The crazy is ratcheting up. Even a Republican senator is urging Nunes and his gang not to be in such a hurry to release the memo.

Mr. Thune’s note of caution joined a growing chorus of warnings from national security officials who say that releasing the memo would jeopardize sensitive government information, including how intelligence is gathered, and from Democrats who say it is politically motivated and distorts the actions of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. by omitting crucial context.

President Trump, who has made clear that he wants the memo to be public, was expected to indicate as early as Thursday that despite strong objections by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, he did not intend to block its release — a move that would free the committee to release it.

And the only reason he’s ignoring the F.B.I. and the Justice Department is because he hopes the memo will thwart the investigation into Russia’s role in his election. He’s thinking solely about his own skin and not even a little bit about the broader good.

In a rare statement on Wednesday, the F.B.I. strongly condemned the memo’s release, saying the bureau had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

People familiar with the three-and-a-half page Republican memo say it contends that officials from the F.B.I. and Justice Department may have misled a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge when they sought a warrant to spy on the former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, in October 2016. The people say the officials relied on information handed over by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, without adequately explaining to the judge that Democrats had financed his research.

Using Vince Foster’s bank account which is in a vault in a pizza place off Dupont Circle.

In a sharply worded letter of her own on Thursday morning, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, called on Speaker Paul D. Ryan to remove Representative Devin Nunes of California as the Intelligence Committee’s chairman.

“Congressman Nunes’s deliberately dishonest actions make him unfit to serve as Chairman, and he must be removed immediately from this position,” she wrote, adding, “The integrity of the House is at stake.”

Mr. Nunes gave no indication that he intended to change course.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s earlier request to see the memo was declined.

Nunes, let’s remember, is the guy who pretended to have briefed the White House on matters that in fact the White House had just briefed him on, to the incomprehension of all onlookers.

Adam Schiff (the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee) explains why the release of Nunes’s memo is such a terrible move.

As multiple investigations work to unearth the full truth, the president has lashed out with Nixonian ferocity at the Justice Department, the FBI, congressional investigators and the media.

However, unlike President Richard Nixon, who waged his Watergate fight without the same kind of vocal allies, Trump not only has an entire media ecosystem dedicated to shielding him from accountability but also senior Republicans on the Hill who have cast aside their duty to uphold the law and perform oversight in favor of protecting the Trump presidency — no matter the cost. Nunes may have wielded the committee gavel here, but the ultimate responsibility lies with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who lacked the courage to stop him.

Ryan, who has never served on the Intelligence Committee, seems not to understand the central bargain underpinning the creation of the intelligence committees after Watergate. In exchange for the intelligence community’s willingness to reveal closely guarded national secrets to a select group of members and staff for the purposes of oversight, the committees and the congressional leadership pledged to handle that information responsibly and without regard to politics.

That contract has now been spectacularly broken by the creation of a partisan memo that misrepresents highly classified information that will never be made public. Intelligence agencies can no longer be confident that material they provide the committee will not be repurposed and manipulated for reasons having nothing to do with national security. As a result, they will be far more reluctant to share their secrets with us in the future. Moreover, sources of information that the agencies rely upon may dry up, since they can no longer count on secrecy when the political winds are blowing. This is a grave cost for short-term political gain.

We want Congress to oversee the intelligence agencies, because the alternative is the Hoover-era FBI or the Cold War CIA overthrowing elected governments all over the planet. We want oversight, but not if it’s done by corrupted hacks like Nunes.

https://twitter.com/vonny_bravo/status/958296320808292352

https://twitter.com/vonny_bravo/status/958296899152437248

The drawbacks to being born female:

An eight-month-old baby girl has been raped, allegedly by her cousin, in the Indian capital Delhi.

Police say she is in a critical condition after being admitted to hospital on Sunday. They have arrested the 28-year-old cousin.

Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal, who visited the girl, described her injuries as “horrific”.

