Quid pro quo, or not?

William Taylor's opening statement in his deposition as part of the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry included a description of a 7 September 2019 phone call between Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland, as relayed to Taylor by NSC Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs Tim Morrison.

According to Mr. Morrison, President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that he was not asking for a “quid pro quo.” But President Trump did insist that President Zelenskyy go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelenskyy should want to do this himself.

Donald Trump may have insisted he was not asking for a quid pro quo, but does his assertion fit the facts? Here's Taylor's description of Sondland's conversation with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy subsequent to Sondland's 7 September call with Trump.

The following day, on September 8, Ambassador Sondland and I spoke on the phone. He said he had talked to President Trump as I had suggested a week earlier, but that President Trump was adamant that President Zelenskyy, himself, had to “clear things up and do it in public.” President Trump said it was not a “quid pro quo.” Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelenskyy and Mr. Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelenskyy did not “clear things up” in public, we would be at a “stalemate.” I understood a “stalemate” to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance.

"Stalemate" only makes sense if there's some kind of interaction. In business and diplomacy, negotiations stalemate when neither side is willing to change its bargaining position.

Trump knew Ukraine needed the military assistance Congress had approved but that he was refusing to disburse. If Trump had a different reason for holding up that aid, a reason that would stand public scrutiny, he would have told Zelenskyy.

The only reasonable conclusion is that Trump was holding up the assistance in order to extort a public announcement that President Zelenskyy would "investigate" Joe Biden in order to dig up "dirt" that Trump's campaign could use in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. (Trump also wants whatever flimsy vindication can be conjured up for the nonsensical conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.)

"Give me dirt on Biden and I'll give you your military aid." That's the message Trump was sending Zelenskyy.

In the truth-telling world, we call that a quid pro quo — literally, this for that.

Whether Trump was lying or being an imbecile, his insistence that he wasn't asking for a quid pro quo is simply false.

Trump's defenders will repeat until the end of time that he never asked for a quid pro quo. Sondland himself tried to parrot that line, not just in the 8 September phone call with Taylor but in subsequent text messages to Taylor. Taylor, not being a fool, saw through that bullshit.

So do the rest of us.

Yes, it was a quid pro quo. And no amount of bullshit from Trump or his defenders can change that.

Is it an impeachable offense? Different question but as long as I'm writing — yes, it goddamned well is impeachable, too.

Trump leveraged the power of the presidency to extort a foreign head of state for personal gain. He wasn't acting in the interests of the United States. That's a violation of his oath of office, which requires him to act in the nation's interests, not his own.

You may love Trump, you may think he has gotten a raw deal from those of us who didn't vote for him, but you goddamned well ought to see what a terrible precedent his extortion sets for future presidents — including those you might loathe.

He has grossly abused the power of his office in exactly the way some of the Founders worried a president might. He must be impeached. I would also urge Senate Republicans to give serious consideration not just to convicting him but to removing him from office. There are a ton of reasons he is unfit to be president (and Congressional Republicans will privately concede most of them) but this incident alone is sufficient to justify that extreme step,

Of "executive power"

The United States Constitution, in Article II, Section, 1, states:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

Curiously, nowhere in the Constitution is "The executive Power" defined.

Prof. Julian Davis Mortenson took a stab at figuring out what "executive power" actually meant to the generation that wrote the Constitution. His piece begins, somewhat provocatively, "Is the president a king?" Put so baldly the question sounds "absurd", as Mortenson admits, but "[a] great many lawyers, politicians, judges, and policy experts think the U.S. Constitution builds from exactly that starting point". One of those judges is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and one of those lawyers is Attorney General William Barr. In short, imperial-presidency advocates carry a lot of weight in our current government.

As for Mortenson (spoiler alert!):

After years of research into an enormous array of colonial, revolutionary, and founding-era sources, I’m here to tell you that—as a historical matter—this president-as-king claim is utterly and totally wrong.

Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the Revolutionary War: Britain's George III is no hero in any American telling of that tale. The astonishing thing, then, is that so many otherwise intelligent people think the Constitution would grant the president such royal power.

(Lest you think this is an anti-Trump hit piece, by the way, Prof. Mortenson notes that both Obama and W also argued for arguably over-broad interpretations of presidential power when it suited them.)

This is an important piece to read if you want to understand what the founding generation actually intended the president to do in our government. It wasn't much, at least at the beginning of the republic.

Prof. Mortenson has a warning for textual originalists, as so many conservatives today are:

You can advocate originalism in constitutional interpretation. You can support the imperial presidency. But you can’t do both at the same time.

However you feel about presidential power, you owe it to yourself to read this relatively short but cogent piece.

The rot in our democracy

In a piece in The Atlantic, Prof. Marty Lederman and Ben Wittes (editor in chief of the respected blog Lawfare) carefully review the impeachment inquiry being conducted by the House of Representatives into Donald Trump's 25 July 2019 phone call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Of greater importance, though, are their insights into the context of the call — specifically, what the call says about Trump and his world view, and what the reaction to the call says about us.

