Mueller's indictments are just the beginning

Robert Mueller is getting close. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates' indictments are just the breaking of the seal. The real head-turner in this saga is the guilty plea of George Papadopoulos, who admitted to lying to the FBI during the grand jury investigation, and admitting that he approached Trump and his team about his ability to get Trump a meeting with Putin, an attempt confirmed by JD Gordon, who is sitting next to Papadopoulos in the March 31, 2016 National Security meeting that Trump himself tweeted the photo of. Gordon recalled the conversation, that Jeff Sessions' was disinterested in the possibility of Trump meeting Putin, but also that Trump himself was interested. Trump, as recently as Friday before he left for Asia, tried to downplay the meeting itself, calling it "unimportant," and claiming that he doesn't even remember it - a hilariously dumb assertion, coming from "one of the great memories of all time" (direct quote).

But one of the more damning elements of this is that Papadopoulos claims to have tried to have this conversation because a Russian professor he communicated with had emails of Hillary Clinton and John Podesta. This flies square in the face of Trump and his team claiming they didn't know about the email hack until much later. If what Papadopoulos is claiming is true, it not only shows that Trump and his team knew about it, but raises questions of whether they were involved in the retrieval and release. This may not be the case, of course, but they can't avoid the position they've put themselves in by continuously lying at every turn, about even the most benign things. And worse, the timeline puts Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey squarely in the cross-hairs, because now that firing could be argued as federal obstruction of justice, a felony.

Mueller also did the wisest thing he could have done, which is to release the indictments and Papadopoulos' plea deal as early as he could, because Trump has ratcheted up his complaints about Mueller in recent weeks, and many were wondering if he would finally pull the trigger and fire him. This release makes that possibility all the more difficult to do. And while the administration has tried to claim Papadopoulos was a "low-level volunteer," and a "liar," (but Trump calls everyone a liar...), Trump himself named Papadopoulos to his Foreign Policy team, publicly mentioning him in an interview. Papadopoulos also represented the Trump campaign at the RNC, sitting on a foreign policy panel for a discussion on US foreign policy for the American Jewish Committee.

Interestingly, while some hard-liners have encouraged Trump to fire Mueller, many Republican politicians have widely warned the Trump administration against doing so. It's becoming clear that their fates in re-election could be tied to whatever Trump does in response to the investigation, and they want no part of that kind of fallout. Many are also holding their breath in anticipation of Trump doing something even dumber, like professing a plan to pardon everyone Mueller indicts. Trump has discussed this before, and has seemed unflinching about the optics of doing such a thing, as evidenced my the move he's already made for Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. If he pre-emptively pardons Manafort, Gates and - in amnesty-type fashion - anyone else that the Mueller investigation eventually uncovers, the rule of law in this country will unravel. No politician wants to be seen as being a party to one of the most serious abdications of responsibility and accountability in presidential history.

However this plays out, Mueller is just getting started. And the microscope he is under assures that he wouldn't be issuing indictments and making plea deals if he didn't have at least some of the evidence he needs to uphold the charges. The question now is: Does Donald Trump have the testicular fortitude to NOT be himself, and let Mueller do his job without interference? I wouldn't put Vegas odd on it...

How early CAN we ban abortion?

Ohio is trying to become the latest state to move the banning of abortion to earlier in a pregnancy, by introducing bills that would ban abortion for genetic disorder reasons and once a fetal heartbeat can be registered. First, the bills:

Ohio House Bill 214, for the 132 General Assembly

The bill prohibits any person from purposefully performing or inducing, or attempting to perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman, if the person has knowledge that the pregnant woman is seeking the abortion, in whole or in part, for any of the following reasons:

• A test result indicating Down syndrome in an unborn child;
• A prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome in an unborn child;
• Any other reason to believe that an unborn child has Down syndrome.

The bill does not specifically prohibit the act of aborting unborn children with Down syndrome. Rather, it looks at why the mother desires an abortion and whether the person who will perform the abortion knows the mother's reasons. Whoever violates this prohibition is guilty of performing or attempting to perform an abortion that was being sought because of Down syndrome, a felony of the fourth degree.

The bill also:

• Requires the State Medical Board to revoke a physician's license to practice medicine if the physician violates the criminal prohibition.
• Provides that a physician who violates the criminal prohibition is civilly liable for compensatory and exemplary damages and reasonable attorney's fees to any person who sustains injury, death, or loss that results from the prohibited abortion.
• Provides criminal immunity for a pregnant woman on whom an abortion was performed, in violation of the criminal prohibition.
• Provides that the criminal prohibition does not repeal or limit any other provision of law that restricts or regulates the performance or inducement of an abortion
• Requires physicians to indicate a lack of knowledge that the mother's intent to seek an abortion was, in whole or in part, because of a test result indicating Down syndrome, a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, or due to any other reason to believe the unborn child had Down syndrome, when complying with the continuing requirement to report to the Department of Health after each abortion.

