Monthly Archives: January 2018

In WaPo’s DemocracyPost, Christian Caryl takes note of certain poll results:

Trump attacks the press? One poll this past July showed that 45 percent of Republicans approved of the government shutting down media deemed “biased or inaccurate.” Trump plays fast and loose with democratic norms? An August survey found that fully half of GOP voters would support postponing the next presidential election if Trump proposed it. Trump praises Russian President Vladimir Putin? A poll this past May found that 49 percent of Republican voters regard Russia as friendly or an ally. Trump expresses frustration with democratic constraints on his power? A Pew Research Center poll last year revealed that fully one-third of Republicans favor the idea of a strong leader who can govern without interference from Congress or the courts.

And to those Republicans who affirm these positions, I should like to say …

You may be Republicans, but you are not Americans any longer.

I’m not going to bother to say I’m ashamed of those Republicans, or appalled. Folks, if that’s how desperate you are to hold on to the privilege of governing, of being part of some imagined elite that depends on being in control of American government, then you’re no longer Americans.

You simply yearn to be a member of an autocratic country. And we don’t need you here.

Being American means believing we function best as a Republic, with elected representatives with specified powers, all corralled by checks and balances, and kept relatively honest by a free press. If any of that is not to your taste, hey, Russia’s always looking for new citizens.

Write and tell us how that works out for you.

There’s not much to The Pharaoh’s Curse (1957). The acting is professional, but the special effects range from mundane to just awful (I particularly liked how the real scorpion crawled past the plastic arm that was supposed to be real), the cinematography’s OK, and the sound might be a bit off.

But the real disaster is the story. Set during Britain’s colonial period, a small British patrol is sent out to retrieve some archaeologists digging for a pharaoh’s grave in Egypt, bringing with them the wife of one of the archaeologists, although we’re not sure why. The leader of the patrol, Captain Storm, is attracted to her. Whatever.

Also appearing, a mystery Egyptian lady named Sumera, who draws her strength from the desert.  And the pack asses don’t like her.  Really.  In fact, Mabel the donkey deserts the mission. We never hear if she makes it back to camp. I miss Mabel.

Meanwhile, the archaeologists have found a coffin and are in the midst of opening it when one of the native torch-bearers collapses, leaving the mummy to its own devices while they carry the guy back to the camp.

After some mishaps, including the aforementioned scorpion’s sting of the wife, the patrol arrives and tells the archaeologists it’s time to leave.  But before they can go, the torch-bearer turns into an old man and starts to attack people at random in the cave complex where the coffin is located. Various riches are found, which are inexplicably ignored by the archaeologists. Maybe it was the fact that people are starting to die, completely drained of blood.

At one point, the archaeologists do pull the arm off of their stealthy attacker, which made me laugh.

In any case, the expedition soon gives up and leaves. Sumera disappears as well.

And we don’t care. Horror movies thrive on you caring about those that meet a gruesome end, and no one here evokes sympathy, much less empathy.

Watch it for the risible special effects. And with shots of your favorite liquor available.

Or go do jumping jacks. They’ll be better for you than this waste of time.

On Slate Dahlia Lithwick and Steve Vladeck express their dismay at certain supporters of President Trump’s agenda:

For months, a vocal but small cohort of conservative and libertarian legal scholars have been trying to convince anyone who will listen that the federal courts have “joined the resistance”—that subversive lower-court judges have abandoned their oaths of integrity and impartiality to rule against President Trump on anything and everything. These commentators have used inflammatory and incautious language to tar entire federal circuits and besmirch virtually every judge who has sided against any Trump administration action. Over the weekend, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal joined that chorus. In a breathless and tendentious editorial, the Journal portrayed the Supreme Court’s decision last Friday to hear the latest challenge to the travel ban as reflecting a desire on the part of at least some justices to “rebuke the judiciary for stretching the law to join the political resistance to Mr. Trump.” As the Journal put it, “The Justices have a chance to rule on the legality of Mr. Trump’s ban but also whether judges can ignore the law merely because they loathe Mr. Trump and all his works.”

The claim that the high court took up the case not to settle a novel legal question on the merits but to spank the feckless judges of the resistance is fatuous and shallow. It’s also profoundly dangerous to the norms and values of judicial integrity and stability.

