Daily Archives: June 8, 2017

He had previously ruled out a coalition deal with other parties after warning their positions on Brexit could not be reconciled.

Speaking about the loss Mr Clegg said the next parliament will preside over a deeply, deeply divided and polarised nation.

We saw that in the Brexit referendum last year and we see it again tonight, he said, adding that the most grave gulf of all in society is between the young and the old. Accepting his defeat, he said that in politics You live by the sword and you die by the sword.

It came after the former leader warned he had seen an "uptick" in support for Jeremy Corbyn's party in his seat, which has a high student population.

The former Lib Dem leader ruled out a coalition between his former party and Labour or the Conservatives, addingthere is no "meeting point" between them because of their views on Brexit.

Speaking to ITV MrCleggsaid: "It's clearly a complete boomerang election for the Conservatives who when they started out in this election campaign were treating it as something of a coronation and clearly it's going to be a much tighter fought contest."

Asked about the possibly of a coalition with either Labour or the Tories he added:"There's no meeting point between the Conservatives and the Labour parties and the Lib Dems."

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Liberal Democrats rule out coalition with Labour as former leader Nick Clegg loses seat - Telegraph.co.uk

'A Proud Liberal' Engages 'a Proud Deplorable' New York Times Dear Friend: I write as a proud liberal with an open mind. Though there is much we disagree about, there is one thing you and I agree on: We live in a dangerous world. One of the greatest risks we face is our belief that those who disagree with us have ...

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'A Proud Liberal' Engages 'a Proud Deplorable' - New York Times

Christy Clark reiterated that she doesn't expect to be B.C. premier much longer, while addressing media at today's Liberal MLA swearing-in ceremony.

"There is a very strong likelihood that the government will be defeated on a confidence motion, and I think that's a fair assumption to make," she said.

"We are in an unusual place in the province," she said. "It's an unusual situation when the party that gets the most seats does not govern."

The NDP and Greens won a combined 44 seats in last month's election and have agreed to work together to unseat the Liberals and form a minority government. The Liberals won 43 seats.

With the legislature set to berecalled June 22, there is growing intrigue over who will be elected Speakerand whether or not it will throw the legislature into gridlock.

Normally, the Speaker comes from the party forming government, which would have the effect of reducing the combined NDP-Green seat total to 43, tied with the Liberals.

Parliamentary convention has it that in the event of a tievote, the Speaker would continue debate and maintain the status quo. However, in the matter of a confidence vote, the speaker could cast the tie-breaking vote.

LiberalGovernment House Leader Mike deJongcautioned it would be dangerous to go against custom and politicizethe Speaker's position.

NDP leader John Horgan is introduced to his caucus in advance of the NDP swearing-in ceremony. (Mike McArthur/CBC)

"Whoever that person ends up being, there are parliamentary conventions in place for the approach the Speaker takes when called upon to cast a deciding vote," he said.

"To begin to amend the rules simply to buttress or make life easier in a precarious minoritysituation isfraught with problems."

The 41-member NDP caucus was sworn in this afternoon, one day after thethree elected members from theB.C. Green Party.

Clark said her party would be willing to support the NDP-Greens on issues they agree on, but that major decisions on Liberal-backed Kinder Morgan and Site C need to be pushed forward.

Clark and NDP Leader John Horganhave been waging a public letter-writing battle over the massive Site C hydroelectric dam, sparked by Horganadvising BC Hydro to not sign any new contracts related to the $8.8 billion project.

And the NDP-Green alliance has said it will attempt to stop the twinning of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which has federal approval and is slated to begin work in September.

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Liberal, NDP MLAs take part in swearing-in ceremony - CBC.ca

Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org called for President Trumps impeachmentThursday after the release of former FBI Director James Comeys opening testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In the United States, no one is above the law. The testimony that former FBI Director James Comey is expected to deliver today makes clear that Congress must begin impeachment proceedings immediately, the statement reads.

Todays testimony puts us in fundamentally new territory. This is no longer about our opposition to Trumps policies and rhetoric.

