A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do....

Lite Guv. Dan Patrick wanted to pass a "bathroom bill" a la North Carolina's, because of bathroom predators and bathroom privacy and reasons.

The "predators" idea is what sank the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance ("HERO"), something that gained national attention for Houston (o boy!) and which Patrick was deeply familiar with, he being from Houston and all.

Now you have to realize the Texas Constitution doesn't give power to any one person.  The Governor and the Lt. Gov. are elected separately, and while the latter presides in the Texas Senate and the former is the only person who can call special sessions and decide precisely what the special session will try to pass (and once passed, the session is over; no hanging about passing any other laws not put on the agenda by the Guv.), that's about as powerful as the offices are.  It's largely a matter of political clout as to how much you can do in either position.  Bob Bullock was a legendary Texas pol who knew where ALL the bodies were buried in Texas, and he ran the state as Lt. Guv.  He even got a Texas history museum named after him in Austin.  Former Gov. Dolph Briscoe has his name attached to a museum on UT campus in Austin, but that's because he was rich and left a lot of money for it.  Everybody still remembers the long shadow Bullock cast; Briscoe is a phantom of some very long memories (like your host's).

So Dan Patrick was determined to "North Carolina" Texas.  Except Texas business interests didn't want to see that happen, and Joe Strauss, Speaker of the Texas House, listens to the bidness men.  Patrick's bill passed the Senate, but never had a prayer in the House.

Texas has one of the shortest legislative sessions in the country:  six months every two years.  Anything outside of that is a "special session," called by the governor, limited to what the governor puts on the agenda.  The Governor is not anxious to put Patrick's "bathroom bill" on the agenda; but he's not anxious to cross the crazies Patrick and the Texas Senate represent.  Strauss doesn't care; he's not letting Texas become the next North Carolina.  Patrick decide to flex his muscles and demand that bill (and a few others) get to the House floor, or he wouldn't pass the state budget, the only law the Lege has to pass in regular session (or come back immediately in special session).

Texas legislators don't get paid well to come to Austin for six months, and they are anxious to leave when the whirlwind is over.  But the law is the law, and a budget must be passed, before the end of the month, or in the summer.

And then this morning I learn that a "compromise" has shown up in the House, an amendment to another bill, that would limit the "bathroom bill" to public and charter schools.  K-12, so as not to bother the NCAA (of course).  The original bill applied only to public buildings, so you're local restaurants public bathrooms would not have been affected.  But if Caitlyn Jenner were to visit your local Texas courthouse or city hall, she'd have been directed to the men's room; presumably.  If she was recognized (the only reason I mention her); and if there was a policeman ready and willing to do his/her duty under the law.  Fat chance, IOW.  Still, that risk could be removed if this amendment makes it to the Senate and the Senate decides half a loaf is better than a special session.

Of course, the only people even Patrick's original bill would apply to was students in public schools.  There was a question of whether publicly owned football stadiums would be covered, and I never envisioned police standing before the bathrooms checking birth certificates and...well, what?  The premise of the bill was to enforce privacy, right?  So in the name of privacy we make you drop drawers and show a piece of paper besides?  Yeah, right.

The first excuse was predators:  men in women's clothes looking to rape our innocent white young girls.  That worked in Houston, but it won't work again, and it's pretty much gone as an argument.  Privacy was next, but bathrooms are supposed to be private, and unless transgendered women are gonna belly up to the urinal, whose to know, unless we remove the doors on stalls in the name of privacy?  So we're down to the point of this bill all along, and the only population it could ever apply to:  public school students.

The schools know who you are, and what it says on your birth certificate, and the schools alone can police their bathrooms in the ways no other institution can.  Even the broadest reach of Patrick's fevered dreams was only ever going to come down to public school students.  Apparently public school isn't hard enough, we have to make it tougher.

Then again, this may not pass muster in the Senate, because it allows an out:

The last-minute vote amended a Senate bill focusing on school districts' emergency plans and added language requiring K-12 schools provide single-stall restrooms and other public areas to a student "who does not wish" to use facilities designated by "biological sex."

So they don't have to pee where they want to pee, but they don't have to pee with other people, either. Hey, it's compromise, right?

The result is the same:  Dammit, we gotta discriminate against SOMEBODY!  What's the point of having a legislative session in Donald Trump's first term if we don't do that!

And while we're talking about schools, Patrick still insists on a sop to hard-working rich people:

HB 21 now includes a provision the House hates and Patrick wants: state subsidies for parents who want to send their children with disabilities to private schools or need money for services to educate them at home.

The amount involved is about $8000.  That won't pay tuition at many private schools, if you can get in (most around here have waiting lists.  Well, the better ones.).  And those aren't even the schools targeted.  Fewer and more expensive and more exclusive are the private schools that take children with disabilities.  Such schools limit enrollment, as all private schools do.  So if you think you can take that voucher and put your kid in a private school that will deal better with her needs, I'm afraid that won't happen.  But if you have the money for that school, $8000 is nice refund on the costs you're paying.  As I say, this won't help people who can't afford those schools; it will only help the people who can.

The flip side of this is that Texas tried something like this years ago, allowing people to take the money and spend it on private schooling of almost any description.  A huge number of fly-by-night schools opened, took the money, and ran.  Imagine how much worse that would be for poor parents with children who need help and get the minimum Texas will pay for and the federal government will  provide; and then they go to a private school that has no interest beyond getting that voucher coupon cashed.  We've seen this movie, we know how it turns out; and now we're gonna sit through it again.

And for those kids who can't escape the public schools, we'll make sure to shame them as much as possible about where they go to relieve themselves.  Why should life be easy for kids whose parents aren't rich, right?

Asking for a friend....

Since Trump's already shredded the emoluments clause of the Constitution, what's the over/under on whether he treats this medal as personal property?

Turns out, he really is that stupid

So, there's this:

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I,” Trump said, according to the document. “He was crazy, a real nut job… I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

Which is not only as clear a statement of committing obstruction of justice as a prosecutor could wish for, it also indicates who Trump trusts to share confidences with.  As Josh Marshall puts it:

What really stands out about this is the recklessness of Trump’s actions and his familiarity with Lavrov and Kislyak. As related, the substance of this conversation is that Comey is someone Trump took care of. He’s on the other team from Trump and Lavrov and Kislyak who are familiars.

Marshall links it to the "collusion" question.  I think it just proves Trump is a clear and present danger, who would tell the Russian ambassador what the nuclear codes were, if he thought it would earn him some bragging points.

And then there's this:

President Donald Trump has told advisers he wants to end payments of key Obamacare subsidies, a move that could send the health law's insurance markets into a tailspin, according to several sources familiar with the conversations.

Many advisers oppose the move because they worry it would backfire politically if people lose their insurance or see huge premium spikes and blame the White House, the sources said. Trump has said that the bold move could force Congressional Democrats to the table to negotiate an Obamacare replacement.

Of course, Trump still hasn't figured out why nobody carried him around town on their shoulders for firing Comey, so his political skills may be just the least bit, well....non-existent.

The important point here is not what Trump says, although that is very important in the case of the Russian ambassador.  The important point is, this stuff is getting out.  The "many advisors" opposed to Trump's strategy are obviously the ones who called Politico.  Somebody called the NYT to read the transcript of that Oval Office meeting to a reporter.  Sean Spicer's response to the report about that transcript was:

"Once again, the real story is that our national security has been undermined by the leaking of private and highly classified conversations.”

Problem is, just because the President says it in the White House, doesn't mean it's classified.  I don't think the rats are leaving the sinking ship; I think they're turning on the captain.  The report that staffers would feed Trump fake news in order to turn him in their desired direction has now turned into staffers torpedoing the S.S. Trump Administration, because they don't like where it's going.