And these adversarial legal scholars don’t appear to be able to think ahead. If they succeed in the politicization of the courts – no doubt they’d argue that’s already occurred, but given the fact that judges appointed by Presidents from both parties have weighed in against President Trump, that argument hangs in shreds – then the future of the Republic would look far less stable than it would otherwise.

The judiciary is not a political battleground. The independence of the judiciary is such a necessary part of our governmental system that it is legendary. If we compromise it, either with great vaingloriousness such as these chappies, or more subtly through the subjection of judicial seats to the winds of the electoral system, then we risk the future stability of a Republic that prospers when the judiciary is stable & independent – and suffers greatly when the political winds blow through the judicial galleries. We still rue Dred Scott, do we not?

So SCOTUS is looking at Trump’s Travel Ban 3.0. Does the very future of this argument rest on it? Will this band of brave legal scholars triumph, or lie tattered in defeat, depending on how these elderly and, sometimes, wise jurists decide this one case? I personally doubt it. If the travel ban is permitted, it’s merely SCOTUS correcting the lower courts, which happens with some frequency, for the law is sometimes hard to understand, as it flows from our legislatures.

And if the travel ban is once again rejected, will these legal scholars throw over their crusade and return to more honorable pursuits? No, for those who affirm Trump despite all affronts seem to know no shame.

So don’t go looking for a climactic throw-down here. Regardless of the result, the legal railing against oft-settled law will just go on and on. Some run along on momentum, and others are not able to visualize themselves being in the wrong.

Steve Benen notes the allegations of sexual misconduct by Steve Wynn, business tycoon and Finance chair of the Republican National Committee, and asks, perhaps sardonically, whether Wynn will now be forced out, and his contributions to various campaigns and to the RNC itself rejected:

Just a few months ago, as the public was first learning about the Harvey Weinstein scandal, the RNC seemed eager to exploit the controversy for partisan gain. In fact, the RNC invested considerable energy, not only in trying to tie Weinstein to Democratic candidates he supported, but also in demanding that DNC return any contributions they received from the Hollywood producer.

When the DNC was slow to respond, the Republican National Committee intensified its focus. It didn’t matter that Weinstein had no formal connection to Democratic politics; he was a Democratic donor and for the RNC, that was enough. “If the DNC truly stands up for women like they say they do, then returning Weinstein’s dirty money should be a no-brainer,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said in October.

In retrospect, this was a risky posture, not only because of the allegations of misconduct made against the president, but also because of the man the president asked to help lead the RNC’s fundraising efforts. As of today, Wynn is the RNC’s finance chair, a friend of Donald Trump, and a man accused of ”behavior that cumulatively would amount to a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct.”

Hard to say. Senator McConnell’s deliberate hypocrisy with respect to the norms of the Senate only applying to Democrats suggests to me that the Republicans don’t see themselves as being subject to the same forces of ethics and morality as are the Democrats. They see themselves as somehow above those requirements, existing on a higher plane.

Tony Perkins’ willingness to give President Trump a “mulligan” on sexual indiscretions reinforces that perception.

On the other hand, several GOP elected officials have resigned in the last year over sexual misconduct charges of various sorts, or announced they’ll not be running for re-election.

Wynn is not an elected official. He’s a guy with a shitload of money and, I’m guessing, an iron grip on his business holdings. The shitload of money is probably the key phrase here, as money is now the God of the GOP. He may be forced out regardlessly, but only after a lot of anguished screaming by those sucking at his teat.

A reader remarks on Trump’s use of language:

It may be part of his appeal, but he’s an idiot. My son had a larger vocabulary at age 8 — no exaggeration.

Or in other words: if you as a citizen are equally limited in your vocabulary and thinking by choice, I don’t think you should have the right to vote.

I fear that down that street lies riot and ruin.

An allied approach – you must first prove you can put the good of the group ahead of your own profit before you can participate in the democracy – is the underlying philosophy of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. (Not the movie!)

