe" aiming to sabotage Trump's vision for the country.
According to the organizer's website, rallies were scheduled in some 50 cities, including Nashville, Phoenix, Boston, Denver, Miami, and St. Paul, and even Berkeley, Calif. In several cities, the rallies were met by counter-demonstrations and some arrests.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/03/04/supporters-gather-march-4-trump-rallies-around-us/98740822/

Read that first paragraph carefully.

The "seditious fringe" these bastards are referring to is US.

Not only does a president not order wiretapping, but national Republican political strategist and media consultant Rick Wilson reminded President Trump this morning that the wiretapping was hardly a secret, the FBI was granted a FISA warrant in October covering Trump’s ties to Russia:

Rick Wilson ✔ @TheRickWilson
Just a reminder that this wasn't a secret: http://bit.ly/2m5KzXE via @LouiseMensch
9:40 AM - 4 Mar 2017

Wilson mocked Trump for sounding like Nixon but with “Trumpbart brittle”, “I love this tweet. This is ‘I am not a crook’ wrapped in the Caine Mutiny, covered in Trumpbart brittle, and with a creamy nougat filling.”

Rick Wilson ✔ @TheRickWilson
I love this tweet. This is "I am not a crook" wrapped in the Caine Mutiny, covered in Trumpbart brittle, and with a creamy nougat filling. …
9:27 AM - 4 Mar 2017

Wilson is saying that Trump is projecting his guilt. Intelligence expert Malcolm Nance said on MSNBC’s Joy Reid this is the kind of behavior you see when a target starts getting “buggy.”

Meanwhile, many in the intelligence community are saying new info will be dropped that will be “the least convenient facts in American political history.”


http://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/04/gop-media-strategist-reminds-trump-fbi-granted-fisa-warrant-covering-ties-russia.html

from WIRED magazine -


IT STARTED, LIKE so many eruptions these days, with a tweet.

Early Saturday morning, President Trump fired off a series of tweets accusing, without evidence, former President Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in the month before the election. Trump compared the alleged snooping to “Nixon/Watergate,” and intimated legal action....

“You can’t tap the phones of a political candidate for political purposes,” says Doss.

What you could you tap them for? Acting as a foreign power, or as an agent of a foreign power. In other words, spying against US interests with both knowledge and intent....

If federal authorities did have cause to listen in on Trump Tower, though, and they provided enough evidence for a FISA court to approve the snooping, Obama is not the one who ought to worry.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2017/03/feds-wiretap-trump-tower-not-obama-worry/amp/

After Donald Trump had accused President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower before the election, former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told Trump that it is because of people like him that presidents don’t have the power to order wiretaps.

Ben Rhodes ✔ @brhodes
No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you. …

Trump’s tweets caught the White House off-guard, because they had no idea that he was going to launch into a conspiracy about Obama tapping his phones:



Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump

I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election




Former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes dropped some a humiliating facts on Trump




There is a pattern to Trump’s tweet attacks. Before the stories on Attorney General Sessions’ meetings with Russia came out, Trump went on tweet storm attacking the press and The New York Times.

A president can’t order wiretaps. It is alarming that the current president seems to have no idea what the powers of the presidency are. Rhodes was correct. Presidents don’t have the unilateral power to order wiretaps. The reason why the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General was so troubling for many was that it was a direct attack on the idea of Justice Department independence.



http://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/04/obama-adviser-humiliates-trump-explaining-presidents-order-wiretaps.html

The big tell is that Trump went on a tweetstorm about this that totally caught his staff off guard.

Sounds a bit like pants shitting.

Was Trump told what was on the tapes to give him a chance to resign?