Oh gee, poor White House, they’re all in a mess again because of Porter and Wray and why won’t it just stop? All they want is to be left in peace to take away Medicare and Medicaid and subsidies for health insurance and the EPA and food stamps and a few other tiny things.

The White House struggled Tuesday to contain a widening crisis over its handling of domestic violence allegations against a senior official, as it reeled from sworn testimony by the FBI chief that directly contradicted what President Trump’s aides had presented as the official version of events.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the bureau had completed a background report on then-staff secretary Rob Porter last July and closed out the case entirely last month. Wray’s account is at odds with White House claims that the investigation required for Porter’s security clearance was “ongoing” until he left his job last week, after his two ex-wives publicly alleged physical and emotional abuse.

So they lied, so what? Won’t somebody please think of the billionaires?

The latest bout of turbulence is exacerbated by the administration’s reputation, earned over 13 chaotic months, for flouting institutional norms and misrepresenting facts to the public — a culture set by the president himself.

The public relations fallout is further compounded by Trump’s own history of alleged sexual assault and his seeming reluctance to publicly condemn violence against women and give voice to the national #MeToo reckoning.

But other than that, why does anybody care?

Trump is playing it cool when we can see him but behind the scenes he’s asking everybody what the media are saying and how this is all working out for him.

People are super annoyed at Kelly.

Kelly is “a big fat liar,” said one White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share a candid opinion.

Hahahahahahaha “I’ll tell you what I think of Kelly if you promise to keep my name out of it, ok? Cool. He’s A BIG FAT LIAR. Don’t say it was me.”

Kelly’s attempts at explaining his role, according to some aides, have included telling senior staff members last Friday to communicate a version of events many believed to be false, as well as telling at least one confidant that he has “a good bullshit detector” and had long detected troubling characteristics in Porter.

If he had a good bullshit detector he wouldn’t be working for Mister Bullshit himself.

“Credibility is the coin of the realm for any White House chief of staff, and it’s especially important in a White House where truth was the first casualty and credibility has been the second,” said Chris Whipple, who wrote a book about chiefs of staff.

The internal animus is not limited to Kelly. White House counsel Donald McGahn and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin are also facing scrutiny over how Porter managed to work at the White House — and hold an interim security clearance — for more than a year despite the allegations of abuse during his two marriages.

It’s my impression that the security clearance is actually supposed to mean something, and that people who can’t get one aren’t supposed to have the job where you hand the president all the secret briefings.

During Wray’s testimony, another White House aide texted a Washington Post reporter, describing the moment as “a killer.”

When asked if Kelly could have been more transparent or truthful, that official wrote: “In this White House, it’s simply not in our DNA. Truthful and transparent is great, but we don’t even have a coherent strategy to obfuscate.”

Ahem. Let’s repeat that.

When asked if Kelly could have been more transparent or truthful, that official wrote: “In this White House, it’s simply not in our DNA. Truthful and transparent is great, but we don’t even have a coherent strategy to obfuscate.”

That’s quite an admission.

One of Trump’s new besties is a decidedly overt racist. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports:

A Republican challenger to U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan drew international criticism over the weekend for tweeting an image that replaced the mixed-race fiancée of Prince Harry with a dark-skinned prehistoric Briton known as “Cheddar Man.”

As of Sunday afternoon, Paul Nehlen’s Twitter account had been suspended.

The provocation is only the latest for Nehlen, an outrage artist who has used this technique to help his campaign raise funds and in turn pay his wife a salary. Last month, Nehlen drew criticism for making anti-Semitic tweets and then posting the contact information of ordinary citizens who called and emailed to berate him.

In a tweet late Friday, Nehlen shared an image of the royal couple in which a scientific reconstruction of Cheddar Man’s face is superimposed over the features of the actress Meghan Markle standing beside her fiancé, the prince.

“Honey, does this tie make my face look pale?” Nehlen tweeted along with the image, which the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is not sharing.

But Matt McDermott did share it, which is how I saw it and was inspired to look for news on it.

Barack Obama was in the same room as Louis Farrakhan once and it caused a decades-long controversy.

Donald Trump gave a shoutout to white supremacist Paul Nehlen, Republican running for Congress, and nary a mention. pic.twitter.com/EVNsItEtoJ

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) February 11, 2018

The times we live in.

