monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Well, it was quite normal for the Pharaoh's family members to have great power and influence while at the same time having no ethical constraints. So Ivanka's role here has precedent.

...it wasn't the DNC that leaked it — McCain is the one who gave it to Comey.

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...word of a dossier had begun to spread through political circles. Rick Wilson..said he heard about it in July, when an investigative reporter for a major news network called him to ask what he knew.

Mr. McCain passed the information to James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director [in December].

What We Know and Don’t Know About the Trump-Russia Dossier

In September 2015, a Washington political research firm, Fusion GPS, paid by a wealthy Republican donor who did not like Mr. Trump, began to compile “opposition research” on him — standard practice in politics.

After it became clear that Mr. Trump would be the Republican nominee, Democratic clients who supported Hillary Clinton began to pay Fusion GPS for this same opposition research.

Mr. Steele, who had long experience in Russia and a network of connections there, compiled dozens of reports detailing what he heard from his contacts. The memos he wrote, mostly one to three pages long, are dated from June to December [2016].

Fusion GPS and Mr. Steele shared the memos first with their clients, and later with the F.B.I. and multiple journalists at The New York Times and elsewhere. The memos, totaling about 35 pages, also reached a number of members of Congress.

By your telling, it would seem that McCain is capable of time travel, eh, Hi?

It's been reported most everywhere.

...when the DNC was funding it.

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By your telling, it would seem that McCain is capable of time travel, eh, Hi?

No. I didn't say he leaked it to Rick Wilson. I said that McCain gave it to Comey. Which happened in December.

For that matter, McCain didn't "leak it" to the media or public at all. He just gave it to Comey.

she will not be automatically subjected to certain ethics rules while serving as a de facto White House adviser.

Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn said Tuesday that he is not ready to conclude that President Donald Trump’s claim that former President Barack Obama’s administration surveilled Trump Tower before the election was false.

You're wildly misinterpreting what I've written. The dossier had been widely spread around DC but the contents had been kept pretty well under wraps.

Trump used both charm and admonishment as he made his case, reassuring skittish members that they would gain seats in Congress if the bill passed — and singling out Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, in front of colleagues.

“I’m gonna come after you, but I know I won’t have to, because I know you’ll vote ‘yes,’ ” Trump said, according to several Republican lawmakers who attended the meeting. “Honestly, a loss is not acceptable, folks.”

...“That’s just the demeanor of this president. He wants to get this bill done,” Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a Trump ally. “I don’t hear that as a threat. It’s a statement of reality.”

Many news outlets said they had been in possession of the dossier for months, but wouldn't publish it.

The dossier had been widely spread around DC but the contents had been kept pretty well under wraps.

Your own story says it was agents for the democrats who leaked it. Why doncha read it, eh?

The way you want to tell the story makes it sound like the DNC just accidentaly "found" this dossier, and had nothing to do with creating it.

I’d argue that the answer lies in Trump’s unique experience as a businessman. In his particular corner of the business world, you really can create wealth just by managing public perception — or at least he could. This was the theory of his entire career, that by fashioning a public persona that was as much of a caricature of wealth and success as Scrooge McDuck, he could turn himself into the picture he was painting. The more people saw Donald Trump as the embodiment of wealth, the more they would want to invest in his projects and buy his products, which would in turn make him wealthier. Making ridiculous promises and outright lying were all part of creating the image; one of my favorite examples is how Trump Tower is 58 stories high, but he numbered the floors up to 68 so that everyone would think it was taller than it is.

And it worked, even if not to quite the extent he claims. Over time, the Trump Organization became less about actual real estate development and more about brand licensing, where he would give someone rights to use the Trump name and its association with garish conspicuous consumption, take little or no risk and just collect the fees. It’s a good business, but it’s not the same as politics. Brand management is certainly important to political success, but if you’re the president, you have to deliver for people, and deliver on things such as health care, which are complex and require difficult trade-offs.

