The Republican Party stands against everything Christ required of His followers.  You cannot be a Republican and a Christian at the same time.

Donald from Hawaii (to jimakaPPJ, from last Friday's Open Thread): "The only ones calling it a 'smoking gun' are your buddies at Fox News. But since nobody's actually seen this so-called evidence except Rep. Nunes, and he was further unable to describe it publicly with any real degree of rationality and coherence, it appears to be less smoking gun than red herring. Nunes best be careful, lest he implicate himself in this growing scandal by aiding and abetting an attempt at a cover up."

Too late! So sad.

Los Angeles Times | March 27, 2017
Devin Nunes plot thickens, as his spokesman concedes he met source for surveillance claim at White House - "The day before the House Intelligence Committee chairman revealed that conversations by Trump transition officials may have been inadvertently picked up by  U.S. surveillance, he met with the source of the information at the White House, his spokesman said Monday. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), went to the White House because there was a facility there for reviewing classified information,  said Jack Langer, a spokesman for Nunes, who has refused to divulge the identity of his source. 'Chairman Nunes met with his source at the White House grounds in order to have proximity to a secure location where he could view the information provided by the source,' Langer said."

Just for the record, while Chairman Nunes claims that members of Congress don't have networked access to these kinds of intelligence reports, there are in fact a number of secure sites outside of the White House where lawmakers may review classified information via Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIF). In fact, several locations on Capitol Hill itself have SCIFs, as does the FBI Building and CIA HQ at Langley, VA.

Citing a need to protect his 'sources and methods,' Nunes has thus far refused comment when asked by reporters if the White House itself was the source of his so-called revelations from last Wednesday. He held two press conferences that day regarding these findings and had privately briefed Trump about them, without ever bothering to disclose the information to his Intelligence Committee's ranking member Adam Schiff and other committee members. That unfortunate decision has been roundly criticized by Schiff and even Republicans such as Sen. John McCain.

The following day, Nunes apologized to committee members for what he claimed was an inadvertent oversight on his part, yet as of this writing, he's still not shown this evidence to Rep. Schiff or other committee members. Then he walked back his claim this weekend, and today comes news that he received his information while on White House grounds.

Chairman Nunes is likely working on both sides of the fence here, and he has thoroughly compromised himself as a direct result of last week's shenanigans. Speaker Ryan would be wise to replace him as head of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, at least with regard to this ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign's purported ties to the Russian government and its intelligence services.

Gallup has him at a new low of 36 percent approval. So what to do?  Soldier onward with the help of Putin and Rasputin, or take a deep breath and shift gears taking a leaf from the playbook of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who jettisoned his hard right turn after being tamed by California nurses, and, managed to, at least, limp through his term.

Trump, as with his executive orders and Trumpcare, demonstrated that he has the attention span of a goldfish.  Just get something done, get someone in there. Anything, anyone. And, do it quickly. He will really run everything, along with his companion humans and advisors, Ivanka and Jared. And, Rasputin, who has right wing/white nationalist ideas, but not the right wing/white natinalist personnel contacts.  However, Pence does and is at his service.

Trump can correct course, for starters, by working with ACA or working against it. But, working with it requires overcoming the Republican's barrier to the very idea: Attract people who don't presently need health care to pay for the bills for those who do, with the understanding that the favor will be returned, if and when necessary. And, reduce the overriding fear that "those people" will be getting our money, once again.

  Repeal and replace with something terrific or repeal and replace with nothing.  Trying to make Obamacare terrific would be relatively easy, essentially, cure its present problem of being underfunded.

 In lieu of the $310 Billion tax cuts for the very wealthiest as part of that contraption known as Trumpcare, and that late promise of $85 Billion in a reserve fund to help older (50-64)Americans to receive tax credits, ACA will be properly supported.

 And, if that is not enough, maybe, just maybe, that $54 Billion proposed in the Trump budget in addition funds for the Pentagon could be pared down, to say, $50 billion.  We may not need a larger Navy to get ISIS in their desert hideaways.

Republican leaders blew their chance

The Republican Party had seven years to create their health plan and explain it to the public. With that much time and passion devoted to a single subject, you would think they would write something down.

You would think there would be thousands of pages of analysis and the plan would be honed to a razor edge. Everyone would be on the same page, they would have held dozens of meetings and seminars, and anyone in the party could explain in detail why their plan was better.

