@AirdalePhil tweets:

… Read the rest

Charles Pierce at Esquire says goodbye to Roger Stone’s career as a ratfucker.

On Friday, during a recess in the committee hearings into one of his former boss’s other abuses of power, Stone was convicted on all seven counts on which he’d been called to the bar, and no sartorial cock-of-the-walk narcissism can save him this time.

I remember being nauseated watching him get treated like a star at the Republican National Convention in 2016, and even more deeply nauseated watching him gallivant around the Capitol dressed like Mr. Peanut’s evil twin during the inauguration that same year.

…

Moreover, to those of us who have followed politics for a while now, watching Roger Stone go to the sneezer

Trump’s press secretary issued a statement, which I can’t find any source for other than news media saying so – I don’t know if she said it aloud in front of a camera or put it on a billboard or what. It’s evil and filthy enough to share though.

The tweet was not witness intimidation, it was simply the President’s opinion, which he is entitled to. This is not a trial, it is a partisan political process — or to put it more accurately, a totally illegitimate charade stacked against the President. There is less due process in this hearing than any such event in the history of our country. It’s a true disgrace.

Right. The president is entitled to … Read the rest

Impeachment hearing chapter 2 of the day: the Guardian Live reports:

Fox News anchors described the testimony of Maria Yovanovitch as a “turning point” in the impeachment inquiry against Trump.

Anchor Bret Baier predicted that Trump’s tweet smearing Yovanovitch’s reputation as the longtime diplomat testified would lead to a new article of impeachment against the president.

That was a turning point in this hearing so far. She was already a sympathetic witness & the President’s tweet ripping her allowed Schiff to point it out real time characterizing it as witness tampering or intimidation -adding an article of impeachment real-time.

That’s a Fox anchor who said that.

Trump says the gutting of the State Department is a good thing.

We

And it’s not even Mississppi or Idaho, it’s Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch:

The Ohio House on Wednesday approved legislation that would protect student rights to religious expression in public schools, including prayer, school assignments, artwork and clothing.

Lawmakers passed House Bill 164 by a vote of 61-31 and sent it to the Senate for consideration.

Let’s hope the Senate says Nah.

The bill, dubbed the “Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019,” would require schools to:

‒ Give student religious groups the same access to school facilities for meetings and events as secular groups have.

‒ Lift bans limiting student expression of religion to lunch or non-instructional periods.

‒ Abolish any restrictions on students from engaging in religious

There is no limit. They will do anything to cling to power.

The Senate confirmed Steven Menashi to the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday by a vote of 51–41. Every Republican present except Sen. Susan Collins supported Menashi; every Democrat present opposed him. With this confirmation, Donald Trump has flipped the 2^nd Circuit to a majority of Republican appointees—a momentous shift in the balance of power that could help the president shield himself from criminal liability and congressional scrutiny in a jurisdiction, New York, which he previously called home.

Unless any of the other Republican judges have any limits. Menashi certainly doesn’t.

Menashi, a 40-year-old White House attorney, is one of Trump’s most controversial

The Express covers Nick Robinson’s conversation with Luciana Berger:

Host Nick Robinson said: “Turning to equalities which is the subject of your launch, one part of that is respecting the expression of gender identify. Can we be clear on what that means? Is it now the Liberal Democrats view that if I identified as a woman, you want the law to treat me as a woman?”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Ms Berger said: “Yes. There will be many people who will share with you their very personal experience of being born with one identity and actually experiencing as another.

“For anyone who has to go through that very difficult experience, they should be respected.”

But “respected” … Read the rest

… Read the rest

Can we not stop this?!

NBC News tweets:

Analysis: The first two witnesses called Wednesday testified to President Trump’s scheme, but lacked the pizzazz necessary to capture public attention.

Oh yes, very analysis, much thoughtful.

PIZZAZZ??? What are we, six? Were we expecting clowns and fireworks and a street dance? Can we not be adults for one day? Lust for “pizzazz” is what got us in this fucking mess.