There may be a very poor substitute for a President sitting in the Oval Office, but it appears the professionals who run the joint have the survival of the United States firmly in mind, as former White House Counsel Bob Bauer explains on Lawfare with regard to current Counsel McGahn’s behavior when told to fire Special Counsel Mueller by President Trump:

Of course, McGahn would have had every reason to object to the peculiar, if not wholly specious, grounds that the president apparently asserted for a firing. What counsel would have wished to advise the Justice Department that Mueller’s fatal “conflict” arose out of his unwillingness to remain a member of a Trump golf facility that had raised its fees?

McGahn just as likely understood the high stakes for his office and for his credibility within the administration. The president was asking that McGahn carry out an order with which he strongly disagreed—an order perhaps designed in the first instance in consultation with Kasowitz, his personal lawyer. McGahn would then be acting as mere messenger for an action certain to plunge the White House into controversy and further legal difficulty. McGahn would have shared in the blame but not the actual responsibility. He would have obeyed Trump’s command in an institutionally weakened state, suffering more weakness as the predictable result.

It is interesting that McGahn may have made his intention to resign clear, but according to the Washington Post, he did not communicate it directly to the president. He seems to have been keeping his distance—or otherwise his relationship with the president may have become distant. It is striking that a Counsel to the President who considered resigning at any time, much less in these circumstances, would rely on others to send the message. That this may have happened certainly suggests that McGahn was at the time functioning, at least in relation to Russia matters, on the periphery of the president’s inner advisory circle.

It’s reassuring to read that most or all of the professionals in the White House have the survival of the White House as an institution (I don’t mean the Trump White House by that phrase) firmly in mind. It speaks to the wisdom of those many people who’ve had to deal with one of the more delicate situations in the American governmental system over the years, no doubt motivated by the many sights of rampaging dictatorships in other countries. Kudos to them, from then to now, and presumably to Counsel McGahn for following faithfully in their footsteps.

It’s turned into a full-fledged retreat when it comes to that secret society:

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee acknowledged Thursday that a reference made between two FBI employees of a “secret society” could have been said in jest as opposed to evidence of an anti-Donald Trump plot.

“It’s a real possibility,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, told CNN. [CNN]

Gallup Weekly Presidential Approval Poll, 1/21/2018. Approval currently 36%, disapproval 59%.

Out and out lying? I don’t think so. I think the prominent devout members of the GOP, such as our credulous Senator Johnson, continue to inhabit the conservatives’ echo chamber, and that chamber rings with endorsements of the President by the American people – no matter what the polls say. Using that as their fundamental assumption, they’re forced to assume that the Mueller investigation is hollow and their leader is merely the potential victim of a lynch mob.

Such is the logic of self-delusion.

But when the crash comes, the GOP will have an out, because President Trump has never been a true member of the GOP – heck, he may not even have the card. He is an outsider who swooped in and took over the Party, but if & when the time comes to bid him adieu, via impeachment or a dishonorable term in office from which he shambles away, the Republicans can discard him as not one of them. They’ll be able to point at his marital record as well as his political record and proclaim, without displaying the real shame that adults would feel at this debacle, that he was a sham Republican and not representative of the real Republicans.

In essence, he’ll be a President who’ll be used and tossed aside by the people who hide behind the curtain, avoiding responsibility for the fallout of their beliefs of how to manage the United States. I hope he enjoys that position.

Preternatural:

• • Beyond or not conforming to what is natural or according to the regular course of things; strange quotations ▼

    Synonyms: inexplicable, extraordinary, abnormal

  • (dated) Having an existence outside of the natural world.

In modern secular use, refers to extraordinary but still natural phenomena, as in “preternatural talent”. In religious and occult usage, used similarly to supernatural, meaning “outside of nature”, but usually to a lower level than supernatural – it can be used synonymously (identical to supernatural), as a hyponym (a kind of supernatural), or a coordinate term (similar to supernatural, but a distinct category). For example, in Catholic theology, preternatural refers to properties of creatures like angels, while supernatural refers to properties of God alone. [Wiktionary]

Noted in WaPo‘s PowerPost:

The president’s proclamation reflects his preternatural self-confidence that he can talk his way out of any pickle. He insists he’s done nothing wrong, and he recognizes the bad optics of refusing to cooperate. Perhaps he thinks he can publicly convey support for transparency, even as he privately drags his feet, puts up roadblocks and makes demands that Mueller won’t agree to.

