Robert Mueller wants to interview White House staffers who witnessed Trump dictating that letter which provided false information about Junior's Trump Tower meeting.

Courtesy of CNN:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team has approached the White House about interviewing staffers who were aboard Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower was crafted, three sources familiar with the conversations said. 

The special counsel's discussions with the White House are the latest indication that Mueller's investigators are interested in the response to the Trump Tower meeting. Mueller wants to know how the statement aboard Air Force One was put together, whether information was intentionally left out and who was involved, two of the sources said. 

Mueller's questions could go to the issue of intent and possible efforts to conceal information during an obstruction of justice investigation. The answers to Mueller's questions also could illuminate the level of anxiety surrounding the meeting and the decision-making that followed. 

The interviews with White House staffers who were aboard Air Force One have not begun, the sources said. They currently involve only a small number of people, but the sources cautioned that number could increase. At this time, Mueller has not asked to interview President Trump. 

I think that is where all of this is leading. To an interview with Donald Trump.

And that makes sense because we KNOW he is going to lie.

That is ALL he ever does. 

Once in that witness chair Trump will ignore the advice of his attorneys and start digging himself into a hole that no amount of presidential powers will be able to extricate him from.

Trump's only option to protect himself is to find a way to fire Mueller, and if he does THAT his chances of being impeached will only increase.

To put it simply, he is fucked!

Christian couple sue Massachusetts because the state won't let them adopt foster children to beat.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

A Massachusetts couple claim they’re victims of religious discrimination because the state won’t allow them to adopt foster children because they spank their own kids. 

Gregory and Melanie Magazu sued the Department of Children and Families after their application was rejected because they admitted to using corporal punishment. 

“It’s been hard because (being a foster parent) is something that’s been in my heart, that I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” said Melanie Magazu — who grew up in the foster care system herself. 

She and her husband, who are members of Grace Reformation Bible Church, were turned down in 2013 because the state does not allow foster parents to use corporal punishment, as the Magazus do with their own three children. 

“Because of the significant trauma children in DCF care may have experienced, Department policy requires that foster parents agree not to use physical punishment as discipline,” said department spokeswoman Andrea Grossman. “This couple was denied as foster parents based on their use of corporal punishment on their biological children and the negative effect that could have on foster children.” 

The state argues that many foster children come from abusive homes, so exposure to spanking and other corporal punishment could be traumatizing — but Gregory Magazu said that’s how he shows his Christian love.

You simply do NOT get to use corporeal punishment against children placed in the care of the state, which is exactly as it should be. 

And if you want to adopt children, and your go to punishment is to hit them, then you are unfit for the job. And if that is against your religious beliefs than you REALLY need to think about changing your religious beliefs.

As I have mentioned before I work with some of the most challenging young people you can possibly imagine and if I even made a fist in response to one of their behaviors I would be out of a job. Period!

Many of these children have been horribly abused and neglected, and it really takes very little to re-traumatize them.  Which is something these two ignorant morons seem unable to grasp.

I have also worked with families who thought that the way to deal with escalating behaviors was to escalate the severity and frequency of the beatings. And yes some of them used their religion as as excuse for the beatings.

Yeah those people do not even SEE their children anymore.

There is a new twist in the Arkansas adoption/sex abuse case. Demons!

So as all of you probably remember I reported yesterday on that incredibly troubling case in Arkansas having to do with Rep. Justin Harris and an adopted daughter that was sexually abused after he simply rehomed her without notifying the proper authorities.

Well as it turns out Harris has a perfectly reasonable excuse for getting those children out of their home.

Demonic possession.

Here is more from the Arkansas Times:

Chelsey Goldsborough, who regularly babysat for the Harrises, said Mary was kept isolated from Annie and from the rest of the family. She was often confined for hours to her room, where she was monitored by a video camera. The reason: The Harrises believed the girls were possessed by demons and could communicate telepathically, Goldsborough said. Harris and his wife once hired specialists to perform an "exorcism" on the two sisters while she waited outside the house with the boys, she said. 

Multiple sources who interacted with the family confirmed Goldsborough's account that the Harrises believed the children were possessed, and another source close to the family said that Marsha Harris spoke openly about the supposed demonic possession.

Of course through their attorney the Harrises deny these charges but let's face it right now they are denying any culpability whatsoever. 

Now I know that the rational part of you wants to dismiss this as an exaggeration or hogwash, but let me tell you that it is not as uncommon as you might wish it to be.

You see many years ago I worked with a family that had a very challenging adopted child as well.

