There’s a reason Mike Rogers has the worst favorable/unfavorable ratings of any Michigan statewide candidate. If you scoured the state, you could not find a less likable person to run for Senate. Yet the GOP elites pushed for him to be the nominee—twice!

Fact check: Mike Rogers is one of the chief architects of the modern surveillance state. In Congress, he opposed every substantive effort to protect Americans’ privacy and worked hand in hand with the NSA, FBI, and intelligence agencies to bypass and erode the Fourth Amendment.

The Trump administration used a domestic terrorism directive to investigate citizens in Minnesota protesting federal immigration enforcement. NSPM-7 labels opposition as “anti-American” and political violence, putting First Amendment-protected beliefs under federal scrutiny. 🧵

Oof. Pathetic. Engaging directly with constituents in a potentially contentious and challenging environment—answering for all your actions as a legislator—is one of the most important facets of being a member of Congress, a representative of the people.

Conservatives spent a full decade warning of the dangers of the Deep State and all its domestic powers only to now assemble in unison behind Mike Rogers in Michigan who -- as @justinamash notes -- is one of the most devoted advocates for all of that:👇

No member of Congress has been a more vehement defender of a ubiquitous, warrantless domestic surveillance state than Mike Rogers. He was the CIA and NSA's lead man in the GOP House. Smart of @AbdulElSayed to highlight this and the critical importance of privacy in the US:

Here are some quotes from Ludwig von Mises: “The most valuable privileges are those granted in the field of taxation. Some of these exemptions do not count very much, e.g., the exemption from the annual franchise taxes. But the exemptions in the matter of income taxation are of primordial importance. “From its very beginnings, the federal income tax legislation exempted cooperatives. These exemptions were widened and enlarged in the later Acts. On the other hand, they became the more helpful and profitable as the tax rates increased to confiscatory levels. With the present tax rates, they are tantamount to lavish subsidies at the expense of all taxpayers and the whole nation.” *** “If the inefficient grocer A is exempt from a tax which his more efficient competitor B is forced to pay, the power of A to stand the competition of B is strengthened. A‘s operating costs proper (i.e., operating costs exclusive of taxes) are still higher than those of B. But against this difference in the operating costs proper must be held the advantage which A derives from tax exemption. Although A‘s conduct of affairs is wasteful, although it absorbs an amount of capital and labor which, without curtailment of the services received by the public, could be made available for the satisfaction of other wants which cannot be satisfied precisely on account of A‘s wastefulness, his shop can continue in business. The government shelters A against the consequences of his own inefficiency. “A‘s tax exemption is therefore not merely a matter that would concern exclusively him and B and would not affect the interests of all other people. What the government achieves by taxing B alone instead of distributing this tax equally between A and B, is not merely a disarrangement of the mutual competitive position between A and B. The main social and economic effect is the preservation of a high cost unit at the expense of a low cost unit, the preservation of a quite useless and obviously pernicious squandering of scarce factors of production. “This inefficient A whom the government pampers in order to make it possible for him to compete with B, is the cooperative in its capacity as a beneficiary of tax exemption and other government favors. It is of no avail how the friends of cooperativism try to justify these tax privileges in resorting to metaphysical arguments. The simple truth is: the government interferes in order to make it possible for the cooperatives to stand the competition of private business which they admittedly could not stand when unaided.” *** “The cooperatives did not stand the test. Where they thrive and as far as they thrive, they owe their existence to various government privileges, especially to tax exemptions and cheap government credit.… “…the government forced other people to make a sacrifice for the benefit of the members of the cooperative. It forced these other people to pay higher taxes in order to free the cooperative from the burden of taxes. The cooperative acquired the factory by a subsidy which it received in the shape of tax exemption.”

Here are some quotes from Ludwig von Mises: “The most valuable privileges are those granted in the field of taxation. Some of these exemptions do not count very much, e.g., the exemption from the annual franchise taxes. But the exemptions in the matter of income taxation are of primordial importance. “From its very beginnings, the federal income tax legislation exempted cooperatives. These exemptions were widened and enlarged in the later Acts. On the other hand, they became the more helpful and profitable as the tax rates increased to confiscatory levels. With the present tax rates, they are tantamount to lavish subsidies at the expense of all taxpayers and the whole nation.” *** “If the inefficient grocer A is exempt from a tax which his more efficient competitor B is forced to pay, the power of A to stand the competition of B is strengthened. A‘s operating costs proper (i.e., operating costs exclusive of taxes) are still higher than those of B. But against this difference in the operating costs proper must be held the advantage which A derives from tax exemption. Although A‘s conduct of affairs is wasteful, although it absorbs an amount of capital and labor which, without curtailment of the services received by the public, could be made available for the satisfaction of other wants which cannot be satisfied precisely on account of A‘s wastefulness, his shop can continue in business. The government shelters A against the consequences of his own inefficiency. “A‘s tax exemption is therefore not merely a matter that would concern exclusively him and B and would not affect the interests of all other people. What the government achieves by taxing B alone instead of distributing this tax equally between A and B, is not merely a disarrangement of the mutual competitive position between A and B. The main social and economic effect is the preservation of a high cost unit at the expense of a low cost unit, the preservation of a quite useless and obviously pernicious squandering of scarce factors of production. “This inefficient A whom the government pampers in order to make it possible for him to compete with B, is the cooperative in its capacity as a beneficiary of tax exemption and other government favors. It is of no avail how the friends of cooperativism try to justify these tax privileges in resorting to metaphysical arguments. The simple truth is: the government interferes in order to make it possible for the cooperatives to stand the competition of private business which they admittedly could not stand when unaided.” *** “The cooperatives did not stand the test. Where they thrive and as far as they thrive, they owe their existence to various government privileges, especially to tax exemptions and cheap government credit.… “…the government forced other people to make a sacrifice for the benefit of the members of the cooperative. It forced these other people to pay higher taxes in order to free the cooperative from the burden of taxes. The cooperative acquired the factory by a subsidy which it received in the shape of tax exemption.”

Maybe @amprog got the facts wrong. Maybe troop presence in my old hometown of DC reduced crime, maybe it didn’t. President Trump is free to make his case with the biggest bully pulpit in the world. What he must not do is threaten the donors who helped make their reporting possible. When a president suggests that people may be sued simply for supporting an organization that criticized him, the message is hard to miss: You may not be the speaker, but backing the speaker can make you a target too. As the president of a donor-supported organization that regularly criticizes people in power, this one hits especially close to home. Organizations like @theFIREorg can only do their work because people are willing to support them, including when that work is unpopular. That kind of threat can do enormous damage without a single lawsuit ever succeeding. It encourages people to withdraw support, or avoid controversial organizations altogether. In other words, it can shrink the space for dissent by making association itself feel risky. The government should not be in the business of making people afraid to support its critics. Whatever your politics, the First Amendment principle here should be easy.

Nearly every state that once had straight-ticket voting as a ballot option has wisely eliminated it. When will Michigan do the same? The straight-ticket option disadvantages independent and third-party candidates while propping up many of the worst GOP and Dem partisans.

Forty-seven members of Congress skipped the vote on the KIDS Act, which establishes the infrastructure for mass surveillance of Americans online. This bill needed a two-thirds majority to pass, so just 17 more no votes could have sunk it! A couple members might have a legit excuse, but 47? No way. They bailed to avoid going on the record, even at the cost of furthering the surveillance state.