Special counsel investigating Joe Biden’s handling of classified material is not expected to bring charges

Special counsel Robert Hur is not expected to charge anyone in connection with the mishandling of classified documents at two locations connected to President Joe Biden, two sources close to the investigation told CNN.

The most common argument against the existence of objective morality and moral facts besides moral differences between societies is that they aren’t tangible objects found in the universe and can’t be measured scientifically. Are there any refutations or arguments against this? — Captain Homicide

Question the implicit assertion that if something isn't a tangible object found in the universe and can't be measured scientifically then it doesn't exist.

Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? — Michael

Hah, Jack Smith even quoted this in a recent court filing.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40232/gov.uscourts.cadc.40232.1208570955.0.pdf

As the court explained, targeted disparagement of this sort poses a danger even when it does not explicitly call for harassment or violence, as repeated attacks are often understood as a signal to act—just as King Henry II’s remark, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” resulted in Thomas à Becket’s murder. JA.183, 202; see, e.g., United States v. Smallwood, 365 F. Supp. 2d 689, 696 n.14 (E.D. Va. 2005) (discussing idiom). Such risks are far from speculative here, the court found, given uncontradicted evidence showing that when the defendant “has singled out certain people in public statements in the past,” it has “led to them being threatened and harassed.” JA.209.

I personally didn’t attend any of Biden’s rallies. — praxis

Why would anyone attend a political rally? It's so weird. Just watch whatever they have to say on TV. It's much more comfortable.

The irony of someone trying to argue that words have no power to influence.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-shares-creepy-fantasy-about-citizens-arrest-of-judge-engoron-ag-letitia-james

Former President Donald Trump may already be on thin ice with the jurist presiding over his New York fraud trial, but that didn’t stop him from reposting a supporter’s creepy suggestion that Judge Arthur Engoron and New York Attorney General Leticia James should be placed under citizen’s arrest.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/donald-trump-fiery-rhetoric-jonathan-karl_n_6552a1dee4b0c9f2466156af

Trump Told ABC Reporter He Hopes Fans Act On His Fiery Rhetoric

Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?

He’s literally not. — NOS4A2

He literally is.

All I have to do is look at the preceding context (which you suspiciously leave out) and see that you’re wrong.

“They have done something that allows the next party — I mean, if somebody, if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business, they’d be out of the election.” — NOS4A2

Exactly. He’s saying that because he is being indicted then if he wins the election then he will indict his opponents if he sees that they are doing well and beating him.

But you thought he was saying it allows him to terminate the constitution, which is an absolute lie. — NOS4A2

"A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles ... found in the Constitution."

He's literally saying that.

False. He was explaining why it was wrong. — NOS4A2

He wasn't just explaining why it was wrong. He was explaining that he would commit that very same wrong (that he is falsely accusing others of).

This is true. — NOS4A2

No it's not.

He was explaining why it was wrong to weaponize the justice department, because doing so sets the precedent. — NOS4A2

He wasn't just explaining that. He was also saying that he will weaponize it in the future.

And whereas he is being indicted because there is evidence of multiple crimes, he explicitly said that he would indict someone if "[he sees] somebody who is doing well and beating [him] very badly."

He's planning to weaponize the justice department in response to legitimate cases against him.

The notion that Trump called for the termination of the constitution or that he was going to indict political opponents is nonsense. — NOS4A2

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109449803240069864

A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/376097-trump-take-the-guns-first-go-through-due-process-second/

“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.

You load every single item (thousands), image link, and description (often lengthy) when someone visits your homepage? That doesn't seem efficient to me. I suppose it simply loads the blank "default item" page and clicking the item individually loads its information? That would still require every single item in inventory's ID, picture, title, and usually price to be loaded from the first homepage visit. That seems a bit much. — Outlander

Not if you use code-splitting. On the initial page load it just pulls down something like "index.js" and then runs the code in that. When you click the "/about" link it pulls down "about.js" and then runs the code in that. If you go back to the home page it re-uses the "index.js" that has already been downloaded. And the same if you return to "/about". This can make for a faster user experience and reduce the load on the server.

But for anything useful like a public forum or guestbook, or say billing or payment application where an action could have been made from another avenue ie. by phone and needs to be updated, it really ought to communicate with the server, wouldn't you say? — Outlander

Yes. Many SPAs will use Ajax. I was just pointing out the technical point that SPAs and Ajax are independent technologies.