A random email, this time interesting. You may have heard about the recent 7.9 earthquake off the coast of Alaska. But did you hear about this resultant?

Tuesday’s 7.9 magnitude earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska sent vibrations through the earth that caused water to rise and fall in wells in Florida, thousands of miles away.

Sensors near Fort Lauderdale and Madison, near the Georgia border, showed a minor change in water levels after the earthquake, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

A water level rise from 41.59 feet to 41.77 feet was recorded at the well near Madison before it returned to normal. At the well near Fort Lauderdale, the water level fell from 1.42 feet to 1.31 feet.

Why did water levels in these wells some 3,800 miles away from the earthquake’s epicenter change?

A 7.9 earthquake is nothing to sneeze at, of course, but we were fortunate that it was off the coast and not on land, like the Alaska 9.2 earthquake of 1964.

The 1964 Alaska Earthquake.
Source: Wikipedia

From WaPo:

The emailed response from the Guggenheim’s chief curator to the White House was polite but firm: The museum could not accommodate a request to borrow a painting by Vincent van Gogh for President and Melania Trump’s private living quarters.

Instead, wrote the curator, Nancy Spector, another piece was available, one that was nothing like “Landscape With Snow,” the 1888 van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles, France, with his dog.

The curator’s alternative: an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet — an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.

For a view from the conservative side of the confidential memo of Representative Nunes concerning the FBI, Jonah Goldberg presents one on National Review, and is clearly feeling sqeamish:

Again, there are some legitimately disturbing facts (and allegations of facts) swirling around the FBI, the Mueller investigation, etc. But there’s also an astonishing amount of manufactured outrage, absurd dot-connecting, and near-hysteria. It’s as if everyone who shouts about the other side being conspiracy theorists needs to have a conspiracy theory all their own as well.

Meanwhile, this #ReleaseTheMemo campaign is obviously a PR stunt. But that in itself is not damning. PR stunts are sometimes valid efforts to get a real story out. I’m actually impressed that congressional Republicans were effective at messaging for once. I wouldn’t have predicted that it would work this well. After all, Republicans insinuating that a memo written by a Republican committee chairman in a Republican-controlled Congress during a Republican presidency is being hidden from the public by some force or entity other than the Republicans strikes me as kind of hilarious. As is the idea that all of these Republicans saw it, but no one leaked it because leaking is just wrong. (It is wrong, but come on.) That said . . . hey, it was just crazy enough to work.

Of course, this stunt — and so much else — will look not just absurd but dishonorable if the memo doesn’t live up to the hype.

That’s why I’d caution Republican politicians from taking their cues from President Trump’s Twitter feed or the media platforms that unapologetically fuel his persecution complex. If professional opiners want to go the way of Alex Jones and Jim Hoft, fine. But the GOP itself should think twice. If Ron Johnson’s performance on Special Report last night is a preview of what is yet to come, I think some Republicans may be painting themselves into an ugly corner.

Ugly corner? Just think of it as campaign fodder. The neediness of the Party Leader is really leading the GOP right down into a toxic waste dump. I know a few conservatives I talk to are really tired of the entire politics thing, even if they still suck down the fallacious swill about the Democrats – as persistent readers of this blog know from my occasional vents on the matter.

Meanwhile, Senator Johnson (R-WI), who Tuesday claimed he had a real live informant that would provide proof positive of a secret organization within the “deep state” out to get rid of President Trump, is retreating:

Johnson backtracked somewhat on Wednesday, saying he had merely “heard” about the existence of a secret society and did not have direct evidence of such a rump organization within the FBI.

“All I said is when I read those in those texts, that’s Strozk and Page’s term,” Johnson said when pressed by reporters on Capitol Hill on whether he believed such a group existed. “I have heard there was a group of managers in the FBI that were holding meetings offsite. That’s all I know.” [NBC News]

Ho hum. I think he’s a fantasist. How Wisconsin voters could pick this deceitful twerp over Russ Feingold is beyond me.

