{"id":180344,"date":"2017-05-17T21:14:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T02:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/17\/pass-the-popcorn-25\/"},"modified":"2017-05-17T21:14:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T02:14:00","slug":"pass-the-popcorn-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/17\/pass-the-popcorn-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Pass the Popcorn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2017\/may\/17\/trump-russia-investigation-special-counsel-robert-mueller-fbi\">appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump Campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There is basically no difference difference between a special counsel and special prosecutor.  The former term came into use largely through the notoriety of the latter term during Watergate.<\/p>\n<p>Both are appointed by, and can be removed by, the Attorney General or his designee, who also gives the special counsel\/prosecutor his remit.<\/p>\n<p>An independent counsel (IC) is a completely different kettle of fish:  They are appointed by a 3 judge panel, cannot be removed by the Attorney General, and their remit is pretty much unlimited.<\/p>\n<p>The law that enabled the appointment of an IC expired in 1999, following the excesses of Kenneth Starr in his pursuit of Bill Clinton&#8217;s penis.&nbsp; (Starr went on to become President of Baylor, where he covered up a <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news\/url?sr=1&amp;sa=t&amp;ct2=us%2F0_0_s_3_0_t&amp;usg=AFQjCNFtSPM4OcWCvXbsCGjmSBeSCDrqMQ&amp;did=ab480016e4c4c361&amp;cid=52779497993479&amp;ei=4R4dWcCFE4m33gGAj44w&amp;rt=STORY&amp;vm=STANDARD&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2017%2Fmay%2F17%2Fbaylor-university-lawsuit-rape-allegations\">rape culture among its athletes<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>This should be interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein just appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump Campaign. There is basically no difference difference between a special counsel and special prosecutor. The former term came into use largely through the notoriety of the latter term during Watergate. Both are appointed &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[407,374,405,455],"class_list":["post-180344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-justice","tag-politics","tag-presidential-campaign","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180344"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}