As for "AJAX vs. HTML page loading" as you say, again it's a matter of allowing for a faster user experience and reducing server load. With an SPA when navigating to the second page of a discussion it only needs to return a JSON object of the second page's post data and then rebuild the section of the page that displays the post, whereas with an MPA it has to return all the HTML for the entire page as well as run any additional processes/queries to generate any of the surrounding data (e.g. using TPF as an example, the list of categories and the logged-in user's mention, comment, and discussion count).

Historical precedent also confirms that a criminal conviction is not required for an individual to be disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. No one who has been formally disqualified under Section 3 was charged under the criminal “rebellion or insurrection” statute (18 U.S.C. § 2383) or its predecessors. This fact is consistent with Section 3’s text, legislative history, and precedent, all of which make clear that a criminal conviction for any offense is not required for disqualification. Section 3 is not a criminal penalty, but rather is a qualification for holding public office in the United States that can be and has been enforced through civil lawsuits in state courts, among other means.

Well that addresses my initial skepticism that the lawsuit would succeed.

I think you misunderstand what an SPA is.

Think of a website as a book. In traditional MPAs (multi-page apps), you ask the website to give you a page. You read it and then ask for another page. In SPAs (single-page apps), you ask the website to give you a book. There are still pages but you don't have to ask for the website to give you them each individually.

So in a way the "P" in "SPA" and "MPA" is a bit of a misnomer.

Although even this analogy is a little off as with code-splitting you do get given each page individually, but it only gives you the new stuff, e.g. the particular block of the website that is about to change. You don't have to be sent all the surrounding stuff as well. This makes it faster.

@Jamal

Plush Content Ltd financial statement Feb 2023

They have 1 employee and £1,745.42 in the bank.

Also remember you're describing AJAX deep down at the end of the day — Outlander

SPAs don't require Ajax.

You might prefer Svelte.

Often, all the necessary HTML, JavaScript, and stuff are downloaded once, when you log in. — Jamal

Code splitting is easy so this isn’t a problem.

Cool. I used to be dead against non-semantic CSS like Tailwind, but the arguments in its favour are persuasive. I think it depends what you're building. If it's content-focused, semantic makes sense, but if it's highly interactive, things like Tailwind look good. — Jamal

As someone who sucks at styling, Tailwind is a godsend. Perfect for component based frontends like React. I can see it being a pain in the ass if you just do raw HTML.

Also this is convincing.

Like Michael, I've toyed with the idea of building forum software for TPF so I can bring the data and codebase under our control. I asked ChatGPT how long it would take and it gave me two answers: either 6 months to a year, or 18 months to 3 years. The latter estimate is more realistic for a full-featured (and extra-featured) forum platform. I can't dedicate that much time to it unfortunately. — Jamal

That strikes me as an overestimate. I've built business CRMs used by a FTSE 100 company in a few months.

Although I guess if you were just doing it in your spare time then it will take much longer.

I used to think that. I always thought that HTML should just be done in HTML, not JavaScript. But then I actually tried React and Vue and quite like it. It certainly makes reactivity much easier.

I've recently been using a Laravel backend with Inertia, React, and Tailwind for the frontend. Works really well.

Ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows granted immunity, tells special counsel he warned Trump about 2020 claims: Sources

Former President Donald Trump's final chief of staff in the White House, Mark Meadows, has spoken with special counsel Jack Smith's team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury, which came only after Smith granted Meadows immunity to testify under oath, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said Meadows informed Smith's team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump's prolific rhetoric regarding the election.

According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being "dishonest" with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.

Ellis has implicated former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in her plea deal by admitting that she aided and abetted the former mayor’s “false statements” to Georgia lawmakers at a December 2020 hearing, where they both peddled baseless voter fraud claims.

She acknowledged that she was “assisting with the execution of” that legislative hearing with Giuliani and another co-defendant, Trump campaign attorney Ray Smith.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-false-claims-new-hampshire_n_6536e24fe4b011a9cf7ab60f

Trump is losing his mind.

The most newsworthy quote probably came prior to the rally, when a reporter asked Trump if his recent perplexing claim that Sidney Powell was never his attorney (although he’s previously said she was) meant that his interactions with her wouldn’t be covered by attorney-client privilege.

Trump, who has been indicted four times, responded by making the completely false statement that he was “never indicted.”

“We did nothing wrong,” Trump said. “This is all Biden’s stuff … I was never indicted. You practically never heard the word.”