Ohio House Bill 258, for the 132 General Assembly

The bill prohibits any person from knowingly and purposefully performing or inducing an abortion with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of the life of an unborn human individual whose fetal heartbeat has been detected.

• Provides that a person who violates the above prohibition is guilty of performing or inducing an abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, a felony of the fifth degree;
• Provides that a physician is not in violation of the above prohibition if that physician performs a medical procedure designed to or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman or prevent a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman;
• Provides that a person is not in violation of the prohibition if that person has performed an examination for the presence of a fetal heartbeat and the method used does not reveal a fetal heartbeat;
• Provides that a physician does not commit the offense if the physician performs or induces an abortion believing that a medical emergency exists.
• Provides that the prohibition does not repeal or limit any other provision of law that restricts or regulates the performance or inducement of an abortion by a particular method or during a particular stage of pregnancy.

So the implications of these bills are severe. First, the heartbeat: the fetus first registers a heartbeat at about six weeks. This is a problem for women who may not even find out they are pregnant until that time. The heartbeat bill is putting a burden of hyper-intuition on women to just "know" immediately that they are pregnant, in order to get an abortion within the highly restricted time frame. Constitutionally, it's difficult to argue that this is not an undue burden.

The Down Syndrome bill is where we get into really sticky constitutional terrain - not because they want to ban abortion for a possible Down Syndrome fetus, but because they want to ban abortion, period, and this is a very slick and conniving way to do it. Go with me on this, because this bill isn't about Down Syndrome, it's about opening a door, and Down Syndrome is the pry bar on the deadbolt:

1. Ban abortion on any fetus that has been tested to show a possibility of Down Syndrome;
2. Then argue that they should protect all fetuses who may test positive for any genetic or developmental disorder (such as Cystic Fibrosis, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Hemophilia A, Thalassemia, Sickle-Cell Anemia, Spina Bifida, Polycystic Kidney Disease, Tay-Sachs disease, etc., and expand the law to accommodate these as well;
3. Then argue that they can't know IF they need to protect fetuses from their mothers, and so expand the law to require genetic (MSAFP) testing on fetuses before doctors are allowed to perform an abortion, which can't be done the 16th-18th week. This is a great alternative for the Right To Birth-ers (not "Right To Life-rs," there's no such thing) if they can't get the Heartbeat legislation to pass, or if it does pass and later gets kicked on constitutional grounds;
4. Then argue that it's easier to require doctors to run hCG (a protein) and PAPP-A (a hormone) tests (these test can be run very early in the pregnancy) on the mothers themselves, once pregnancy is confirmed, for genetic markers that indicate the possibility of chromosomal abnormality long before MSAFP tests would confirm such abnormalities, and expand the law to ban abortion based on the POSSIBILITY rather than the CONFIRMATION.

The idea here is to ban abortion as early in pregnancy as possible, to essentially eliminate the window to abort at all. The Heartbeat bill would do that in all but a few cases, but the Down Syndrome bill is more comprehensive in the precedent that is being set. Thanks to GMOs in our crops and chemical treatments on our livestock, the food we eat has contributed to a rise in the development of allergies in children per capita, as well as mutations in hormones (this is why children, especially girls, are entering puberty as early as 8-10 years old.) This means women will, inevitably, increasingly test positive for some form of possible abnormality. This bill could be the crack in the door to PRE-BANNING women from getting abortions if they ever get pregnant.

Don't mistake this for a doomsday scenario - THIS IS HOW OUR STATE AND FEDERAL CONGRESS WORKS. Fail, retry with different parameters, fail again, retry with different parameters, fail again, retry with different parameters, succeed - the door's been cracked! One success is where it starts, and they build on the precedent to open the door wider and wider with every expansion stemming from that original law.

Pay attention to these legislations, and pay attention to how legislators operate. Often, these bills are buried deep in bigger, more expansive bills, in hopes that they can slither the bill past the people without being noticed - and then it's too late. Stuff like this matters.You have to pay attention and harass your legislators to vote NO on these bills when they are introduced and, more importantly, READ every bill in it's entirety, so they can catch buried bills being snuck past them. Their job is to competently represent you, protect your freedom and your rights - it's their JOB. The thing they care about above all else is re-election. They need to know their constituents are watching them like a hawk.