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Jeet Heer
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So being a loving & faithful husband is now ... a bad thing because ... Obama does it? Am I understanding the logic here accurately?

The indictment alleges the defendants used the names of U.S. citizens and companies to illegally buy political ads on social media and stage political rallies.

Although some of the activity dated back to 2014, the indictment states that by early to mid-2016, the defendants’ operation included supporting Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton.

According to the indictment, “Some defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”

In a Feb. 16 press conference announcing the indictment, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reiterated that the communications established by the defendants were made with “unwitting Americans.”

“Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity,” Rosenstein said. “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.

In the hours after Rosenstein’s press conference, Trump tweeted:

Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2018

A press release issued by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders echoed those points.

Statement from the press secretary regarding the Russia Indictments, Feb. 16: President Donald J. Trump has been fully briefed on this matter and is glad to see the Special Counsel’s investigation further indicates — that there was NO COLLUSION between the Trump campaign and Russia and that the outcome of the election was not changed or affected.

But that’s not what Rosenstein, or the indictment presented by the U.S. special counsel’s office, stated.

Rosenstein merely stated that there was no allegation in “this indictment” that any Americans — including those in the Trump campaign — wittingly participated in “this illegal activity.” (Emphasis is ours.)

According to Rosenstein, the Russians “recruited and paid real Americans to engage in political activities, promote political campaigns and stage political rallies. The defendants and their co-conspirators pretended to be grassroots activists. According to the indictment, the Americans did not know that they were communicating with Russians.”

Later, Rosenstein noted that, “the nature of the scheme was the defendants took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists, even going so far as to base their activities on a virtual private network here in the United States so, if anybody traced it back to that first jump, they appeared to be Americans.”

In other words, those who may have been paid by the Russians for social media ads, or to stage rallies, did not knowingly collude with the Russians.

Trump’s tweet goes beyond what Rosenstein and the indictment stated. His tweet assumes there is no investigation beyond what was revealed in the Feb. 16 indictment. And we just don’t know one way or the other what other things Mueller may be investigating.

Bloomberg reported after the indictment was announced that, “Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors haven’t concluded their investigation into whether President Donald Trump or any of his associates helped Russia interfere in the 2016 election, according to a person with knowledge of the probe.”

As for Trump’s claim that the indictment indicates that “the results of the election were not impacted,” that also goes beyond what Rosenstein said.

Again, Rosenstein said, “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.” That’s consistent with a declassified intelligence report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that was released on Jan. 6, 2017. That report accused Russia of meddling in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf, but it “did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcomes of the 2016 election.”

According to that DNI report, “The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.”

As we wrote when Vice President Mike Pence recently repeated the false talking point that U.S. intelligence agencies came to the “universal conclusion” that Russia’s meddling had no impact on the election results, the intelligence community has not concluded one way or the other if Russia’s influence campaign affected the election outcome.

In this case, Rosenstein acknowledged there was “no allegation” in the indictment that the Russians’ social media campaign or rallies swayed votes. The impact of these activities is possibly unknowable.

Walter Hinteler wrote:

To call a survivor of a mass shooting a "female dog" is even low for your unmorality.

What's the problem?

She and her friends were cruel to someone who was suffering and he snapped and went on a killing spree, and now she wants to blame me for protecting civil rights?

My morality is just fine, thank you.

The most fundamental premise/claim/lie of right wing media is that all other voices than their own are not to be trusted. Some version of this premise is repeated every hour of every day by any element in RW media. It's a decades-long propaganda campaign that rides on the promotion of fear and victimization and which is hammered into its audience through constant repetition. It's been very effective.

The Russians did not merely want to keep Hillary out of the presidency,...

Young survivors of Wednesday's school shooting in Florida have announced a national march on Washington to demand political action on gun control.

Students organisers told US media that they are determined to make Wednesday's shooting a turning point in the national gun debate.

The attack, which left 17 students and staff members dead, was the deadliest US school shooting since 2012.

Yesterday protestors chanted "shame on you" to US lawmakers and the president.

Mr Trump last year he would "never" infringe on the right to keep arms - a long-running and contested debate within the US.

Speaking on US television networks on Sunday morning, student survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas announced their March for Our Lives campaign.

They are planning to march on Washington on 24 March to demand that children and their families "become a priority" to US lawmakers. They want other protests to happen simultaneously in other cities on the same day.

"We are losing our lives while the adults are playing around," Cameron Kasky, a survivor from the school said.

It is one of many student-led protests amassing support on social media in the wake of Wednesday's attack.

Young survivors of Wednesday's school shooting in Florida have announced a national march on Washington to demand political action on gun control.

It does bother me that many people the world over can be influenced by social media, advertising, massive wealth, celebrity and the like. And it also bothers me how we all live in our own bubbles of limited understanding about what it is exactly that our governments are up to. And the way the world powers have handled others throughout history is indeed often reprehensible. I for one, as American citizen, will dutifully share my guilt with those residents of other offending parties

She'll learn when we defeat her attempts to violate our rights.