The British newspaper The Mirror decried the “racist tweet” in a headline, saying that Markle has been subjected to racial abuse since the royal engagement was announced. The Mirror quoted Markle’s co-star, actor Patrick J. Adams.

“You’re a sad and sick man with no sense of shame or class,” Adams said to Nehlen. “Get a life. And don’t go anywhere near MM – she’s got more power, strength, honor and compassion in her fingernail than you’ll ever know in this lifetime. Way above your weight class.”

But he’s Trump’s li’l buddy.

The awfulness of Sarah Sanders.

She dripped disdain.

She oozed contempt.

“If you were paying attention to what I just read to you . . .” she huffed, like an exasperated teacher reprimanding a classroom troublemaker.

No, worse than that, really. More like an angry prison guard. That horrible scowl of hers goes way beyond exasperated.

Watching the press secretary at Monday’s briefing, the words that came to mind were these: A new low.

Yes, a new rock-bottom from the podium at the Trump White House press briefing.

And that is really saying something, given the lying-from-day-one reign of Sean Spicer, along with Sanders’s own fulsome history of dissembling, and the 10-day flameout of Anthony Scaramucci last summer.

Not fulsome; that’s the wrong word. Extensive, packed, overfull – she dissembles a lot.

You might think that as one of the most visible women in the Trump administration, Sanders would bring some credibility — maybe even sympathy — to bear on subjects related to respect for women.

Well, no, because if she had that in her she wouldn’t be doing that job.

In fact, it seems to bring out the worst in her.

For Jay Rosen, New York University journalism professor, this is another reason to “send the interns.” The press briefings are so devoid of substance, so predictably filled with lies, that they aren’t a valid use of top reporters’ time.

Monday’s performance once again fulfilled what he tweeted was the “brand promise” of the Trump administration when dealing with the press: “Watch: we will put these people down for you.”

Really? Sarah Huckabee Sanders is criticizing Nancy Pelosi's facial expressions? Look in the mirror! #hypocrisy #SarahHuckabeeSanders #NancyPelosi #potcallingthekettleblack #scowling #PelosiFrowns #frowngate #pettywoman pic.twitter.com/YaeqZHknJI

— Shari Mathias (@sharimathias) January 31, 2018

This woman is about to find out that her neighbor's corgi has been sneaking into her yard at night to ride her pony 😮 pic.twitter.com/YB553OoOyg

— The Dodo (@dodo) February 12, 2018

NBC News offers some explanation of why Rachel Brand has quit her job.

The Justice Department’s No. 3 attorney had been unhappy with her job for months before the department announced her departure on Friday, according to multiple sources close to Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand.

Brand grew frustrated by vacancies at the department and feared she would be asked to oversee the Russia investigation, the sources said.

The sources say the WalMart job had been in the works for some time.

As far back as last fall, Brand had expressed to friends that she felt overwhelmed and unsupported in her job, especially as many key positions under her jurisdiction had still not been filled with permanent, Senate-confirmed officials.

Four of the 13 divisions overseen by the associate attorney general remain unfilled, including the civil rights division and the civil division, over one year into the Trump administration.

Only one man matters.

While Brand has largely stayed out of the spotlight, public criticism of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein by President Donald Trump worried Brand that Rosenstein’s job could be in danger.

Should Rosenstein be fired, Brand would be next in line to oversee Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, thrusting her into a political spotlight that Brand told friends she did not want to enter.

A spokeswoman for the DoJ said none of it is true. We believe everything they say, yes? No.

Scott Pruitt, destroyer of the EPA, is not stinting himself on luxury accommodations on the taxpayer’s dime.

Just days after helping orchestrate the United States’ exit from a global climate accord last June, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt embarked on a whirlwind tour aimed at championing President Trump’s agenda at home and abroad.

On Monday, June 5, accompanied by his personal security detail, Pruitt settled into his $1,641.43 first-class seat for a short flight from the District to New York City. His ticket cost more than six times that of the two media aides who came along and sat in coach, according to agency travel vouchers; the records do not show whether his security detail accompanied him at the front of the plane.

They all could have just taken the damn train for a fraction of the cost.