Trump defenders want us to believe that impeachment is only appropriate for a violation of the law. Lederman and Wittes know better.

The president’s derelictions are far more profound and more fundamental to the constitutional order than a mere violation of the criminal code. To use the scholar Charles Black’s canonical test for whether impeachment is warranted, Trump engaged in (1) extremely serious conduct that (2) corrupts or subverts the political and governmental process and “tend[s] seriously to undermine and corrupt the political order,” and (3) is “plainly wrong in [itself] to a person of honor, or to a good citizen, regardless of words on the statute books.”

Lederman and Wittes note that while both Nixon and Bill Clinton had their defenders, those defenders argued that the wrongdoing didn't constitute an impeachable offense. No one argued that no wrongdoing had occurred.

Yet that’s effectively where we find ourselves now—confronted with a president, and some of his defenders, who would insist that abuses of presidential authority are unexceptional or, worse still, consistent with the president’s constitutional oath and duty.

In the long run, this defense of Trump’s Ukraine machinations may well prove more corrosive than what occurred in the July 25 conversation itself. ... [W]e’re perilously close to the point at which there may no longer be a national consensus that there’s anything constitutionally problematic about using governmental powers to advance one’s own pecuniary and electoral interests.

The fact is, Trump followers' identification with Trump has gotten so problematic that they can no longer see an attempt to hold him accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors as not merely sanctioned, but required, by the rule of law. To those followers, any attempt to hold Trump accountable is nothing less than an attack on them, singly and collectively. Because Trump loyalists make up the largest constituency in the Republican Party, that party's lawmakers have refused to condemn what they know — or at least knew, before Trump came along — is Trump's copious track record of degrading the office of President.

The time of reckoning is at hand. Congressional Republicans now must ask themselves if their desire to stay in office is worth killing their consciences and bidding farewell to their morals. Their souls are at stake.

If Congressional Republicans continue to honor the demands of those of their supporters whose moral compasses have been deranged by Trump, all in hope of remaining in office, those lawmakers will have betrayed their oath and their country. They know what they're witnessing in Trump is abhorrent to the nation. They know he debases his office with his shameless greed and corruption. They know he is more sympathetic and attentive to the needs of Vladimir Putin than to ordinary Americans.

The damage Trump has done goes way beyond his own misdeeds. He has debased the country's sense of right and wrong. Impeaching him for a phone call seems like a ridiculously small amount of punishment for such grave harm — but it might be all we can do. Let's at least not blow it.

Our integrity and honor are at stake.

Dems, do you want to succeed?

Democrats and their sympathetic allies like me are anxious to end not just Don Trumpone's corrupt and corrosive presidency, but the reactionary and toxic hold of Republicans at the national (and often, the state) level.

Now, as a climate-change worrier (though I'm transitioning to resignation), I'm first and foremost concerned with mitigating our nation's catastrophically bad impact on our air, water, and soil. However, in terms of practical politics, I recognize a giant blind spot in Democratic policy discussions that is of far greater moment than climate change.

How will Democrats address the economic left-behinds?

I know, this is not exactly a new topic, and to some degree it has been part of many 2020 Democratic presidential candidates' talking points. However, it hasn't been central to anyone's, not even Elizabeth Warren's.

The reason we're talking a little more, and even contemplating doing a little more, about climate change is that Gov. Jay Inslee made that the singular focus of his campaign. Inslee, of course, ended his presidential bid after failing to attract enough support to participate in recent debates. However, his campaign's message lives on, and thank goodness for that.

Unlike climate change, which has a too-esoteric, too-distant relationship to everyday life for most people to care (though their children and grandchildren do and will vilify us for being so damned shortsighted and stupid as they suffer the consequences of our inaction), economic dislocation is an issue everyone cares about. Livelihoods being eliminated by technological and political changes hit as close to home as you can get.

Here's one canary in this coal mine, which just happens to be about coal mines in Wyoming.

A decade ago, about half of U.S. electricity came from coal-fired power. Now it’s below 30%, a shift that heavy equipment operator Rory Wallet saw as utilities became less willing to lock in multiyear contracts for Belle Ayr mine’s coal.

“The market’s changed,” Wallet said. “The bankruptcies all tie into that.”

The market's changed. Don Trumpone tapped into a lot of voters' anxiety that "the market's changed" when he promised to resurrect coal's role in the national economy. I doubt many in coal country believed he could turn back the clock that far — but at least he told them he gave a damn and he was willing to go to bat for them, however futilely.

I assume Hillary Clinton was concerned about those out-of-work coal miners, too, but she didn't send much of a message on that score.

Wallet, 40, followed his father, an equipment mechanic, into the Belle Ayr mine in 2008. He said the recent mine closures and loss of his $80,000-a-year job took him by surprise.

He has four children, ages 11 to 16, and his wife’s job at the Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant in Gillette is their main income while they await news about the mines.

