Mueller hearing: afternoon session and summary points.

The big take-aways from the Mueller hearings:

1.  A hostile foreign power systematically attacked our electoral process, sowed disinformation on a million-dollar-plus social media campaign.

2.  The disinformation campaign was designed to help Donald Trump's election and hurt Hillary Clinton.

3.  The Trump campaign knew about this foreign government sponsored help and welcomed it, even if there is no proof that they actually conspired and coordinated with them.   But neither did they report it to the FBI, which is what they were supposed to do.

4.  Once in office as president, Trump tried in multiple ways to interfere with the investigation into this foreign attempt to interfere with our democratic process, including clear-cut attempts to obstruct justice.

A report from the Senate Intelligence Committee (chaired by a Republican) was released late yesterday about their investigation of Russian meddling in our election.   They found that in 2016 Russia had infiltrated all 50 state voting systems, and showed in Illinois that they could actually alter data on voter roles, which could change who gets to vote.

Now they've had four more years to develop even more ways to control our democratic processes.   But Trump and the Republicans refuse to do anything about protecting us.   Mitch McConnell refuses to bring up for a Senate vote, two election security bills passed with a bipartisan majority in the House.

His ridiculous reason:   It would give the Democrats an electoral advantage.  What it would do instead is to reduce the Democratic disadvantage caused by Republican manipulation of our democratic process.

I begin to wonder if it's only Trump that the Russians have some blackmail-able dirt on, but other Republican leaders as well.

Ralph