He did two tv gigs hooraying Trump’s trashing of the Paris climate agreement and then stayed in a nice posh pricey hotel before zipping back to DC the next day.

That Wednesday, after traveling with Trump on Air Force One for an infrastructure event in Cincinnati, Pruitt and several staffers raced to New York on a military jet, at a cost of $36,068.50, to catch a plane to Rome.

The transatlantic flight was part of a round-trip ticket for the administrator that cost $7,003.52, according to EPA records— several times what was paid for other officials who went. The documents do not explain the discrepancy. In Rome, Pruitt and a coterie of aides and security personnel got private tours of the Vatican and met with papal officials, business executives and legal experts before heading briefly to a meeting of environmental ministers in Bologna.

In short he’s having a lot of fun at our expense, while he takes apart the EPA that Nixon inaugurated.

In total, the taxpayer-funded travel for Pruitt and his top aides during that stretch in early June cost at least $90,000, according to months of receipts obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project under the Freedom of Information Act. That figure does not account for the costs of Pruitt’s round-the-clock security detail, which have not been disclosed.

His round-the-clock security detail that is a bizarre and unprecedented thing for the head of the EPA to have, that is.

Such travel decisions, coupled with a tendency to not publicize out-of-town trips, have prompted criticism from Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups, who have questioned how much some of Pruitt’s trips have to do with the EPA’s mission.

“What did American taxpayers get for Pruitt visiting the Vatican and getting photographed with European agency heads?” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, of last year’s Italy trip. “This was all for show.”

The group obtained Pruitt’s travel vouchers through litigation and is suing for other travel-related documents, including speeches he has made in closed-door meetings with industry officials.

“It is acutely paranoid,” Schaeffer said of the EPA’s refusal to disclose Pruitt’s whereabouts on any given day. “He’s a public official. His schedule should be publicly known.”

Destructive and extravagant; lucky us.

Julie Bindel on charity organizations and prostitution:

Just when I thought my opinion of pro-prostitution lobbyists could not get any lower, I see a tweet by one about the Oxfam scandal: “Buying sex from professionals is not sexual misconduct and women in Haiti may well have been glad to get the sex work. I hate prissy Establishment fiddle-faddle implying ‘development’ workers are ethical puritans or saints.”

There you have it. The idea that the women involved in prostitution in Haiti are somehow benefiting from being bought and sold by the very men that are supposed to be helping them cope with their hellish existence.

Let us consider what this person is defending. Oxfam’s country director in Haiti, Roland van Hauwermeiren, admitted using prostituted females at premises paid for with charitable funds. Children may well have been among those abused by van Hauwermeiren and other aid workers. This happened after the earthquake in 2010, which killed 220,000 people, injured 300,000 and left 1.5 million homeless.

So naturally the women among those 1.5 million people left homeless must have been delighted to “get the sex work” – i.e. get a little cash from Oxfam workers in exchange for being raped.

Wherever there is conflict, natural disasters and dire poverty, women and children will be abused into prostitution. Traffickers target countries such as Haiti, knowing that there will be rich pickings, because women and girls will be additionally vulnerable.

I have witnessed scandals like this before. In 1999, during my first trip to Kosovo, shortly after the end of the war,  I was told by my driver that a number of brothels were being built close to the area inhabited by a number of charities and UN organisations, because so many of the men stationed there were prolific prostitute users. I saw a number of men going in and out of these establishments, despite the fact that many of them were there to advise local law enforcers on anti-trafficking strategies.

This is why we can’t have equality; it’s because people who have the upper hand aren’t going to give it up. Poverty and desperation=cheap and compliant labor, which includes “sex workers.” Slumps and natural disasters are good things for the people on top, because there are so many more desperate people to exploit.

The sex trade is built on colonialism and racism, as well as misogyny. Whether it is the overrepresentation of African American girls and women in prostitution in the US, or the targeting of indigenous and native women and girls in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada, it is clear that rich, powerful, white men consider it their “right” to use such women and girls as commodities.

Oxfam is supposed to put vulnerable women and children at the centre of its efforts, and yet some of the organisation’s most senior male officials appear to have done the opposite. It is nothing short of a disgrace that prostitution apologists somehow create a defence of these vile sexual predators by suggesting that the women and girls lured into the sex trade are somehow making a “choice”, and are “professionals” doing a “job”. These women and girls are being abused and exploited by men who are paid huge salaries to make their lives less horrendous.