They were VERY dedicated Christians, and came to believe that the boy was possessed by demons, and brought him to their church where a visiting minister administered an honest to goodness exorcism.

As you might imagine that exacerbated the child's problem a hundredfold, and he was soon deemed out of control and was removed from the home.

Though he had a rather complicated diagnosis he was responsive to therapeutic interventions combined with some psychotropic medications, and he eventually went on to lead a relatively normal life.

Now you might assume that the boy's parents were some backwater hillbillies, but in fact they were both college educated professionals, who simply allowed their ignorance of mental illness and their superstitious belief system to push them toward horrendously bad decision making.

So yes among certain fundamentalists this kind of lunacy still happens even today.

And from what I have read about the Harrises, they are prime candidates to believe that there is a primitive religious solution to a psychiatric problem.

Convoluted Arkansas adoption/sex abuse case seems determined to get even more convoluted.

Courtesy of the Arkansas Times:  

On April 4, 2014, a 38-year-old resident of Bella Vista named Eric Cameron Francis was arrested by the Arkansas State Police for the rape of a 6-year-old girl in what the police said was his temporary care. Sexual crimes against children always attract a certain horrified attention, but this particular case earned additional scrutiny because Francis had recently worked as head teacher at a Christian preschool in West Fork owned by state Rep. Justin Harris (R-West Fork) and his wife, Marsha. 

Harris, who said he was "devastated and sickened" by news of the abuse, told the Arkansas Times in April 2014 that Francis had been in his employ only about three months, from November 2013 to January 2014, before being fired for poor work attendance. 

"He came with a pristine record," Harris said at the time, noting that Francis was also a youth pastor at a church and had worked previously in early childhood education for the Bentonville School District and with a Head Start program. Harris added that he was confident nothing had happened to any of the children at Growing God's Kingdom Preschool, because of strict security protocols (the classroom contains a continuously operating camera that generates a permanent record). Indeed, no further charges against Francis resulted from subsequent State Police interviews of families at the preschool, although investigators uncovered at least two other incidents of sexual abuse of children in the community outside of the school. In November, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison on a negotiated plea. 

What Harris did not publicly disclose last spring, however, is how Francis came into contact with the 6-year-old victim. In prosecutor documents recently obtained by the Arkansas Times, state police investigators and multiple witnesses concur that the child was in fact the legally adopted daughter of Justin and Marsha Harris.

That's right Harris legally adopted the six year old and her two younger sisters, then when the older child became too much for him to handle he simply sent them all off to live in the home of a man that he hardly knew, without notifying DHS of this plan.

The reason Harris did not notify DHS, as he stated in a recent interview, is apparently because he believed that they had it in for him. This courtesy of Wonkette: 

In the interview, Harris repeated his claim that he was threatened by the DHS that if he tried to dissolve the adoption, he would be charged with child abandonment; he says that Cecile Blucker, the head of DHS’s Division of Children and Family Services, told him this and that another source inside DHS (who he again declined to identify) told his wife, Marsha, “this is what they plan for you… because of your husband’s belief system, they will charge you with abandonment. This is what they have planned for you.” He clarified that he meant that he was singled out “for my political beliefs,” apparently because he is that extremely rare thing, a rightwing fundamentalist Christian, which we suppose must be a persecuted minority in Arkansas. He added that he believed DHS threatened him because, as a state legislator, he had held the agency accountable for its poor performance in constituents’ adoptions. 

And don't forget that these  uber-Christian teabaggger types have an innate distrust of all things governmental.

As it turns out the family that had previously fostered the two younger girls argued against the Harris family adopting them: 

An experienced foster family that housed the two younger girls for a year and a half prior to their adoption by the Harrises has approached the Times with their story. Craig and Cheryl Hart say, among other things, the adoption was allowed to proceed over the objections of the foster parents and local DHS staff only because the head of the the Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS), Cecile Blucker, exerted pressure on behalf of Justin Harris. DCFS is the arm of DHS responsible for child welfare. 

The Harts also say the middle sister — who would have been 4 years old at the time she entered the Harris home in 2012 — was not violent or dangerous. They claim the Harrises were warned repeatedly by themselves and local DHS staff that their home was not a suitable placement for the two girls or their older sister. 

The third sister, who would have been about 6 when she entered the Harris home, was fostered at a different household that provided specialized therapeutic care for troubled children. The Harts had some contact with her as well, since DHS would sometimes arrange for the siblings to visit one another. Harris said on Friday the third girl threatened to kill his entire family.

As somebody who has worked extensively with foster families and adoptive families, let me just say that this is an extremely common scenario. 

