#JILL'S RESPONSE [ a personal missive ]

[shivariia]

「   RP MEME :  RANDOM DIALOGUE 2.0   」  / @lucisking

‘ what do you wish for? ’

" that a question could be answered so simply. "

IT WAS CLEARLY said in jest, but for every bit of laughter there was a shred of truth. she had wished for many things over the years, with her head turned skyward in hopes that her words would be heard above the inevitable din of prayers sent to metia & carried past the moon, into the heavens to be granted. of those wants, many had been repeated more than once. all, in fact, but her most childish, which she had abandoned hoping for fairly quickly in attempt to give her more serious prayers a chance to be permitted.

THERE WERE THOSEwho would say that sort of thought in & of itself was better suited for a child, but jill would allow herself this superstition.

" i don't think you will find a person in all of the twins who has a single, solitary wish. but, i will spare you the hours it would take to get through all of my own & limit myself to one. "

SILENCE REIGNED AS she turned her thoughts over in her head. what one thing would come close to encompassing several of her wishes all in one? for the blight to recede. for the war to end. for the safety of bearers. for the protection of her friends.

FOR FREEDOM FROM the curse.

" peace. "

THE WORD SLIPPED out before she had even realized she'd found her connection, but it was far from a surprise. she had been wishing for peace long before she'd entered the hideaway. long before the iron kingdom.

EVEN LONG BEFORE rosaria, during the zenith of a northern winter, watching her father suit up for battle. it was the closest she would get to an all––––encompassing desire. any other would be fleeting & frail if conflict continued to ravage their home, their lives & their futures.

" i would wish for peace. "

[gyrlversion]

Dems demand Muellers full 300 pages, mock scaredy-cat GOP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia report is more than 300 pages long, it was revealed Thursday, sparking fresh criticism from Democrats arguing that Attorney General William Barr’s four-page summary was gravely inadequate and the full findings must be quickly released.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Barr’s synopsis that cleared President Donald Trump of campaign collusion with Russia and criminal obstruction of the federal probe “condescending” and “arrogant.”

“Mr. Attorney General, we do not need your interpretation,” Pelosi said Thursday. “Show us the report and we’ll come to our own conclusions.” She mocked the administration and Republicans as “scaredy-cats.”

The length of Mueller’s confidential report makes clear that there are substantially more details he and his team have documented in their investigation than Barr disclosed to Congress and the public in his summary. The volume of pages was described Thursday by a Justice Department official and another person familiar with the document.

The Justice Department official said Barr discussed the length of the report during a phone call Wednesday with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler.

Both the department official and the other person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential report.

Barr has been at work going through the document as the battle is intensifying over if and when he will release the complete report and its underlying evidence amid Democratic concerns that what has been made public so far was tilted in Trump’s favor. Barr has said he’ll release at least a partial version in April and also told Nadler he would agree to testify before his committee.

As that battle brews, House Democrats barreled ahead with their oversight of the Trump administration, and Trump resumed his attack on Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., just as the chairman of the intelligence committee was about to gavel the panel into session.

“Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!” Trump tweeted early Thursday.

Republicans picking up on Trump’s complaints formalized their demand that Schiff resign as chairman of the intelligence panel over his comments that there was significant evidence the president and his associates conspired with Russia.

“We have no faith in your ability to discharge your responsibilities” in line with the Constitution, the Republicans wrote to Schiff in a missive they read aloud at the hearing.

Republicans pointed to Barr’s synopsis, released Sunday, that said Mueller’s probe didn’t find that Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Schiff stood by his remarks, listing the meetings those in Trump’s circle had with Russians. He noted Trump’s pursuit of a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

“There is a different word for that than collusion, and it’s called compromise,” Schiff said, as he opened the session. The hearing was called to provide an overview on how Russia in the past has blackmailed Americans.

Since Barr’s findings were released, Schiff this week has repeated his assertion that evidence of collusion is in “plain sight.” He says Mueller’s failure to find a criminal conspiracy with Russia does not absolve the Trump campaign of its actions.

Pelosi stood by Schiff, saying she was proud of him and taunted Republicans — and Trump — for fearing the chairman whom she called a “patriotic leader.”

“What is the president afraid of, Is he afraid of the truth?” she said. “They’re just scaredy-cats.”

Outside the hearing room, the main battle continued over releasing Mueller’s still-confidential report. The New York Times first reported Thursday that the report was more than 300 pages.

“I would hope the attorney general would not be acting as a political operative for the president,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Judiciary Committee. “The Department of Justice should not be involved in a cover-up of what’s actually in the report.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Wednesday he was disappointed Barr would take weeks, not days, to release the report.

“The president has now an opportunity for weeks, it sounds like, to do these victory laps,” said Cummings, noting that Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, is among those headed to jail as a result of the probe. “Cohen goes to jail, the president runs a victory lap.”

Barr told the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that he’s combing through Mueller’s report and removing classified, grand jury and other information in hopes of releasing the rest to Congress.

Trump has said he’s fine with releasing the findings. “The president said, ‘Just let it go,’ and that’s what’s going to happen,” Graham said.

What’s clear, though, is that Barr will miss the Tuesday deadline set by six House committee chairmen to see the full confidential report and its underlying documents. They have suggested they may eventually try to subpoena it.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Andrew Taylor, Catherine Lucey, Jill Colvin, Alan Fram, Mike Balsamo and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

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Follow all of AP’s Trump Investigations coverage at https://apnews.com/TrumpInvestigations .

