The school, established a quarter-century ago to educate a new generation of leaders and scholars after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, became on Monday the first university to be forced out of a European Union nation.
The ejection marked one of the surest signals to date of autocracy’s return to Hungary, and the region, after decades of relative freedom.
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Maureen Dowd was unsparing with her thoughts in her Op-Eds in the NYT about G H W Bush, and not to mention GW or Jeb! But her recap here of her true relationship with G H W B was a bit light-hearted, and something remarkable to consider that both put aside their differences to sort of agree to disagree, and make fun of the situation.
Posting this because it made me laugh (the written banter between them is funny)…and spoke to the character of the man (regardless of politics) and his innate decency.
At the mere mention of Trump’s name, 41 made a face. “He’s an ass,’’ he snapped.
When Trump began plowing his way through Republican rivals, H.W. was known to throw his shoe at the television set.
The narcissistic, amoral, vulgar reality-TV president and the modest, principled, classy, old-world president could not be more different.
With Poppy, there was decency and sweetness.
“Put it this way,’’ he wrote me once. “I reserve the right to whine, to not read, to use profanity, but if you ever get really hurt or if you ever get really down and need a shoulder to cry on or just need a friend — give me a call. I’ll be there for you. I’ll not let you down.
“Now, go on out and knock my knickers off. When you do, I might just cancel my subscription.”
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Some mentionable lines that were heard during the funeral for George H W Bush today…very moving, and honor and love was strewn his way.
A great line from longtime Bush buddy and former Senator, Alan Simpson: ”Those who travel the high road of humility in Washington are not bothered by heavy traffic.”
“He never hated anyone… Hatred corrodes the container that its carried in,” - Sen. Simpson, in a line I’m immediately writing down to remember.
President George HW Bush on his hard (and consequential for his political career) decision to raise taxes per friend US Sen Alan Simpson, R-WY: “When the really tough choices come it’s the country not me its not about Dems or Republicans it’s for the country that I fought for”
Former Canadian PM Brian Mulroney, a long time friend of President George HW Bush, ends his eulogy with an Irish proverb: “There are good ships, and there are wood ships, the ships that sail the sea. But the best ships, are friendships, and may they always be.”
After WW2, “The rest of his life was a perennial effort to prove himself worthy of his salvation," @jmeacham says
Dear Lord, I sincerely pray/hope in my old age, someone is smuggling a bottle of vodka and a Morton’s steak into my hospital room. (in reference to comments by Sen Simpson that James Baker smuggled in a steak and vodka to his hospital room)
President Trump walks solemnly into the cathedral clutching the hand of Melania Trump, the first lady. The Obamas greet both of them. Bill glances over. But Hillary Clinton looks straight ahead.
From various tweets this am…
#respect
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Trump has slashed protections for 153.3 million acres of land and water and offered nearly 95 million acres of public lands and waters for oil and gas leasing.
As of September 2018, President Trump had offered 13,667,241 acres of publicly-owned land to oil and gas companies. That is more than the size of Maryland and New Jersey combined. Most of the lands offered for leasing are in the top 25% of wildest places in the contiguous U.S. and the top 25% most important areas for wildlife connectivity (Belote, et al. 2016; Theobald, 2013). Off our coasts, President Trump has offered 81,324,267 acres of publicly-owned waters to oil and gas companies.
In total, Trump has offered nearly 95 million acres of land and water for oil development. This massive amount equals an area larger than the state of Montana.
President Trump has also stripped protections for 153.3 million acres of land and water, an area larger than California and Washington combined.
https://wilderness.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=3c85766bc4c44579a2a7bb133b70e774
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This could be titled, “Stephen Calk Wants His Bribe Back.”
You may remember Calk from the Manafort trial. As co-owner of a Chicago bank, he approved millions in suspect loans to Manafort. Around the same time, Manafort sent an email to Jared Kushner recommending Calk for the post of Secretary of the Army. Kushner replied, “On it!” Although, Calk did not ultimately win the appointment, there’s still a strong appearance of a quid pro quo – or in, plain English, a bribe and a payoff.
You’ve got to hand it to Calk for ballsy behavior because, as the article above explains, his bank has filed a suit claiming that it, rather than the Government, should receive the proceeds from Manafort’s seized property – the very property that Manafort bought with Calk’s alleged “loan bribe”!
This is timely news since Friday we may find out if the apparent “pay-to-play” scheme between Manafort and Calk was one of the things about which Manafort lied to Mueller – thus scuttling Manafort’s plea deal.