Trump is gonna do a Palin, and he may well do it soon.  4 months in, and this administration is flying apart from it's own centrifugal force.  The center cannot long hold.

David C. Gomez, a former FBI assistant special agent in charge, said Trump’s comments demonstrated a profound inability to grasp the potential consequences of his words.

“In terms of potential criminal activity, it’s amateur night at the White House,” Gomez told The Daily Beast. “These guys—and Trump especially—don’t know how to not implicate themselves.

“On a big case like this, the ideal thing would be a wiretap on your number one subject,” Gomez added. “But in this case, you don’t need a wiretap. He just comes right out and says it.”

The Horror of Giving Horror a Backstory

Echoes of da Vinci?  Really?

The problem I continue to have with Ridley Scott's continuation of his "Alien" series is that he wants to introduce theology into it; or at least some philosophy of religions questions like the nature of evil. And the problem is he is so bad at it.

The closest I will come to seeing "Alien:  Covenant" is reading reviews like this one.   And while this review notes a vague connection to Egypt (through Shelley's "Ozymandias," not a connection to Egypt I would press down on too vigorously) and Norse legend through Wagner (the Ride of the Valkyrie), it doesn't note the connection to Greek mythology (and angering the gods) in "Prometheus."  The anger of the gods, according to that legend, was provoked by letting humans have fire.  But Prometheus, the Titan, was punished for that crime ("sin" is a Judeo-Christian concept; let's keep our lines clean here).  "Covenant," as the reviewer at Vox notes, is an Hebraic concept, so here we are more explicitly trading on theological (i.e., Christian) ground.

But the first problem is:  "Covenant" has precious little to do with Noah's ark (despite the 2000 souls aboard the ship looking to colonize somewhere not earth; a religious concept only if you think Stephen Hawking, who keeps saying we need to do just that, is a religious thinker), and even less to do with Milton's Satan.  David the Android (will no one comment on the most famous king of Israel, who was devoted to God but also all too human?  But David the android has nothing to do with the Biblical figure; he takes his name from the Michelangelo statue, a work of art reifying the Renaissance ideal of human perfection in form, not the deeds of the king of ancient Israel) is not a figure cast out of heaven; he is a figure as alien as the humanoid creature that terrorized (will terrorize, I suppose) the Nostromo.  He's really no more sympathetic to humans than Ian Holm's character.  It will take "Aliens" to redeem the artificial persons, and "Alien: Resurrection" to allow them to find faith.

Maybe that's what Scott didn't like.....

The construct here seems, to me, to be fairly straightforward, and it has nothing to do with Satan being cast out of paradise.  If you go back to "Prometheus," it opened with a tall albino figure dissolving himself into a stream, presumably creating life on earth.  Whether this was approved by his shipmates is open to interpretation, since the "Engineers" (as they come to be called) seem to be perpetually angry.  Or maybe that's just something to do with culture.  Anyway, it seems clear in that film that a)  the Engineers are all dead, at least on the base where Prometheus' crew finds them and b) they were very frightened of something before they died.  IIRC, there is some discussion of the base being a weapons laboratory, and it is this that seems to pique David's interest.  He is, after all the reason Noomi Rapace's character has to have a C-section by robot to get the alien out of her that her lover has inadvertently planted.

At any rate some of the tension of the film rests on the dreadful things they might find if they stay around so, of course, they stay around.  David finally manages to resurrect a dead Engineer and even talk to it; in return, the Engineer rips David's head off and tries to fly the alien ship away to parts unknown (it is presumed by the characters to fly the deadly payload to Earth).  From the trailers I've seen for "Covenant" David is repaired by Rapace's character, and seems to learn from her some idea of compassion.  Or not, as another scene shows him raining down some kind of black terror on a planet full of Engineers.  Satan creating Pandemonium (his "House of All Demons" cum palace in Hell)?  I'm guessing not, but you don't need Satan when you have a creation myth gone bad.

Rapace's character at the end of "Prometheus" has her faith shattered because she finds out human life originated with the Engineers, not with God's word.  A curiously literalist reading of Genesis, but let it go.  Scott seems to think he's recapitulating the discoveries of the 19th century centuries hence, and I'm not sure what that means except Scott isn't thinking about this any too hard (besides, all religious thinking is rooted in the 19th century, right?). But there's also speculation in that film that whatever weapon the Engineers were creating, it was meant to go back to Earth and destroy all life there.

So maybe that's why David turns it on them when he gets the chance.  Or maybe not, because it seems that David is responsible for the xenomorph that eventually becomes the iconic Alien.  Why is still shrouded in mystery and spoilers I haven't read about yet, but really:  who cares?  The theme here is pretty clear:  the creation of human life led to a less than perfect outcome (the whole "problem of evil" in philosophy of religion circles).  So, suitably, the creation of artificial life in our image (as we are made in the Creator's image; and is it an accident that the Engineers are chalk white humanoids?  Just asking....) is less than, well, human.  The redeeming factor of humanity, the counterpoint to evil, is compassion, concern, even love.  David lacks these traits entirely (Winona Ryder's artificial person even prays to the God of Abraham, by contrast).  David is merely experimenting when he afflicts Noomi Rapace's character on"Prometheus."  He apparently is behind the creation of the xenomorph, so his effort at creation is even more flawed than God's (or, in this case, the Engineers).

Or maybe he's just mad that that Engineer he just raised from the dead and wanted to talk to, instead ripped his head off.   And like any ungrateful creature, he turns his anger on both the Engineers and humanity.  Or maybe that Engineer just wanted to exterminate humanity as a bad concept (seems to be the point of the opening scenes in "Prometheus").  Or maybe that Engineer was doing the rest of the crew a favor, and once again foolish humans create their own worst enemy by being....human, and compassionate.  I dunno, but it seems to have something to do with Christmas, since both movies include Christmas trees on their ships (really?  After all that time?).

No, I don't know what any of this has to do with Christmas.  That's a rabbit trail too far, for me.

And the sin?  Creating something in the image of God, of course.  Really bad consequences flow from that decision.  The Greeks might even call it an act of hubris.

I dunno; does that theme play in a horror movie?

N.B.  I stepped away from "Star Wars" after the third movie (even my daughter, then the target age, gave up after "Phantom Menace."  That one bored her to tears, not just me), so I've not kept up with the plethora of films.  But now I find out (yes, the last person the planet to know) that "Rogue One" exists largely to explain why the Death Star was built with such an exploitable weakness that would destroy it at one blow.   Seems a ship designer sympathetic to the Rebels threw that in.  And how did this escape the notice of all the other designers?  And how did it cost lives to get that info?  Well, I guess that's the movie, isn't it?  But honestly, trying to turn a good one-off into a narrative empire, just doesn't work.  Ask Frank Herbert, who really should have quit with Dune.

She Blinded Me With Science!

Funny what the morning news brings.  This:

With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special councel appointed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2017

This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2017

Is not Donald Trump "changing reality."  This is Donald Trump whining.  But it isn't the sound of a sui generis man-child, it is the sound of Trump's supporters who still think there is nothing to the allegations made against Trump.  And they think that because they, too, are whiners.  They think their privileges have been taken from them, that life has not been fair to them, that they deserve better than they've gotten, and many of them probably dream of living the way Trump lives:  loudly, ostentatiously, gaudily, bragging about his sexual conquests and parading a small army of blond wives around, each younger than the last, each more "pneumatic" than a blow-up doll.  I'll put it bluntly and you can read the article at Slate to get my context:  Trump isn't "reshaping reality" with his language (he's hardly one of the unacknowledged legislators of the world; he deals in toddler-speak).  He is simply giving voice to a minority who put him in office because of the quirks of the electoral college and low voter turnout in 2016.  They aren't trying to change reality; this is how they see the world.  The "consensus" view of politics, law, international relations, government, is not their view.  If there is a danger in Trump, it is in not recognizing who he speaks for, however inadvertently.  But are they going to rise up through Trump and take over America?  Is their view going to prevail?  In some sense, they have, and it does:  the GOP is the dominant political party throughout the country, despite the fact it is numerically the "minority" party.  But will that last?