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LONDON — Britain’s ambassador to the United States resigned Wednesday after being branded a fool and made a diplomatic nobody by President Donald Trump following the leak of the envoy’s unflattering opinions about the U.S. administration.

Storm clouds gathered over the trans-Atlantic relationship as veteran diplomat Kim Darroch said he could no longer do his job in Washington after Trump cut off all contact with the representative of one of America’s closest allies.

The break in relations followed a British newspaper’s publication Sunday of leaked documents that revealed the ambassador’s dim view of Trump’s administration, which Darroch described as dysfunctional, inept and chaotic.

“The current situation is making it impossible for me to carry out my role as I would like,” Darroch said in his resignation letter. He had been due to leave his post at the end of the year.

In the leaked documents, he called the Trump administration’s policy toward Iran “incoherent,” said the president might be indebted to “dodgy Russians” and raised doubts about whether the White House “will ever look competent.”

“We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept,” one missive said.

Prime Minister Theresa May and other British politicians praised Darroch, condemned the leak — and criticized Trump’s intemperate comments, if only implicitly. Pointedly, however, Boris Johnson, considered the front-runner to replace May as prime minister, did not defend the ambassador after Trump’s tirade.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Johnson’s rival for the post, said Wednesday it was “absolutely essential that when our diplomats do their job all over the world … we defend them.”

“We had a fine diplomat who was just doing what he should have been doing — giving a frank assessment, a personal assessment of the political situation in the country that he was posted (to) — and that’s why I defended him,” he told reporters. “And I think we all should.”

Speaking at a conference on media freedom, Hunt also criticized Trump’s verbal attacks on journalists.

“I wouldn’t use the language President Trump used, and I wouldn’t agree with it,” he said. “We have to remember that what we say can have an impact in other countries where they can’t take press freedom for granted.”

Darroch announced his decision the morning after a televised Conservative leadership debate between Hunt and Johnson. During the debate, Hunt vowed to keep Darroch in the post, but Johnson — his predecessor as foreign secretary — failed to support the British envoy.

“I think it’s very important we should have a close partnership, a close friendship with the United States,” said Johnson, whom Trump has praised in the past.

Emily Thornberry, the spokeswoman on foreign affairs for the main opposition Labour Party, said Darroch “has been bullied out of his job, because of Donald Trump’s tantrums and Boris Johnson’s pathetic lick-spittle response.”

Darroch’s forthright, unfiltered views on the U.S. administration — meant for a limited audience and discreet review — appeared in the leaked documents published by Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper.

Darroch had served as Britain’s envoy to Washington since 2016; the leaked cables covered a period from 2017 to recent weeks.

British officials are hunting for the culprit behind the leak, which was both an embarrassment to May’s government and a major breach of diplomatic security.

“We will pursue the culprit with all the means at our disposal,” Foreign Office chief Simon McDonald told a committee of lawmakers, adding that police were involved in the investigation.

McDonald said it was “vitally important” that ambassadors were able to speak candidly in private and that it was the first time in his 37-year career that a head of state had refused to work with a British ambassador.

But he said the trans-Atlantic relationship was “so deep and so wide that it will withstand any individual squall.” He also said he feared there might be more leaks of sensitive government documents.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that “the United States and the United Kingdom share a bond that is bigger than any individual, and we look forward to continuing that partnership. We remain committed to the U.S.-UK Special Relationship and our shared global agenda.”

Like his predecessors, Darroch was a prominent figure in Washington, meeting frequently with high-level U.S. officials and hosting parties at the stately British Embassy.

Gatherings were frequently bipartisan, drawing guests from the Trump and Obama administrations, who mingled with journalists and members of prominent think tanks.

Darroch often addressed the attendees at such gatherings, making sure to single out high-level administration officials.

Trump’s tweets created a furor among many British politicians and officials, who found themselves insulted by the president’s decision to have the administration cut off contact with their ambassador.

It underscored that the close relationship between the two countries has become increasingly lopsided — a severe problem as the U.K. prepares to set a new path with its departure from the European Union.

“It is shameful that Kim Darroch has effectively been forced out for doing the job that diplomats are appointed to do,” Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted. “Boris Johnson’s failure last night to stand up for him — and stand up to the behavior of Donald Trump — spoke volumes.”

Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan — who served under Johnson when he was foreign secretary — went further, accusing Johnson of having “thrown our top diplomat under a bus” for his own personal interests.

But Trump supporter and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage described the resignation as, “the right decision.”

“Time (to) put in a non-Remainer who wants a trade deal with America,” he tweeted.

It’s unclear whether May will have time to name a replacement before she leaves office later this month.

Appointing ambassadors usually involves a formal civil service process with advertisements, applications and interviews, though Simon McDonald, head of Britain’s diplomatic service, said the post of ambassador to the U.S. wasn’t always chosen that way.

“History shows that there are often bespoke procedures for filling the embassy in Washington, DC,” he said.

By DANICA KIRKA and JILL LAWLESS – July 10.2019 – 1:56 PM ET __

Associated Press writer Julie Pace contributed from Washington.

UK Ambassador to US Quits After Leaked Cables Enrage Trump LONDON — Britain’s ambassador to the United States resigned Wednesday after being branded a fool and made a diplomatic nobody by President Donald Trump following the leak of the envoy’s unflattering opinions about the U.S.