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Just the facts: -Donald Trump has never disclosed his financial ties to Russia and Russia connected interests in the former Soviet States. -The Trump administration has enlisted senior members of the intelligence community and Congress in efforts to counter news stories about Trump associates’ ties to Russia. -A Trump deal in Azerbaijan has been linked to corrupt officials who support the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. -The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) puts a legal burden to conducting due diligence on American companies operating overseas. - The FCPA not only applies to U.S. based companies but also to U.S. citizens working for a foreign subsidiary. The FCPA also applies to individual directors, officers, employees, agents, consultants and any stockholders acting on behalf of a U.S. company. - The consequences of not complying with the FCPA are significant -- the company and its officers, directors, and employees are subject to criminal and civil penalties.

This is going to get a lot of coverage but listen closely to what Coons is actually saying.

1) The minority has no leverage in the Senate. 2) The only leverage we have is closing down the government. 3) We'll never close down the government.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but this strikes me a pretty stupid pronouncement on a number of strategic and practical levels. That said - It is nice to see that Coons is trying to find his resistance voice.

A coalition of 14 communities pooled their resources to hire Tim Willard, a Georgetown attorney, and lobbyist, Joe Conaway to press for some reasonable sounding limits on beach truck traffic. The communities lost.

The next opportunity for Democrats to rebuke Republicans is the March 21st special election for Kent County Levy Courts's 2nd District. The Dems are running Andrea Kreiner, who sounds like an honest to goodness Democrat, and a great addition to the Democratic bench. Check out Kreiner's material here, which includes a nice long interview with WDDE. If she looks legit to you, kick in $10.01 and DL will match all $10.01 donations up to $100.00.

Victory has a thousand fathers, so it is not surprising that the useless DNC and UTTERLY useless DLCC both stepped up to claim some credit for the Hansen win the…

Call it whatever you want, but this weekend's news marks a shift. The Republican President is insane, out of one's mind, deranged, demented, crazed, lunatic, non compos mentis, unhinged, not right in the head, bonkers, cuckoo, loopy, loony, bananas, loco, not all there, out to lunch, crackers, nutso. IN ADDITION to that, he is a known espionage agent of the Russians. Chris Coons and Tom Carper have a responsibility as United States Senators to act. History will judge them by what they do in the next few weeks and months to protect the United States from this administration.

MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Russian President Vladimir Putin is “starting to get concerned” that the puppets he installed in the executive branch of the U.S. government “might not be up to…

A BIPARTISAN collection of 41 members of congress went on record calling on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the investigations of Russian influence within the Trump White…

…from the desk of R.E. Vanella.   This is dedicated to a friend. Thanks for the email. I needed a bit of a push this week.  

“I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day. Actually, the experience of the Lager with its frightful iniquity confirmed me in my nonbelief. It has prevented me, and still prevents me, from conceiving of any form of providence or transcendent justice… I must nevertheless admit that I experienced (and again only once) the temptation to yield, to seek refuge in prayer. This happened in October 1944, in the one moment in which I lucidly perceived the imminence of death… naked and compressed among my naked companions with my personal index card in hand, I was waiting to file past the ‘commission’ that with one glance would decide whether I should go immediately into the gas chamber or was instead strong enough to go on working. For one instance I felt the need to ask for help and asylum; then, despite my anguish, equanimity prevailed: one does not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, nor when you are losing. A prayer under these conditions would have been not only absurd (what rights could I claim? and from whom?) but blasphemous, obscene, laden with the greatest impiety of which a nonbeliever is capable. I rejected the temptation: I knew that otherwise were I to survive, I would have been ashamed of it.” ----Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 1986

  I’m only dealing with people now. Not anonymous characters. I have an interesting idea that I’ll be sharing with the email group. So if I know you, and I have your email address, you will likely be seeing a message from me over the weekend.   I’m trying to be creative and effective and efficient. As is its tendency, time will tell.

We are an outlier among North Eastern states where Judaism is the runner up.

Not surprisingly, the SD10 Special Election dominated the traffic last month, occupying 6 of the top 10 spots. Kellyanne Conway not being attractive is turning into a real SEO evergreen up there with the all-time champion, "Bacon number lower than 4"