unraveling

29.June 2018

Going out with his usual style

One of the basic rules of Commedia dell'Arte is no learning. The stock characters stick to their assigned roles, and we can laugh at them (and ourselves) as they make the same mistakes over and over again, predictably. Part of the pleasure for the audience is seeing the inevitable disaster on the way, and feeling smarter than the characters on stage, as they exaggerate, distort reality, and fall on the faces with extravagant flair.

Just 4 short years ago, when Idaho's Congressman Raúl Labrador presided over a chaotic state GOP convention, that melted into a pointless floor fight and pathetic adjournment, he said "This is as low as a party can go. We have hit bottom."

Never underestimate the GOP's ability to go lower than the bottom.

With Labrador having failed in his primary bid for Governor this year, the convention was treated to his tearful swan song. "I would not change a thing," he declared defiantly, and instead of showing the tiniest support for the candidate who beat him, Labrador took the trouble to tell the party to "never forget that 63% of our party voted for change," which is to say not Lt. Gov. Brad Little. In a 7-way race that Labrador must've thought he was going to win. But in fact, 67% of the voters in the GOP primary voted to put him out of his job.

Think about that defiance. 8 years in Congress, nothing in his wake but shambles, disruption and a wanna be dictator, and Raúl Labrador would not change anything. The purity of his ideology, and the certainty of his infallibility is a chrome-plated boat anchor. No changes, no compromises, nothing worth reconsideration, NO LEARNING.

Cry me a river, Raúl. And please find another line of work, because you pretty much stink at this whole politics thing.

28.June.2018

Supreme Court: Next Generation

In a week of bad decisions, the one from Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy to call it a day is perhaps the most disheartening, even as it seems the quintessential emodiment of this moment in US politics. He's indisputably the man in the ideological middle among the current members of the Court. As Adam Liptak puts it,

"Justice Kennedy has occupied a place at the court's ideological center for his entire tenure, though he shared the middle ground with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for most of his first two decades. On her retirement in 2006, his vote became the undisputed crucial one in most of the court's closely divided cases."

NYT-interactively: the Court "loses its center."

I remember the loss to the Court when O'Connor retired, too. I can't fault either one for retiring early (i.e., while still alive—Kennedy is only 81), but their work is, and will be missed. Granted, not all of their work: Kennedy voted with—or made—the majority in Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, gutting the Voting Rights Act with Shelby Co. v. Holder, rewriting the 2nd Amendment with Heller, and this week's parting shots included "a pair of decisions ducking the question of whether the Constitution prohibits partisan gerrymandering."

Kennedy's departure will make the Court more polarized, and if the current president maintains his position in spite of the growing dossier of his high crimes and misdemeanors (or his manservant-in-waiting takes over), and gets to name a replacement, the Court will tilt further to the judicial activism of the extreme right. Never mind the occasional genuflection and crossing themselves with the holy water of "originalism."

And it will do so thanks to the illegitimate and despicable manipulation of the Senate Majority Leader, obstructing Merrick Garland's nomination until an unpopularly elected Republican could sidle into office and appoint the likes of Neil Gorsuch. What we're now calling it Mitch McConnell's "rule" that Democratic presidents shouldn't get to appoint Supreme Court Justices in an election year. Such as... 2018? But no, the rule doesn't apply this year. It's only for Democratic presidents, remember.

When you decide to violate your oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, foolish expectations of consistency are no obstacle.

26.June 2018

Bad judges of character

While Diktat Don allows us to keep the Judiciary branch of government, here are two more horrible decisions from the Supremes: they're making American Express great again by letting it keep merchants from offering better deals for to consumers using cheaper cards. The reason being that AmEx customers get other benefits, what? The vast majority of us are NON-AmEx customers, because really, the high-priced card is for people who have more money than they know what to do with. A company I once worked for made its employees get and use AmEx cards for travel, paid the card fees, and must've got some sort of kickback out of the deal. But I and all the employees I knew used it only when we were forced to, and dumped it as soon as we could.

American Express was quick to offer fatuous praise for the court decision and celebrate the supposed win for everyone, including consumers and merchants. Absent their promotional material, those groups might not be able to discern how an increase in monopoly power benefits them. (Hint: it doesn't.)

