@AirdalePhil tweets:

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 is a blessed bit of rough justice for all of the people he has victimized over the years and, indeed, for the system of government that was his most prominent victim of all. He learned the basics of ratfcking from Richard Nixon, which is like learning music from Mozart. In 1977, he was elected president of the Young Republicans with the help of his good friend, Paul Manafort. But his career came to full flower in the 2000s, which began with his role in disrupting the Florida recount process on behalf of the Bush campaign. (He may or may not have been central to the infamous Brooks Brothers Riot that shut down the recount in Miami-Dade County, but it certainly bore all the hallmarks of Stone’s work.) And he was pushing the idea of a Trump presidential campaign long before one finally was organized in 2015.

He was an A-level predator in the jungle politics that also produced Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, the jungle politics that many Nice Republicans would rather not talk about now that the rot and decay has taken the ground under their feet. The Republican Party was perfectly happy with Roger Stone for as long as it needed his gifts for the dark arts.

What Nice Republicans are there? Given how unanimously they’re going along with everything Trump does, I don’t think I believe in their existence.

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 an opinion, and he’s entitled to an opinion about an ambassador he fired because she was in the way of his corrupt intentions, and he’s entitled to express that opinion on Twitter while she is testifying to an impeachment inquiry. Sure. That definitely all makes perfect sense and isn’t in the least a shameful pack of lies from a compromised hack defending a criminal who has stolen our government and is working hard to destroy it.

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 have vacancies in various departments because we do not want or need as many people as past administrations (and save great cost), and also, the Democrats delay the approval process to levels unprecedented in the history of our Country!

Guilty guilty guilty.

Former Trump associate Roger Stone has been found guilty on all counts, including lying to the same House committee currently holding impeachment hearings.

Stone becomes the latest member of the president’s circle to be convicted — joining the likes of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn.

Lie down with dogs get up with fleas.

And then there’s Giuliani:

Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating whether Rudy Giuliani stood to personally profit from a Ukrainian natural-gas business pushed by two associates who also aided his efforts there to launch investigations that could benefit President Trump, people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, pitched their new company, and plans for a Poland-to-Ukraine pipeline carrying U.S. natural gas, in meetings with Ukrainian officials and energy executives this year, saying the project had the support of the Trump administration, according to people briefed on the meetings. In many of the same meetings, the two men also pushed for assistance on investigations into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and alleged interference by Ukraine in the 2016 U.S. election, some of the people said.

Filth as far as the eye can see.

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 expression in completion of homework, artwork or other assignments.

Meaning they could turn in biology homework full of “Goddidit”?

We’re doomed.

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 judicial nominees. His past writings include inflammatory and offensive remarks about women, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and racial minorities. Menashi worked with Stephen Miller, a white supremacist White House aide, to craft Trump’s nativist immigration policies. He also helped Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos roll back protections for vulnerable students. Moreover, according to a New York Times report, he also devised an illegal program “to use private Social Security data to deny debt relief to thousands of students cheated by their for-profit colleges.”

Not to mention that Menashi is, in the words of Laurence Tribe, “spectacularly unqualified.”

During his confirmation hearing, Menashi refused to answer questions from both Republican and Democratic senators about his work in the Trump administration. His evasive performance drew criticism from Louisiana GOP Sen. John Kennedy, who said he was “real doubtful” that he would vote for the nominee. A day after Kennedy appeared at Trump rally, however, he announced his support for Menashi. Other putatively independent-minded Republicans like Sen. Lisa Murkowski then jumped on board, clinching his confirmation.

Menashi will now take a seat once filled by civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall. The 2^nd Circuit will have a 7–6 Republican majority, including five Trump appointees. Whenever the court hears cases en banc—that is, with every judge sitting—conservatives will have the upper hand.

We’re doomed.

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” meaning what? And before we even get to respecting that very difficult experience, what exactly is it? What does it mean to be “born with one identity and actually experiencing as another”? What, especially, does it mean in such a clear and peremptory and undeniable way that we have to base law and policy on it, and in fact diminish other people’s rights for the sake of it? It’s a bit like saying “I find life more painful and stressful than others do so I get to have special new rights.” Nobody knows how “difficult” that “very difficult experience” actually is, because we can’t know how difficult anyone’s experience is. The subjective is the subjective.

Mr Robinson asked: “Yet there are plenty of people who will say to you that there is a conflict of rights here. The rights of trans people and the rights of woman, hard-fought over many decades. Rights for example that sex offenders can’t demand to be housed in a woman’s prison. Rights that there is a demand for privacy in places where woman undress. Why are the Liberal Democrats choosing to oppose women’s rights?”

Ms Berger responded: “I don’t think they are in competition. I think there are some challenges we have to work through. But in the same way we fought for equalities with sexuality, for people from ethnic minority backgrounds. There shouldn’t be a hierarchy of equalities, it’s a challenger but we’re working through it.”