...

“You don’t have to vote, don’t worry about voting. The voting, we got plenty of votes,” he said.

...

Trump also remarked that “U.S.” and “us” are spelled the same and noted that he’d “just picked that up.”

“Has anyone ever thought of that before?” he asked the crowd. “Couple of days, I’m reading, and it said ‘us.’ and I said, you know, when you think about it, us equals U.S. Now if we say something genius, they will never say it.”

...

Trump also promised to keep immigrants who “don’t like our religion” from entering the United States. Of course, the First Amendment establishes that there is no state religion in America.

...

He also justified challenging the 2020 election results by saying he doesn’t mind “being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it for a reason.”

You can't disparage a prosecutor in the United States of America, I guess. — NOS4A2

A party to the case can’t if such a gag order has been issued.

Judge Chutkan issues limited gag order for Trump in D.C. Jan. 6 case

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan said Monday she will impose a limited gag order on former president Donald Trump in advance of his election interference trial, as requested by prosecutors.

The gag order, she said in a ruling issued from the bench after a hearing, will prohibit all parties from statements “publicly targeting” special counsel Jack Smith, his staff, her staff or “any other court personnel.” Statements about the families of those individuals are “absolutely prohibited as well.”

Even before the order was issued, Trump’s lawyer John Lauro said they would appeal any such order, as it would affect important free speech principles, particularly for a leading candidate for president.

Trump “can argue that this prosecution is politically motivated,” the judge said, but he cannot disparage the prosecutor by calling him a thug or “vilify and implicitly encourage violence against public servants who are simply doing their jobs.”

She is also barring Trump and all parties from making statements about witnesses in the case.

So how long before he defies it?

Looking into it further, it does say:

But the fact is that the great majority of the allegations in the indictment—including allegations of the defendants’ conduct, knowledge, and intent—turn on evidence contained in the unclassified discovery, not the much smaller set of classified discovery.

And the indictment in several places says:

did corruptly conceal a record, document, and other object, and attempted to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity and availability for use in an official proceeding...

... with that "official proceeding" being the grand jury. So it may be that this new court filing is referring to Trump's intent to obstruct and not his intent in taking and keeping the documents in the first place.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.173.0_1.pdf

That the classified materials at issue in this case were taken from the White House and retained at Mar-a-Lago is not in dispute; what is in dispute is how that occurred, why it occurred, what Trump knew, and what Trump intended in retaining them—all issues that the Government will prove at trial primarily with unclassified evidence.

Interesting.

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/06/donald-trump-backs-jim-jordan-house-speaker

“Jordan is one of Trump’s biggest champions in Washington DC and has been leading spurious investigations into prosecutors who have charged the former president. He was also part of a group of Republicans who worked with Trump to overturn his defeat, ahead of January 6.”

Trump allegedly discussed US nuclear subs with foreign national after leaving White House

Months after leaving the White House, former President Donald Trump allegedly discussed potentially sensitive information about U.S. nuclear submarines with a member of his Mar-a-Lago Club -- an Australian billionaire who then allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists, according to sources familiar with the matter.

...

Prosecutors and FBI agents have at least twice this year interviewed the Mar-a-Lago member, Anthony Pratt, who runs U.S.-based Pratt Industries, one of the world's largest packaging companies.

...

According to Pratt's account, as described by the sources, Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump -- "leaning" toward Pratt as if to be discreet -- then told Pratt two pieces of information about U.S. submarines: the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.

What else has he talked about and to who?

Why does Trump call the AG a “peekaboo”? What does that even mean? I know it in the context of hiding and showing yourself to a baby?

I don't know what the solution to the immigration issue is, but I'm not sure it's a border wall. — GRWelsh

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/rapid-proliferation-number-border-walls

Yet the claim that walls have been nearly universally “successful” could not be further from the truth. Research from around the world indicates that both the direct and indirect costs of building border walls exceed the benefits. Tunnels, drones, ladders, ramps, document forgery, and corruption—the strategies for circumventing the walls end up multiplying. Walls do not achieve the objectives for which they are said to be erected; they have limited effects in stemming insurgencies and do not block unwanted flows, but rather lead to a re-routing of migrants to other paths. As migrants take other routes, circumventing the obstacles and therefore becoming more difficult to monitor, they rely more on smugglers and as a result pay greater costs. This is a process that many studies have shown, for instance along the U.S.-Mexico border and between Israel and the West Bank. As border enforcement increases, so do smugglers’ profits and the presence of organized crime.

https://www.cato.org/blog/border-wall-didnt-work

After a temporary lull in migration during the early part of the pandemic, that very month (October 2020) saw a significant jump in both known successful entries (what the Border Patrol calls “gotaways”), as well as arrests to levels as high as before the pandemic, and the numbers kept rising. Even before Biden assumed office, the Border Patrol was making more arrests and witnessing far more successful crossings after the wall went up than most months before the Trump wall.