The second, and more egregious 5-4 decision from the blinkered Gentleman Justices sees no evil of discriminatory intent in Texas-sized gerrymandering, after finding procedural escape clauses for related cases from Wisconsin and Maryland. Texas' population growth, nearly all from minorities (mainly Hispanics) magically led to the added 4 seats sending 4 Republicans to Congress. A three-judge panel's interim map and its initial redress (one seat) was let stand as "close enough" for Texas horseshoes. From Andrew Prokop's analysis for Vox:

"[C]onservative justices thought the challengers did not sufficiently show that these particular modified versions of Texas’s maps were “tainted” by “discriminatory intent” — even if earlier, largely similar versions of the maps had been tainted. Furthermore, the justices refused to strike down two state legislative and one congressional district on grounds of alleged discrimination in effect (rather than intent).

"The big political takeaway, though, seems to be that the majority on the Supreme Court wants to set a high bar before federal courts can step in and block states’ district maps on racial grounds."

That's built on the foundation of what Matthew Yglesias calls legitimately the greatest heist in world history, Mitch McConnell's theft of Merrick Garland's seat on the court.

Put another way: McConnell's unprecedented block of Garland hearings, a move of sheer power politics, is paying significant dividends and embedding further structural political advantage for his political coalition. https://t.co/FzlxvsGtNH

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 25, 2018

25.June 2018

Another day, another outrage

WaPo front page print headline: Trump opposes trials for migrants. That's... interesting. According to what Fearless Dictator tweeted on his way to Sunday golf. He thinks that whole due process thing is totally overrated. (Can't wait to see how he feels about it when Bob Mueller delivers.)

Says there, Trump's "attack on the judicial system sowed more confusion" among the hapless Congress that broke themselves into a hostile takeover target. "Prospects for passage appeared dim." Passage of pretty much anything, and everything, even for an imaginary crisis.

Diktat Don called our laws "a mockery," and enumerated the extralegal steps he thinks should be taken. I'm sure one of his rally mobs would give this a full-throated endorsement.

Vacillation. Gratutous insults. Trump's got a problem with people cheating, that's rich. "That tweet demoralized Republicans," at least. A spokeswoman for the Speaker said there had been discussions all week, though.

How about if we just give the doofus a really, really big medal and let him call it a day?

23.June 2018

Suspicious language

Our quirky visit to Europe just completed (with the arrival of our checked luggage Thursday evening) involved 7 languages in 3 countries, counting the touchdowns in Munich to change planes. German, Romanian, Hungarian, Spanish, Catalan, and English, with a soupçon of French for some Belgians who stayed at the same B&B in Barcelona. Given our (lack of) fluency in all but English, we were fortunate to deal with more educated persons than ourselves for all essential logistics.

As always, we found that people appreciated some attempt to say something in their language, before our necessity of depending on their command of ours. I was convincing enough in exactly one case—phatic with the flight attendant on our last Lufthansa ride—that I garnered a response in the same language, which of course I did not understand the first time, or (bitte?) the second. After my confession, and her compliment of my accented ignorance, she asked me if I knew how to find my seat?

Closer to home, in Havre, Montana, up on the high line 35 miles from the Canadian border, it seems that talking Spanish is mighty suspicious. "Very unheard of up here," as Agent O'Neal put it. Not that there's anything wrong with speaking Spanish, of course, or that an "official complaint with United States Customs and Border Protection" is going to bring satisfaction to the people involved.

I've been through Havre on the Empire Builder, decades ago. Otherwise, it's a lot of miles from nowhere on the high plains, a "remote agricultural city," to NYT readers, population 9,000. 183 Border Patrol agents are stationed there. That's one fewer than four times the number of people who speak Spanish in the town. (Spanish being the second most common language you'll encounter.)

Jeanette says there were kids from Havre in Great Falls high school back in the day. That's 113 miles away. Google Maps estimates 1h 49m, but back then, with no daytime speed limit on US 87, an hour and a half would've been plenty I suppose. Hour and a quarter if you were in a hurry, but you would have to slow down a bit for the handful of small towns along the way. The town's grown a bit; they now have a high school on the map.

The Border Patrol's special, not-so-Constitutional zone extends 100 miles inside the nominal border (or coastline), which includes a mostly vacant 54,300 square miles across the top of Montana, and all of Maine, and New Hampshire. And Florida, Hawai`i, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

This week, for 11 hours on Wednesday, "Border Patrol agents closed off all southbound lanes of Interstate 95 north of Bangor, Maine, stopping drivers, searching outside their cars with drug-sniffing dogs and refusing to let them pass until they disclosed their citizenship."