…

Ms Maliwal tweeted that the baby had undergone a three-hour operation and that her cries could be heard in the hospital.

Geeta Pandey, BBC News, Delhi, has analysis:

This distressing case of assault on an infant has shocked India and made national headlines. The extent of her injuries has horrified many and prompted them to wonder whether we have reached a new low.

But a look at the statistics, compiled by the government, shows that such crimes are not uncommon.

And worryingly, their numbers are rising rapidly.

According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau data, 2016 saw 19,765 cases of child rape being registered in India – a rise of 82% from 2015 when 10,854 cases were recorded.

A couple of years ago, an 11-month-old was kidnapped by a neighbour while she slept next to her mother and brutally raped for two hours.

The tighter the better, I guess.

John Crace at the Guardian does a Digested Read version of Jordan Peterson’s already brisk 12 rules for being like Jordan Peterson.

1 Stand up straight with your shoulders straight
Most lobsters are complete bastards left to their own devices. Most humans are complete bastards left to their own devices. This proves there is a God who wants us to have Order. Order is Masculine and Chaos is Feminine. Therefore to move towards Order, we all need to man up.

Order is Masculine and Chaos is Feminine except when it’s the other way around. Men are the rebels, the lone geniuses, the innovators, the disrupters, while women are the boring anal petty rule-followers and tidiers of messes who stay home lining up the forks. Only a man could be a Nawesome Genius like Jordan Peterson; women color inside the lines and suck up to Teacher.

11 Do not bother children while they are skateboarding
This is the rule that’s the real catnip for right-wingers everywhere. Want to know why the world is falling apart? It’s because liberals are turning boys into girlies with their namby-pamby ways. Let boys do boy things and girls do girl things.

See? Order is Masculine but on the other hand boys must be very unlike girls and girls are, let’s face it, kind of weak and worthless.

Meanwhile I’d rather read Seneca.

Also:

President Trump is seeking to parlay his first State of the Union address Tuesday into cash for his reelection campaign by offering supporters a chance to see their name flashed on the campaign’s website during the speech.

In a fundraising solicitation Monday, Trump offered those willing to pay at least $35 the opportunity to see their name displayed during a live-streaming of the address on the website.

“This is a movement,” the solicitation says. “It’s not about just one of us. It’s about ALL of us. Which is why your name deserves to be displayed during Tuesday night’s speech.”

The Web page to which the solicitation links offers donors the opportunity to contribute as much as $2,700 — the maximum amount allowed per election.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, the pitch had generated $1 million in contributions from more than 75,000 individuals, according to Cassie Smedile, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. Money raised by solicitation will benefit not only Trump’s campaign but also the RNC and joint fundraising committee, she said.

New level of disgusting achieved. Well done.

H/t Ben

Donnie the Grifter:

Donald Trump says the Trump National Golf Club in Florida is worth more than $50m. Palm Beach County property tax appraiser Dorothy Jacks disagrees, saying the Jupiter course, where Trump plays when he visits nearby Mar-a-Lago, is actually worth $19m.

Oh burn. She’s dissing his valuable golf club resort luxury escape.

The president’s lawyers are now suing Jacks, saying her estimate and the nearly $400,000 property tax bill it generates are too high, even if her appraisal is only 40% of what the president listed in his 2017 financial disclosure form.

Oh so he’s saying it’s worse less than 50 million…and less than 19 million too. Or I suppose that it changes value depending on whether we’re talking about taxes or selling price.

Trump’s company, Jupiter Golf LLC, does not say in the lawsuit how much it thinks the course is currently worth, but it sent the county nearly $300,000 as a good-faith estimate of what it believes the tax bill should be. That would make the course worth $15m.

Well that’s quite similar to 50. Less than a third of it, yes, but still quite similar.

Also? He cheats at golf.

Suzann Pettersen, the 15-time LPGA Tour winner and a golfing partner of Donald Trump, says the president “cheats like hell” on the golf course.