Often with failed placements there is a religious component that convinced the adoptive family that they were called to become adoptive parents by God, and that he would provide support for them.

That is almost verbatim what Harrises argued:

"DHS attempted to talk to them about the girls' issues, but I feel like they were in denial," Cheryl said. "They were very defensive about it. They repeatedly told us they had degrees in Early Childhood Development, they had therapists there at their preschool, and they had God to help them through this."

Sometimes the bad people that are waiting to harm vulnerable foster or adoptive children are not simply sexual deviants or physically abusive people, sometimes they are those who will simply not accept the help or support that they will need in order to cope with the challenges of bringing children with special needs into their homes.

And if you think that reminds you of somebody, well give yourself a gold star for intuition.

Rep. Justin Harris and his wife, with Sarah Palin in 2013.

Concerning laws against gays, Franklin Graham says that Putin is going to do what's right for Russia. Calls gay adoption "recruitment."

Courtesy of the You Tube page:

Rev. Franklin Graham on Sunday said that he stood by earlier comments agreeing with so-called gay "propaganda" bans in Russia because President Vladimir Putin was doing "what's right" for the country. During a March interview with the Charlotte Observer, Graham had asserted that LGBT people were trying to "recruit" children by adopting them, and suggested that it was "exploitation." 

He also said that he "agreed" with Putin because "protecting his nation's children was a pretty smart thing to do." 

Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, Graham doubled down on his praise of the Russian president. 

"Putin is going to do what's right for Russia, and not what's right for America, but for Russia," he opined. "We used to have a president in this country that did what's right for this country, but we don't seem to have that right now." 

"Putin is going to make these decisions that he thinks is best for the Russian people, and he thinks that taking advantage of children — exploiting children — is wrong for any group so they passed a law," Graham added. "So, I do agree with him." 

When asked about his father, Rev. Billy Graham, he again brought the discussion back around to the issue of same-sex parents. 

"When we talk about families, when we talk about gay people, many people, maybe gays that are watching want to know, 'Can God forgive me or can I go to Heaven as a gay person?' Absolutely," he declared. "But the same for any of us, we have to repent of our sins and turn." 

"A person cannot stay in adultery and be accepted by God," Graham continued. "You have to repent."

It is kind of hard to believe that anybody would suggest that what Putin is doing right now is "good for Russia" but I guess when you are a fellow homophobe you tend to give your fellow hate mongers the benefit of the doubt.

As for this idea that gay adoption is about recruiting children into homosexuality, that could not be farther from the truth.

I have known, and worked with, several gay adoptive parents and essentially I can think of only one family where a child they had adopted turned out to be gay.

The rest were quite heterosexual, though to be honest they seemed to lack the gene which inspired them to call every kid they did not like a "faggot." Unless of course that is NOT a heterosexual feature and instead a learned behavior.

Franklin Graham is a POS and really should serve as an embarrassment to Christians everywhere, as well as to Americans who find Vladimir Putin to be a chest thumping megalomaniacal bully.

Bishop of Malta: Pope was "shocked" by idea of gay adoptions. Guess who was just chosen as Person of the Year by the Advocate.

Courtesy The Independent:  

The Pope is “shocked” by gay adoption, according to the Bishop of Malta. Bishop Charles Scicluna of Malta defended his Christmas sermon in which he condemned adoption between same-sex couples by claiming that Pope Francis gave the anti-gay sentiments of the address his blessing. 

The Bishop told the congregation that God’s own son was raised by a man and a woman, and not by two men or two women. 

In an interview with The Sunday Times of Malta, Bishop Scicluna said he met with Pope Francis on 12 December, and the pair discussed “many aspects” of the Bishop’s sermon. 

Bishop Scicluna said The Pope was “shocked” by the Maltese Civil Unions Bill that aims to legalise gay adoption. 

“When I raised the issue that’s worrying me as a bishop [gay adoption] he encouraged me to speak out," said Bishop Scicluna. 

Previously, the Bishop said that the sexual activity of heterosexual couples has a “fundamental role in producing future members of society” whereas the sexual activity of same-sex couples does not “as it does not produce offspring”. 

The news comes after Pope Francis was voted person of the year by leading gay rights magazine The Advocate after he said: “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?” 

However, as Argentina’s Cardinal Bergoglio, he condemned gay adoption and marriage, but supported civil partnerships as the lesser of two evils.

I was all ab out giving this Pope the benefit of the doubt, and took a wait and see attitude.

Well I waited, and I've seen. 

In fact I think I've seen enough.