Wallet didn't do anything wrong. He took a high-paying job that allowed him to support a growing family. Through no fault of his own, that job disappeared. A similar one might come along but there's no guarantee, and odds are he wouldn't be the only one competing for it if it did.

That story is one that both parties have been happy to ignore for decades, since at least the 1970s. The reckoning for Democrats came in 2016 when the unthinkably awful Don Trumpone squeaked into office by talking to the nearly economically dispossessed. (As many have observed, those already dispossessed tended to favor Democrats; Trump picked up those who were desperate not to fall off the economic ladder.)

What he told those fearful of losing everything was the sheerest bullshit and he is emotionally and intellectually incapable of actually helping them, but did anyone on the Democratic side compete with him?

Well yes, Bernie Sanders did. However, Democrats didn't nominate him.

I'm not a Sanders fan but his message that the system is rotten and needs major overhauling, not little tweaks, resonates. The original sin of our headlong embrace of globalization half a century ago has not yet been addressed: no politician cared what happened to the ones who lost their jobs.

Democratic Party, if you want to be relevant outside cities and tech hubs, you can't give the same tired answers to the same tired question, "What happens if I lose my job?" You must tackle the much scarier question, What do I do if my livelihood disappears? — and in your answer(s) you have to bring the same energy, focus, and depth of thought that Jay Inslee brought to his climate-change plans.

The problem with Shane Gillis

Saturday Night Live recently announced three new cast additions. One of them was a comic named Shane Gillis.

Unfortunately for SNL, Gillis has an extensive history of making ugly, derogatory remarks about Asian Americans, among others. Vulture's Megh Wright goes into more detail about that history and includes links to some of the material.

I only had the stomach to listen to the first of the items Wright cited, an excerpt from a podcast Gillis co-hosted. It's ugly. What is worse news for Gillis is that it's not funny. That's not a rebuke, that's an observation.

Gillis and his co-host obviously got their rocks off mocking a culture different from their own. That's the kind of humor that appeals to young boys, and by "young" I mean under the age of twelve. The rest of us outgrew it when we learned to be decent human beings.

Gillis and his ilk will dismiss my complaint as "political correctness". I've written about that twice before. Once was in a request to Rep. Mike Bost not to use the term "Orientals". In that request I noted, "... 'political correctness' is a term seemingly used only by those uninterested in the principle at its heart: civility — common courtesy".

The other mention was in a discussion of the racist massacre at a South Caroline church in June 2015. I digressed slightly from that topic to rebuke comedians who were then complaining that political correctness was shackling them, making them afraid to rake risks.

There has been a minor fuss raised by some comedians of late, railing against so-called "political correctness" and its supposedly deleterious effects on their standup routines. I almost blogged about it, but I thought Jerry Seinfeld's idiotic whining didn't deserve any more attention than it had already gotten. My feeling was and is, if you as a comedian can't figure out how to make people laugh without visiting tired stereotypes, maybe it's time to find a new job.

The impulse that keeps an audience from laughing when a comic makes an easy joke based on a dumb stereotype is the same impulse that keeps us from succumbing to the mindless contempt for somebody else based on irrelevant characteristics like race. It's a sense that tells us, "This ain't right". It's a moral compass. It's a conscience.

Gillis falls squarely into the camp of comedians who ought to find other work.

I say that because he pretended to apologize:

“I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.”

Bullshit, Shane. You're not happy to apologize to anybody and you sure as hell haven't apologized to anybody. You're pissed that your old material — some of which is only as "old" as 2018 — has resurfaced with such a vengeance, and you're worried that the blowback could cost you your new gig.

I don't know how to reach someone as defiantly close-minded as Gillis. I only know that his wide-ranging and simpleminded contempt for others, including gays and women as well as Asian Americans (and likely Asians generally), can't be written off as a necessary rough edge for comedy. That's a lazy excuse put forward by people who don't give a shit about denigrating people who are already targets of bigotry.

SNL, I don't give a shit if you fire Gillis. I really don't: I don't watch. What would give me a little hope would be if executive producer Lorne Michaels promised to take Gillis in hand and teach him to be a better person.

Not your job, Mr. Michaels? Perhaps not. In that case, then, you'll be judged by the company you keep and hire. We'll just have to accept that you don't mind, perhaps even endorse, Gillis' deep contempt for others and his penchant for punching down.

Honestly, I don't want to turn Gillis into a pariah who can't get work because of his crummy past behavior. I want Gillis to become a better human being who understands exactly why the rest of us condemn what he currently thinks, or pretends to think, is just "edgy" comedy. I want him to turn his life around and help to undo the harm he has done.

[UPDATE: I guess Lorne Michaels wasn't interested in taking on the challenge. Gillis is out.]

Illegality vs. danger

The CIA pulled one of its most important intelligence sources from Moscow in early 2017.

CNN initially reported the story. In its report, CNN claimed:

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.

The disclosure to the Russians by the President, though not about the Russian spy specifically, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure, according to the source directly involved in the matter.

The clear implication is that the CIA was spooked by Trump's big mouth and feared that sources would be inadvertently outed because he doesn't know how to keep his trap shut.

