I guess we won't rest until al-Awlaki's entire extended family has been murdered.

But the US government will never do that. The Democrats should troll Trump and introduce a bill that adds Saudi Arabia, Quatar, the UAE and maybe some other countries where Trump has business interests. I would love to see Republicans explain why they didn't vote for the bill or why Trump vetoed it.

+1 to this.

If you can't find a credible alternative source then you can be pretty sure not worth linking.

I looked for another source and saw the NBC link before I posted. I supposed I could have grabbed that link instead. Oh well.

a ban on muslim immigrants and refugees while expanding christian immigration. an atheist's utopia.

I don't think anyone is making the argument that it's under inclusive means it should be extended, the point is that it's not even fit for its stated purpose. The best article on this was on lawfare.

Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence: Trump’s Horrifying Executive Order on Refugees and Visas

Here the author talks about underinclusivity and overinclusivity as both examples of how the policy fails in it's stated objective to make America safer. It's a means to do the work you want which is to point out he's not actually getting anything done.

I was thinking about this some more on my way into work.

I might say just as easily that the democratic norms we cherish only die when both sides abandon them.

It's pretty dangerous to take the view that winning is the only thing that matters and that adherence to baseline levels of political decency is for dreamers and invertebrates. (DVaut is a thoughtful observer of politics and I'm sure this is an unfair caricature of his personal views.)

Here's the problem. People who are willing to do anything to win rarely transform into people with moral centers once they are in office. The Democrats could nominate some authoritarian jackass like Andrew Cuomo in 2020. He certainly would be willing to get in the gutter with Trump. But expecting Cuomo to be anything other than an authoritarian jackass if he were elected would be very foolish. I don't want the Democratic party to go there, even if it is the only way to win in the very immediate term. The cost is too high.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be a dick - it's just that the Dail Mail is pure evil as well as having no credibility.

Mattis should not be confirmed. Wtf with ignoring the Sec Def is supposed to be a civilian??? That should be opposed at every opportunity and under any pretext.

Mattis retired from the Marines in 2013. Virtually every Secretary of Defense served in the military. The only difference between Mattis and others is that he was "recently retired."

100% agree and it was ridiculous that the Dems didn't take advantage of the free points in opposing him based solely on this fact.

Well trump killed an American kid in Yemen so at least he is trying to keep up

Surprised this hasn't been brought up yet -- Suspect in Quebec Mosque Attack Quickly Depicted as a Moroccan Muslim. He’s a White Nationalist.

I suppose that will be dismissed as fake news by Trump supporters, though.

Yeah but don't forget, Obama ordered the drone-strike murder of her brother (in a cafe with his 17yo cousin, iirc). He was a 16yo American citizen with zero terrorist inclinations. Obama was taking out their families long before Trump ever uttered those words, it's just people didn't care as much when Obama was the one doing it, because Obama at least pretends / gives the outward appearance of not being a monster.

(But I do miss Obama right about now.)

That rule wasn't there for no reason and this wasn't the time for an exception.

Obama was and is widely criticized by both sides of the aisle for his drone program.

And yet he wasn't impeached for war crimes nor violating the Constitution.

Is it legal for the Democratic Party to go door to door for the next 2 years registering every person and providing them state specific advice on how to register and obtain whatever retinal scans, fingerprints, and secret handshake the GOP will force upon people in blue counties?
Also it's time to really start pushing early voting on people that normally vote on the day of the election, and forcing early voting through any state that doesn't already provide it.

Democrats will capitulate on everything. Hell, there are enough Blue Dogs that it's not even capitulation. It's just who they are.

The waiting period was shorted from 10 years to 7 years in 2008, and Mattis still couldn't qualify.

Even so, I strongly suspect that Mattis will be more of an adult than whoever Trump would have chosen had it been impossible for him to nominate Mattis. And I find it a little hard to get worked up over this rule, seeing as there is nothing prohibiting the country from electing a four star general to be Commander in Chief.

Rumsfeld was about as close to a civilian as any Secretary of Defense in recent memory, and he was the worst public servant of my lifetime (at least before Trump was elected.) Rumsfeld's lack of understanding of the military, combined with his unwavering confidence in his own judgment, was a disastrous combination.

Ash Carter, the last Sec Def was a civilian. A physics professor.

That's true. I forgot that Carter never served in the military. His predecessor in the Obama administration, Chuck Hagel, did serve, which is much more typical.

We might as well drop this debate. I'm sure we all agree that, if we could ding one member of Trump's cabinet, it certainly wouldn't be Mattis.

"Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact." - Mad Dog

This is the adult policy we want?

I don't know why Mattis isn't high on the list. There's hardly any issue more impactful than whether or not we're at war.