His views on women and gay rights is essentially just as backward and judgmental as those who came before him. No great change, just a slicker package.

Sarah Palin and conservatives attack MSNBC host for laughing at incongruity of Romney family adopting African American just months before Mormon church finally stopped referring to their brown skin as a "punishment from God."

Courtesy of Palin's ghostwritten Facebook page:  

Holy unbelievable. The hypocritical leftist lamestream media should be shamed by every caring, child-loving American. It has once again reached a new low. See the article linked below. One just can't win in their petty little games. Good thing most Americans don't play those little games! It's a beautiful thing the Romney family has done by embracing “the spirit of adoption.” What on earth is more beautiful? Shame on MSNBC for mocking this. 

The LSM's pursuit of “shock ratings” is unreal. Governor Mitt Romney ran for higher office with what I believe is a servant's heart. He was saddled with some sup-par campaign tactics. That does not make him a bad person nor does it open his children or grandchildren to attacks over a year after the fact. This latest attack from the Left is despicable. 

Leftist media hounds are not expressing an opinion with this attack; they are expressing a prejudice that would never be accepted if it came from anyone else but the lib media. 

You really need a conscience, yellow journalists. May your 2014 New Year's Resolution be to find one. 

Thank you, Romney family, for giving a child a family full of love.

The ghostwriter then links to an article on Breitbart, but I will spare you having to see that. 

The hubbub is over a reaction that occurred on Sunday during the broadcast of the Melissa Harris-Perry show. The image up above flashed across the screen and the mostly African American panel responded by pointing out that it "summed up the diversity the Republican party and RNC" and with another panelist singing "One of These Things is Not Like the Other."

I will agree that it was probably somewhat impolitic to respond in such a way (Harris-Perry has since apologized.), however one can hardly blame them considering that the Mormon church just this month renounced the doctrine that brown skin is a punishment from God.

Besides perhaps they had seen a Romney family photo before.

Come on you have to admit that you don't get much more Caucasian than that.

There is also the fact that for some reason the Romney family decided to accentuate the baby's skin color by naming him after it:  

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has welcomed a new addition to the Romney clan. 

On Friday he tweeted, “Our 22nd grandchild was officially adopted today: Kieran James Romney,” alongside a photograph of a cute African-American baby. The child has been adopted by Romney’s second youngest son Ben and his wife Andelynne. 

Interestingly, Kieran means “little dark one” in Gaelic. Kieran is common name in Ireland and although it literally means “black” or “dark,” it generally signifies a link to Fergus, King of Ulster, a mythological Irish figure.

Probably just a coincidence right? Right?

Regardless of what you think about the Romney's reasons for suddenly opening their homes to an African-American child I think we can all agree that the little one hit the jackpot as far as living a life of luxury.  So good on the Romney's for adopting the little boy. (However I have to admit I do have an issue with religious families adopting children in order to increase the size of the flock.)

And since the Melissa Harris-Perry show is also an opinion show, and this segment took place during that portion, it does NOT indicate yellow journalism. Which if Sarah Palin actually had a degree in journalism she might be able to suss out for herself.

But the opportunity to attack MSNBC? And a black host at MSNBC? No WAY, is Sarah Palin going to miss that opportunity.

Update: One of the panelists weighs in.

And finally a word from my favorite Sunday School teacher.

At least THAT'S the message being promoted by his followers. 

Mitt Romney as Governor in 2003: "Some Gays Are Actually Having Children... Not Right on Paper... Not Right in Fact!" Oh the horror!

Click asshole to play video.

Courtesy of the Boston Globe:  

It seemed like a minor adjustment. To comply with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2003, the state Registry of Vital Records and Statistics said it needed to revise its birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. The box for “father” would be relabeled “father or second parent,’’ reflecting the new law. 

But to then-Governor Mitt Romney, who opposed child-rearing by gay couples, the proposal symbolized unacceptable changes in traditional family structures. 

He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father’’ on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,’’ in ink. 

Romney’s interventions mostly resulted in delays awarding birth certificates for women married to same-sex partners who gave birth. Gay men seeking parental rights were required to take a different route, by obtaining a court order. By law, birth certificates must be issued within 10 days of birth, and in some instances, those deadlines were not met. 

Okay let's go ahead and add gays to the list of people who should NEVER even consider voting for this man, along with women, African Americans, the Middle Class, young voters, old voters, American car enthusiasts, and members of his own church who should be ashamed to have this man representing them in the White House.

Is anybody left?

Oh yeah, his fellow one percenters. I doubt that will be enough.