Only the future will tell, and no one can predict that.  Which brings us to the other interesting story in the news:  Slate also tells me that ESP is real, and that fact has broken science.

Well, the headline says that; the article says otherwise.  A 10 year study by Daryl Bem concluded that replicable evidence of ESP had been produced, based on results above statistical expectations (albeit barely, as best I can tell).  What interests me is not the assertion, but the reaction to the assertion; and I don't mean the reaction the article focusses on.  The thesis of the article is that Bem instigated a review of standards regarding the scientific method which may reverberate throughout not just psychology and the social (or "soft") sciences, but reach ultimately to chemistry, physics, etc. I don't think that would be a bad thing, especially considering how much blind faith (yes, I said it!) is given to science today, based on the fact that it's science!, and therefore must be true!  Oh, sorry:  True!

No, what interested me was the connection between that article and this argument about proofs of the existence of God (a philosophy of religion issue, by the way, not a theological one. I always feel constrained to clarify that point, now.  Anyway....).  You see, the interesting reaction to the publication of Bem's results was not:  "Gee, is that possible?  Should we conduct some experiments to find out?", but:

 “I was shocked,” he says. “The paper made it clear that just by doing things the regular way, you could find just about anything.”

The paper, you see, had to be wrong.  Mind, the methodology was impeccable:

“Clearly by the normal rules that we [used] in evaluating research, we would accept this paper,” said Lee Ross, a noted social psychologist at Stanford who served as one of Bem’s peer reviewers. “The level of proof here was ordinary. I mean that positively as well as negatively. I mean it was exactly the kind of conventional psychology analysis that [one often sees], with the same failings and concerns that most research has.”

But it couldn't be right.  The results were unacceptable, so clearly something was wrong.  But is that conclusion the result of the scientific method; or the result of a refusal to let paradigms shift?

The article moves to other concerns with how scientists actually follow the scientific method (spoiler alert:  badly!), and I'm not making a case for the reality of ESP.  But if you can read a peer-reviewed paper published in a scientific journal and conclude immediately it must be false, then how do you ever accept a proof of God's existence?

Not that you have to, but what is the purpose of such a proof except to overcome doubt?  That isn't the purpose, actually.  If you read the excerpt at Thought Criminal outlining the argument of Duns Scotus, you'll note the argument is more theological than philosophical (do I contradict myself?  No.) because it is aimed at establishing the nature of God, not at overcoming modern atheism (anachronisms abound, and again I choose my words carefully).  Even if it is taken as a proof of God on par with Berm's "proof" of ESP, I can see many a philosophical atheist concluding "With logic you can find just about anything."

Or, as Kierkegaard put it:  if you do believe, what proof do you need?  And if you don't, what proof is possible?  A point illuminated by the Slate article:  Berm has not convinced "skeptics" that ESP is real, but he himself remains convinced it is.  How would you dissuade him?  How could he convince you?

And is anyone ever going to convince Trump, or his most ardent supporters, that reality is not centered around them?

Deja vu all over again

Truth. https://t.co/g63Our339Z

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 17, 2017

With friends like these? Rivera is not a lawyer; Trump, Jr. is not a lawyer.  But to say it isn't obstruction you have to assume/admit it happened that way.

Watergate is not so green in my memory that I have photographic details of it down and complete.   I don't recall if John Dean testified before or after the Saturday Night Massacre. I do recall Dean's testimony didn't convince everyone Nixon was crooked, or guilty of obstruction of justice, or had to leave the office of President.  Dean was vilified, in fact, as a quisling, a leaker, a breaker of confidence, perhaps even criminally culpable simply for testifying.  And yeah, we're already seeing that "shoot the messenger" defense being trotted out:

“After getting fired, [Comey] magically reaches into his jacket and pulls out some memo he wrote at the time?” [former Trump aide Jason] Miller said to [CNN host Erin] Burnett. “That is absolutely absurd.”

“I think there’s also something a little bit weird and a little bit vindictive on Director Comey’s part,” Miller charged. “There’s this little diary — or figuratively speaking a diary — where he’s keeping every single note so he can try to come back and play gotchya games later on…the whole thing just doesn’t seem to make sense.”

That line has already reached the Speaker of the House:

“Look, there’s been a lot of reporting lately, I think, that requires close examination, let me tell you what I told our members just (Wednesday) morning,” Ryan said. “We need the facts. It is obvious there are some people out there who want to harm the president, but we have an obligation to carry out our oversight regardless of which party is in the White House, and that means, before rushing to judgment, we get all the pertinent information.”

“I’m sure we’re going to hear from Mr. Comey about why, if this happened as he describes, why he didn’t take action at the time,” Ryan said. “So there are a lot of unanswered questions.”

Protect the King; shoot the messenger.  One question is a legal one; the other is a distraction.  There was a lot of attention on Dean, as a way of taking attention off Nixon.  Of course, the desperation to distract is a tacit admission, too.

A senior official in the Trump administration, who previously worked on the president’s campaign, offered a candid and brief assessment of the fallout from that string of bad press: “I don’t see how Trump isn’t completely fucked.”

Neither does Paul Ryan, which is why he's trying to shoot the messenger.

For Nixon, the other big event history still vividly remembers was the Saturday Night Massacre, which seems historic and devastating in retrospect, and was eventually another nail in Nixon's coffin, but not necessarily so in the moment.  Somewhere in there, too, was the 18 1/2 minute gap, and the photo of Nixon's secretary straining mightily to keep a foot on the pedal of the dictaphone while reaching somewhere else on her desk, while putting another hand on another part of her desk.  Something like that; it was nuts, but it was meant to explain how she could have been distracted for almost 20 minutes while making the machine erase what was on the tape.  It was no more convincing than it sounds, and yet it didn't bring Nixon down.

The tapes were even released and published.  I remember buying a copy, and wish I'd held on to it to keep beside my copy of Ellsberg's Papers On The War (now I am dating myself).  I still have the Ellsberg, but the tapes were about as interesting to read as a phone directory, and disappeared somewhere in the last 40+ years.  But that didn't bring Nixon down, either.

The last straw was the "smoking gun" tape.  It's worth remember the Democrats controlled Congress; Nixon may have won a landslide victory, but the people gave Congress to the other party (as they thought they were doing in 2016), especially since it was a second term for Nixon.  Impeachment proceedings moved slowly and deliberately, with little fuss or bother; there were numerous public hearings and a rogues gallery of players to keep up with.  The movie "All the President's Men" covers it well, but simplifies it, too.  It wasn't just Nixon, or Dean,  it was a vast and greasy cast of characters.  Somewhere in there, too, Agnew had to resign and face criminal charges for something wholly unrelated to Watergate (putting the lie to another of Trump's ideas, that as President he is immune from criminal or civil prosecution).  It was long, it was drawn out, it was painful, and it wasn't over until it was over.

And it wasn't over until even the most die-hard hold outs went to Nixon and said it was over, even for them.  Men of impeccable Republican and conservative credentials who, to a man (they were all men, after all) would be considered "squishes" and "weasels" themselves, in today's GOP.

I don't know when this ends, I don't know how it ends.  I do know the center cannot hold: that this kind of chaos and madness and incompetence cannot go on sucking up the resources of so many people and so much of the Administration.   But don't take my word for it:

There is a growing sense that Mr. Trump seems unwilling or unable to do the things necessary to keep himself out of trouble, and that the presidency has done little to tame a shoot-from-the-hip-into-his-own-foot style that characterized his campaign.

