"While shock dominated much of the FBI and the White House, the mood was more elated at Roger Stone's house in Florida. Several Stone allies and friends said Stone, who has been frequently mentioned in the investigation, encouraged the president to fire Comey in conversations in recent weeks.

On Twitter, Stone signaled praise for the move by posting an image of Trump from The Apprentice saying "You're fired."

Stone declined to comment Tuesday night but said he was enjoying a fine cigar."

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the Trump administration weighs extending humanitarian protections for thousands of Haitian immigrants, officials are digging for unusual information: How many have been convicted of crimes.

Internal emails obtained by The Associated Press show a top immigration official wanted not only crime data on Haitians who are protected from deportation under the Temporary Protected Status program, but also how many were receiving public benefits. Such immigrants aren’t eligible for welfare benefits.

Roughly 50,000 Haitians have been allowed to live in the U.S. under the program in the aftermath of a 2010 earthquake, and the questions about misdeeds among them comes at a critical moment. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly must decide soon whether to continue protecting the group from deportation.

Normally the decision depends on whether conditions in the immigrants’ home country have improved. But emails suggest Kelly is looking at other criteria as well.

Department spokesman David Lapan said Tuesday that criminal history and other information requested by policy chief Kathy Nuebel Kovarik won’t be used to make a final decision about Temporary Protected Status. Lapan said the questions were asked so that Kelly could have a fuller understanding of who is in the program.

But Lapan’s explanation doesn’t reflect the apparent importance placed on the questions by Kovarik, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services head of policy and strategy, in repeated emails to her staff.

The request for criminal data for an entire ethnic community is unorthodox. Federal law doesn’t specify it should be a consideration for Temporary Protected Status, and the government has never said it would use a community’s behavior in deciding if a country’s citizens should be allowed to stay.

slugsrbad wrote:Reporrts that Trump was getting increasingly pissed off about the Russian investigation/inability to control the narrative. Also saw that Grand Jury subpoenas were issued in the Russian investigation recently. We seem to be lucky enough to live in a country where our corrupt politicians are typically inept.

In an email, the company said of Meyer’s pitch, “Kushner Companies apologizes if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Ms. Meyer’s intention.” Of the photograph of the president, Kushner Cos. said, “The image was part of a presentation by the event’s organizers. Kushner Companies had nothing to do with it.

thephan wrote:

slugsrbad wrote:Reporrts that Trump was getting increasingly pissed off about the Russian investigation/inability to control the narrative. Also saw that Grand Jury subpoenas were issued in the Russian investigation recently. We seem to be lucky enough to live in a country where our corrupt politicians are typically inept.

Actual leaks or just people going with 'it figures'?

pacino wrote:Good to see Bob Casey vote against the FDA pick. He's really come around over the past few months.

JUburton wrote:

pacino wrote:Good to see Bob Casey vote against the FDA pick. He's really come around over the past few months.

Gottlieb is at least as standard an R pick as you can get. And was deputy commissioner at one point.

But you can expect companies to push off label promotion as far as possible under first amendment protection. FDA is going to get very weak on that except in the most egregious cases.

Spicer then appeared to suggest that the warning from Yates was dismissed because it was from Yates.

“Let’s look at, again, how this came down,” he replied. “Someone who is not exactly a supporter of the president’s agenda, who, a couple of days after this first conversation took place, refused to uphold a lawful order of the president’s. Who is not exactly someone who was excited about President Trump taking office or his agenda.”

Spicer was asked in subsequent questions to explain his comments about Yates’s loyalty to the administration.

“Appointed by the Obama administration and a strong supporter of Clinton,” Spicer said at one point. Asked to clarify his assertion that she was a “supporter of Clinton,” Spicer later said Yates was “widely rumored to play a large role in the Justice Department if Hillary Clinton had won.”

NBC’s Hallie Jackson pressed him on that point. Was it the right call for Flynn to sit in on meetings despite Yates’s warning?

“What you have is somebody who was an Obama appointee coming in and saying — you have somebody who you have to wonder why they’re telling you something,” Spicer replied.

“You said it was widely rumored that she wanted to be a part of the Clinton White House potentially,” Jackson replied.

Spicer’s rationale? Yates was “somebody who clearly showed by the fact that career attorneys told her that she should sign the president’s lawful order and then chose not to do it — that vindicates the president’s point. This is not somebody who was looking out — my point is, we were correct in the assumptions we made at the time.”

There is great interest in going after Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah because it is though that there is a significant COAL reserve there. Oil and natural come along for the ride too.