Pettersen, who has known Trump for a decade and says she is fond of the president even though she does not agree with his policies, was speaking to the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang.

“He cheats like hell … so I don’t quite know how he is in business,” said Pettersen. “They say that if you cheat at golf, you cheat at business. I’m pretty sure he pays his caddie well, since no matter how far into the woods he hits the ball, it’s in the middle of the fairway when we get there.”

Maybe God moves it.

Originally a comment by Anna Y on Top lobster.

Yet another guy who thinks he’s very “Alpha” spouting off about how all the feeeemales should be irresistibly attracted to him (and conveniently picking a species where this is the case; admittedly lobsters are a novel choice, normally this sort goes for lions; funny how no one talks about hyenas, or elephants, or bonobos, etc, with a female topped hierarchy). But, even accepting his premise that all women should be irresistibly (and exclusively) attracted to Alphas, I don’t think he’d like that in practice.

For one, in the animal kingdom, high status males don’t just magically spring forth full-formed: they rise up through the ranks by competing with other males, often violently, sometimes with deadly consequences. Once they’ve achieved the “top lobster” status, they continue to have to defend it against challengers. Eventually (which, in practice, can mean “almost immediately”) they are deposed (often fatally) by the next in line. The reward for this high-stress existence is also fairly fleeting: the Alpha gets to mate with the most females while holding the title. These females then lose all interest in him, once they received what they wanted: sperm from an ostensibly fit donor, that makes it more likely their offspring will have a better shot at survival. The females don’t then stick around to make the Alpha sandwiches, and listen to him endlessly prattle on while pretending to be utterly fascinated, and nodding in the right places. In fact, just as soon as he gets his ass handed to him by the next guy, his popularity is history: it’s brilliant strategy after all, for the females to move on to the best and brightest, not stick around to soothe the loser’s bruised ego. There’s also no mention whatsoever of beauty contests among the lobster females to get a shot with the top guy, so presumably our Alpha is happy to fertilize grandma lobster and morbidly obese lobster, or whatever passes for unattractive in lobster terms. In other words, the brightest females in the animal kingdom (according to Peterson), behave precisely like human gold-diggers: they zero in on the male with the most to offer, take him for everything he’s worth (in exchange for a little nookie, sure), and as soon as they get what they want from him, they move on to the up-and-comer. Brilliant strategy indeed, but I’m gonna bet Peterson has something unflattering to say about it when properly applied by members of his own species.

Also, I’m kind of curious how he squares the “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today” rule (which ostensibly invites a person to forgo competition and focus on fostering one’s personal virtue as an end in itself) with his ideas on dominance hierarchies (and their corollaries re: sex and reproduction).

No. I think this is completely wrong, however highminded it sounds.

I understand the decision of some members to boycott the SOTU but I don’t agree with it any more than I did when a member disrupted a speech in the House chamber by @BarackObama. The fact that this @POTUS flouts norms and denigrates institutions doesn’t mean others should follow.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) January 30, 2018

Yes it does. The fact that the norms this POTUS flouts are the norms that say we should treat other people with respect and fairness and basic empathy does mean that we should not reward him with attention and deference. This POTUS is an evil bullying monster, and he should not be treated as normal or naughty-but-acceptable.

The state of the union address has been puffed into what now looks like a royal ceremony, which is embarrassing. The tv networks are giving it all the solemn awe and hype they bestow on the Oscars, another pseudo-royal ceremony hyped out of all recognition.

Plus there’s the fact that this POTUS has shown us all that the famous checks and balances are worthless, so what else are we supposed to do? What else are legislators supposed to do? Just go on acting as if he’s normal, and wrong but otherwise ok? He’s not in any way ok and we get to say so.

The shithole Trump has made:

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include strong denials from pro-Trump protesters of allegations they singled out dark-skinned individuals, as well as video links showing their interactions during a protest at the Capitol on Jan. 25.