There is a fear among some of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers about leaving him alone in meetings with foreign leaders out of concern he might speak out of turn. General McMaster, in particular, has tried to insert caveats or gentle corrections into conversations when he believes the president is straying off topic or onto boggy diplomatic ground.

And when that doesn't work, McMaster bald-faced lies to the press, as he has done about the leak to the Russians.   One can only lie so many times, but that number is high.  The bigger problem is trying to explain what the President, the man who "speaks his mind," just said, and why he didn't say what he clearly said, and didn't do what he clearly did.  When it was clear what Nixon had done, when he couldn't deny it anymore (although he continued to until he died), he was done.  Trump doesn't even deny it, he declares it, and insists it is his right to do as he pleases.  He's got the Presidential seal, and the Presidential podium, and his momma loves him like a rock.*

Trump is like the old Greek concept of chaos.  Logos, or reason, kept chaos in check, but couldn't vanquish it.  One day, the Greeks reasoned, reason and the order it imposed on chaos, would be forced to give up the struggle, and chaos would rule again.  Trump cannot be eliminated, only controlled.  But that control is limited, and limiting, and it can't stop Trump from being Trump; and therein lies the problem.

When is Trump done?  When what he's doing matters again.That may be by the end of the year, if he keeps making life and the function of government for his staff not only impossible but criminally illegal.  Asking Comey to "back off" Flynn is obstruction of justice no matter how you look at it.  Is it established?  No, but that's why you have investigations.  But as he undermines more and more of his own staff, making it impossible for them to even make an announcement that isn't refuted within hours or days, it will be harder and harder for his Administration to function.  If he doesn't break it all by 2018, a new Congress is very likely to break him, solely for the sake of the nation.  That break is coming.  At Slate, they compiled a list of news articles indicating the declining morale, not of the FBI (which is alternately "shattered" or "emboldened" by the Comey firing, depending on which article you read next), but of the White House staff.  It ends with this description from, of all people, Ross Douthat:

Read the things that these people, members of his inner circle, his personally selected appointees, say daily through anonymous quotations to the press. (And I assure you they say worse off the record.) They have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpate with contempt for him, and to regard their mission as equivalent to being stewards for a syphilitic emperor.

We aren't six months in yet, and already Trump is losing the support of his staff.  Despite the attempts to blame Comey now, the chickens will come home to roost soon enough.

*Paul Simon; look it up. I can't do everything for you.

If not for those meddling kids!

The problem is not that Trump screwed the pooch and revealed sensitive information from Israel to Russia.

The problem is so many people now know Trump did that:

“The real issue, what I would like to see debated more, is national security has been put at risk by those violating confidentiality and those releasing information to the press that can be used connected with other information available to make American citizens and others more vulnerable,” [National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster] McMaster told reporters.

Yeah, that's the REAL national security risk!

When in worry when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!

"Peace I leave with you;my peace I give you.Not as the world gives do I give to you.Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid."John 14:27

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 16, 2017

"Commit to the Lord whatever you do & your plans will succeed.The Lord works out everything for his own ends....."

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 16, 2017

I think little Marco is losing the thread.  No offense, but when a U.S. Senator is tweeting those Bible verses, it's not comforting.

Meanwhile, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!  Focus on what's important!

I read the Washington Post story and I read General McMasters response, which tends to refute the story, rebut the story. I think we could do with a little less drama from the White House on a lot of things so that we can focus on our agenda, which is deregulations, tax reform, repealing and replacing Obamacare.

And then the Trump tweets which refute and rebut the McMasters response!  Wheeee!!!!!!!!!  And how's that working out for him?

“He seems to be sort of constantly shifting what his justifications are; he tries one thing and when it doesn’t work he tries something else,” GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak told TPM. “The problem with that is he’s using up the credibility of a number of people inside the White House who’ve spent a lifetime building up their credibility. And they seem willing to be putting that on the line for somebody who doesn’t back them up.”

There were reports of screaming among White House staff last night:

Can now hear yelling coming from room where officials are. https://t.co/xh8LQ0paPM

— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) May 15, 2017

WH comms staffers just put the TVs on super loud after we could hear yelling coming from room w/ Bannon, Spicer, Sanders

— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) May 15, 2017

I understand the "prestige" of working in the White House, and that it's always a high pressure job, but honestly:  who would put up with this?  And how long will it go before people start leaving like rats off a sinking ship?

And finally, is this really a defense?

The key is that McMaster says Trump was within his rights to make the decision (true, in terms of legality) and that he and two other top advisors believe it was in fact the correct decision (a subjective call we have no direct way to evaluate.)

The "true in terms of legality" there is, in Josh's own words, "too cute by half."  Trump's action may fall within the strict letter of the law; that does not mean it is not grounds for concern, or even impeachment.  The President may have the ability to declassify information, but that isn't an "absolute right" to do so.  And grounds for impeachment are not limited to clear violations of statutory law.  Grounds for removal are even broader.

The issue remains the same:  "Bottom line: It matters who we have running the most powerful institution in the world."

Adding:  it will be interesting if the involvement of Israel moves some GOP lawmakers to take this matter a bit more seriously:

According to the Times’ sources, “the revelation that Mr. Trump boasted about some of Israel’s most sensitive information to the Russians could damage the relationship between the two countries” because it “raises the possibility that the information could be passed to Iran, Russia’s close ally and Israel’s main threat in the Middle East.”

Israeli spies were reportedly warned by some of their American counterparts earlier this year to avoid sharing information directly with the Trump administration over fears that sensitive intelligence could leak out to hostile powers.

Only Kings have "Absolute Rights"

As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017

...to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017

But today we call such people "dictators."

And B)  Trump has now admitted he shared classified information with Russians in the Oval Office.  How much of this story is "false" now?

C)  Trump told the Russians in the Oval Office "I get the best intel, I get great intelligence."  And then he told them what he knew that they shouldn't know.  His "humanitarian reasons"?  He needed to stroke his own ego.

D) Notice he takes no responsibility for revealing an intelligence source that shouldn't have been shared with our allies, much less with Russia.  It's all about Trump and his "absolute right."  And, as I say, what exactly is "false" about this story, now?

E)  IOKIYAT--

It’s also impossible that he thinks it’s fine to leak classified intel. He ran an entire presidential campaign – the greatest ever, he claims to anyone mad enough to listen to him – on the premise that Hillary Clinton should be locked up for mishandling classified intel.

Obviously it isn't impossible any more.  L'etat, c'est Trump. 

No, even the bozo-in-chief isn’t stupid enough to think it’s OK to hand out information like presidential M&Ms to anyone who walks into the Oval Office.

Tweet ipsa loquitur.  The tweet speaks for itself.

It seems Trump sees nothing wrong in being so close to the Russians that he spills his guts about our most precious intelligence. He is so desperate to impress them that he cannot distinguish between American interests and his own neediness. America First means Trump First, and if Trump wants to brag about his inaugural crowds or his intel reports, it’s all good. As Richard Nixon liked to say, if the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.

I think Trump just said that.

(Trump's tweet drives the last nail in the coffin for nations who want to share intelligence with the U.S. that they don't want shared more widely.  This is directly how the President can be a threat to national security.  He makes us less secure by scaring our allies away from sharing information with us.)

On that question of "high crimes and misdemeanors"

The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by "intelligence" like candy. Very un-American!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017

An analysis worth discussing:

If the President gave this information away through carelessness or neglect, he has arguably breached his oath of office. As Quinta and Ben have elaborated on in some detail, in taking the oath President Trump swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” to the best of his ability. It’s very hard to argue that carelessly giving away highly sensitive material to an adversary foreign power constitutes a faithful execution of the office of President.