I’m beginning to think the mid-terms will be more interesting in terms of advertising than usual, because it will be all about presentation during the campaigns. These mid-terms could mark inventive new ways to bring the missteps of both sides into sharp focus for voters.

The question will be whether or not the voters will be willing to go out and verify the claims, or not. I wonder if the advertising will be adjusted to make verification a little easier than starting cold – or if either side will simply lie its ass off.

Glancing at CNN/Money‘s report on Trump’s sudden desire to be part of the successor to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), I was struck, for the umpteenth time, by his use of language:

“I would do TPP if we were able to make a substantially better deal. The deal was terrible. The way it was structured was terrible,” he said during a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

I’m reading that and thinking that this is not the way an expert, nor an expert politician, would put it. But it’s the way that much of his base might put it. He uses general-usage adjectives, rather than specific nouns and adjectives, in everything he does.

And that’s part of his appeal, I’m afraid. In all probability, he’s not familiar with either the original TPP deal nor the successor, but, because he emotionally needs to be seen as improving “the deal” for the United States, not only because it makes his base happy, but because that’s an emotional requirement for  his own existence, he blasts it – and he does so in the same way they think they would. Then he keeps painting himself as a successful businessman – the guy who couldn’t even make money off of a casino! – as a way to butter up the base. He talks their way, and he’s a success – thus they must be a success, too.

Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s a fantastically quick study and knows TPP inside and out, and can out-think economists and foreign policy experts on the matter. (I don’t know what either batch of specialists think of the agreement.) But his language militates against such a conclusion. It’s not arrogance on my part, either. The use of specialized words makes for far more precise, and efficient, communications.

What’s better, “I WANT BOMB GOES BOOM” or “Use 2000 lb pound bombs on the bunker”? Yeah. General use words signal the amateur who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Add in the fact that White House sources indicate he spends his time watching TV (the notorious “Executive Time” meme of last week) and can’t be troubled to do any sort of deep reading, and it’s really hard to take this latest zig as Trump realizing he’s about to look bad, and trying to backtrack by criticizing something and trying to “improve” it – probably by adding a comma to an introductory section.

One of President Trump’s earliest moves was to take the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which effectively collapsed the effort to construct a trade agreement between maybe ten countries. This is the sort of thing that I look at as background noise when it comes to politics on the ground, because while these sorts of things have tangible impacts, they’ll be subtle, and if they don’t go through, often the folks on the ground aren’t going to notice – who are different from, say, farmers who might be more strongly affected.

So I appreciated Steve Benen’s piece on Maddowblog on what’s happened since Trump pulled out:

… as Reuters reported this week, our former TPP partners have decided to simply go around us.

Eleven countries aiming to forge an Asia-Pacific trade pact after the United States pulled out of an earlier version will sign an agreement in Chile in March, Japan’s economy minister said on Tuesday, in a big win for Tokyo. […]

An agreement is a win for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government, which has been lobbying hard to save the pact, originally called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Remember, that partnership was originally the United States’ idea. Now it’s “a big win” for Japan – which came on the heels of another big trade deal between Japan and the European Union, announced last year.

A Washington Post  report in the fall noted that when Trump withdrew, it “created a vacuum other nations are now moving to fill, with or without the president.”

A FiveThirtyEight piece, noting that the Republican’s plans “backfired,” explained, “Japan, the world’s third-biggest economy, has assumed the leadership role. Canada, initially a reluctant member of the club, volunteered to host one of the first post-Trump meetings of the remaining TPP countries to work on a way forward – perhaps because research shows that Canadians will do better if they have preferential access that their American cousins lack. Smaller, poorer countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia wanted freer trade with the U.S. but agreed to consider improved access to countries such as Australia, Canada and Japan as a consolation prize for years of hard bargaining.”

It was clearly a trade agreement of some importance, and I suspect a lot of people will benefit from it – none of them Americans. But without analysis of the sort supplied by Steve, FiveThirtyEight, and others, how would we realize the mistake we appear to have made?

Of course, Japan and Canada are close allies of ours, so it’s not as if China or Russia had assumed the leadership position – and reaped the benefits of being out in front. But it’s clear that we’re retreating rapidly. And what are those benefits? Technologically, being out front often means developing new technologies that have often unpredictable positive – and sometimes negative – attributes. Financially, there are often advantages to being out front.