Supporters of President Donald Trump singled out dark-skinned lawmakers, legislative staffers and children at the Capitol on Jan. 25 as they protested congressional efforts to pass immigration reform, according to staffers of the Arizona Legislature and two Democratic legislators.

Waving large flags in support of Trump while standing between the House and Senate buildings, the protesters, who were also armed, asked just about anyone who crossed their path if they “support illegal immigration.”

They called some “illegal” and told them to “go home,” barbs they reserved for those with brown skin, according to the staffers.

Two women who said they were part of the protest against illegal immigration at the Capitol vehemently denied accusations that they singled out dark-skinned people and accused them of being illegal immigrants.

But Lisette Flores and Selianna Robles, policy advisors for Senate Democrats, said they were yelled at when they walked from the Senate to the House lawn, directly passing the Trump supporters, to get lunch at a farmers market. Three white coworkers offered to escort Flores, Robles, and Democratic staffer Dora Ramirez back to their offices, Robles said.

We’ve seen this before – groups of people whipping up hatred of other groups of people. Rwanda, Bosnia, Burma, Bangladesh…we’ve seen it before. Trump has awoken a monster.

Lawmakers said they were also questioned based on their appearance. Rep. Eric Descheenie, D-Chinle, said he was confronted by Trump supporters while helping defend a young student that he said was being harassed.

They asked Descheenie, a Navajo lawmaker, if he was in the United States illegally.

“I’m indigenous to these lands,” Descheenie said. “My ancestors fought and died on these lands. I just told them, ‘Don’t ask me that question.’”

…

A 14-minute video of yesterday’s protest uploaded on YouTube shows several interactions initiated by the anti-illegal immigration protesters. Near the beginning of the video, one protester could be heard assuming that members of a group are staying illegally in the U.S.

“No, they’re not legal. They’re illegal,” a woman can be heard saying.

“Yeah, we know they’re illegal. Get legal or get out of America … They’re illegal, see that?” another woman shouted at the group.

Mind you, it seems to be a tiny group of people, and from the way they talk they sound not right in the head…But without Trump they might be contentedly shouting at clouds instead of at other human beings.

Peak hate-mongering xenophobic immigrant-bashing racism?

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), an immigration hardliner, announced this afternoon that he has asked the U.S. Capitol Police and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to check the identification of all State of the Union attendees and arrest any illegal immigrants.

Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress. Any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise, should be arrested and deported.

— Rep. Paul Gosar

Why it matters: At least 27 members of Congress plan to bring immigrants with DACA or Temporary Protected Status as their guests to Trump’s address, per CNN.

He proudly posted on Facebook:

Today, Congressman Paul Gosar contacted the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asking they consider checking identification of all attending the State of the Union address and arresting any illegal aliens in attendance. Additionally, Congressman Gosar asked that they arrest those using fraudulent social security numbers and identification to pass through security.

“Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress. Any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise, should be arrested and deported,” said Congressman Gosar.

The Phoenix New Times:

On Twitter, outgoing senator Jeff Flake responded, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

Though a number of Democrats are boycotting Trump’s State of the Union address, plenty of others are bringing guests intended to send a political statement. According to the Huffington Post, nearly 30 Democratic lawmakers plan to bring Dreamers.

That includes Arizona congressmen Ruben Gallego and Raul Grijalva.

Gallego will be bringing Antonio Valdovinos, a 27-year-old DACA recipient from Phoenix who was unable to join to the Marine Corps due to his legal status. Valdovinos went on to work in grassroots activism, leading get-out-the-vote efforts for Phoenix City Council candidates. He now owns his own business, La Machine Field Operations, which works to get progressive candidates elected in Arizona.

Grijalva plans to bring Arisaid, a Dreamer from Arizona who now attends Georgetown University, he wrote in a tweet.

This country has become a racist shithole.