We don't all live in a police state. Only 200 million or so of the US population live in the border zone.

(Speaking of sniffing dogs... in the no-cellphone, no-video border zone of Denver International Airport on Wednesday, I watched a cute little beagle-sort of dog in a service vest sniff out a foreigner trying to come in with two bananas and chicken salad sandwiches in her personal item. The dog's handler demanded the traveler's immigration card, and "corrected" the YES/NO answer about whether she was bringing in food. So there. Little doggy didn't make no never mind about the snacks I had in their original—US—packaging; we'd safely chowed down our Catalonian bread and produce before attempting the crossing.)

8 divided by 292,226 is... not a lot

The Daily Beast's terse report of Judge Wood's terse order says that only 8 items out of nearly 300,000 seized from Michael Cohen by the FBI are protected by attorney-client privilege.

I read through the laundry list, and didn't quite see how they came up with that 8 figure, from the 160-some items flagged by the special master. Almost all of those were about Cohen's communication with his lawyers, for his defense against the charges he's facing. Seven deemed "highly personal" and unrelated to the court matters. One item in special master limbo.

So call it 162 out of 292,226. 0.06%-ish. Seems that 99.94%+ of Cohen's business was not attorney business.

22.June 2018

Bad news

It was a relief to be out of the mainstream of US political news for a while. Not terribly surprising that things seem even worse than before as we catch up. "We were the leader of the free world," now being looted by a grubby little man and his grubby little children. Paul Krugman, on the Fall of the American Empire:

"[A]ll the things happening now are of a piece. Committing atrocities at the border, attacking the domestic rule of law, insulting democratic leaders while praising thugs, and breaking up trade agreements are all about ending American exceptionalism, turning our back on the ideals that made us different from other powerful nations."

American prosperity will not be squandered in a day, of course. The pointless and expensive attempt to distract from the investigation into the corruption at the root of the Trump administration struggles to stay on the front page with the supposed "immigration crisis" theater. Krugman's on that too: The Return of the Blood Libel, with a genuinely frightening image captured by Tom Brenner at the MAGA rally in Minnesota on Wednesday, illustrating the "breathtaking" "speed of America's moral descent under Donald Trump."

"In a matter of months we’ve gone from a nation that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to a nation that tears children from their parents and puts them in cages.

"What's almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it's not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren't happening. They're just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities."

Live and learn

A friend's "thought for the day" yesterday, from James Joyce kicked off the season. With a gentle rewrite to make it serve for all of us: "One's errors are the portals of discovery."

Then today, from Roy H. Williams, author and marketing consultant: "A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether."

If you live long enough, you can forget some of the wisdom you've collected and have a chance to learn from making the same mistakes over again. No matter how much of a wise guy you are.

That thought came to mind while driving to the airport last night, to collect the last of our luggage from two weeks in Europe. A wise man does not check a bag... even on that last leg to home. No harm done in the end, just a day's delay to accommodate Lufthansa's errant notion that 45 min. is enough for an international connection.

Also, that doesn't rise quite to the level of "wisdom," more in the realm of a "travel tip." As we unpack our bags, we'll see if we can unpack some of the deeper wisdom from our time away.

19.June 2018

Serendipity abundance

There are inevitable slights and bruises in travel, and away from home, they capture more attention. But we go to encounter the new, the longed-for, the imagined, and we always find less, and much more than we bargained for.

Yesterday morning, our second stop at a small shop selling meat and cheese, the same clerk with good English who had waited on us on Saturday greeted us as if we were old friends, accommodated our order and listened to what we had done and were going to do, and gave a friendly suggestion to put on some sunblock for the day.

After the morning grocery shopping, and the circuituous walks of Metro connections, the Plaça de Catalunya, wandering through passages brought us to the surprise of the Església de Santa Anna, nearly swallowed by the city growing up around it, still announcing its presence with a well-timed bell. (We were aiming for it, actually, but had no idea how subtle the path, and entrance before coming upon it.) One of the fellows inside—living there, perhaps?—brought a smile to my face and a reason to introduce myself by his WISCONSIN shirt. (He was from Senegal, in fact; and I suspect had no idea where or what my home state was like.) No chance to sing there, but the acoustics were on display with lovely enough recorded music playing.