Violating the oath of office does not require violating a criminal statute. If the President decided to write the nuclear codes on a sticky note on his desk and then took a photo of it and tweeted it, he would not technically have violated any criminal law–just as he hasn’t here. He has the constitutional authority to dictate that the safeguarding of nuclear materials shall be done through sticky notes in plain sight and tweeted, even the authority to declassify the codes outright. Yet, we would all understand this degree of negligence to be a gross violation of his oath of office.

Congress has alleged oath violations—albeit violations tied to criminal allegations or breaches of statutory obligations—all three times it has passed or considered seriously articles of impeachment against presidents: against Andrew Johnson (“unmindful of the high duties of his oath of office”), Richard Nixon (“contrary to his oath”), and Bill Clinton (“in violation of his constitutional oath”). Further, two of the three articles of impeachment against Nixon alleged no direct violation of the law. Instead, they concerned Nixon’s abuse of his power as President, which, like the President putting the nuclear codes on Twitter, is an offense that can only be committed by the President and has thus never been explicitly prohibited in criminal law.

There’s thus no reason why Congress couldn’t consider a grotesque violation of the President’s oath as a standalone basis for impeachment—a high crime and misdemeanor in and of itself. This is particularly plausible in a case like this, where the oath violation involves giving sensitive information to an adversary foreign power. That’s getting relatively close to the “treason” language in the impeachment clauses; it’s pretty easy to imagine a hybrid impeachment article alleging a violation of the oath in service of a hostile foreign power. So legally speaking, the matter could be very grave for Trump even though there is no criminal exposure.

This approach to sensitive information does not appear to be a one-off. President Trump has previously taken heat for his cavalier attitude towards safeguarding classified information, for example when he openly reviewed plans related to a North Korean nuclear test in the Mar-a-Lago dining room in full view of other diners or when he appeared to inadvertently confirm the authenticity of leaked CIA documents on Fox News.

There's a great deal more where that came from.

Bottom line: It matters who we have running the most powerful institution in the world.

Yes; yes, it does.

Running as fast as I can to stay in one place

Otherwise occupied today (i.e., not reading the news obsessively like I was Donald Trump or something), I find I can't keep up with this story now:

According to one anonymous source who spoke with Buzzfeed, the disclosures were “far worse than what has already been reported”.

Buzzfeed confirmed that there was at very least a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing, though it appears that other officials were briefed as well.

Following the meeting, White House staffers allegedly “moved quickly to contain the fallout” of the information Trump revealed to Russia’s US ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which included classified informational about ISIS that not even American allies were privy to.

Following the news break, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told reporters “if this story is true, it’s another brick in the wall of a really, really troubling connection between Trump and the Russian government.”

This statement, reported by NPR in conjunction with the later White House statement from McMasters that the WaPo story is "False," was included in the original WaPo article.  It is, as Josh Marshall says, a classic non-denial denial.  The charge that it is "false" is pretty much brushed aside by NPR and everybody else.  Rex Tillerson issued a statement, through the White House, which is also reported by NPR.  I'm watching CNN live just now, and the reporting is that no one in the State Department knew that statement had been released.

And the WaPo reporter held his own press conference to call "bullshit" on McMaster's press conference:

Following McMaster’s statement, Post reporter Scott Wilson (who along with Miller co-wrote the initial breaking story) noted on Twitter that the national security advisor “had the opportunity to call the story “false” before we published it,” but chose not to.

Yeah, this is not going away soon:

Speaking with MSNBC’s Greta Van Susteren, conservative columnist George Will noted Trump is the same “man who discussed the Syrian missile strikes in a public dining room with the president of China during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago.”

Will argued voters wanted to try an “experiment” by electing a man without government experience. “They got it,” Will said.

“We have a situation where the president of the United States is one of the biggest—if not the biggest—security risks to the United States. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that,” [Howard] Fineman said.

“You have Donald Trump literally bragging about the great intel he’s getting and handing it over to the very people we’re investigating elsewhere in government,” he added.

And from the belly of the beast:

“Do not ask me about how this looks, we all know how this looks,” the senior aide told The Daily Beast on Monday evening. Trump administration officials spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity so as to speak freely. The aide described a scene at the White House as tense and “a morgue,” where senior officials such as Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Stephen Bannon convened to sketch an immediate path forward in handling the aftermath.

This shite is getting deeper and deeper.  I expect a tweet storm tonight blaming it all on Schumer.

Lock Him Up?

Anybody else remember how Trump brayed on the campaign trail that Hillary Clinton had revealed classified information in her e-mails?

President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

This is not a drill:

The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency.

“This is code-word information,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

Well, you know, he was reading the news:

One day after dismissing Comey, Trump welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — a key figure in earlier Russia controversies — into the Oval Office. It was during that meeting, officials said, that Trump went off script and began describing details of an Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft.

For almost anyone in government, discussing such matters with an adversary would be illegal. As president, Trump has broad authority to declassify government secrets, making it unlikely that his disclosures broke the law. 

Forget "high crimes and misdemeanors", we are in 25th Amendment territory.  The President is empowered with "broad authority to declassify government secrets" because he is presumed rational enough not to declassify them to a foreign power during an office chat!

Don't make him angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry....

Over the weekend, on the news, someone argued that information could be "leaked" that was 90% accurate, and about 10% fake, and such a leak could do a lot of damage.  They were talking, of course, about social media and Russia and "hacking," and I thought it interesting the false information part of that assertion didn't raise a few more eyebrows, or merit further notice.  John Podesta, if memory serves, said that some percentage of his e-mails that were leaked were fake.  Wikileaks claims information wants to be free, but Wikileaks is not an intelligence service, nor a scholarly service, sifting fact from fiction.  There is a great deal of common knowledge out there that is simply false, including the idea that Galileo was severely punished by the Pope for being a heretic.  That hoary chestnut popped up again as "fact" in an article about the Papal Observatory on The Daily Beast.  It's one of those zombie lies that will never die, because everyone knows it is "true."  It's no surprise, then, not even something new under the sun, that leaked documents contain outright fabrications designed to do damage beyond revealing what someone wants to keep concealed, is not allowed to blunt the fact the documents say so.

It's a danger that never seems to have occurred to Julian Assange or any of his defenders.

I point this out because apparently this is not just a problem in the news cycle when a new trove of documents is dumped on the internet:

Just days earlier, K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser, had given Trump a printout of two Time magazine covers. One, supposedly from the 1970s, warned of a coming ice age; the other, from 2008, about surviving global warming, according to four White House officials familiar with the matter.

Trump quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy. But there was a problem. The 1970s cover was fake, part of an Internet hoax that’s circulated for years. Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it.

McFarland had an agenda in mind:  defeat discussion/concern about climate change.  What better way to do that than to slip the boss false information.  The TIME magazine cover is a zombie lie; it's been circulating on the Internet for years.  But hey, if it's useful!

A news story tucked into Trump’s hands at the right moment can torpedo an appointment or redirect the president’s entire agenda. Current and former Trump officials say Trump can react volcanically to negative press clips, especially those with damaging leaks, becoming engrossed in finding out where they originated.

That is what happened in late February when someone mischievously gave the president a printed copy of an article from GotNews.com, the website of Internet provocateur Charles C. Johnson, which accused deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh of being “the source behind a bunch of leaks” in the White House.

Oh, those mischief makers!  Because the upshot was:  Walsh no longer works there.  Long knives?  Or Dennis the Menace and one of his pranks!  That Dennis!