And prestige, while intangible, is not something to value lightly. This is not simple vanity, but is part of the unstated but always present struggle between governmental systems. The failure of our liberal democracy, under the dubious leadership of President Trump, to bring TPP to fruition speaks to a weakness in our governmental system of serious concern. It speaks to the vulnerability to spiteful whim to which President Trump appears painfully prone.

I can only hope we don’t bleed too much while we figure out how to patch it up.

P.S. now Trump wants back in.

Reprobate:

verb transitive
1. to disapprove of strongly; condemn
2. to reject
3. Theology
to damn
adjective
4. a. unprincipled
b. totally bad; corrupt; depraved
5. Theology
damned
noun
6. an unprincipled or totally bad person
7. Theology
a person damned; lost soul

[Collins Dictionary]

My Arts Editor called me an old reprobate last night. Sheesh.

For all that the GOP wants to deny the existence of climate change, it appears SCOTUS doesn’t agree, as it refuses to hear a case from Alaska concerning the protection of animals thought to soon be imperiled by climate change. From Anchorage Daily News:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected requests to review protections for bearded seals that live in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

The nation’s highest court denied an appeal by the oil industry and other groups including the state of Alaska to review a 2016 Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that reinstated protections for the seals.

It appears SCOTUS is satisfied that climate change is real and needs to be taken into account when evaluating the danger in which a species lives of extinction.

Or they want a better case for deliberation.

I suppose this could be called inadequate camera equipment.

Before dismissing Chelsea Manning as an attention seeker, er, or maybe if you haven’t recognized her for being an attention seeker, consider this report of the reported Democratic candidate for the Senator from Maryland at a party for well-known right-wingers. From WaPo:

“A Night for Freedom” was billed as a “gathering of patriots and political dissidents who are bored with mainstream political events,” in the words of Mike Cernovich, the far-right activist and conspiracy theorist who organized the party. The $139 general admission fee got attendees hors d’oeuvres and tickets for three drinks. DJ duo Milk N Cooks handled the music. As the event shifted into high gear, it featured an all-star lineup of fringe Internet celebrities, Trump backers and media trolls, including, reportedly, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe and the Gateway Pundit’s Lucian Wintrich.

But an unexpected guest, neither a Trump die-hard nor Internet provocateur, ended up dominating the news coverage of the event. Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst who spent seven years in prison for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, was spotted “smiling and socializing with attendees” early in the evening, BuzzFeed reported.

“I f‑‑‑ing crashed!” Manning, a current candidate for a Maryland U.S. Senate seat, told a New York Observer reporter at the coat check. Later in the night, Manning posted her own tweet acknowledging she had “crashed the fascist/white supremacist hate brigade party,” she wrote, adding: “learned in prison that the best way to confront your enemies is face-to-face in their space.”

“I think it’s clear that she does what she wants,” Cernovich told BuzzFeed. “And I think she knows that we’re the same way.” …

On Monday, Manning again addressed the Saturday night event, writing on Twitter that “fascists/alt-right deserve no platform” and that she “took up an opportunity to gather intel on them b/c the ideology they peddle threatens everyone.” According to the Guardian, Manning also reached out to Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour to apologize for her “very bad judgment.” Buzzfeed’s Joe Bernstein reported Manning “was on the verge of tears” when she expressed her regret to Sarsour.

The last sentences were a little puzzling. It appears Manning wants to make a splash, though.

Comity:

1. An association of nations for their mutual benefit.
   [mass noun] The mutual recognition by nations of the laws and customs of others.
2. [mass noun] Courtesy and considerate behaviour towards others.
   ‘a show of public comity in the White House’ [Oxford English Dictionaries]
   

Noted in “Chief Justice John Roberts Has Changed A Little Bit. And That Could Be A Big Deal,” Chris Geidner, BuzzFeed News:

With the unpredictability that Trump has brought to government and Washington — which followed the year of instability that the court itself faced following Scalia’s death — Roberts has sought out a path of compromise and comity that is in fitting with the institutionalist conservatism that has marked his approach to his role on the court.