Out on the Avinguda del Portal l'Àngel, chi chi shopping, the high-end hotel district, and best locale for pickpockets, we rode the elevator to the top of the department store for a peek out the cafeteria windows, and escalatored down the levels of lovely, no price tagged goods, and then the next Metro jump, after an impossible maze of tunnels and stairs. Close to one of our destination attraction, we sat down on a shady bench too close to a busy street, had an early bit of lunch (which is to say around noon here). Consulting our guide book, we saw that the "retreat" of 20th c. industrialist Rober Suris now housed the Catalan Tourist Agency, and it was just up the street. In Palau Robert we read that "you can see exhibits in one of three exhibition spaces," and found that we could in fact see exhibits in three spaces, numbered 1, 3 and 4.

Per què? Carme Solé Vendrell is on through most of September, and a charming tour of the life and work of the illustrator of more than 800 books. Upstairs, there was a retrospective of Antoni Bernad, "the Catalan fashion and portrait photographer" we'd never heard of, but found quirky and delightful, especially after enjoying the video interview of him (with English subtitles). Not something we would have sought out, but a gem.

We found room 4 after enjoying a stroll around the lovely palm-shaded garden (where we might have enjoyed our lunch stop), and the Testimonis de l'oblit #2 exhibit sans English. The photographic visit to "four major crisis areas and the people who endure them," the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Niger, Ethiopia and Colombia was amply powerful beyond the languages we don't read well. Exiting through the open air passage in front of the Gallery Hotel, we realized we had made a loop back to the same corner where we'd sat for lunch.

Just down the street, our nominal destinations, Casa Milà and Casa Batlló, with intentions to enjoy only the exterior, in favor of the Big Goal of the day, the incomparable and unfinished masterpiece of the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família. For that, the modest, but not insignificant discovery that the Metro change between L2 and L4 does not involve an unpleasant underground walk through a long, unadorned tunnel (as some do) and a series of stairway descents and ascents (as nearly all do).

Awaiting our ticketed entry time, we grabbed the first shady bench spot available in the park across the street, and quietly conversed without engaging the fellow we were sharing it with. Just before it was time to get up, Jeanette thought we should talk to him, and struck up a conversation. (This would have happened sooner if I had not sat in the middle, I'm sure.) He turned out to have excellent English (taught English, he said), was from Egypt, worked in Kuwait, and travelled about... on his own? Not sure. But he seemed on his own here, and for the third time in Barcelona, had yet to go into the Sagrada Família for reasons we did not get to. The €30 entry is no small thing, but by his account of where all he'd visited, it didn't seem it could be just that.

Not his religion, presumably (nor ours, for that matter), but such remarkable architecture... and here he was, near its shadow sitting in quiet contemplation in the afternoon. We said friendly good-byes and proceeded to the entry queue, where we found the ticket control system not terribly fussy about early arrivals. We made it through the main entry, and the tower entry scans 10 minutes or so ahead of schedule, and had all the time we wanted (on average, between us). If you could tune out the heavy foot traffic surrounding you, you might like to come early in the morning and stay all day to watch the light shift from cool blue through the nativity façade's windows to fire-red in the afternoon passion.

17.June 2018

Party of one

Raúl Labrador gets a nice sendoff, I guess it is, from Politico. The Friday Cover is headlined with Idaho's outgoing Congressman's epigraph: "This Is a Place That Just Sucks Your Soul."

He seemed ever-focused on ideology and symbolism (and TV time) to me; his lamentations about everyone else's shortcomings neatly misses any of his own. He's more disillusioned, is he? He thought the messianic fervor of a gaggle of inexperienced freshman could bring back small government? Everything is broken. Except Don Quixote's indomitable spirit and self-certainty.

"It’s an understatement to say Labrador has failed to fit in. He is, in the words of one friend, “the angriest man in Congress,” an abrasive critic of Washington whose time here only darkened his outlook. He is a loner, even by House Freedom Caucus standards, a Mormon who doesn’t drink and has no interest in socializing. Hardly any member of Congress has been tougher on his own party’s leadership, and less popular on Capitol Hill as a result. There were surely no tears shed in Speaker Paul Ryan’s office when Labrador announced last year that he would leave and run for governor of Idaho, and no small celebration at Boise’s chamber of commerce when, in May, Labrador lost the Republican primary to Brad Little, the lieutenant governor and party favorite."

The initial run at making the federal government smaller was to cut a relatively modest $100 billion from the get-go. It was a nice, round number, but a bridge too far. (As Idaho's Governor, if only, he promised to do even more, which is to say less. 25%? 30% was it? When you're taking pie out of the sky it doesn't have to make actual sense.)