Well, that’s a sadly lazy and non-responsive response. No, there shouldn’t be “a hierarchy of equalities,” but there also shouldn’t be wack new “equalities” that aren’t equalities at all but narcissistic demands for Special Status.

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 law.

Jennifer Rubin replying to Fallows:

And what we really don’t need is journalists commenting on whether they thought it was exciting enough. If you are bored watching an historic impeachment hearing, guys get a new job.

Mimi Rocah:

No.

She works for NBC, by the way, which makes it all the more eloquent.

Jennifer Taub:

What’s wrong with them? Were they expecting a wardrobe malfunction?

A wag who goes by Full Tilt Booty:

I call the next witness!

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 of the criminal law. It is to express the values we share, conditioned by a desire to respect difference and protect the vulnerable.

But who in this dispute has the relevant “difference”? Who is “vulnerable”?

At a later point he explains:

My tweet was a response to those saying “if you let those with xy chromosomes into women’s toilets they might molest women.” I was making the point that if they do the criminal law can deal with them. And also that there are other forces that stop those are not women…

… (such as Nick Robinson) from using women’s toilets but allow those who are women (including transwomen) to use them. And those “other forces” are an important part of how a functioning society self-regulates. Hope that helps.

It doesn’t help, because what “other forces” are those? How do they work, where do we find them, how do we invoke them? What other forces are there that distinguish – instantly, on the spot – between those that are not women, like Nick Robinson, and those that are, including trans women? What forces are there that distinguish – instantly, on the spot – between men pretending to claim to be women, as a joke or to make a point, and real genuine authentic actual vulnerable women of the subset trans? What forces are those?

I doubt that he has the faintest idea what those forces are or what they could be, and I think he is able to be so blithe about it because it doesn’t affect him.

I’m so tired of being lectured by clueless men on the need to be more accommodating of the vulnerability of men who say they are women.

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 genocide in Myanmar, or in Sri Lanka, they had to just shut down – essentially, shut down the Internet for a few days because people were inciting so much violence. Now, we can’t lay all of that at the feet of Mark Zuckerberg. Obviously, violence and ethnic strife and all those things existed before the semiconductor did.

But for a long time, the reason I was so obsessed with this ideology of laissez faire – the reason that techno-utopianism is in the subtitle of my book is that when you just believe to your core that everything will be sorted out by the marketplace of ideas in the long run, you’re much more reluctant to do anything in the present to impede people saying anything they want to say. And I think we’ve reached a point now where we really recognize how irresponsible that is. What worries me about Facebook right now is that they do keep kind of falling back on that rhetoric.

I mean, Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech recently at Georgetown University. It was a 40-minute written speech from a lectern with teleprompters. I mean, for someone who doesn’t like being thought of as a politician-like political figure, he really made himself seem sort of analogous to a politician in that setting. And his entire speech was just about freedom of expression. You know, we love freedom of expression. Facebook is here to protect free speech. And it’s the kind of airy abstraction that sounds nice. But in practice, what it’s being used for is to avoid the responsibility that Facebook has to be a responsible gatekeeper, to be a curator of information. It’s essentially being used as a cop-out.

Yep. We saw it just today – they won’t let Kate Smurthwaite run her paid-for promo of her show because the title is “BITCH” but they will let men call her a bitch on Facebook all day long.

GROSS: Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook will continue to take political ads, and it won’t fact-check or reject those ads. He doesn’t see it as their job to do that. And then there was a letter from about 250 Facebook employees offering suggestions to improve the policy on political ads without eliminating them altogether. What was said in that letter?

MARANTZ: It was really specific. You know, these are Facebook employees who know how to speak a language that Facebook executives can understand, so they didn’t lead with a lot of broad, sweeping political statements. They said, here are six things we can do to improve our policies. And, you know, we can reduce the amount of microtargeting that is used by political advertisers. So, yes, maybe they can put up false information, but maybe we shouldn’t give them the tools to be able to target that false information to single moms in Dayton, Ohio, who drink Bulleit Bourbon and go to church on Wednesdays, you know? Again, this is the kind of thing where the executives and Zuckerberg himself really, really seem determined to stay at the level of abstraction and keep the debate focused on, well, do you like free speech or don’t you? And this set of anonymous engineers within the company was willing to say, no, no, no. Let’s drill down on what we’re actually talking about. This isn’t about – I mean, first of all, it’s not about the First Amendment, right? – because Facebook is not the government. But it’s also it’s not about…

GROSS: Because the First Amendment is about government intrusion on speech. It’s not about…

MARANTZ: Yeah.

GROSS: …Private enterprise.