There’s another key difference between Trump’s business experience and politics. When he conned someone, like the attendees of Trump University, no matter how unhappy they were he could move on to other marks (even if he might have to pay his victims off if the courts caught up with him). It was a big world, and there were always other people who might be taken in by the next scam. But in politics, you have to go back to the people you made promises to the first time around, and ask them to put their faith in you again.

For now, it’s obvious that Trump looks at his first legislative priority much like one of his buildings: What matters is that people think it’s the tallest one around, even if it isn’t.

(reputable) citation please, which shows that the DNC funded the report and leaked it

Sen. Michael Bennet (D) of Gorsuch’s home state of Colorado joined the nominee and graciously introduced him to the Senate Judiciary Committee...Bennet said it was tempting to deny Gorsuch a fair hearing, but, “Two wrongs never make a right.”

That’s an interesting principle, actually. Under normal circumstances, it’s fairly compelling to think powerful policymakers should act in a mature and responsible fashion, steering clear of pettiness and needlessly cheap efforts to score partisan points. Many understandably grow weary of “tit-for-tat” schemes.

But I have a few straightforward follow-up questions for the Democratic senator: two wrongs may not make a right, but what does? Given the circumstances, what’s just in this situation? How will rewarding Republican maximalist tactics move us any closer to what’s “right”?

As we discussed when Gorsuch was first nominated, part of this fight has to do with the jurist’s record and ideology, but just as important – perhaps more so – is the broader context.

Over a year ago, President Obama chose a compromise nominee, Merrick Garland, to fill the Supreme Court’s vacancy. The Senate Republican majority responded by launching a blockade without modern precedent: Garland, GOP senators declared, would not be considered in any way. No hearing, no debate, no floor vote, no consideration.

As part of a scandalous display of obstructionism, Republicans blocked a qualified, compromise nominee because the president was a Democrat. To execute the gambit, GOP senators made up rules that didn’t exist, they lied about rules that did exist, and when they assumed Americans would never actually elect Donald Trump to the presidency, they said they were prepared to leave the court’s vacancy in place until 2021 – at the earliest.

In other words, Republicans stole a Supreme Court seat, and now expect to be rewarded for it. GOP senators aren’t just pretending the events of 2016 didn’t happen, they’re simultaneously insisting that the Senate play the game by the standard rules – now that the people who set fire to the rule book are satisfied with their handiwork.

The New York Times’ David Leonhardt’s assessment from several weeks ago is as correct now as it was then:

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“Democrats should not weigh this nomination the same way that they’ve weighed previous ones. This one is different. The presumption should be that Gorsuch does not deserve confirmation, because the process that led to his nomination was illegitimate.

”

Michael Bennet seems eager to take the high road. His position is that Republicans were wrong in 2016 when they radically abused the process, so it’s better that Democrats steer clear of their own obstructionism in 2017. And as nice as that may sound, it’s an approach that carries its own dangers. Bennet’s “Two wrongs never make a right” posture, while certainly polite, tells Republicans that there are no consequences for their actions. GOP senators stole a Supreme Court seat, and by playing nice, Dems would reward Republicans with the prize they sought – at no price whatsoever.

The precedent this would set creates a new set of incentives for senators going forward: you, too, can abuse the process in outrageous ways, get exactly what you want, and suffer literally no penalties.

The democratic operatives fronting this disinformation campaign wouldn't THINK of sharing the info with Clinton, right? They were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for something they would enjoy reading in their private studies, that's all, eh?

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The democratic operatives fronting this disinformation campaign wouldn't THINK of sharing the info with Clinton, right? They were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for something they would enjoy reading in their private studies, that's all, eh?

If they were really paying all this money (which you have not proven) why didn't they just release the dossier themselves? Clinton could have held a big press event in the closing days of the campaign. Trump wouldn't have had time to do anything but deny the embarrassing charges. The Tweetstorm would have been epic.

layman, you're going back on "ignore". I hate to say it, but it's not worth my time (or yours) to attempt reasoned discussion. I'll catch you on the Blues thread.