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MoveOns call for Trumps impeachment is not the only one. Democratic Reps. Al GreenAl GreenRyan denies GOP would try to impeach Dem accused of same actions as Trump Liberal group MoveOn calls for Trump to be impeached Second Dem joins effort to impeach Trump MORE (Texas) and Brad Sherman (Calif.) have also called for the presidents impeachment.

Sherman said he was drafting a single article of impeachment due to Trumps firing of Comey. This would be the first step in any congressional bid to oust the president.

However, House Democratic leaders have pushed back on calls for impeachment,saying the efforts could undermine the congressional and federal investigations into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russian election meddling.

MoveOns statement comes hours before the former FBI chief will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The former FBI head put out his opening own opening statement on Wednesday, in which he says the president said he expected Comeys loyalty and that Trump wanted him to lift the cloud surrounding the Russia investigation.

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Liberal group MoveOn calls for Trump to be impeached - The Hill (blog)

Project Veritas, the conservative activist group famous for damaging undercover videosthat recently forced two Democratic operatives out of their jobs, has been hit with a potentially expensive problem a $1 million conspiracy lawsuit.

The allegations: Project Veritas infiltrated a Democratic consulting firm under false pretenses, secretly recorded private conversations and published deceptively edited footage all to mislead the public and hurt former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the White House.In doing so, Project Veritas violatedfederal and Washington wiretapping laws, among other things, said attorney Joseph Sandler, a former Democratic National Committee general counsel who represents the plaintiff, Democracy Partners, a consulting group working with the Clinton campaign.

Project Veritas's founder, James O'Keefe, hasdenounced the lawsuit as an intimidation tacticto impedeProject Veritas's army of guerrilla journalists and their pursuit of the truth.

The lawsuit, which comes at a time of strong political divisiveness,will not be without significant challenges, legal experts say.

For one, pretending to be someone else to expose something that might be of public interest is hardly new. And courts in the pasthave protected constitutional rights to gather and publish news, whether by the institutional press or the average citizen, said David Heller, deputy director of the Media Law Resource Center.

[Two Democratic operatives lose jobs after James OKeefe sting]

Secondly, although wiretapping laws make it illegal to secretly tape conversations, they also say that it's okay to do so as long as one party knows about the recording and had consented to it. The exception, known as the one-party consent, is the reason why, for example, President Trump wouldn'thave broken any laws if he did tape conversations with former FBI director James B. Comey.

A judge or a jury will have to answer these questions: Do Project Veritas's undercover investigations serve the public interest? Or are they a smear campaign disguising asjournalism?

In the current environment of 'fake news' and hyper partisanship, it won't be surprising if judges struggle over what is or isn't for the good of the public, Heller told The Washington Post.

It all started in June 2016, when a man named Daniel Sandini introduced himself to Democracy Partners's founder, Robert Creamer. Using a false name, Sandini connected Creamer tohis niece who he claimed was interested in advocacy and political work, according to the complaint, which was filed last week. That niece, Allison Maas, used a false name and a fabricated resume to secure an internship at Democracy Partners.

Both Sandini and Maas are Project Veritas operatives, the lawsuit states.

During the course of her internship, which started in September, Maas wore a hidden camera and audio recording devices. Sherecorded conversations made with clients in person or via conference calls, the lawsuit states. Shehad access to confidential emails and documents and was present at confidential meetings.

Creamer had told her not to share information with anyone, the lawsuit states, although Maas never signed a nondisclosure agreement with Democracy Partners. Sandler said that even without a nondisclosure agreement, Maas owed it to Democracy Partners to not steal information.

[James OKeefe says CNN is the target of his next sting]

You essentially sign up for an internship and become part of an organization, Sandler said. You owe a basic duty of loyalty to that organization that you are not going to that you haven't deceived them, defrauded them. That's what she breached here.

Mason Kortz, an instructional fellow at Harvard University's Cyberlaw Clinic, said what will likely be a hurdle for Democracy Partners is the manner in which the conversations were recorded. Was Maasa bystander recording other people's conversations? Or was she a part of the conversations? If it's the latter, federal andWashington wiretapping laws' one-party consent couldgive Maas some reprieve, Kortz said.