It's not just a "fair critique," but a damning summation of Labrador's pointless time in office that "many Tea Partiers were more committed to headline-grabbing obstruction than the diligent pursuit of policy changes." Credit where due: it was more than a "perception" that "he specialized in creating problems rather than solving them."

With the rest of his party, working together after a fashion, he ensured that the Affordable Care Act's implementation would be hamstrung in every way imaginable, that the economic recovery from the creative finance real estate bubble would be as tepid as possible; that there would be no compromise of any sort on immigration; and that the GOP would be ripe for takeover by a demagogue campaigning on all the failures of the system that Labrador abetted.

There is some magical thinking in that disgruntled back bench. Take it from his pal, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, after Labrador had been easily dispatched in his bid for Majority Leader, after Eric Cantor was deposed by a no-nothing far right primary challenger:

"[W]e don't have many communicators in our conference as good as Raúl. He's very, very persuasive."

To a very select group, it turns out.

7.June.2018

The coming disaster

H/t to Frank Rich for tweeting a link to Andrew Cohen's Monday take for the Rolling Stone: A Memo to Manafort and Trump: Mueller Already Knows the Truth. We've been at a bit of a remove from the news for a couple of days, so there may be new chapters written already? A few things struck a chord for me, in light of my recent work as a witness in a legal case with nothing whatsover to do with politics. That has involved lots of documents, lots of history, lots of legal verbiage, and lots of hours in practice sessions for two depositions (done) and trial (later this month). Much, much less interesting than the Big Show, which goes like this (with my emphasis):

When we last got a glimpse of this secret interview preparation, from earlier this spring, it was not a pretty picture. The Wall Street Journal reported in May: "In an informal, four-hour practice session, Mr. Trump's lawyers were only able to walk him through two questions, given the frequent interruptions on national-security matters along with Mr. Trump's loquaciousness, one person familiar with the matter said." Loquaciousness is one word for it. Bullshit is another. The Journal's report continued: "'Anyone can see he has great difficulty staying on a subject,'" one person familiar with the legal team's deliberations said."

Next up is former Governor, and former federal prosecutor Chris Christie, supposedly going to be asked "to turn Donald Trump into a cautious, measured, honest deponent," as Cohen put it.

If you've ever given a deposition, you might recognize that as exceptionally dry wit worthy of a laugh-out-loud. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as we say.

5.June.2018

Your face here

The story is all about how Apple is still thinking different, and have you noticed that "we might not even recognize how distracted we've become" by gadgets, while up on the screen, OMG WE CAN TURN OUR OWN FACES INTO EMOJI THAT KNOW WHEN WE'RE STICKING OUR TONGUES OUT!

Ok, that's actually been a thing for like four years already, but OMG PEOPLE.

My friend P

There are so many distractions these days. As we wakened to the dawn's early light, and the local birds had their Executive time, there was talk about pardons, and don't you have to be guilty before you get pardoned? You know, like Richard Nixon, and Oliver North, and Joe Arpaio ("America's contemptible sheriff," unless that's David Clarke I'm thinking of). Anyhow.

As the wheels of justice grind, the measureable results come out slowly. Here's one: Paul Manafort, out on bail, accused of violating the terms of his release.

"Prosecutors said that Mr. Manafort tried to contact witnesses by phone, through an intermediary and through an encrypted messaging program. One witness told the F.B.I. that Mr. Manafort was trying to “suborn perjury,” prosecutors said. Two witnesses provided the texts to the F.B.I., which also searched Mr. Manafort’s cloud-based Apple account, according to court records."

It's not easy letting go of privilege. For his part, the president says he hardly knew the guy who was in charge of his campaign for half of 2016, and what me worry if they throw the guy in jail? "Mr. Trump’s lawyers say Mr. Manafort has nothing incriminating to provide."

Are you sure?

"Mr. Trump has tried to distance himself from Mr. Manafort and repeatedly noted that the charges are not related to Mr. Manafort’s time as campaign chairman. And they do not address the central question of Mr. Mueller’s investigation: whether anyone with the campaign conspired with Russia to try to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump’s lawyer has floated the idea of a pardon for Mr. Manafort."

Floated. If you take that jump to NYT reporting in late March, you'll find they said the trial balloon went up before Manafort was indicted. Not that there's... anything wrong with that? Weirdly enough, it's under discussion. Take your pick of pro (Jack Goldsmith, opining about how "absolute" the power is) and con (Samuel W. Buell, professor of law at Duke University):

“The framers did not create the power to pardon as a way for the president to protect himself and his associates” from being prosecuted for their own criminal behavior, he said.