In its own reporting on the story, the New York Times clarified that the CIA's concern predated the new administration:

As American officials began to realize that Russia was trying to sabotage the 2016 presidential election, the informant became one of the C.I.A.’s most important — and highly protected — assets. But when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia’s election interference with unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.’s Kremlin sources.

C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia.

So Trump wasn't solely, or even primarily, responsible for the CIA's decision to extract this Russian source.

But can there be any doubt that other sources are nervous about the Blabbermouth-in-Chief?

As noted in the above quotation from CNN, Trump blew an Israeli intelligence source. He has had multiple private conversations with Putin, conversations whose contents he refuses to discuss and which he took deliberate care were not witnessed by any other U.S. person. If he were motivated solely by patriotism, he wouldn't have objected to the presence of others who could have attested to those conversations' contents.

In short, Trump has contempt not just for national secrets (as opposed to personal ones, i.e., his own) but for the national interest.

The usual defense of Trump's imbecilic handling of sensitive data is, "He's President. He can declassify anything he wants." And so he can, under the law.

And as every honest observer knows, THAT TOTALLY MISSES THE POINT.

Legal actions are not always wise ones.

If the president who blabbered the Israeli intelligence data to the Russians had been named "Obama", every Republican in the country would have screamed that Obama was a secret Muslim selling the country out. (A lot of them said that anyway.)

If the president who held private discussions with Putin, unwitnessed by any other American, had been named "Obama", every Republican in the country would have taken to the streets, torch and pitchfork in hand, screaming, "TRAITOR!!!".

But because the president who did these things is named "Trump", Republicans have pretended that "legality" is the only concern.

Bullshit.

Legality is not the issue, judgement is. And Trump's judgement is appalling. One could argue that it's nonexistent. He is a feckless, thoughtless moron incapable of comprehending the gravity of the national secrets with which his office is entrusted. Worse, he is devoid of the empathy needed to feel the weight of his responsibilities and to exercise his office's authority with commensurate discretion.

Spare me the "it's legal" argument. That's bullshit and we all know it.

Trump's a threat to everyone who puts his or her life on the line to acquire intelligence for this country.

The wrath of con

The U.S. House of Representatives formally condemned Don Trumpone's recent tweets attacking four House members, all of whom are women of color. The vote broke down largely along party lines with only four Republicans joining all Democrats and new ex-Republican Justin Amash to pass the resolution.

Trump himself urged House Republicans to hold firm prior to the vote.

“Those Tweets were NOT Racist,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body! The so-called vote to be taken is a Democrat con game. Republicans should not show ‘weakness’ and fall into their trap.”

What follows might be obvious to many. However, I suspect that any number of Trump supporters will not know it and I want to explain it as calmly as possible.

Trump told Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan to "go back" to what he called "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came".

As it happens, three of those representatives were born in the United States. Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia but emigrated to the U.S. and became a naturalized citizen.

All four of them are therefore citizens of this country. Just like you, I would guess.

Now, unless you're Native American, you or your ancestors came from somewhere else. Your ancestors might have come from multiple different places, in fact.

How would you feel if you were told to go back where you came from? Not just told, but told in a hostile tone of voice (even if you were told by tweet).

Would you interpret that as, "Go back to the house you woke up in this morning"? Of course not.

Would you take it as, "Go back to the state/county/town where you were born"? Again, no.

There is only one way to interpret "go back where you came from": it's another way of saying, "You don't belong in this country".

You grew up here. Your family and friends are here. You know no other home. You pledge allegiance to no other nation. Yet none of that counts. As far as the one who told you to go back where you came from is concerned, you don't belong.

If that's incomprehensible to you, it's because you're white.

I know, bringing race into the conversation is inflammatory. Yet it's at the heart of the matter, whether you like it or not.

You might want to believe it's a coincidence that none of the four House members Trump targeted was white. You might want to believe Trump's denial tweet, quoted above. You might want to believe that having Ben Carson, an African American man, and Elaine Chao, an Asian American woman, in his Cabinet means that Trump can't be racist.

Above all, you might want to believe that if you don't know you hold racist views, you aren't racist. Nobody wants to be accused of being something he isn't conscious of being, and being called a racist is only a little less toxic and offensive than being called a child predator.

I get all that. But the things you want to believe very likely aren't true.

Trump didn't target House members whose ancestors came from France or the UK, both of which many Americans, including Trump, are fond of considering troubled nations. He targeted people — women, in particular — who are obviously not white.

House members who are white, both male and female, have criticized Trump many times over the last three years. He didn't tell them to go back to their ancestors' homelands. He saved that message for four non-white women.

Why?

Because "go back where you came from" is a favorite message of racists.

The message brands you as racist.

It reveals that you don't think that people who look or sound different from you could possibly have been born here. It reveals that you think they aren't entitled to live here.

So when Trump angrily declares he doesn't have a racist bone in his body, he is simply wrong. However much you want to believe that he isn't racist, he is. However much he wants to believe he isn't racist, he is.

