Floyd Abrams Sees Trump’s Anti-Media Tweets as Double-Edged Swords

His Twitter trail could be a gift to lawyers for the news industry during leak investigations into articles that made the president mad enough to pick up his Android and tap, Tap, TAP!

It could provide great grist for legal arguments that the investigations are less about prosecuting damaging leaks than they are about punishing journalists.

.. his new book, “The Soul of the First Amendment,” which he called “really a story of American exceptionalism.” It argues that the United States’ protections for free speech are the best in the world, at least as of now.

.. he helped argue the conservative side of the Citizens United case, which allowed corporations and unions to spend more freely in elections.

.. things have been much worse. There were days when censorship was rampant and real reporting could land you in prison, right here in the United States. For instance, as Mr. Abrams’s book notes, it was not all that atypical when, in 1901, a Chicago court sentenced the managing editor and a reporter at The Chicago American to jail for an article that was critical of one of its decisions.

.. by the second half of the last century, the courts had begun to view “the First Amendment in an expansive and generally highly protective way.” It started with liberal jurists and eventually spread to the conservative jurists as well

.. Gawker, which a Florida jury hit with a $140 million verdict in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit last year. Without the financial wherewithal to fight on through the appeals process, its owners went into bankruptcy and sold to Univision.

DeVos Halts Obama-Era Plan to Revamp Student Loan Management

The Obama administration sought to replace this labyrinthine system with a single entry point — a sea change in how student loan servicing would work. Instead of dealing directly with private vendors, all federal borrowers would gain access to their accounts through an Education Department portal, with standardized forms and processes. A single vendor would take the lead in creating the system’s interface

.. In October, the government narrowed the field to three finalists

  1. Navient; the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (better known as FedLoan);
  2. Nelnet
  3. Great Lakes

.. The winner was to be announced in February.

.. Navient is the biggest lightning rod. In January, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and two state attorneys general sued Navient, charging it with a long list of misdeeds.

.. a particular piece of guidance from the Obama administration she struck down:

  • that the Education Department should place great weight on a company’s track record when selecting student loan vendors, and should steer away from companies with histories of shoddy service or other problems.

.. that puts Navient — the nation’s largest federal student loan servicer ..

on stronger footing than it had been in bidding for agency contracts.

.. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau responded ..

borrowers “should be able to repay their debt without having to deal with illegal loan servicing practices.”

.. Navient’s size makes it a very strong competitor — once past performance is played down.

.. The loan servicer has tremendous power to guide them through repayment options. Some plans stretch payment periods out for as long as 30 years, and others help qualifying students get a portion of their debt forgiven. Strategic use of those paths can trim — or inflate — the sum that a student ultimately pays by tens of thousands of dollars.

Democrats Elect Tom Perez as Party Chairman

Former Labor secretary, backed by party establishment, defeated Keith Ellison from the party’s populist wing

To help heal the division, Mr. Perez in declaring victory immediately appointed Mr. Ellison as the party’s vice chairman. Mr. Ellison practically begged his supporters to remain in the party and back Mr. Perez.

.. “It is imperative that Tom understands that the same-old, same-old is not working and that we must open the doors of the party to working people and young people in a way that has never been done before,” Mr. Sanders said.

..Keith Ellison was uniquely qualified to transform that anger and fear into political power and organization.”
.. Despite Mr. Ellison’s grass-roots support, large segments of the DNC remained mistrustful of Mr. Sanders, a registered independent whose supporters are aiming to transform the party by installing his acolytes in party posts.
.. The Perez victory ends a four-month campaign to lead the party that few Democrats had expected. Had Mrs. Clinton been elected president, as virtually all DNC members here thought would happen, she would have served as the head of the party and named the new leadership.
.. Mr. Perez has a résumé long on government experience and short on political campaigning.
.. Mr. Perez worked in the Justice Department’s civil-rights division under President Bill Clinton and during President Barack Obama’s first term. In 2013, Mr. Obama named Mr. Perez to lead the Labor Department, a post that made him a favorite of labor unions and liberal activists. But as a member of the Obama cabinet, Mr. Perez backed the Trans Pacific Partnership and other trade deals opposed by the party’s base.
.. He entered the DNC race weeks after Mr. Ellison with the encouragement of Obama allies
.. Haim Saban, an Israeli-American donor who funded the construction of the DNC’s Washington headquarters, in December publicly called Mr. Ellison “clearly an anti-Semite.”
.. Mr. Perez’s association with Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton was a liability for him with liberals and new voters brought to the party by Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign. These voters are looking for a revamp of a party structure they see as too beholden to corporate interests.
.. Mr. Perez adopted much of the rhetoric of the Sanders movement and other critics of the Obama-era DNC, calling for a return to an emphasis on grass roots organizing, and a 50-state strategy that does more to channel money to state parties. Behind the scenes, though, Mr. Perez drew on the strength of the Obama network. He was endorsed by former Vice President Joe Biden and former Attorney General Eric Holder. Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett made phone calls to wavering DNC members.

Obama’s Final Whopper as President

The argument over whether or not there is voter fraud will rage on, in part because the Obama administration has spent eight years blocking states from gaining access to federal lists of non-citizen and other possibly illegal voters. Even so, there is abundant evidence that voter fraud is easy to commit. The Heritage Foundation’s website contains hundreds of recent examples of people convicted of stealing votes.

.. But Obama’s first statement, that the U.S. is unique in trying to enforce ballot integrity, is demonstrably false.

.. All industrialized democracies — and most that are not — require voters to prove their identity before voting. Britain was a holdout, but last month it announced that persistent examples of voter fraud will require officials to see passports or other documentation from voters in areas prone to corruption.

.. The Post also asked whether respondents thought that the supporters and opponents of voter ID were acting out of genuine concern for fair elections or were instead trying to gain partisan advantage. Respondents replied that voter-ID opponents were acting more out of partisanship than supporters were

.. “It’s not. It’s simply a good-government issue.”

.. Which is precisely why it’s so disappointing to see Barack Obama use it to raise baseless fears that voter ID is a racist form of voter suppression. Even as he leaves office, the president who promised to unify us is continuing his level best to polarize and divide us.