If you can't draw a straight line now between Trump and any number of international actors who want to manipulate the U.S. President, you haven't been paying attention.  Comey's firing is a serious problem (and being taken more seriously every day, if today's news is any indication); but this is absolutely frightening.  In fact, NATO has already noticed:

“It’s kind of ridiculous how they are preparing to deal with Trump,” said one source briefed extensively on the meeting’s preparations. “It’s like they’re preparing to deal with a child — someone with a short attention span and mood who has no knowledge of NATO, no interest in in-depth policy issues, nothing,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They’re freaking out.”

Still, despite these changes, experts are wary of how Trump will react to NATO meetings and their long-winded, diplomatic back-and-forth among dozens of heads of state, which can quickly balloon into hours of meandering discussions. One former senior NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described these meetings as “important but painfully dull.”

Rank-and-file diplomats always try to push for shorter, more efficient meetings at NATO. “It’s not so unusual that they strain to try to keep it interesting and short and not dragged down into details,” said Jim Townsend, who served as the Pentagon’s top NATO envoy until January. But what is unusual is the president.

“Even a brief NATO summit is way too stiff, too formal, and too policy heavy for Trump. Trump is not going to like that,” said Jorge Benitez, a NATO expert with the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

Howard Fineman insists we should not underestimate Trump, that he's proven more powerful than he is acknowledged to be.  Actually, Trump just proves how tenuous our systems are, and how much we've come to rely on them to save us from our own indifference and self-interests.  We expect an "invisible hand" to solve all our problems with something we call "capitalism."  We expect "checks and balances" to magically control our government.  We elect a man who "tells you what's on his mind," and he has to employ a staff of flacks to explain whatever the President says is not what he meant.

Saturday Night Live got in right in the Lester Holt interview cold open:  "nothing matters anymore."  Until we make it matter, the man-child will continue to be in control simply through temper tantrums.

Master, who sinned, that Mick Mulvaney was born without a soul?

Mick Mulvaney is a flaming jackass:

“We have plenty of money to deal with that. We have plenty of money to provide that safety net so that if you get cancer you don’t end up broke,” Mulvaney said at the Leaders in Global Healthcare and Technology forum.

But then he drew a distinction between people like Kimmel’s son, born with a congenital heart disease, and people who end up with conditions like diabetes. “That doesn’t mean we should take care of the person who sits at home, eats poorly and gets diabetes,” Mulvaney said, according to a Washington Examiner account consistent with real-time social media reports. “Is that the same thing as Jimmy Kimmel’s kid? I don’t think that it is.”
....
“Mr. Mulvaney’s comments perpetuate the stigma that one chooses to have diabetes based on his/her lifestyle,” the A[merican] D[iabetes] A[ssociation] said. “All of the scientific evidence indicates that diabetes develops from a diverse set of risk factors, genetics being a primary cause.”

Another big reason most health insurance systems treat people equally regardless of medical condition is that segregating them almost inevitably leads to shabby care for the sick, regardless of how they got that way. High-risk pools are actually a perfect example of this. Roughly two-thirds of the states operated them before the Affordable Care Act took effect, and they inevitably offered coverage that was less affordable, less available or less comprehensive than standard policies.  

I have known diabetics all my life.  Many of my family members are diabetics.  There's a genetic predisposition to it.  I know diabetics who controlled their diabetes strictly with diet for decades.  In old age they had to resort to insulin to control what can be wild swings in blood sugar.

Mick Mulvaney is a f*ckin' idiot.  He doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.  If brains were dynamite he couldn't blow his nose.  Before that fateful Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge still had more compassion for his fellow humans than Mulvaney.  He's a f*ckin' idiot.

Did I say that already?

Charlie Pierce's curse on them is to say they "really are the mole people."  That's too kind.  Mick Mulvaney isn't a person.  He's an object, a piece of wood, a block of stone.  He is unfit to be among human beings, much less hold a government office.  He could only be worse if he were Paul Ryan:

“That’s a discussion we’re having ongoing with the administration,” he said, later adding, “I do really believe we need to do Medicare reform.”

Ryan has released various versions of his so-called “Path to Prosperity” budget blueprint that have included a privatization of Medicare. The general idea he has promoted is turning Medicare into a so-called “premium support” system — i.e. a voucher system — in which seniors would get a set amount of money to shop around for private health care plans. Earlier versions of his proposal would have lead to a phase-out of Medicare altogether. Some experts have argued that even the most recent iteration of his blueprint, which ostensibly leaves some form of traditional Medicare available, would eventually lead to its phase-out as well.

Which is not unconnected to Mr. Mulvaney:

It’s not just Ryan that’s trying to make Medicare privatization happen. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, a former  House member with a reputation as a budget hawk, said last month that it was his “guess is the House will do either that or something similar to that.”

“Let them pass that and let’s talk about it,”Mulvaney said, when asked about Trump’s pledges not to touch Medicare.

And we worry about "illegal aliens" who might commit criminal acts.  How many more people will these two damage, if they get the chance?

I discard him.  Hell, I discard both of them.

On the other hand, maybe those pills aren't a bad idea....

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

We can't take this story as a series of beads on a string; connected, but discrete.  It isn't that Trump keeps throwing kerosene on the fire (well, it isn't just that!), it's that each utterance reveals the limitations of his thought again.  For example, Comey's response to that tweet:

A source close to Comey told me this morning: “He hopes there are tapes. That would be perfect.”

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) May 12, 2017

And if there are tapes, maybe we'll hear them soon:

@KenDilanianNBC They've been requested, and Trump is known to record employees- the whole loyalty thing. pic.twitter.com/NCxveqkKp3

— NYEMSMom (@rehtaeh1628) May 12, 2017

Trump doesn't think things through; he just blusters.  Granted that's not a good look for a President (as we've mentioned before).  Buried in the nonsense is the assertion:  the concept of such a dinner, where Comey would beg to keep his job, why would that happen?  The FBI director has a job for 10 years, regardless of who the President is.  Yes, he/she can be fired by the President, but it isn't a job that where his resignation is requested with the change of administrations.  That's the whole point of the 10-year appointment.  And not only do prosecutors NOT tell the target of their investigations that they are targets (when has Trump ever been the target of a criminal investigation?), FBI directors don't meet with the new President and beg not to be fired or tell him about grand jury proceedings.

Yeah, we're pretty much down to internet memes now.  Basically, if Trump says it, it's a lie.  The man has been lying since he bragged about the size of his inaugural audience.  Nothing he's said since has made him any more reliable.

And it has the rest of us feeling pretty much like that.  Not just because of Trump, but because of this stuff:

One thing I learned at DOJ about Comey: he leaves a protective paper trail whenever he deems something inappropriate happened. Stay tuned. https://t.co/sENlYyhL5B

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) May 12, 2017

Which sounds just a little like the days of J. Edgar, except Comey wasn't keeping files to blackmail government officials, but to document his actions.  At least, I'll take it that way for now.  Which means we are going to see a gen-u-wine shitstorm (maybe not a "Constitutional crisis."  A rather dull law professor and Cato Institute adjunct on NPR yesterday insisted this was not a "Constitutional crisis."  Fair enough.  But it ain't good for the Republic, either.)

There's no question Trump is a danger to the republic.  There's also no question the republic will survive him.  Damage, however, will be done.  We lost some of our national innocence with Nixon; perhaps this time we'll lose some of our national ignorance about why elections matter.

We could take the advice of ex-CIA official Philip Mudd:

“Believe me, I know this is going to sound facetious but I’m breathing a sigh of relief. You can’t take this seriously,” Mudd replied. ” “You could have taken this seriously from President Bush or President Obama, from President Bush’s father, from President Clinton. You can’t take this seriously.”

“You feel like you’ve got to give the president of the United States a pacifier and a rattle and put him in the crib. You’re threatening the FBI, who’s in the midst of an investigation of presidential aides?” Mudd added sarcastically. “The FBI’s been around since 1908. The president of the United States has been around for three and a half months. If you think you’re going to intimidate the former FBI director and the dozens of people in the workforce who are conducting this investigation with the Department of Justice, you’ve got another thing [sic] coming.”