I doubt Trump worries about being racist but he does worry about being thought racist. That might make some of his supporters think hard about whether they really want to stand with him through thick and thin.

In short, he's conning us. Or rather, he's conning you, his loyal supporters.

Trump gets publicly angry because a lifetime in the murky world of real estate development has taught him that most people back down in the face of visible anger. Scared people don't unmask con men: that's the lesson he has absorbed to the depths of his being. His vehemence isn't a sign of his innocence, it's a sign of his commitment to his con — and of his urgent need to keep you committed to it as well.

There is no way to stand with Trump on those tweets without getting the stink of outright racism all over yourself. If you are okay with those tweets, you are racist.

Are you?

Electronic voting cannot be secured

A while back I argued that governments should adopt only electronic voting systems that run on open-source software.

I have to take back that advice.

“You simply can’t construct a trusted paper trail,” [Georgia Tech professor Richard] DeMillo says, “if you let a machine make a ballot for you.”

...

... some of the nation’s leading experts on computer science and elections concluded that there is no “technical mechanism currently available that can ensure that a computer application—such as one used to record or count votes—will produce accurate results.” One reason the authors noted: Malicious software “can be introduced at any point in the electronic path of a vote—from the software behind the vote-casting interface to the software tabulating votes—to prevent a voter’s vote from being recorded as intended.”

Translation: wherever computers are involved in the voting process, bad actors could corrupt the software. Whether that means some votes are ignored or altered, whether it happens at the polling place or a county central facility, the vote will have been subverted.

The problem with my original recommendation is that there is no way for people to know what the software on a given computer is actually doing. In general we cannot even know with certainty whether a computer is running the software the vendor intended.

You might object that we all use computers every day in spite of this concern, and that things pretty much work out as expected. Why, therefore, should electronic voting machines be any different?

The answer is, electronic voting machines carry out a task that is hugely important to the country, a task whose consequences affect millions. That gives bad actors a tremendous incentive to penetrate and to subvert such systems, far more incentive than they have to break into your computer or mine.

If you take the problem of subverted computers seriously you can make such subversion a lot harder. The trouble is that elected officials don't take the problem seriously. They're too ignorant of computers and software to grasp the problem's potential scope. Or worse, they're too concerned with fighting the bad press from past elections. Such seems to be the case with Georgia state senator William T. Ligon, Jr. He is not familiar with the fatal vulnerabilities of software systems, nor does he comprehend exactly how they work.

... Instead, Ligon cites the testimony of former Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox as one of the reasons he chose to back a system based on touch-screen voting machines that print out a paper ballot.

Cox told the legislature about “under votes, over votes, and stray votes. They all come with hand-marked paper ballots,” Ligon says. It is clear to him that printed ballots bring more certainty. When asked about research demonstrating that voters don’t or can’t verify their ballots when printed, Ligon said, “Voters have to take some responsibility for verifying their ballots.”

Ligon's familiar with all the fiascos that embarrassed Florida in the 2000 election but he has no clue about the ones that will engulf him and his colleagues if Georgia's electronic voting systems are cracked. All he understands is a PR nightmare from two decades ago. Talk about fighting the last war.

By ignoring voters' predictable behavior, Ligon demonstrates contempt for voting itself. Worse, the supposed verification he cites as the safeguard for election security is absolutely meaningless. The votes that will be counted are the digital ones, not the ones on the paper record. (If you were going to count paper ballots you wouldn't need software at the polling place at all: you'd make people mark their ballots the old-fashioned way.) Subverted software could print a faithful representation of the voter's choices while altering or ignoring the digital record. And again, it's the digital record of the vote that will be counted (or not).

These are not hard problems to understand, but you have to be willing to learn from experts. Ligon is not willing to learn. And he likely has a lot of company. Between willful ignorance (whether from anti-intellectualism or simply finding the concepts difficult to grasp) and a thirst for campaign contributions (electronic voting companies throw a lot of money around to entice officials to buy their products), we can expect that too many jurisdictions will make the foreseeably harmful choice to adopt vulnerable electronic voting systems.

Guys like Ligon have to be held accountable: their feet have to be held to the fire until they listen to the experts who understand these things.

In the meantime, voters must demand paper ballots, no matter how cumbersome and primitive they seem.

Glitz versus greatness

The so-called leader who ducked out of military service in Viet Nam has ordered the military to participate in Washington, D.C.'s annual Fourth of July festivities.

White House officials have said Mr. Trump’s speech is not intended to be political, but rather an homage to the military and to the United States. Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said, “The president loves America and wants to help all Americans celebrate our nation’s independence with a salute to America on the National Mall.”

If what made the United States great was its military, the United States would not have earned the respect of millions (at least before Don Trumpone waddled into the Oval Office).

The U.S. military was a relatively minor component of the nation before World War II. People didn't emigrate to the United States for more than a century because they lusted after its military hardware. They came because they heard the siren call of the nation's promise that all men could be free.

