Ted Vaill and Lance Simmens (VPs of the Malibu Democratic Club; Ted is also on the PaliDems board) hosted “The Mueller Report and What You Can Do About It,” a salon discussion, on April 27.

Ted is a lawyer who read the full (redacted) Mueller report. Missed the discussion? Follow the threads in Ted's most recent article for the L.A. Progressive:
https://www.laprogressive.com/no-obstruction/

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Congratulations Janet Turner, PPDC's 2018 Truman Awards recipient

for outstanding service on behalf of all PaliDems!

The following letter to the editor was printed in the Palisadian-Post on July 19, 2018.

It was written in response to a letter published the previous week under the headline "Tell Me in Your Words." That letter began, "Many Americans are witnessing a hysterical and unprincipled 'left.'"

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Author Steve Cron is a longtime PaliDems board member who is a criminal defense attorney and founding partner of Cron, Israels & Stark as well as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine Law School.

Here's the full version of Steve's letter, which the Post edited for space:

Dear Ms. Feldman,

You raised numerous issues in your letter to the editor, and asked for answers in our own words. Here are my answers, and a few questions for you:

Your main complaint is that those of us on the “left” don’t say anything positive about Donald Trump. That is the only statement in your letter with which I agree, because I can’t think of anything good to say about him. Not only do I dislike his policies and find them destructive for our nation, I dislike him as a person because he lacks the integrity we have always expected from our leaders—he has proven to be a liar, a bully, and a cheat, and he has a long history of abusing women. He’s certainly not someone whom I view as a role model for our children, our grandchildren, or our nation. Do you?

The PaliDems would like to extend our deepest condolences to board member Dodi Fromson on the recent passing of her husband, award-winning correspondent/reporter/professor Murray Fromson.

Read about Professor Fromson's many accompishments:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/obituaries/murray-fromson-champion-of-press-freedom-dies-at-88.html

https://apnews.com/3359e9efcad94140b08c8f8c0cb24e33

http://www.laobserved.com/boyarsky/2018/06/murray_fromsom_a_fighter_to_th.php

http://www.latimes.com/sns-bc-us--obit-murray-fromson-20180609-story.html

From the USC/Annenberg website:

Murray Fromson was an Associated Press and CBS News Correspondent and Producer who covered both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the former Soviet Union, two U.S. presidential campaigns, the civil rights movement in the southern United States as well as major stories in the Midwest.

During a 35-year career in journalism, he also reported from Tokyo, Jakarta, Phnom Penh, New Delhi, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Moscow, Bangkok, Saigon and Hong Kong. He and his CBS colleagues were awarded two Overseas Press Club awards for their reporting on the fall of Saigon in 1975.

The PPDC is proud to be an active participant in the resistance against Republican policies in the era of Trump. It is easy to get disheartened when there is so much chaos around us. The good news is that participating in one of the volunteer opportunities available these days may lead to increased happiness and fulfillment.

By Ted Vaill,April 9, 2018

The bombshell this week is the FBI’s “no knock” search warrant (or “break-in” as Trumputin calls it) of his lawyer Michael Cohen’s New York City hotel/residence (while his apartment is being renovated) and his office in Rockefeller Center to collect documents, his phone, and his computer relating to the Stormy Daniels matter and other Trumputin-related documents. What they find should be quite interesting and relevant to the impending impeachment of Donald J. Trump, the President of the Electoral College of the United States of America.

There are four reasons why Mueller referred this action to the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York City:

1. The New York U.S. Attorney’s office jealously guards its territory, and these search warrants were entirely executed in New York City. It is politically smart for Mueller to turn this operation over to the New York office.

2. The Acting U.S. Attorney in New York City, Jeffrey Berman, was personally interviewed and selected by Trumputin. All of the attorneys in the New York office, according to former N.Y. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara (fired by Trumputin) are Republicans. This is not a Democrat-led operation. And in order to get the search warrant, the New York U. S. Attorney’s office had to convince a federal judge to authorize it, which they are often unwilling to do when it is a lawyer’s privileged files that are being searched. However, it should be stated that there is a crime/fraud exception to the rule holding attorney-client documents privileged: if the lawyer is participating in the commission of a crime by the client, there is no privilege.

By Ted Vaill

March 17, 2018

Trump FiredFor the first time in my seven decades of life, I fear that our democracy may be endangered, by a traitor President and a cowardly Republican majority in Congress, who may also be aiding and abetting this treason. And I was alive when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and when the Cuban missile crisis happened.

The supposed “election” of Donald John Trump as President of the Electoral College of the United States of America, with the help of the Russians, is a disaster for our country. Retired highly decorated (for heroism in Vietnam) four star General Barry McCaffery has just come to the conclusion that President Trumputin “is a serious threat to U.S. national security…because he is refusing to protect vital U. S. interests from active Russian attacks…and is under the sway of Mr. Putin.” In other words, PRESIDENT TRUMPUTIN IS A TRAITOR.

For the first time in my seven decades of life, I fear that our democracy may be endangered, by a traitor President and a cowardly Republican majority in Congress, who may also be aiding and abetting this treason.

Another danger signal is Special Prosecutor Mueller’s wide-ranging subpoena directed to The Trump Organization for all records regarding their ties to Russia or Russian interests. This may be interpreted by Trumputin as crossing the “red line” he has drawn regarding how far the Mueller investigation can go.

And given the extensive, decades-long extensive ties of The Trump Organization with the Putin-friendly Russian oilgarchs who have financed Trumputin’s business operations over at least the past decade (since no legitimate banks would loan him money after four bankruptcies), such a subpoena would unearth a mother lode of incriminating documents.

Will Mueller Be Fired?

My ancestors have been in this country for ten generations, since 1620, and every day I resent Trumputin, the son of a recent immigrant, his Scottish-born mother, and a man who was conceived in Germany before his grandfather was kicked out of that country, Fred Trump,trying to destroy the democracy my ancestors fought for over the past nearly 400 years. And I fought for our democracy too, as a Navy Lieutenant in the Vietnam War (later promoted to Lt. Commander), something our chicken hawk, bone-spurred President refused to do. written by Ted Vaile -  read more

So Special Counsel Robert Mueller has finally obtained some more grand jury indictments. A week or so ago, I could feel that another set of indictments was coming. And there are (many) more to follow. Trumputin should be quivering in his golden boots, and many of his children, in-laws, assistants and political hacks are certain to end up in the slammer. And if any of the indicted Russians decide to take a nice vacation at the Riviera, they may end up at Quantanamo Bay instead.

Who is now endangered? Given the detail in the 37-page indictment of Russian operatives and trolls, with information clearly provided by NSA and other U.S. spy agency intercepts, by moles in the Russian government, and by Russian operatives who have been flipped, indictments of Americans are sure to follow, and soon.

Read more