In case you’re wondering how the FBI Director is supposed to handle political pressure, Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare talk about it in a larger article concerning how current FBI Director Wray is currently interfacing with Attorney General Sessions:

One of the underappreciated benefits of Senate confirmation and a 10-year term for the FBI director is that it gives him an outlook and perspective that favor the rule of law and the integrity of law enforcement over high-profile presidential pressure. An FBI director can afford to fight with the president. Louis Freeh had a famously bad relationship with Bill Clinton. Yes, the president can fire the FBI director. But he almost certainly won’t—unless he’s Trump—and the firing would martyr the FBI director, not disgrace him. Conversely, no FBI director can afford to be pushed around publicly by the president and attorney general at the expense of a popular FBI career official the president is bullying, especially when that bullying is related, at least in the president’s mind, to an FBI investigation that involves the president, his campaign advisers and others close to him. To maintain his internal credibility, Wray’s loyalties simply must be with the forces he is charged with leading for a decade, long after Trump has departed from the scene. That’s all before one considers the mainstream attitudes Wray almost certainly holds—and that he professed at his confirmation hearing—about the proper relationship between the political echelon and law enforcement professionals.

And another illustration of the GOP‘s un-American deference to their putative leader:

Finally, a word about Attorney General Sessions. It says a lot about the man that he was willing to pressure Wray to remove McCabe—and that he was willing to put sufficient pressure on him to provoke a conflict. Of course, in theory, the attorney general—who supervises the FBI director—should be able to discuss with the FBI director who the deputy director should be. But in context, when the president is attacking McCabe and explicitly tying the attacks to the Russia investigation, and when Sessions is recused from that investigation, the proper role for Sessions is actually the one that Wray played here. The job of the attorney general here was to try to uphold and defend the FBI’s independence. Not only did Sessions not do that, at least according to Axios, but Wray had to do it, to protect the FBI from the attorney general himself.

I hope that part of the conclusion of this dubious episode in American political history will include a strong discussion of the importance of the independence of the Justice Department from the President, even though he nominates and supervises the Attorney General. Most Presidents usually nominate strong candidates, but Trump nominated someone who supported him early on, expecting slavish loyalty, and was shocked when he didn’t get it.

And I’d never really thought about this complex balancing act. Most Americans are probably puzzled by this entire little dance, and it wouldn’t hurt if we were able to take the time to explain it in greater detail, after Trump is gone.

Thought I’d snap a picture or two last night. My Arts Editor tells me this is the best of the bunch.

All cleared off now. Or so my aching back tells me.

WaPo is reporting that Special Counsel Mueller wants to have a chat with President Trump:

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is seeking to question President Trump in the coming weeks about his decisions to oust national security adviser Michael Flynn and FBI Director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with his plans.

Mueller’s interest in the events that led Trump to push out Flynn and Comey indicates that his investigation is intensifying its focus on possible efforts by the president or others to obstruct or blunt the special counsel’s probe.

Trump’s attorneys have crafted some negotiating terms for the president’s interview with Mueller’s team, one that could be presented to the special counsel as soon as next week, according to the two people.

Negotiating terms? I’m sorry, the President doesn’t get special treatment. We’re all equal before the law. Well, I suppose some sort of deal will be cut in order to get President under the bright lights.

I’m guessing that Mueller will be asking for Trump’s versions of certain events, such as the Comey firing, for comparison with the stories obtained from other witnesses, which includes Attorney General Sessions, who was interviewed very recently. Sessions was apparently the first Cabinet-level interviewee. Discrepancies might form the basis for subpoenas and even criminal proceedings, although whether that would be against President or the other witnesses will depend on the issue. And will honesty even figure into this interview?

Probably not.

The Trump advisors and lawyers are not happy about this, of course. But this remark made me laugh:

However, some of Trump’s close advisers and friends fear a face-to-face interview with Mueller could put the president in legal jeopardy. A central worry, they say, is Trump’s lack of precision in his speech and his penchant for hyperbole.

People close to Trump have tried to warn him for months that Mueller is a “killer,” in the words of one associate, noting that the special counsel has shown interest in the president’s actions.