The history of this nation has been a struggle to live up to the ideals enshrined in the Constitution. Those ideals and our determination to embody them in the way we live are the wellspring of this nation's greatness.

To highlight the military on the national holiday that celebrates the country (rather than a religious event like Christmas) is to misconstrue the very nature of the country. The military is a fine institution but it's no accident that it is subordinate to the nation's civilian authority. The nation's heart is its commitment to shared ideals.

Trump comprehends none of this. He is obsessed with surface impressions, with visuals and sparkle. Fighter jets are impressive, tanks are impressive, and that makes them emblems of greatness in his eyes. If he could get a Ford-class aircraft carrier onto the streets of D.C., it would be part of his plans for the Fourth.

Anyway, Trump is uniquely incapable of uniting this nation around shared ideals. Even before his 2016 campaign he specialized in divisive, ugly rhetoric (birtherism, demonizing the Central Park Five, lying about Arab Americans cheering the fall of the World Trade Center towers) because he is incapable of inspiring others. He can only conceive of himself triumphing and others being vanquished. "Greatness" is reserved for him and his adoring followers alone.

Military parades, France's Bastille Day celebration notwithstanding, bring to mind tinpot dictators trying to distract their unhappy populaces. The comparison is all too apt in our own case, I fear.

Trying to link the military so tightly to the nation's "greatness" besmirches both. Trump will go to his grave not understanding that. The rest of us, however, must.

Pence is mistaken — as usual

The Vox piece is headlined, "Pence tells graduating Christans to be ready for attacks on their faith".

In his remarks, he warned students of the attacks they’d face just for being religious. Often, he said, they’d be asked to not only tolerate but also endorse values that go against their beliefs. He added that those who tout tolerance are often the least tolerant of traditional Christian values.

What traditional Christian values might trigger such intolerance?

Karen Pence, who sat in the crowd during the speech, received “harsh attacks” in January after she returned to teach art at a Christian school that bans LGBTQ teachers and students, Pence said in his speech. He characterized the incident as an “un-American” attack on Christian education and vowed to protect the First Amendment, which upholds freedom of religion.

Mike Pence is okay with Christians who will not tolerate the presence of LGBTQ teachers or students. He is not okay with those who object to that intolerance of LGBTQ people.

And what's the justification for calling the latter "un-American"?

Why, the fact that freedom of religion is enshrined in the Constitution.

Now, I thoroughly approve of the First Amendment's prohibition against the government supporting or opposing religion. However, I have deep misgivings about how far freedom of religion has been taken.

Too many religious adherents would like that freedom to extend further than it should: they celebrate idiocies like Indiana's stupendously misguided 2015 legislation prohibiting state and local laws that "substantially burden" people following their religious beliefs. Such laws provide cover for anything that a believer claims is required by his religion — including a religious business owner denying service to whomever he likes. Hello, colossally wrongheaded Hobby Lobby decision (which I've discussed at some length elsewhere: see the above link for the citations).

Answer me this, Mike Pence: why is your religious intolerance of non-heterosexuals just fine and dandy, but my thorough dislike and condemnation of bigoted Christians like you not okay? Why is the latter, in fact, positively un-American in your eyes?

Let me help you. The reason you can throw around the loaded expression "un-American" is that the Founders were wary of religious oppression by the government. They did not, however, mean to let the likes of you oppress others in the name of your religion. Your characterizing of criticism of your faith as "un-American" is nothing more or less than a grotesque misreading of the First Amendment.

In fact, the harm your wife suffered from criticism does not compare to the harm inflicted by you and your LGBTQ-hating ilk on a still-marginalized minority, harm inflicted by laws like the aforementioned 2015 one you tried to enact when you were governor of Indiana. You tried to elevate the privileges of religious adherents above that of everyone else. Talk about "un-American"!

You are so blinkered by your faith that you can't see your hypocrisy.

You also are so hung up on writ that you have lost sight of the fundamental decency that religion is supposed to inculcate. You dare to condemn people you don't know based on what they do with other consenting adults in the privacy of their bedrooms?

You're telling the world you think non-heterosexuals are evil: that is, after all, the only excuse your wife's school can have for banning them. I can guarantee you, though, that that school has employed, and admitted as students, people whose hearts are less pure than some of those it has refused to employ or to admit as students over the years. That's just the way life is. Being heterosexual doesn't make you purer, hard as it is for you to see that, Mike.

This post will not change your mind, Mike, I know that. You will continue to fear and loathe non-heterosexuals for as long as you draw breath.

However, you need to know that those of us not in the thrall of religious blindness see through your literally holier-than-thou bullshit.

Don't try waving the Constitution at us and bleating that loathing and reviling your bigotry is "un-American".

The rest of us are upholding this country's ideals by rejecting your intolerant principles.

The White House doesn't want election security

It's hardly a surprise, but now we (or at least I) have on-the-record quotations from a White House spokesperson confirming that the White House killed election-security legislation last year in the Senate.