Where are all those Originalists when we need them, to tell us whether the Framers did, or did not envision the President as All-powerful? It's hard to imagine the Framers could have envisioned a Congress as supine as the not-fighting 115th under the "leadership" of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

3.June 2018

Admiral Akbar, paging Donald Trump

Today's left lead story: EPA Chief has Cozy Ties to Coal Baron (and have you heard the one about the administration preparing to invoke emergency powers from the Cold War to order grid operators to buy electricity from ailing coal and nuclear power plants?).

And right lead story: TRUMP IS EXEMPT FROM QUESTIONS, HIS LAWYERS SAY. Somehow, this country that was impelled to separate itself from a long train of abuses and usurpations, and a tyrant who refused his Assent to Laws has come to the point where a couple of lawyers can opine that l'État c'est Lui.

As reported by Michael S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Matt Apuzzo, a 20 page letter that was sent to Special Counsel Robert Mueller in January, insists "that he cannot be compelled to testify" and what's more, "that he could not possibly have committed obstruction because he has unfettered authority over all federal investigations." (Said letter should be on everyone's summer reading list, don't you think?)

"Mr. Trump’s lawyers fear that if he answers questions, either voluntarily or in front of a grand jury, he risks exposing himself to accusations of lying to investigators, a potential crime or impeachable offense."

Or as Trump lawyer extraordinaire Rudy Giuliani put it, "the reality is, we're not going to sit him down if this is a trap for perjury." Given the constancy of Trump's lying—on the record in the 2006 libel suit he brought against the author of TrumpNation over his inflated claims of net worth, and lost, for one remarkable example—there is zero percent chance Trump could testify for 4 minutes let alone 4 hours without committing perjury. Said author, Timothy L. O'Brien, told the story a year ago: My lawyers got Trump to admit 30 times, under oath, that he lied.

When a reporter asked Trump if he would testify about his version of events "under oath" with the Justice Department's special counsel in the Russia probe, Robert Mueller, the president said, "One hundred percent." And Trump elaborated, "I would be glad to tell him exactly what I just told you."

Since it's almost summer, time for reruns. Take yourself back to May 11, 2017, just after Trump fired James Comey and kicked his obstruction of justice into high gear (and long before James Comey's book, and book tour, from which we could all see for ourselves what sort of person Comey is), to that amazing NBC News exclusive interview of the president with Lester Holt.

"Look, he's a showboat, he's a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil, you know that, I know that, everybody knows that."

Anything else, Mr. President?

Firing Comey was absolutely his decision. Never mind the supposed justification penned by the Deputy Attorney General. "I was going to fire regardless of recommendations."

But what about that Rod Rosenstein fellow, the Deputy Attorney General?

"He's highly respected, very good guy, very smart guy, the Democrats like him, the Republicans like him. ...

"When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said 'you know, this Russiar [sic] thing, with Trump and Russia, is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.'"

Ok, so much for that showboatin' Jim Comey, but what about the Russia investigation then?

"Look, look, let me tell ya, as far as I'm concerned, I want that thing to be absolutely done properly. When I did this now, I said, I probably, maybe, will confuse people, maybe I'll expand that, you know I'll lengthen the time, because it should be over with, it should, in my opinion, it should've been over a long time ago, because all it is, is an excuse, but [sniff] I said to myself, I might even lengthen the investigation, but I have to do the right thing for the American people."

Fast forward 8 months, Timothy O'Brien published another opinion about having watched Donald Trump testify under oath, the day after the president popped into a meeting of reporters and his chief of staff to volunteer that he would "love to" to talk to Mueller under oath.

"I'm looking forward to it," he said. Maybe in the next couple of weeks. That was January 24, 2018.

The letter from John M. Dowd and Jay A. Sekulow wrote as Counsel to the President (with the helpful annotation by the NYT reporters) was dated January 29, 2018. In it, you may read about how "candor and engagement" have been encouraged, as opposed to "adverserial hostility." Also the President's "desire for transparency."

But.... actually testifying, you know, under oath, the legal team wanted to make it very, very clear that that's out of the question, because, you know, there would be perjury. For sure.

In case you wondered: it took 5 years for Trump to lose that libel suit against O'Brien.

raveling

Tom von Alten