Tag: Office

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough savaged Attorney General Bill Barr as a "political hack" on Friday's edition of "Morning Joe," saying Barr was among the worst attorneys general in history. Scarborough said Barr "shamed himself" with the release of a redacted version of the Mueller report this week and in doing has made himself "irrelevant to the discussion and to history." Yesterday was fascinating. I think really the most remarkable thing about yesterday was the fact that a man who had had the respect of attorneys on both sides of the aisle over the past 30, 40 years, Attorney General Barr humiliated himself, shamed himself by just a pathetic performance. And you’ll notice yesterday half of the talk was about what Barr did and a lot of pundits couldn’t focus long enough on what Donald Trump did. And Robert Mueller even said in the report, of course, William Barr lied. That's exactly what Barr did yesterday like any political hack would do. I want to say, though, how ridiculous for Barr to try to excuse Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice, for Barr to try to excuse Donald Trump running around telling people to fire the special counsel, telling people to lie to investigators, all the things he did, because he was angry, he was frustrated because of political enemies. What Bill Clinton was charged for, I mean, again, we’re talking about lying before a grand jury, lying in a deposition about his personal life, so pales in comparison to what Lindsey Graham, who prosecuted that case in the Senate, to what Lindsey Graham now excuses every day of the week. Let's talk about the Mueller report, what we know about it so far.

They arrived on a wind of change in 2015, only to be blown out of office four years later by an even more powerful gale. It was a genuine thumping, with the UCP winning more than 60 seats, and the New Democrats largely cornered in their Edmonton stronghold. The Alberta Party and Liberals were shut out. To come back to Alberta from Ottawa, to talk about uniting conservatives, to run for the Progressive Conservative leadership, to win that unlikely prize; then to virtually force successful merger talks with Wildrose; to win the new united party’s leadership, and now to capture the premier’s office — that staggering list is simply unprecedented in Canadian provincial politics. The goal was immutable, the means adjustable, and that may yet cause Kenney grief. But he pulled it off, and Alberta’s political future is in his hands. Horgan’s government waited until just before the polls closed to register its approval for Bill C-48, the infamous tanker ban. That might have been a feeble attempt not to hurt Notley further, on the dawning realization that B.C. That may determine whether Kenney, like Notley, will be a one-term premier. Notley’s campaign is already being criticized by some New Democrats for blurring her achievements with personal attacks on Kenney.

Actress Angelina Jolie says she isn't closing the door on trading Hollywood for Washington. "Never say never," the actress told People magazine when asked if she could see herself running for office. “[But] right now I am looking to others for leadership," Jolie, 43, added. A special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the "Maleficent" star and human rights activist has long flirted with a political bid. "If you asked me 20 years ago, I would've laughed," Jolie said of a move into politics in a December interview with the BBC. "I always say I'll go where I'm needed. In 2014, Jolie said she would "consider" a possible political run. But, the Academy Award-winner said at the time, "It's not something I'm actively seeking at this moment." But laws around the world, Jolie noted, also have to be enforced. One initiative the mother of six is working on is a proposal "for a permanent international body to investigate war crimes, including mass rape and other sexual and gender-based violence.”

Office politics. But here's the thing: When we're talking about office politics, all we're really talking about are the unspoken rules of influence that exist in every organization. If you work in your average professional environment, you can't get things done without influence. Those who do the latter are what give office politics a bad name. Once you have a better understanding of how that influence is attained, you have every ability to use that power in a way that is ethical, above board, and to create much better relationships with the people you're working with. People use office politics for these things all the time - we just don't notice them as much as the negative because we're more likely to give our attention to the things we don't like, rather than the things we do. At the end of the day, it's nothing more than adapting your behavior to get the best outcome out a specific situation at work, and hopefully that's an outcome that helps you make progress towards your most important goals. Each day this week, I'm going to publish a new article outlining my five principles of office politics to help you understand and navigate the psychology of the human workplace. Understand their work style will help you adapt to them. At the end of the week, you'll have a playbook that you can use to up your office politics games and use the power for good, not for evil.

(CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller's office disputed an explosive story from BuzzFeed News as "not accurate" Friday night, after the news outlet reported the President had directed his personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, for which Cohen was later prosecuted. "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate," said Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller's office, in a statement. The clamor grew throughout the day and into Friday night. The BuzzFeed story, by reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier, asserted that Cohen had told special counsel investigators that "after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie — by claiming that negotiations [for a Trump development project in Moscow] ended months earlier than they actually did — in order to obscure Trump's involvement," BuzzFeed wrote, attributing its assertion to two law enforcement sources. The BuzzFeed story made several other claims that remain uncorroborated by other media outlets regarding Cohen's lies to Congress and communications with Mueller. he tweeted. Steele worked for the intelligence firm Fusion GPS, which was retained by Perkins Coie, the law firm for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Trump encouraged Cohen to lie," he tweeted. "Today's development only underscores the need for the special counsel to wrap this investigation up immediately," the North Carolina Republican tweeted. Show us what you have."

Boca Raton’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch said on a national broadcast Friday morning that if reports are true that President Donald Trump told his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to lie about Russia then that would constitute a violation of Trump’s oath of office. Deutch, who chairs the U.S. House Ethics Committee, stopped short of saying he would consider that an impeachable offense despite several direct questions to that point on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show Friday morning. “If this is true this is more evidence that the president has violated his oath of office,” Deutch said of the report that Trump told Cohen to lie. Deutch would not give a “yes” or “no” answer. “If this report is true, if the President of the United States violated the law, if he told Cohen to commit perjury, then that’s going to go into the whole discussion we have about whether the President should continue in office,” Deutch responded. Asked again, Deutch added, “You’ve got to realize that alone is not all that we’ve got. This is damning. And it’s terrible. That’s before you even get to the Mueller report and Russia and all the huge news that’s broken on Russia,” Deutch said. Deutch spent about a half hour on the show.

Outgoing U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano says he knew even before his eventual successor Ayanna Pressley challenged him in the September primary that this year’s election was going to be a tough one for him. But he dismissed the notion that he was targeted by voters hungry for change during a WBUR interview that aired Tuesday. “It’s whoever was in office in a place that has progressives. And that’s fine. That’s not a problem to me.” The 10-term incumbent garnered 41.4 percent of the vote to Pressley’s 58.6 percent amid an election cycle that catapulted a wave of women, people of color, and Democrats into Congress. Capuano, reflecting on his loss, said this week that voters are angry and upset with the direction of the country under President Donald Trump. He heard that anger from constituents, and, although it wasn’t directed toward him specifically, “when that happens, you have a tough opponent,” he said. “My hope is that it ends up something positive,” Capuano told WBUR. “My hope is that the people who came out to vote for the first time or one of the few times from this primary continue to vote and learn these issues and figure out how to actually change the system. “There’s nothing wrong with new blood, but it has to be balanced as well with people that have been around, that know the history of what has happened, know the internal relationships between people, know what you can do and what you can’t do.

Ayanna Pressley is the first black woman that Massachusetts has ever elected to Congress. In a tweet Monday afternoon, the 7th District congresswoman-elect announced that she’s getting the former office of Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman in the country elected to Congress. Pressley, who has repeatedly called Chisholm her “shero” and inspiration for running for public office, said she got the late Brooklyn congresswoman’s space after trading House office lottery numbers with fellow Democrat and soon-to-be freshman Rep. Katie Hill. Wow! TY Mommy for the extra bday luck! We just learned my Congressional Office designation will be #ShirleyChisholm 's former office. How's that for divine intervention, AND the selflessness of my colleague @KatieHill4CA who drew a better lottery# but still wanted me to have it. She died in 2005 and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. During her visit to the Capitol for freshman orientation last month, Pressley tweeted a photo of herself posing in front of the iconic portrait of Chisholm. #ChangeCantWait #vote pic.twitter.com/JtfhIBE76N — Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) November 6, 2018

The state's next governor is heading into office with plenty of goodwill, according to one of Illinois' longtime political experts. Paying for his inauguration is just one piece of the puzzle that will help ease Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker into office. Jim Nowlan, who's worked in and around state government for decades, said Pritzker is riding a wave of amity. "I think he starts with a blank slate and a positive setting in which to operate," Nowlan said. "He looks like your favorite uncle, and he's positive in his approach to things." It also it helps that Pritzker won decisively over incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner. And, Nowlan said, it helps that Pritzker is not Rod Blagojevich or Pat Quinn. "Even when you had Quinn and Blagojevich, you had Democratic governors, but you had Democratic legislatures that didn't agree with the governors," Nowlan said. Nowlan said there will once again be a one-party government in Springfield, but there is a sense that all of the Democrats will get along.