Associated Press:
President Donald Trump's embattled national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned late Monday night, following reports that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russia. His departure upends Trump's senior team after less than one month in office."Destabilizing blow"? If anything, it is to the administration's credit they got rid of Flynn now before he did even more damage. Unlike the Obama administration, which kept Attorney General Eric Holder through multiple scandals, at least President Trump seems willing to jettison the garbage.
In a resignation letter, Flynn said he held numerous calls with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the transition and gave "incomplete information" about those discussions to Vice President Mike Pence. The vice president, apparently relying on information from Flynn, initially said the national security adviser had not discussed sanctions with the Russian envoy, though Flynn later conceded the issue may have come up.
The revelations were another destabilizing blow to an administration that has already suffered a major legal defeat, botched the implementation of a signature policy and stumbled through a string of embarrassing public relations missteps.
On the bright side, Steve Bannon is still serving on the National Security Council. Sleep easy, America.
In other news...
The Mercury News:
More than a decade ago, federal and state officials and some of California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns that the massive earthen spillway at Oroville Dam — at risk of collapse Sunday night and prompting the evacuation of 185,000 people — could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe.This is what happens when federal and local governments come together to guess wrong. Of course, the idea that the Sierra Club is telling you they want concrete on the spillway instead of natural "earthen hillside" should have been a huge tipoff. When the enviro-nazis care more about safety than nature, that should be a red flag that even a careless government bureaucrat should recognize.
Three environmental groups — the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League — filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the dam’s emergency spillway be armored with concrete, rather than remain as an earthen hillside.
The groups filed the motion with FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They said that the dam, built and owned by the state of California, and finished in 1968, did not meet modern safety standards because in the event of extreme rain and flooding, fast-rising water would overwhelm the main concrete spillway, then flow down the emergency spillway, and that could cause heavy erosion that would create flooding for communities downstream, but also could cause a failure, known as “loss of crest control.”
FERC rejected that request, however, after the state Department of Water Resources, and the water agencies that would likely have had to pay the bill for the upgrades, said they were unnecessary. Those agencies included the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to 19 million people in Los Angeles, San Diego and other areas, along with the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 agencies that buy water from the state of California through the State Water Project. The association includes the Metropolitan Water District, Kern County Water Agency, the Santa Clara Valley Water District and the Alameda County Water District.
Federal officials at the time said that the emergency spillway was designed to handle 350,000 cubic feet per second and the concerns were overblown.
In more "dam" news...
The Mercury News:
Holding his first news conference since the threat of flooding at Lake Oroville forced more than 180,000 Californians to evacuate their homes on Sunday, California Gov. Jerry Brown assured citizens that the state was doing everything it could “to make sure we have a safe dam up there and all the other places where we have these kind of potential threats.”What moxie! The state of California is doing everything it can! Rolling up its sleeves, and getting to work on this situation...by calling the federal government for help.
“We live in a world of risk,” Brown said, referencing the collapse of the Bay Bridge after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. “Stuff happens, and we respond.”
The governor also on Monday sent a letter to the White House requesting direct federal assistance for some 10,000 evacuees from Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties.
These are the same people who will be leading a potentially seceded California nation? They are so screwed.
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