One of the myths about the sex trade is that the men who rent the inside of women’s bodies for their one-sided sexual pleasure are somehow doing a favour to their victims because money changes hands. As my close friend and colleague, the formidable writer and sex trade survivor Rachel Moran, has said in response to white liberals who claim paying for sex is defensible because it provides an income to poor women: “Wouldn’t you say, if a person cannot afford to feed themselves, the appropriate thing to put in their mouth is food, not your cock?”

Wouldn’t you?

This from last March is terrifying: the Koch brothers are bankrolling a move to rewrite the Constitution.

A constitutional convention, something thought impossible not long ago, is looking increasingly likely. Under Article V of the US Constitution, if 34 state legislatures “issue a call” for a constitutional convention, Congress must convene one. By some counts, the right wing only needs six more states. Once called, delegates can propose and vote on changes and new amendments to the US Constitution, which, if approved, are currently required to be ratified by 38 states.

There are two major legislative pushes for a convention at the state level. One would attempt to engineer a convention for a balanced budget amendment only, and the other tries to secure an open convention for the purpose of limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. But once a convention is underway, all bets are off. The convention can write its own rules, resulting in a wide-open or “runaway” convention that can make major changes to the constitution and, some argue, even change the number of states required to ratify those changes.

…

Running the “Convention of States initiative” is an Austin, Texas-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG). CSG reported revenue of $5.7 million in 2015, more than double its haul from two years earlier, when it launched its Convention of States Project, according to The Dallas News. It now boasts 115,000 “volunteers,” although that figure may represent the number of addresses on its email list.

…

CSG also has ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that unites conservative politicians with big-business lobbyists who develop cookie-cutter “model” legislation behind closed doors at ALEC meetings.

ALEC has long been funded by Koch Industries and a representative of Koch Industries sits on its executive board, while representatives from the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity groups fund and sit on various committees. ALEC has also received funding from Koch family foundations. CMD estimates this funding to be over $1 million, though the actual total could be much higher. In addition, ALEC gets funding from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

According to Common Cause, “no group has been more influential” in promoting an Article V convention than ALEC. In 2011, ALEC commissioned a handbook for state legislators on how to push for a constitutional convention. The group has produced at least three model balanced budget amendment bills and has endorsed several model bills calling for a convention to vote on constitutional amendments, such as requiring Congress to get approval by two-thirds of the states before imposing new taxes or increasing the federal debt or federal spending.

Do not want.

H/t Wesley Elsberry

Human Rights Watch:

A new law in Poland, threatening to jail those who imply the country had a role in the Holocaust, will likely have a wider chilling effect on free expression.

The law, signed by Polish President Andrzej Duda, makes it a crime punishable by up to three years imprisonment to claim that the Republic of Poland or the Polish nation was responsible for, or participated in, Nazi crimes during the Second World War.

Under the law, the Institute of National Remembrance, a state body tasked with establishing an official historical narrative and prosecuting Nazi and Communist-era crimes, will now also be able to claim compensation from anyone “damaging the reputation” of Poland.

How very Turkish. Turkey throws people in jail for “insulting Turkishness” by talking about the Armenian genocide.

Duda is consulting with the Constitutional Court.

Some observers worry that the Polish government’s motivation goes beyond solely trying to suppress discussion about Poland’s role in crimes committed in the Second World War. Critics argue the government may be able to use the civil remedies in the law to curb broader public criticism of its track record.

While the use of the term “Polish death camps” may obscure the responsibility of the Nazis for those camps on Polish soil, the government has failed to convincingly prove that the harsh measures under the law are necessary to prevent the “falsification of Polish history” and of “slandering” Poles.

Laws that criminalize historical discussion – whether denial of, or responsibility for, genocide – have a chilling effect on free expression even if no one is prosecuted under them.

Imagine a US law making it a crime to talk about the Japanese internments in WW2 or Jim Crow laws or slavery or the genocide of Native Americans…my we have a lot to talk about, don’t we. Imagine a UK law making it a crime to talk about The Empire or the Irish famine or the Amritsar massacre. Imagine it and then say No.