But the laws also provide another exception that could help Democracy Partners, Kortz said.Secret recordings are illegal in Washington if they were done to purposely damagea person or an organization.

They would have to provide proof of what(Maas's) purpose was, her state of mind, Kortz said.

According to O'Keefe, his organization's purpose is investigative journalism that exposes malfeasance and corruption of certain organizations. Sandler calls it political espionage.

In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Project Veritas released videos, some of which were from footage taken by Maas. The series, called Rigging the Election, purport to prove that Democracy Partners, including Creamer and a Democratic activist from Madison, Wis., had committed voter fraud and conspired to disrupt campaign ralliesof Trump, who was then a Republican presidential candidate.

Creamer announced that he was stepping back from his work for the Clinton campaign shortly after the videos were published. Scott Foval, the activist who contracted with Democracy Partners, was laid off. Democracy Partners and a consulting firm owned by Creamer also lost clients and contracts.

The lawsuit alleged that the videos, some of which Trump mentioned at presidential debates and which have been viewed millions of times on YouTube, were selectively and heavily edited and contained false commentary by O'Keefe.

[James OKeefes CNN Leaks are totally overrated]

Yael Bromberg, a supervising attorney for the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law, said the videos gained widespread criticism across the political spectrum.

We're in an era of unprecedented hyper partisanship and fake news, and the integrity of the public domain is critical to the practice of democracy, said Bromberg, who's also representing Democracy Partners and Creamer. What's more is they degrade public discourse during a time of heightened importance, which is when the public is most in tuned into politics just before the election.

In an earlier statement, Democracy Partners denounced both Project Veritas and the statements caught on camera.

Our firm has recently been the victim of a well-funded, systematic spy operation that is the modern-day equivalent of the Watergate burglars, the firm said. The plot involved the use of trained operatives using false identifications, disguises and elaborate false covers to infiltrate our firm and others, to steal campaign plans and goad unsuspecting individuals into making careless statements on hidden cameras. One of those individuals was a temporary regional subcontractor who was goaded into statements that do not reflect our values.

O'Keefe saidthat he and his group are on the right side of the law.

This lawsuit further justifies the need to drain the swamp. We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced. We will find out who is funding this lawsuit. We will never stop exposing the truth. We will not back down,said O'Keefe, whose organization received $10,000 from the Trump Foundation in 2015 before heannounced his candidacy.

O'Keefe first gained notoriety in 2009,when Project Veritas's undercover sting led to the destruction ofthe Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. Another sting in 2011 led to two resignations at NPR, although subsequent investigations found discrepancies between what NPR executives actually saidin taped conversations and what was shown in the sting video.

In 2013, O'Keefe agreed to pay $100,000 to a former ACORN employee who said he was illegally recorded.

David Weigel contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly characterized Shane Bauer's reporting when he worked as a prison guard for a Mother Jones expose. The article has been updated.

READ MORE:

James OKeefe finally realized that people will develop conspiracy theories all on their own

The left jousts with James OKeefe

New James OKeefe video: Clinton campaign allowed a foreigner to acquire official swag

Continued here:

James O'Keefe's undercover video stings damaged liberal icons ... - Washington Post

The review of Canadas defence policy took more than a year to assess the potential threats in the world and came back with one real priority: wed better figure out a way to pay for a military.

There are some new things in the Liberal governments blueprint: more drones, surveillance, cyberdefence and special forces.

But the big thing is an admission a rare one that Canada must spend more to have an army, a navy and an air force.

Read more: Ottawa lays out $62-billion in new military spending over 20 years

Its going to be a lot more, $7-billion a year more a decade from now, in 2027, on an accrual-accounting basis. And it wont really buy a bigger or flashier fighting force. Mostly, the extra money is needed because there wasnt enough set aside for the long-planned buys of essential equipment, such as fighter jets and warships.

The policy issued Wednesday was supposed to take stock of the challenges the military will face in the coming world, but the assessment was groundbreaking: The job is still to protect Canadian territory, work with the United States in North America and NORAD and join with allies in global security, either in NATO missions or UN peacekeeping. Theres terrorism and theres cyberthreats. Thats not news.

