Protest

The post office has a board of governors. Here they are:

And here's how to reach them:

roman@rmiv.com 
barger.jm@gmail.com 
mduncan@inezdepositbank.com 
ron.bloom@brookfield.com 
lee.moak@moakgroup.com 
DirectorAccessMailbox@cigna.com

These six men must make public proclamations that DeJoy is up to no good. Principled resignations may be necessary.

It is against the law to interrupt the mail. DeJoy should be prosecuted if Biden wins. And if any members of the Board of Governors aided in this crime, they too deserve prosecution.

Write to Nancy Pelosi and urge her to bring back all House members. This is no time for a vacay. 

One option would be to vote on a modified version of a bill introduced by House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) earlier this week that would prohibit USPS from implementing a planned organizational overhaul that critics maintain would handicap mail-in voting.

Other top Democrats also floated addressing other issues, including expired federal unemployment benefits and voting rights. But Democratic sources said the immediate focus — at least for now — is preserving the Postal Service ahead of the election.

I would never have predicted that there would be an issue more important than unemployment benefits. But here we are.

It's not enough to preserve the Post Office. We need investigations. Hearings.

More than that: The House must use the power of Inherent Contempt to force DeJoy (and others) to testify. For years, we've been begging House members to use this power -- and for years, we've been told: "But that power hasn't been used since the 1930s."

So?

The good guys must use whatever power they can use. Don't be afraid of drama. Trump isn't.

House Oversight wanted hearing sooner but DeJoy refused. In fact, he doesn’t even have to show up & can litigate any subpoenas. How to solve this? Pass my House Rules change that allows us to execute Inherent Contempt against witnesses. No excuse for us not to exercise our power. https://t.co/ENldxttEwe

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) August 15, 2020

What does Inherent Contempt mean? It means that the House Sergeant at Arms can arrest DeJoy and put the sunvabitch IN JAIL if he refuses to testify.

What should we do, you ask? We should subpoena the Postmaster immediately and afford him the opportunity to testify. If he won’t, you ask? The Sergeant at Arms can detain anyone found in contempt of Congress. We’ve abdicated too much, and this is too important and time sensitive.

— Rep. Dean Phillips (@RepDeanPhillips) August 16, 2020

Here's a damned good idea:

So here is a suggestion for the Democratic convention: have Joe Biden or Kamala Harris do a roundtable discussion with four people whose lives have been uprooted by Postal Service delays. People not getting checks, long delays in needed medications, businesses w/o deliveries

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) August 15, 2020

We need to hear from average citizens affected by this move. Seniors in danger of not receiving medicine or Social Security checks. Business owners who ship via USPS. Lawyers and judges who rely on the mail to make court work. Ordinary people who pay bills by mail. We need dozens of stories like this:

For Ms. Brownworth, who was paralyzed four years ago, the mail is her lifeline, delivering prescriptions and checks and mail-in ballots to her Philadelphia home. But that lifeline has snapped. She said she had received mail just twice in the past three weeks, and she dreaded November’s election, worried that her ballot would suffer the same fate as the oxygen tube that she ordered three weeks ago — and that had still not arrived.

Natasha Bertrand has more good ideas...

Beware. The Trump campaign is making a huge ad buy during the Democratic campaign. Maybe these ads will feature the usual campaign-season BS -- if so, fine. But I suspect that the Trumpists may premiere some truly shocking smears. Maybe the BIG Smear.

Speaking of the Big Smear: Everyone has suddenly awakened to the fact that Newsweek is the new Fox. They've been promoting Virginia Giuffre as if she were the Virgin Mary. I wouldn't be surprised if Team Trump uses Newsweek to showcase the upcoming Big Smear: The accusation that an Epstein Girl serviced Joe Biden during one of Biden's many trips to the Virgin Islands.

Why Newsweek? Because many Americans still recall the days when it was a credible source read by both Democrats and Republicans.

I'm well aware that nobody likes my "Big Smear" posts, but I've sounded this alarm for months and so far, nobody has said "You're wrong and here's why." I get it: Anti-Trumpers love that warm-n-fuzzy "We're gonna win" feeling, and they don't want to hear from a perpetual buzz-kill like yours truly. But the only way to deal with a baseball bat blow to the skull is to know that the blow is coming. Being forewarned is key to survival. Maybe you can duck or deflect.

The Durham probe. Is Durham compromised? Well, here's Marcy on the Clinesmith affair -- a misleading business that has what she calls "the frothy right" feeling particularly frothy.

By pretending that every investigation into Trump’s flunkies (including the ongoing Money Laundering investigation into Paul Manafort) got opened by Crossfire Hurricane, Durham creates a narrative that is every bit as dishonest as the worst stories about Crossfire Hurricane.

Durham is doing precisely what he is tasked with investigating others for.

But Durham’s mischaracterization of the investigation as a “FARA” investigation is far more troubling. Either he doesn’t know what he’s doing — replicating an error that DOJ IG had to fix in its Carter Page investigation — or he’s deliberately misrepresenting what was a counterintelligence investigation that, at the start, envisioned the possibility that Page was unwittingly being cultivated.

At this point, the only interesting question is not "What does Durham have?" but "What do they have on Durham?"

We're living in kompromat kountry. Have been since 2016. Durham is a puppet; Barr is the puppeteer.

Final note: Russia, Russia, Russia. The Dems have foolishly allowed Team Trump to convince the country that the Russian probe came up goose eggs -- a false impression conveyed through sheer repetition. In fact, Mueller found definite proof of obstruction and lying to Congress. You don't cover up a crime if there is no crime. One of Marcy's correspondents has put the matter very succinctly:

The Mueller Report documented 101 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. The Center for American Progress Moscow Project has documented “272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives.”

GOP: Nothing to see here.