The Rules Committee planned to advance the legislation last August but postponed it after criticism from the White House and some state officials.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said at the time that if Congress wished to continue pursuing the Secure Elections Act, it should not “violate the principles of federalism.”

“We cannot support legislation with inappropriate mandates or that moves power or funding from the states to Washington for the planning and operation of elections,” she said.

Heaven forbid that states be required to have minimum security standards for little things like our elections.

The White House simply is not a credible voice when it comes to ... well, anything these days, but particularly not when it comes to anything related to our elections. Our domestic Dear Leader is apparently so touchy about the continuing furor over Russian interference in the 2016 election that Cabinet members can't even bring the subject up in the context of protecting the next election.

The trouble is, the only one Donnie's obstinacy and indifference to electoral integrity benefits is him. The rest of us? We get him for another four years, along with who can guess what other bizarre and untrustworthy results.

Look, I know that if you support him it feels like the rest of us are out to get him come hell or high water. You think we'll say anything to boot him from office, fairly or otherwise.

But get this straight: Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

If the Russians had jumped in on Hillary's side, you would have broken out the pitchforks and the torches. You would have called on the rest of us to join you because you would have been enraged that a foreign country messed with our decision. You would have done that even if Hillary had lost, in spite of their support.

Does that give you a better idea of how the rest of us feel, knowing that the Russians interfered on Trump's behalf?

The bottom line is, the Russians have no fucking business messing with our, or anybody else's, election.

We are overdue to harden our elections against them (and other bad actors). Yet the White House killed Congress' prior attempt to respond, rather than working with Congress to fix the bill.

Even if you love Trump, you can't let him leave our elections open to interference. That would betray the entire country.

This is what ethical and moral bankruptcy look like

According to Rudy Giuiliani:

“There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians,” Mr. Giuliani said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that he would have argued against using it, “out of excess of caution.”

Guiliani would have argued against it "out of an excess of caution"? Sorry, Rudy, your ass is still very much uncovered and hanging out in the wind.

To the statement, "There's nothing wrong with taking information from Russians", there is but one answer:

In the context of a campaign, yes, there fucking well is!

That you and your client won't acknowledge that, Rudy, is merely the latest proof that you and he are bereft of a moral compass. There is no "wrongdoing" in your world view except that which defies your client's will.

It is absolutely farcical that you and he bleat on about "exoneration" when there is ample hard evidence — hundreds of pages' worth in Mr. Mueller's report and in your client's own innumerable public statements — that the only thing your client didn't do was to come to a formal agreement with Russia's intelligence services to work together.

That you and he do not comprehend how appalling it was to accept any kind of foreign aid for his campaign, especially foreign aid that came in the form of illegal penetration of computer systems, loudly proclaims how indifferent you both are to the rule of law and how unfit he is to hold high office.

A lawyer indifferent to the rule of law at the very least must be disbarred.

A president indifferent to the rule of law at the very least must be turfed out of office.

Whether you each should also serve prison sentences is an excellent question.

It's not about Trump, it's about our elections

I haven't had a chance to read the Mueller report yet. However, based on the glosses I've heard from cable news (I know, such a reliable source), what's clear to me is that Don Trumpone's possibly criminal actions are a secondary matter for us citizens.

The most important thing Congress has to do for us is to prevent Russia or anybody else from messing around in our elections.

I'm not saying Don Trumpone didn't commit crimes. However, if we have to choose between pursuing him or safeguarding our elections, I regret to say that there is no choice. It will do us no good to punish Don Trumpone if Russia or North Korea or somebody else can screw us over in the 2020 election.

And unfortunately, Don Trumpone's endless emission of lies and inflammatory rhetoric coupled with his multitude of corrupt actions in and out of office have created a myriad of possible investigative trails — so many that Congress might well be unable to pursue them all in any real way.

Clearly Don Trumpone himself is not going to lift a stubby finger to prevent foreign interference. If anybody is going to act in defense of our elections, it will have to be Congress, and possibly just Democrats in Congress, I regret to say.

That defense must be Congress' priority.

Billy and Donnie, sittin' in a tree...

The Justice Department has discussed the Mueller report with the White House, per the New York Times.

Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about the conclusions made by Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, in recent days, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have aided the president’s legal team as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings.

As Neal Katyal reminded us on Maddow tonight, Don Trumpone was a subject of the investigation. What in the hell is the Attorney General doing, sharing an investigation's findings with its subject?

Oh, but Donnie was exonerated, his defenders say. Well, that was only Barr's interpretation of the report. Nobody else has read it!

Oh, but Barr is an honorable man, Trumpers say. Really? That's not what the record indicates. Just Security has a fascinating look at an eerily similar fiasco centered on Barr during Bush 41's administration. At that time Barr announced a startling new DOJ policy permitting the FBI to conduct extraterritorial arrests. Congress wanted to look at the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo Barr had authored justifying the new policy. Barr refused, citing what he claimed was a long history of keeping OLC memoranda secret. (He was wrong, to make the kindest possible interpretation.) He offered to summarize the memo instead.