I’m not the only one who reacted that way.

James Fallows:

FWIW, my “analysis”: What we don’t need: a journalist’s guess about “how this played.” What we do need: reportage of who said what, how it was backed up, what was new, how it matches the records and the

Another odd argument from Jolyon Maugham, which started with a gripe about the state of the BBC:

John Humphries may be gone but his attitude to equalities lives on at the BBC. If you’d like to know more about self-ID this Q&A – from leading feminist charity @fawcettsociety
– is well worth a read. https://fawcettsociety.org.uk/sex-gender-and-gender-identity-qa

What naughty Nick Robinson had said:

Should the law treat me as a woman if I chose to identify as one? Yes @lucianaberger
of the @LibDems told me on @BBCr4today despite criticism by some women that their rights are being ignored

Maugham argues in response:

The purpose of societal norms isn’t to guard against the worst amongst us – that’s the job

Andrew Marantz, a New Yorker writer who’s written about for instance Mike Cernovitch, talked about Zuckerberg and Facebook and Free Speech on Fresh Air yesterday.

GROSS: There’s a lot of pressure now on social media to prevent smears, hate speech, threats, disinformation, propaganda. And, you know, Facebook is a good example of a company that appears to be trying to deal with it. So what has Facebook done recently to try to cut down on propaganda, disinformation, smears, threats?

MARANTZ: So in one sense, Facebook is doing a lot of stuff. In another sense, they’re kind of running away from their responsibility. Often, something really awful will happen on Facebook. Like, they will add fuel to the fire of Rohingya

Trump claims to be totally bored by the whole thing.

The White House and its allies sought to dismiss the hearing as dull and irrelevant. Press secretary Stephanie Grisham and Trump’s son, Eric, both dismissed it as “boring”, with Eric adding “#Snoozefest” in a tweet.

The president himself seemed to have found the historic day soporific, judging by his low energy, croaky voiced performance at a joint press conference with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan which started an hour late.

…

“Are you talking about the witch hunt?” Trump asked a reporter in the White House east room who sought his first impression. “Is that what you mean? Is that what you’re talking about? I hear it’s a joke.

Another chickenshit club:

Rape prosecutors in England and Wales were given a conviction rate target which was never made public.

BBC Newsnight has had access to a Law Society Gazette investigation, which found that from 2016 prosecutors were judged against a 60% target of cases ending in conviction.

So what do you do if you want to hit the target? You don’t prosecute the tough cases. This is what James Comey reminded the SDNY prosecutors when he was their boss: if they made it their goal to have zero losses, then they were in the chickenshit club, because they would prosecute only the sure things.

Rape convictions in England and Wales are at their lowest level since 2008,

Kate Smurthwaite writes:

Ok I’m seriously at my wit’s end. I’ve sold out shows in York the last couple of years with a fair bit of ease so although I wasn’t planning a larger-scale tour this year I figured when the opportunity came up I’d accept a date there.

My new show is called “bitch” and, as ever, it’s about lots of things but one of the key reasons it’s called that is because I get called “bitch” so much online, including on Facebook, Twitter, Insta and YouTube. I’ve tried reporting these messages and over and over the social media sites, including Facebook, have told me that the word “bitch” doesn’t breach their community standards so they can’t

One of the potential bad side effects of Trump’s extortion of Ukraine was said to be undermining the bipartisan support for Ukraine v Putin.

So the Republicans are now making it happen.

Republicans on the House intelligence committee appear to be using their questioning time to add credibility to the baseless conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. (The US intelligence community has thoroughly confirmed that Russia interfered in the election.)

Meanwhile Fox News is doing its thing.

Fox News has so far done its best to present Bill Taylor’s testimony as un-explosive.

As the rest of the media has marveled at Bill Taylor’s statement that Trump “cared more about investigations of Biden” than Ukraine policy,