The real issue was cost. And on that score, the Liberals were refreshingly realistic. They dispensed with some of the perennial flim-flam of Canadian defence policy, which involves underestimating what the military needs and low-balling costs, then shifting budgets around to make do.

This was a Liberal defence policy for the harder realism of 2017, when the Liberals have been forced to face the fact that there isnt enough money set aside for the planes that make the air force an air force and the ships that make the navy a navy. Theres a new U.S. President, Donald Trump, who demands allies bear a greater share of the defence-spending burden. Plus, theres concern, outlined in a speech by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday, that the United States might shrug off the burden of world leadership, requiring other countries to do more.

But it was a long way from the way Justin Trudeaus Liberals talked about defence when they ran for office in 2015, or even last year. This was a good defence policy, but for the Liberals, the snag is that it clashed with so many of the things they said about military matters in the past.

Remember how Mr. Trudeau talked about pulling CF-18s from air strikes in Iraq and Syria, as he suggested a Liberal government would be less combat-minded? He emphasized a return to Pearsonian peacekeeping. Last year, he tasked Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan with preparing a deployment to a UN peacekeeping mission; thats still on hold.

Instead, Mr. Trudeau is proposing to devote the kind of money to defence that his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, was unwilling to spend.

Even if the biggest bumps in spending are slated to come five years from now, the increases start this year and will see the defence budget rise from $17.1-billion to $24.6-billion in the 2026-27 fiscal year, in accrual accounting terms.

Is that what Liberal voters expected? A Justin Trudeau government spending billions more on the military? No.

Mr. Sajjan said Canadians want the government to equip the military properly. But the price tag alone means increased defence spending is a new Liberal priority and that will be a surprise to many of those Liberal voters.

In 2015, he promised to save by ordering cheaper fighter jets than the F-35s that Mr. Harpers Conservatives planned to buy. Now, his Liberal government says the military needs 88 fighter jets, not the 65 Mr. Harpers government planned to buy at roughly double the cost estimated by the Tories. Similarly, the Tories promised to buy 12 to 15 warships and now, the Liberals say it will be 15, period but theyll cost $30-billion more.

Give Mr. Sajjan credit for that. It was always widely believed that 65 fighter jets would be too few the last time Canada bought fighters, it ordered 138 CF-18s. The cost estimates for planes and ships were low-balled. Thank goodness Mr. Sajjan did away with that guff.

The Liberals say they were surprised at the extent of the budget shortfall for big equipment buys. In the harder world of 2017, they chose to look past their campaign rhetoric and face the real cost of a military. The political question is still whether Liberal voters of 2015 want to pay it.

Follow Campbell Clark on Twitter: @camrclark

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A Liberal defence policy could cost you - The Globe and Mail

From a very early age Ive been put off by sanctimoniousness; its why, I think, Ive never been attracted to the political Left, which when I was growing up was heavy on the finger-wagging, and why I find a certain style of newspaper column irritating. They remind me of the sour-faced old guys we used to see at church all in competition to see who could look the most serious and disapproving. This whole idea that if you dont support Labour and the Left youre not just wrong or misguided but a bad person is what puts me off; this Daily Mash article is depressingly close to reality in my experience.

Yet this election has made me feel the same, for the first time; my area is flooded with Labour posters outside front doors and when I look at them I find myself shaking my head.

The extent to which Labour have done better than expected in polling is disappointing; they will certainly lose, but I hoped and expected that they would haemorrhage support from the start as people were put off by Jeremy Corbyn. Some seem to see him as a sort of Obi Wan Kanobi character saving the NHS; I look at him and see a man who has previously spoken of his admiration for the Venezuela regime which has brought such an economic miracle to that country; then theres a shadow chancellor who appears alongside Soviet flags at a rally, and a director of strategy who quite openly laments that the Berlin Wall came down. Even if supporters of the three parties have disagreements, we tend to think of each other as being wrong within normal parameters, as P.J. ORourke said of Hilary Clinton but these views seem so far beyond the bounds of normality I assumed most would be repulsed.

Instead huge numbers not just support him, but see Corbyn as a deeply moral man in a crusade; most troubling is the level of popularity among the young, estimated to be over 60 and maybe 70 per cent.