Side note: It turns out Calk has a reputation for running a clever scam. In 2012, he and his brother bilked the city of Chicago out of $3.6 million in a shell game that was executed with such finesse, the city was unable to prosecute them even after their scheme was exposed.
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Republicans keep flogging a dead horse investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of private email, but when it comes to one of their own, they turn a blind eye. Same story with Ivanka.
Donald Trump’s first Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator repeatedly violated agency policy to use personal email for government business, according to newly released public records.
Scott Pruitt – who left the administration this summer after months of controversy over his spending, travel and ties with industry – used his private email account for work over a period of months, according to records recently made available to the Sierra Club.
Someone forwarded the emails to Pruitt’s government account on the day he resigned. EPA policy requires employees to do so within 20 days of any correspondence via personal accounts.
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Mmm… Trump, Kushner, and Whitaker all on Marine 1. Any chance Whitaker is providing Trump and Kushner with inside information on the Mueller investigation? I guess we just have to trust that he acts in an ethical manner – except we are talking about a guy who was paid to serve on the Advisory Board of a company that is now under criminal investigation for scamming its customers out of millions of dollars.
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You got that right… @Keaton_James
The only saving grace is that Whitaker can be held to account for anything he says within the presidential circle I believe. New Dem lead congress can subpoena him.
But perhaps Mueller has not played all his cards and even if he did, his evidence is airtight.
#Here’sToHoping
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A government and ethics watchdog group on Monday sued the FBI for allegedly failing to fulfill a records request pertaining to a leak to President Trump’s personal lawyer and longtime backer Rudy Giuliani.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said in its announcement of the lawsuit that information was leaked to Giuliani in October 2016, during the final weeks of the presidential campaign, giving the former New York mayor a tip that then-FBI Director James Comey was going to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as secretary of State.
Giuliani admitted to receiving a leak on the investigation, saying on Fox News, “Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it. And I can’t even repeat the language that I heard.”
Giuliani also teased “a surprise or two” in the days leading up to the 2016 presidential election, prompting the FBI to question him on the claims.
This lawsuit may provide some insight into Giuliani’s role in the leak. Was he just a passive recipient of confidential information from within the FBI or did he actively solicit it, using his extensive contacts within the organization? – and, if so, was Trump aware of this initiative, or did he have any role in it himself? The suit will take time to work its way through the courts, but in the meantime, it puts more pressure on Giuliani to come clean – and eventually we may get some answers. 
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Chicago’s most powerful alderman, Edward M. Burke, had his cell phone seized by federal agents who raided his government and political offices late last month, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
It’s unclear why the FBI seized the phone or where it was when they took it.
It’s also unclear whether the alderman has more than one cellphone.
Burke wouldn’t comment on the seizure.
This is an intriguing revelation.
On November 29, when the FBI raided Burke’s office, we saw footage of agents removing boxes, presumably filled with documents. Now we know that Burke’s cell phone was also confiscated. This strongly suggests that the FBI is looking at more than just tax records and may also be investigating Burke’s communications with others – we don’t know who these others might be – and we also don’t know if the raid and seizures have anything to do with Trump. However, it’s hard to ignore the fact that for many years, and concluding just this year, Burke represented Trump in property tax matters as described in another article from the Chicago Sun Times:
2016: A Sun-Times investigation found that Burke’s law firm had saved President Donald Trump $14 million after appealing property tax bills over seven years. Burke’s firm would stop representing Trump’s Chicago interests in 2018.
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This is from the “Flogging a Dead Horse Dept.”
On Thursday, in a last gasp effort to make something of the long-debunked allegations against the Clinton Foundation, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee heard from two “private investigators” who have been leading the charge on this for the alt-right. The pair claims to have 6,000 pages of damning evidence. They say they’ve turned it over to the FBI and the IRS, but have heard nothing from them (maybe because their “evidence” is just hogwash, who knows?).
Republicans on the Oversight Committee expected to get their hands on this trove of 6,000 pages on Thursday, no doubt with the intent of cherry picking through it see if there was any material that might embarrass the Clinton’s. But the whole thing went rapidly south when the investigators refused to turn over their documents. And they couldn’t even come up with a legitimate excuse for their refusal. What a debacle.
A congressional hearing on the Clinton Foundation turned into a fiasco on Thursday after Republicans clashed with their own witnesses — two private investigators who refused to turn over documents that they claimed showed evidence of criminal wrongdoing at the Clinton Foundation.