...

The Trump border wall failed for all the predictable reasons. Immigrants used cheap ladders to climb over it, or they free climb it. They used cheap power tools to cut through it. They cut through small pieces and squeezed through, and they cut through big sections and drove through. In one small section in 2020, they sawed through at least 18 times that Border Patrol knew about in a month. They also made tunnels. Some tunnels were long, including the longest one ever discovered, but some were short enough just to get past the barrier.

While it was always obvious why the wall would never stop crossings, the border wall may actually have been counterproductive. The New York Times reported the roads created to build the wall “now serve as easy access points for smugglers and others seeking to enter the once‐​remote areas along the border.”

But most importantly, many, if not most, crossers never tried to evade capture. They just walked up to the fence (which is mostly in the United States) and asked to be arrested, so they can try to obtain asylum.

Cue the anger and protests? No — NOS4A2

Biden criticized for waiving 26 laws in Texas to allow border wall construction

Joe Biden faced intense criticism from environmental advocates, political opponents and his fellow Democrats after the president’s administration waived 26 federal laws to allow border wall construction in south Texas, its first use of a sweeping executive power that was often employed under Donald Trump.

Also, Biden argues his hands were tied with border wall funds

“The money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate, to redirect that money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t,” he said. “In the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that.”

Biden was asked whether he thought the border wall was effective and responded “no.”

…

Biden aides Thursday repeatedly sought to highlight that the funding being used to build several miles of additional wall was allocated before Biden took office.

“Fact: Congress is forcing us to do this under a 2019 law. Fact: We called on Congress to cancel these funds. They didn’t. We follow the rule of law,” deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Congress needs to stop delaying the effective border solutions @POTUS proposed.”

Don't worry, Republicans Already Barred Trump From Being Speaker of the House:

Rule 26 of the GOP Conference states, "A member of the Republican Leadership shall step aside if indicted for a felony for which a sentence of two or more years imprisonment may be imposed."

People are saying they were the best bombs ever. They came to me with tears in their eyes, real tears, people who have never cried before, they said Mr President, the bombs were so beautiful, just so big and beautiful like you wouldn't believe.

Dude's getting more and more senile by the minute.

You’re right, I’m wrong. I apologize. I will ignore the statute, its genesis, and the precedent. — NOS4A2

Regarding its genesis, see the Sarbanes–Oxley Act

SEC. 1102. TAMPERING WITH A RECORD OR OTHERWISE IMPEDING
AN OFFICIAL PROCEEDING.

Section 1512 of title 18, United States Code, is amended—
(1) by redesignating subsections (c) through (i) as subsections (d) through (j), respectively; and
(2) by inserting after subsection (b) the following new subsection:
‘‘(c) Whoever corruptly—
‘‘(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an
official proceeding; or
‘‘(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.’’.

Well, I’m sorry for reading the title of the statute. — NOS4A2

You need to read more than just the title. He's been charged under subsections (c)(2) and (k):

(c) Whoever corruptly —

(2) obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

...

(k) Whoever conspires to commit any offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the offense the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

You think the crime Trump is being charged with is Witness Tampering? — flannel jesus

It appears to be so. Ridiculous, isn’t it? — NOS4A2

Regarding the Jan 6 case, the charges are:

18 U.S. Code § 371 - Conspiracy to defraud the United States
18 U.S. Code § 1512(k) Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
18 U.S. Code § 1512(c)(2) Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding
18 U.S. Code § 241 - Conspiracy against rights

There is no such thing as a moral fact, even in the case that they do exist, which is simultaneously a fundamental obligation; that is, the core principle which commits oneself to the moral facts, in the case that they exist, is necessarily a moral non-fact. This is readily seen by asking the simple and obvious question: “why is one obliged to the moral facts?”. — Bob Ross

If something is wrong iff one ought not do it then by definition if something is wrong then one ought not do it.