Roger Stone, a longtime informal adviser to Trump, said he should try to avoid an interview at all costs, saying agreeing to such a session would be a “suicide mission.”

“I find it to be a death wish. Why would you walk into a perjury trap?” Stone said. “The president would be very poorly advised to give Mueller an interview.”

Wait, isn’t Trump a stable genius? Surely he can outwit a mere lawyer, GOP member, and former FBI director, no?

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. I wonder if any reporters will be egging him on….

Chris Geidner notes in BuzzFeed News that Chief Justice Roberts may have a little Vaseline under his shoes:

Roberts joined the Supreme Court in 2005, seen as a staunch, across-the-board conservative. In recent years, though, he’s appeared to moderate some of his positions, in specific instances and sometimes in very nuanced ways. That kind of shift could have significant effects on how the current court decides major issues and — if it represents a permanent change — on how Roberts leads the court into the next decade.

In certain cases involving heavily ideological issues, such as whether some activity should be protected under religious freedom or considered a prohibited activity, the Court tends to have a split of 4-4, with Justice Kennedy acting as an unpredictable swing vote.

But if the Chief Justice is sliding to the left, that could herald some interesting changes in the rulings from the Court. Recall that the Chief Justice voted in favor of the ACA, which shocked the political world – what else could he have up his sleeve?

With that in mind, I’ll inaugurate this thread to track the Chief Justice with respect to unusual voting patterns. The first entry? From The Volokh Conspiracy‘s Jonathan Adler:

In Artis v. District of Columbia the Court split 5-4 over the question of what it means to “toll” state law claims under 28 U. S. C. §1367(d). Justice Ginsburg wrote the majority and Justice Gorsuch wrote the dissent. This was not the usual 5-4 opinion, however, as the role of swing justice was played not by Justice Anthony Kennedy but by the Chief Justice, who joined the more liberal justices.

In case you’re as puzzled as I, from the opinion itself:

Section 1367(d)’s instruction to “toll” a state limitations period means to hold it in abeyance, i.e., to stop the clock.

As to whether there are ideological shadows to this opinion, I cannot guess. It seems to have something to do with someone not filing in time in reaction to a lower court ruling, and claiming the time constraint was tolled in this case. I do notice that Adler connects this with Geidner’s piece as well. A lot of court-watchers are on the edge of their seats, I’d say.

Brian Beutler on Crooked summed up Senator Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) fairly awful position a week or two ago:

Maybe Graham is telling the truth, and maybe he isn’t, but either way, the ongoing “shithole countries” fiasco underscores something that should have been clear to all thinking Republicans a long time ago: Debasing yourself for the opportunity to bend Trump’s ear is an extremely stupid idea that will leave you debased without the upside of lasting presidential attention or loyalty. By the same token, the Republican congressional leaders who have given Trump free rein to engage in unprecedented corruption, in tacit exchange for control over the policymaking process, have assumed all the downside of complicity in Trump’s crimes without securing the means of assuring Trump won’t foul up policy anyhow. They have all committed reputational suicide-by-Trump, in exchange for practically nothing. As a result, Graham stands to be outflanked by people who are willing to be more shameless than he is, and who will in turn trap their weak leaders into shutting down their own government by the end of the week.

Perhaps Senator Graham should try being a Senator and not a Party hack. You know, give the bills your mature attention, politic within the Senate, but ignore the President. You can’t predict what he’ll do next, so simply concentrate on being a good Senator.

Oh, wait. I see he was part of the Letter to Iran tomfoolery. I’m afraid we can’t expect much out of him.

Inured:

transitive verb
: to accustom to accept something undesirable • children inured to violence

intransitive verb
: to become of advantage • policies that inure to the benefit of employees [Merriam-Webster]

Ah, one of those words that can mean the opposite of itself. Noted in “Trump aims low, falsely claims Dems are ‘complicit’ in murders,” Steve Benen, Maddowblog:

I’m not aware of any previous instance in which a sitting president accused a major political party of being “complicit” in murders. Indeed, the fact that Trump World’s new, 30-second ad isn’t a massive national outrage is evidence that we’re all getting a little too inured to this president debasing the political discourse and destroying American norms.