John Moynihan and Larry Doyle, financial analysts who say they have uncovered evidence of pay-to-play and financial crimes at the Clinton Foundation, were invited to testify on their findings by the House Oversight Committee’s Republican Chairman Mark Meadows.
But tensions erupted between Meadows and the two witnesses after Moynihan and Doyle refused to turn over 6,000 pages of documents that they say back up their claims — documents that the pair has already given to the FBI and the IRS.
“If you’re not going to share [the documents] with the committee and cut to the chase, my patience is running out,” said Meadows. After consulting briefly with their attorney, who was present, Moynihan and Doyle said they still would not turn over their report but would answer questions about it.
Mark Meadows, the Republican committee chair, demonstrated an astounding level of incompetence when he failed to find out beforehand that his two star witnesses would refuse to provide even one shred of written evidence. It’s a good thing that Republicans are losing control of this committee because they don’t deserve it.
CORRECTION: I just finished watching the committee hearing on C-SPAN (or at least most of it), and have corrected something I said in the 1st paragraph. In my initial post, I said the witnesses withheld documents related to the Uranium One controversy – that is not the case, they withheld documents related to accusations of misrepresentations on tax forms and other alleged mishandling of funds by the Clinton Foundation, particularly their health initiatives.
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All I have to say is neener neener.
Is Roger Stone telling the truth? That’s among the biggest questions at the heart of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Despite bragging at the time about being in contact with Julian Assange, Stone has insisted he had no warning that WikiLeaks would be releasing hacked Democratic National Committee emails and said he didn’t relay that information to his longtime confidante, Donald Trump.
Mueller has yet to tip his hand on whether he believes Stone, though he’s devoted significant resources to the question.
On Monday, though, Stone admitted that he used his platform on Infowars, the far-right conspiracy website founded by Alex Jones, to spread false information in another case.
To settle a lawsuit seeking $100 million in damages from Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman, Stone admitted that he “failed to do proper research” before accusing Guo of violating U.S. election law by donating money to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Stone also falsely accused Guo, who is also known as Miles Kwok, of funding a presidential run by Stephen K. Bannon and being convicted of financial crimes…
In addition to admitting in court documents that he spread falsehoods, Stone agreed to share his statement via Facebook and Instagram and to take out ads in The Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.
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Well Surprise! Surprise!
Is there anything said on that site that is not false?
It amazes me that there are people who actually believe the nonsense that is promulgated on Infowars.
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Breaking… Cover Your A*s Bigly
Trump Foundation now to shut down. Pundits are saying that it could be a way to prevent some civil cases and the potential subpoena’s which might reveal more financial information.
President Trump has agreed to shut down his embattled personal charity amid allegations that he used it for his personal and political benefit and to give away its remaining money, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced Tuesday.
Underwood said that the Donald J. Trump Foundation is dissolving as her office pursues its lawsuit against the charity, Trump and his three eldest children.
The suit, filed in June, alleged “persistently illegal conduct” at the foundation and sought to have it shut down. Underwood is continuing to seek more than $2.8 million in restitution and has asked a judge to ban the Trumps temporarily from serving on the boards of other New York nonprofit organizations.
Underwood said Tuesday that her investigation found “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation — including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more.”
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Trump-produced anxiety throughout Europe and beyond is highlighted in hacked communications.
NYTimes: Hacked European Cables Reveal a World of Anxiety About Trump, Russia and Iran
WASHINGTON — Hackers infiltrated the European Union’s diplomatic communications network for years, downloading thousands of cables that reveal concerns about an unpredictable Trump administration and struggles to deal with Russia and China and the risk that Iran would revive its nuclear program.
In one cable, European diplomats described a meeting between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland, as “successful (at least for Putin).”
Another cable, written after a July 16 meeting, relayed a detailed report and analysis of a discussion between European officials and President Xi Jinping of China, who was quoted comparing Mr. Trump’s “bullying” of Beijing to a “no-rules freestyle boxing match.”
The techniques that the hackers deployed over a three-year period resembled those long used by an elite unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army. The cables were copied from the secure network and posted to an open internet site that the hackers set up in the course of their attack, according to Area 1, the firm that discovered the breach.
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Speaker Paul Ryan’s farewell address today…(and perhaps his send-off video)
One of the most spineless creatures to be in Congress.
Don’t let the door hit you… 
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Breaking…Feds going after Chinese hackers…
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