MARANTZ: Yeah. The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. Now, there are people who say that Facebook should be governed more like a public utility, and I think that’s a worthwhile conversation to have. But as of now, Facebook is not a part of the government, and it’s not treated as such. And so rather than retreating to these sort of mottos that could be carved on marble statues, you know, these engineers and sort of activists outside the company are sort of saying, well, let’s talk about what we actually mean and how you’re actually making money by doing these things, rather than, you know, are you for free speech or are you against it? That doesn’t actually describe what’s happening.

No, it doesn’t.

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. I haven’t watched, I haven’t watched for one minute because I’ve been with the president, which is much more important as far as I’m concerned.”

He added: “This is a sham and shouldn’t be allowed. It was a situation that was caused by people that shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. I want to find out who was the whistleblower because the whistleblower gave a lot of very incorrect information including my call with the president of Ukraine, which was a perfect call and highly appropriate.”

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, despite record levels of allegations.

According to guidance set down in the Code for Crown Prosecutors, decisions should be based on two things: whether it’s in the public interest, and if the case has more than a 50% chance of a conviction.

But from 2016, rape prosecutors were also asked to consider a conviction rate target called a “level of ambition” of 60%.

One way to achieve improved conviction rates is by prosecuting only the strongest cases.

And those women who have the bad judgment to be raped in a difficult to prosecute way, well, they should just go away and do better next time.

The 60% rape conviction rate target was never made public by the CPS, but was discovered by the Law Society Gazette after a trawl through CPS inspection reports.

In one such report, inspectors criticised the Cheshire-Merseyside regional CPS for missing the target in 2017. Their conviction rate was 57.3%, down from 65.4% the previous year, but their actual number of rape convictions had gone up from 100 to 138 in the same period.

The following year, the same team introduced a “more stringent triage process for police files” on rape.

Their number of convictions dropped to 81 – the lowest for years – but by prosecuting fewer cases they actually exceeded the CPS target. Their conviction rate was 68%.

So it’s not the victims who count, it’s the stats of the prosecutors. Cool.

A coalition of women’s organisations, represented by the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ), has launched a legal case against the service for what it says is an unlawful change in approach by the CPS.

Lawyer Harriet Wistrich, founder of the CWJ, told Newsnight: “What a change in the conviction rate would suggest is if they’re being targeted to improve their convictions, the easiest way to do that is to take weaker cases out of the system.

“If those that rape are not being held to account, they will feel they can continue doing so with impunity.”

And they’ll be right.

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 do anything about it.

Of course, as ever, when I share the ticket link to my show Facebook shows it to only a tiny handful of people – we know they deliberately hide ticket sales links because they want to force you to buy advertising. I’ve tried just sharing it in groups and so on but finally this week I decided to give up and just spend some money making sure people who want to come to the show know that it’s on.

I wake up this morning and my advert still isn’t running – the show is Friday so I’m pretty annoyed about this. I chase them up for an answer and…

…seriously I COULD NOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP…

…apparently the word “bitch” breaches their fucking community standards. Now it does. When it’s my show title, when I’m trying to give them money, when I’m trying to discuss the abuse I get and reclaim the vile insults that get thrown at me.

So I’ve got less than half my tickets sold for Friday and I can’t even pay to let people know the show is coming to York.

If you know anyone in York please ask them to get a ticket for my show and come along and please like and share this post if you can cos I have a strong feeling I’m not going to do much touring for a bit after this.

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, and that a Taylor staffer overheard a Trump phone call where the president asked about “the investigations”, much of Fox News’ coverage has adopted a “nothing to see here” approach.

Across television news coverage, CNN, ABC and MSNBC have repeatedly changed their chyrons to represent the latest revelations from Taylor and George Kent’s testimony, Fox News has kept its own on-screen text staunchly neutral: “TAYLOR AND KENT TESTIFY IN FIRST IMPEACHMENT HEARING.” It was also the only channel to cut to an adbreak as Adam Schiff began questioning the two officials.

Subtle.

Oh, this is good. Erdoğan has arrived and Trump is presidenting him.

When asked by pool reporters about the public impeachment hearing, Trump said, “It’s a witch hunt, it’s a hoax. I’m too busy to watch it. I have not been briefed.” He added, “They’re using lawyers that are television lawyers.”

Television lawyers! Television lawyers!!! What does he think he is?! He’s the television president of all time!

His press secretary has tweeted to tell us that the hearings are boring.

This sham hearing is not only boring, it is a colossal waste of taxpayer time & money. Congress should be working on passing USMCA, funding our govt & military, working on reduced drug pricing & so much more. @realDonaldTrump is working right now-the dems should follow his lead!

The White House tweeted a little video clip (television president!!!) of Trump telling us the Democrats wanna take away ya gunz.

The Democrats wanna take away ya gunz, they wanna take away ya health care, they wanna take away ya vote, they wanna take away yer freedom, they wanna take away yer judgez, they wanna take away everything.

Puddle of piss not shown.