The Republican plan turned out to be complaining about the features of Obamacare that were compromises to get enough votes to pass it, and holding 60 symbolic repeal votes, safe in the knowledge that they would be met with a veto.

This is more than a political setback. It is a metaphor for politics of image and automatic objections to anything proposed by the other party.

It is the difference between using the power of government to help people, and using that power against them.

President Barack Obama spent years hammering out a plan and most of a year getting it through Congress. Pinning his name on it was originally supposed to be an insult, but now it is a triumph.

Mr. Obama and a Democratic majority created something that is a long way from perfect but a decided improvement. They spent years working on it. They campaigned on it and they got it passed.

The GOP now owns the halls of power, and can't find the light switch. They don't do homework and they don't seem very smart.

This contrast will make it difficult for the media to pretend that "both sides" are somehow equal, but I'm sure they are up to the challenge.

Liberals pretending to know something about the military.

My position on military matters is influenced by my own military service.  Please tell me about your service.

Twist an "independent's" ear just a little bit, and their inner Hannity comes to the fore.

Did you ever hear of General Smedley Butler, Green?

"In my view, the existence or non-existence of a FISA warrant that the Congressman revealed during his press conferences today is in itself a classified fact," Moss said. And it appears FBI Director James Comey might agree with this assessment.

During Monday's House Intelligence Committee, he told Senators, including Nunes,  "All FISA applications reviewed by the court and collection by us pursuant to our FISA authority is classified."

Furthermore, the Department of Justice also confirmed that revealing the existence of a FISA warrant would amount to divulging classified information.

The Espionage Act (18 USC 798) prevents disclosure of classified information "concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government.

The projects are based on two books to which producers have acquired rights: "Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It," a firsthand account by Lisa Bloom about covering the Zimmerman trial as an NBC analyst; and "Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin," a biographical book about Mr. Martin written by his parents.

I enjoyed the movie Fruitvale Station.  Perhaps the Martin film will be like that and, at least, show Trayvon to be a real person, not the 12 year old angel the media first tried to sell us.

As for the documentary, I'd love to see a thorough examination of Martin and Zimmerman's lives before the shooting.  I'd like to hear more about Martin's high school days and why he was suspended so many times.  I'd also like to hear from Alicia Stanley, the woman who often was more of mother to Trayvon than Sabrina Fulton.  More detail about "star witness" Rachel Jeantel would also be interesting.

The man known as "Carlos the Jackal" has been convicted in a French court of a deadly 1974 attack on a Paris shopping arcade and sentenced to life in prison for the third time.

How is it that the committee cannot view the intelligence only you have seen from any other scif if it's digitized? Okay, let's say it isn't digitized and it's paper documents...

We all saw the classified lock bag on President Trump's carelessly organized desk. There seems to be a courier system in place to transfer classified documents from one location to another since we all know Barbara Eden was not blinking locked classified materials bags onto the President's desk.

Listed some of my sources.

Right wing shills with no credibility who did not themselves serve either.  I saw that.

How long ago were you in the military? Peter Seger reference.

I finished my honorable service on 15-Feb-1968, in military parlance.

I wonder what happened to the last person who called Pete Seeger "Peter" to his face.  Pete's dead now, after a heroic lifetime of patriotism.  Did you know that he was found in contempt of Congress for refusing to talk about his political associations?

Pete was fined $100, and refused to pay it.  The sentence was overturned on appeal, but Seeger would have gone to prison had they sent him.

The Trump Administration added a $30 billion supplement to the Defense spending bill for 2017.  However, $5.2 billion of that supplemental request, which was argued as an urgently needed addition, was already in the bill.  About $3 billion of the supplement already passed the House and awaits Senate action and another $2 billion was in the bill poised for provision.  

The House of Representatives is set to vote as early as today on a resolution that would reverse Obama-era regulations preventing internet service providers from selling your web browsing history on the open market. Those rules, passed by the Federal Communications Commission last year, have yet to take effect. But if the House follows the Senate, which voted to rescind the privacy protections last week, the agency could also never pass similar rules again.

The casino makes impossible profits? Trump protege runs it.

And Its board members include James Woolsey, who ran the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and was among national-security advisers to Trump's presidential campaign (attended the kidnap meeting with Flynn, claims he notified VP Biden about the criminal intent of that meeting. Former FBI director Louis Freeh and Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, sit on an advisory committee, as does Haley Barbour, the ex-Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee chairman who's now a prominent lobbyist.