Sorry if I sound sanctimonious, but the Soviet Union was evil and if you stand beside its flag theres something wrong with you as a human being; yet over two-thirds of the next generation want Britain to be Venezuela with Jihadis. Where has the education system gone wrong?

Thats why Im voting Liberal Democrat for the first time today. The main practical reason is that I live in a two-horse constituency; I am also totally underwhelmed by the Tory party and, ideology aside, Im not sure they are competent enough to do the job. But I also believe the Lib Dems have been unfairly maligned, and the lack of support for them is not just surprising, but also unjust. Im not a natural liberal but they have been unfairly blamed for a coalition they had almost no choice to enter and in which they achieved much, as this Economist assessment points out.

The coalition has cut the deficit more pragmatically than it admits and more progressively than its critics allow. When the economy weakened, the Tories eased the pace (although not by as much as this newspaper would have liked). Though the poorest Britons have been hit hard by spending cuts, the richest 10% have borne the greatest burden of extra taxes.

Its not a perfect record, by any means, but in real life there are only imperfect governments, and terrible governments. (John Rentoul also wrote a good defence of the Lib Dems in government here.)

The Liberals didnt do enough to get their message across while in government, especially on the subject of cuts; a narrative seemed to emerge which went unchallenged, although I think thats probably a perennial problem with those in the political centre. (Likewise Ive come to appreciate the Blair government did lots of pretty good things but almost no one in the Labour party seems to defend them anymore.)

I thought that with Corbyn in charge the Liberal Democrats would become the natural home of Britains moderates, but it doesnt seem to have worked that way; liberals dont seem to support them, so I think its only sporting I should.

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Why I'm voting Liberal Democrat for the first time today - Spectator.co.uk (blog)

A member of the NSW Liberals is facing up to five years' suspension for publicly criticising an MP who was caught falsely swearing to have lived in her electorate for a decade.

Liberal headquarters is moving to suspend barrister Juris Laucis for up to five years for criticising Felicity Wilson, the party's candidate for North Shore.

During a close preselection battle, Ms Wilson was revealed to have falsely sworn to have lived in the electorate for a decade.

On the eve of the April byelection, Ms Wilson said she should have been more careful with her wordsamid a burgeoning media scandal about inconsistencies in her claimed connection to the electorate.

Writing for The Spectator, Mr Laucis described the affair as a "running sore" for the party.

"The honourable thing to do, even at the 11th hour, would have been for the Liberal Party to withdraw from the race, and thereby demonstrate that it is a Party that commands the moral high ground," he wrote.

"The election of Felicity Wilson is a running sore that will plague the Berejiklian government all the way to the next election."

Liberal party state director Chris Stone commenced suspension proceedings against Mr Laucis for those comments this week.

"Mr Laucis did not obtain authority from the State Director prior to publishing the article and has therefore breached [regulations]," a motion from the Department of Party Affairs and passed by the Liberals' ruling state executive read.

But Mr Laucis was unrepentant.

"They're trying to set up a Stalinist regime," he told Fairfax Media. "The reason I speak out is the only way that culture is going to change is if it comes out in the public domain.

"Within the Liberal Party there's no mechanism we can [use to] stop whatever the executive is doing."

Mr Laucis' fate will be determined by a meeting of the party's all-powerful state executive on July 28.

In her first tilt at Parliament, Ms Wilson retained the seat of North Shore for the Liberals, notwithstanding a swing of more than 15 per cent.

Last week she was revealed to have presented her third different account of her ties to the electorate in a speech to party members that significantly watered down her initial apology.

A spokesman for the NSW Liberal party declined to comment.

The Liberal Party maintains famously strict rules that prohibit members from discussing "internal party matters" in the media.

Ex-federal MP Ross Cameron recently fell foul of the rule and was recently suspended for four-and-a-half years for critical comments he made about now-Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

Mr Laucis was also previously suspended last year, along with former MP Charlie Lynn and Mr Cameron, for a period of six months, for comments critical of party preselection processes made to the ABC's 7.30 program.

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Liberal faces five-year suspension for criticising MP Felicity Wilson - The Sydney Morning Herald