We could.  We'll see.  In the meantime, I'm getting tired of all the crazy pills.

Enemy Action

When Trump said this:

Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

There were concerns he had committed a felony by threatening a witness.

Or maybe it was the interview with Lester Holt, when he said "Russia is a made up story" and that's why he fired Comey.

So what is this?

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Dick Durbin thinks its "dangerous":

“I think we ought to get to the bottom line here: President Trump is dangerous,” Durbin asserted on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “dangerous because he may be obstructing justice, in terms of the investigation that really goes to the heart of our democracy —the accountability of the President, the people around him, to the rule of law — protecting our democracy from an invasion — a cyber-invasion by the Russians.”

Dangerous because the President of the United States is threatening James Comey with exposure.   If he were to demand money from Comey, we could call this blackmail.  Set aside that, to Trump, any information in the press he doesn't like is a "leak"; that's stupid enough.  But to tell Comey "If you don't toe the line, I will expose you!" is...dangerous.  There really isn't another word for it.  This is actually indefensible.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence....

Leanin' over the back fence....

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Yeah, no echoes of Watergate here....

Tout le monde (which is to say, "America"), knows that the biggest problem in America is political division and partisanship.  So this morning, when NPR interviewed a conservative blogger, they added to the interview clips from "Trump supporters" from around the country.

They sounded just like the people who thought Watergate was a "D.C. story" when Nixon was still in office.  It had nothing to do with them, it was a Beltway concern, it was easily dismissed.  But I don't recall anyone in 1973 being interviewed because they were a "Nixon supporter."  Maybe it was a given; Nixon won every state but Massachusetts in 1972.  Presumably Nixon supporters were as numerous as blades of grass, and stretched from sea to shining sea.

But I don't think so.  I think after an election people stopped being "Nixon supporters" or even "McGovern supporters," and they just returned to being "Americans."  There was still division, between those who were convinced Nixon was in the Watergate scandal up to his eyeballs, and those who were convinced the whole thing was, what did Trump call it?  "A made-up story."  Yeah, that division ran through America in the 1970's, even after Nixon resigned and left office in disgrace.

But now we worry about "partisanship" and "divisions in America," and yet our default setting is to find "supporters" of the President, because they alone matter.  Although I'm hard pressed to remember any "supporters of Barack Obama" being interviewed as subjects of concern for critiques of our immediate past president.  Maybe it only matters when the President is suspected of serious breaches of law and proprieties associated with the office ("You can't fire the person investigating you!").  Still, the question lingers:  who cares what "Trump supporters" think?  If every legal question (and there are serious questions of obstruction of justice here, not to mention interference in U.S elections) is simply reducible to a political question ("What do the President's supporters think?"), then is it any wonder we are divided by partisan politics?

At least according to our national narrative as conduced by the media.  Of course, the media are only asking questions, right?  They aren't responsible for what people talk about.  They're just the gossips that pass on what 'some people are saying'.

Right?

EOD, right?

Trump: “when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story” pic.twitter.com/MLbiJfyxmO

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 11, 2017

I haven't been a fan of special prosecutors.  I remember Kenneth Starr far too well.  Then again, that was a statutory error; Starr had no one to rein him in.  The only problem with the DOJ appointing a special prosecutor would be Jeff Sessions could rein her/him in.  But necessity is a mother:

Trump has been undermining investigations for months. In February, he compromised the probes of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees alike by enlisting House committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Senate committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), both allies of his, to rebut negative press stories related to the Trump team’s ties to Russia. Then he further undermined the House probe by secretly inviting Nunes to the White House to view intelligence reports — a decision that ultimately led to Nunes recusing himself from the investigation. And this week, Trump undermined the FBI’s investigation into the Russia matter by firing the director who was leading it and then claiming he’d done so on the advice of Rod Rosenstein, the top Justice Department official overseeing it.

It all feels a bit familiar.

“It is so clumsy and butchered the way he handled it, that the natural conclusion you would come to is that he is trying to block the Russian investigation,” said John Dean, who served as White House counsel for President Richard Nixon. “But again, is he that foolish and blatant? It makes it more likely for a special prosecutor [to be appointed]. And it makes it more likely that the FBI is going to double down.” 

Might as well do what needs to be done and damn the consequences.  Trump works that way.  Gotta fight fire with fire, right?

Just to harken back...

...to Monday (yes, three days ago!).  I was listening to "1A" on NPR and I have a fleeting memory of someone mentioning that Rod Rosenstein's reputation was sterling on Monday, and today it's dirt.  Josh Marshall calls this the "Trump Dignity Loss Event Horizon," because once you cross it you become a "wraith."  Exhibit A in this is Chris Christie, once the darling of the East Coast media, now a complete non-entity even though he occasionally shows up in Trump's orbit (and what did that get him?).

The New York Times has been hammering the same point:

Until two days ago, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, had an enviable reputation as a straight-shooting law-enforcement official respected by members of both parties. Then he decided that he was willing to help President Trump tamper with an investigation into his presidential campaign.

Not once, but twice:

Given the sterling reputation you brought into this post — including a 27-year career in the Justice Department under five administrations, and the distinction of being the longest-serving United States attorney in history — you no doubt feel a particular anguish, and obligation to act. As the author of the memo that the president cited in firing Mr. Comey, you are now deeply implicated in that decision.

...

You must also know that in ordering you to write the memo, Mr. Trump exploited the integrity you have earned over nearly three decades in public service, spending down your credibility as selfishly as he has spent other people’s money throughout his business career. We can only hope that your lack of an explicit recommendation to fire Mr. Comey reflects your own refusal to go as far as the president wanted you to.

The point is, Donald Trump is the tar baby:  touch him, and you are stuck to him.  Rod Rosenstein, the man of sterling reputation, is now Robert Bork, the solicitor general who carried out Nixon's demands one Saturday night in 1973.  But I come not to bury Rosenstein, but to praise Yates.

Sally Yates is what integrity in public office and public life looks like.  She was pilloried in some quarters for her insubordination that supposedly led to her firing.  We now know she was fired for entirely different reasons, and she made it convenient for Trump because, more publicly than Comey did, she refused his loyalty test.  She was right to do so; Rod Rosenstein was wrong to carry out the bidding of his President.

And if he is upset now, about it (JMM thinks it unlikely, and I do, too), he has no one to blame but himself.  Frankly, an unsourced news story that he would have had the courage of his convictions, or at least the mettle to preserve his reputation, he coulda shoulda woulda!, is far too little far too late.  You can flush your reputation with a single act.  Sally Yates showed us there are better consequences to being true to your principles than being true to your employer.

No, no, Comey was the problem!

NBC News: Trump nixes plan to visit FBI HQ—"told it was not likely he would be warmly welcomed." https://t.co/rY2ciU1YhU

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 11, 2017

I'm sure this is the fault of the Democrats for complaining about Comey being fired.

TRUMP: He's a showboat, he's a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil, you know that, I know that, everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil. Less than a year ago, it hasn't recovered from that.

They've recovered enough to not want you there.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

The mills of government grind slowly, too....

Not quite two years after the election.  These things take a bit of time.

If anything in recent American history bears comparison to the Watergate scandal, it’s this. If anything demands congressional action, it’s this. But congressional action depends on the Republican Party, which holds majorities in both chambers of Congress. And with few exceptions, Republicans are uninterested in challenging Trump’s actions. The GOP has all but abdicated its role as a check on executive power and a defender of constitutional government and seems indifferent to this latest—and most serious—assault on the integrity of our democracy. Which raises a an unsettling question: Is there anything Trump could do to spark rebellion from the Republican Party? Any action that breaks the thrall of partisanship?

