@briankrebs Well, you know what this administration thinks of facts…

@briankrebs I worked part-time for PCLOB for a year—I resigned in mid-January 2017, before the inauguration. (Full disclosure: for assorted legal reasons, I couldn't have stayed on past mid-February 2017, and since the Board didn't have a quorum (thank you, Mitch McConnell) there was nothing for me to do anyway—but I'd have resigned in any event.) It is instructive to read 42 U.S.C. §2000ee(h)(2) on the qualifications for being a board member (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000ee

"Members of the Board shall be selected solely on the basis of their professional qualifications, achievements, public stature, expertise in civil liberties and privacy, and relevant experience, and without regard to political affiliation, but in no event shall more than 3 members of the Board be members of the same political party. The President shall, before appointing an individual who is not a member of the same political party as the President, consult with the leadership of that party, if any, in the Senate and House of Representatives.”

In other words, other than party affiliation, political party is expressly ruled out as a reason to appoint someone. At most, it's a disqualifier for someone in the president's party. But there's no way to force Trump to appoint people at all, three Republicans can constitute a quorum, and he could always choose to appoint people who are members of the AfUSA party or the remnants of Strom Thurmon's States' Rights Democratic Party.

To paraphrase and merge two Churchill speeches, we shall go on to the end, we shall fight in America, we shall fight on the streets and parks, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength on the Internet, we shall defend our democracy, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the courtrooms, we shall fight in the Congress, we shall fight in the voting booth, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the United States lasts for a thousand years, people will still say, "This was their finest hour."

Getting ready to mute all news sources for a day or so…