Unlike Jamelle Bouie, I remember Watergate; and not just from the movie.  If you lived through Nixon's re-election and the slow rumble of the Watergate scandal, you remember it was a complicated mess involving such a cast of characters it was more like a Dickens novel come to life than a story of a scandal.  The connection to the White House grew slowly, not quickly.  In the movie, Woodward wonders why a high-power Washington lawyer with GOP connections is showing up for the arraignment of the Watergate burglars.  It's enough to make him investigate, but hardly enough to prove Richard Nixon should be subject to a grand jury and an FBI investigation.

Both of which we already have, long before Sally Yates made us all realize there was much more to this story than we'd at first thought.

Even when John Dean spilled the beans, there were still defenders of Nixon.  Even after the Saturday Night Massacre, it wasn't clear what the outcome would be.  Nixon had his defenders in Congress well into 1974.  When they finally turned, they turned like an ocean liner:  slowly, but once turned, decisively.

I find it more interesting that only 18 GOP Congresscritters took to Twitter to say anything about Trump firing Comey, and many of those were "Here is my statement."  They don't want to make a personal defense on Twitter (maybe they do everything by press release on Twitter; who knows?), and they want some distance from the whole thing.  An anodyne statement expressing some kind of support is not "Trump did the right thing" nor "I've spent the last several hours trying to find an acceptable rationale for the timing of Comey's firing. I just can't do it." (Sen. Jeff Flake, R-AZ).  It's a safely passive document that can be re-made as necessary, without the personal touch of Sen. Flake's tweet.  Support for Trump is very soft.  Most of the GOP is holding its cards close.

Which is what happened with Nixon.  There were a lot of denunciations of the investigations, but they always gave themselves some room to move away from the President.  Remember, Nixon won 49 states; it was one of the greatest landslides in U.S history.  He had massive political capital, and it evaporated relatively quickly.  The thread Bob Woodward pulled that night in a D.C. courtroom soon unraveled the whole tapestry of a Presidency.

Of course the GOP is not going to call for Trump's head; not any time soon.  They are waiting to see how this plays out; but they don't owe Trump their loyalty.  If he loses control of this, they will drop him like a bad habit.  You might wish it to happen this morning, but the real world doesn't work that way.  Nixon's resignation didn't look inevitable until he made it.

It may take a change in the composition of Congress; in fact, it almost certainly will.  But the system works only because people make it work.

The President Speaks, Minds Boggle

We'll get to that one in a moment.  We begin with the TIME interview:

“You’ll see something that is amazing. It just happened,” he says as he stands up from the desk. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

What is amazing is what happens next.  It isn't off the record, it isn't anonymously sourced; it is deliberate:

“Yes. He was choking on that,” the President chortles. “Is there any record at all of collusion? He was the head of the whole thing. He said no. That’s a big statement.” Trump leaves unmentioned the fact that there is an ongoing FBI counter­intelligence investigation into possible collusion, which has not yet reached any conclusions. Nor does he note that Clapper, out of government for nearly four months, could not possibly know everything the FBI has learned, and likely would have not known all even when he was in office. Trump also leaves unmentioned that he had a meeting that day with his new Deputy Attorney General about firing Comey, the director of that investigation.

But for now, Trump is focused on his TV. He watches the screen like a coach going over game tape, studying the opposition, plotting next week’s plays. “This is one of the great inventions of all time—TiVo,” he says as he fast-forwards through the hearing.

Trump is showing the reporter a recording of the televised hearing.  This is how he spends his time:  watching TV and critiquing it, as if he was the political version of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

The next clip starts to play, this time showing Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley asking Clapper and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates if they ever requested that the names of Trump, his associates or members of Congress be identified by name, or unmasked, in a legal intelligence intercept. “Watch them start to choke like dogs,” Trump says, having fun. “Watch what happens. They are desperate for breath.”

Clapper, on the screen, pauses several beats to search his memory. “Ah, he’s choking. Ah, look,” the President says. After a delay, Clapper finally answers, admitting that he had requested an unmasking, which would have been a routine occurrence in his former job. The running Trump commentary continues. “See the people in the back, people are gasping,” he says, though it’s unclear who he is referring to on the screen. He also mentions the sound of photographers’ cameras clicking on the television.

Moments later, the President watches as both Clapper and Yates testify that they had reviewed intercepts containing the unmasked identities of Trump, his associates and members of Congress. This, to Trump, is yet another victory, the lead-lined proof of his still unproven claim that Obama surveilled him before he was sworn in. “So they surveilled me,” he says. “You guys don’t write that—wiretapped in quotes. They surveilled me.”

This is Nixon talking to the paintings in the White House, except that was an anonymously sourced story, and this is not only witnessed, it is presented to the press by the President.  This is what the President thinks is important:  commentary on Congressional hearings, analysis that he thinks is insightful.  What does he think he's accomplishing?  And why does he spend so much time doing it, because it's obvious from this accounting that Trump is not watching this hearing for the first time.

Then again, he told Lester Holt he called James Comey and asked if he, Trump, was being investigated by the FBI.   Which is all kinds of improper, and yet another reason why Trump should have not have fired Comey.

Stupid is not a legal defense.

Word Gets Around

“I talked to some of my friends, including some members of the German legislature and the French government and they were astounded,” [Jeremi] Suri [chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs] says. “In addition, Trump did not allow a single American reporter into the Oval Office for that meeting but he allowed Russian news media, Russian photographers, even Russians carrying electronic surveillance equipment… My friends in the intelligence community tell me that they’re concerned that the Oval Office is no longer secure.”

Let that last sentence sink in a moment; and then consider this:

“President Trump in the 110 days he’s been president has filled every day with lies, prevarications and a constant changing of position on every major issue,” Suri says. “Even on this issue of the firing of James Comey, the White House has given five different contradictory explanations. How can you expect any ally, if you’re the leader of Germany, the leader of France, the leader of China, to believe anything you say?”

Josh Marshall noted this about Trump's latest interview with Lester Holt:

So just a short time ago, NBC released footage of its interview with the President conducted by Lester Holt. In that interview Trump is crystal clear that he decided to fire Comey entirely on his own. He asked Rosenstein to write out his views. But he was going to fire Comey regardless. That specifically contradicts what Pence said in an impromptu press conference yesterday on Capitol Hill.

Trump is like a wild fire hose whipping about violently, driven not by coils and water pressure but his own demons and rage. He will say whatever he wants at any given moment based on emotion, impulse, and his impression of tactical advantage as of that moment. This is not strategy. It’s an out of control person. But there are now large numbers of people and institutions implicated in Trump’s actions. They are on the line and along for the ride with every twist and turn.

The leader of Germany, the leader of France, the leader of China, can see that, too.

King Canute Knew He Didn't Control the Tides

@BraddJaffy Trump is the love child of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

— Grant Bosse (@grantbosse) May 11, 2017

Trump, on the other hand:

But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?

It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll…you understand the expression “prime the pump”?

Yes.

We have to prime the pump.

It’s very Keynesian.

We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?

Priming the pump?

Yeah, have you heard it?

Yes.

Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.

It’s…

Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before you can get something out.

Mr Mnuchin: And as we talked about, economic growth under the Trump administration could increase revenues as much as $2trn over the ten-year period of time. So priming the pump in the short term leads to growth.

So, to recap:  in an interview, Trump uses the metaphor "prime the pump," and his interviewer immediately responds that such an action is "very Keynsian."   Which causes Trump to ask if the interviewer has ever heard the expression before, and then he claims to have come up with it "a couple of days ago."  And immediately after that Mnuchin uses it as if it were (as it is) common parlance.

I don't think even crazy foxes are quite this delusional and narcissistic.