Congress was dissatisfied with the summary and subpoenaed the original memo. It eventually was released, of course, at which point everyone discovered that Barr's summary misrepresented the original memo.

Doesn't give me warm, fuzzy feelings about Barr's truthfulness or honor. Especially since Barr got his job in no small part because he wrote a memo, before being nominated for the AG job, decrying Mueller's investigation as illegitimate.

Barr is behaving as the sycophantic crony Don Trumpone always wanted in the AG job, a crony who will do everything he can to defend the boss, justice and his oath of office (to the Constitution, remember) be damned.

I don't know what Barr sees in Don Trumpone. I wonder if Barr stands to gain materially in a way no one yet sees. I otherwise cannot understand why he has torched his reputation with a majority of the public. And yes, if my own reaction is representative of those outside Don Trumpone's base, that's exactly what Barr has done to himself.

Congress requires the unexpurgated report, Mr. Barr

The highly redacted version of Robert Mueller's vaunted report is slated for release Thursday, according to the Justice Department.

I want the whole damned report. So do a lot of others. Unfortunately, we're not entitled to it.

The problem is that William Barr, who as AG ultimately oversees bowdlerizing — excuse me, redacting sensitive material in the report, has declared that Congress isn't entitled to the redacted material, either.

I'm not buying that, Mr. Barr.

Barr has identified a few categories of evidence that he insists must be redacted from Mueller's final report:

• Evidence provided to the grand jury
• Sensitive intelligence
• Information concerning still-pending investigations
• Information that might hurt the reputations of people investigated but not indicted

Let's take these in order.

Ordinarily, if a grand jury doesn't vote to indict, that sends the message that those accused of wrongdoing were not guilty of that wrongdoing, in spite of whatever suggestive or inflammatory evidence was available. Sealing the evidence provided to that grand jury protects the accused from being found guilty in the court of public opinion.

However, Justice Department policy strongly discourages indicting a sitting president. Thus a grand jury hearing about possible malfeasance by the sitting president is participating in an exercise that almost certainly will not result in charges being filed, no matter what the evidence would warrant if the subject weren't the sitting president.

The Watergate grand jury recognized this conundrum. Guided, I assume, by its collective sense of morality, that grand jury asked the judge to release the evidence it saw to Congress, reasoning that since Congress was given the power of impeaching the president, Congress should weigh the evidence against him. That precedent was followed in subsequent cases like Ken Starr's investigation into Bill Clinton.

Why not release the Mueller grand jury evidence to Congress? Isn't that the natural destination for evidence of wrongdoing by a sitting president?

Somebody has to ask a judge to release grand jury testimony. In addition to Barr, who already has told Congress he will not ask, the Mueller grand jury itself could ask, just as the Watergate grand jury did. Why hasn't it? Did the Mueller grand jury decide the evidence it saw should not be released? Did it not know it had that power? Did the idea never even arise?

Now, as to sensitive intelligence, it's clear the public is not entitled to such information. Congress, however, routinely reviews such intelligence. The relevant committees have well-established procedures to safeguard it. They have to have all possible intelligence information in order to know how best to safeguard the country, after all.

Why is Barr refusing to provide the House Intelligence Committee with the relevant underlying evidence found by Mueller's investigators?

I'll give Barr a pass on material relevant to ongoing investigations. As far as I know, Congress doesn't routinely get such information.

The fourth category of redacted information, material that might affect the reputations of unindicted persons, seems fishy. After all, one person we know the Justice Department would be unlikely to indict is the president himself. To use the pretext that he wasn't indicted as an excuse to conceal damaging evidence about him is perverse. At the very least, Congress has to evaluate the evidence for itself to decide whether impeachment is warranted.

Even if you believe that people other than the sitting president ought to be protected from disclosure of damaging information, you come back to the problem that AG Barr is fatally compromised as a trustworthy overseer of the redaction effort. His pre-appointment memo dismissing the validity of the Special Counsel's investigation ought to have prompted him to recuse himself from oversight of the investigation, including its release. We simply cannot trust AG Barr to redact anything without suspecting the redactions will protect this president.

The public will have to wait for decades to see the unredacted report, I suspect. Congress, however, must see it now. It's why the public elects representatives — they have to have access to material the rest of us can't be trusted to see.

You have no fig leaf, AG Barr. You're stonewalling on behalf of the most corrupt president in modern history. You're complicit in his corruption and his criminality.

The admissions scam in novella form

Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic penned a splendid recounting of the college-admissions bribery scam — you know, the one that ensnared Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, among others — entitled, "They Had It Coming".

Flanagan informs the piece with her own experience as a teacher and guidance counselor at a tony Los Angeles prep school thirty years ago. She could see the Huffman/Loughlin scandal coming, not because she knew either of them but because she knew the type of parent they represent. That kind of parent existed back then, too.

We may yet find that the allegations are overblown or even unsupported. I doubt that, but anything's possible, especially when a case involves celebrities: both sides have a lot of incentive to distort reality.

Even so, the truths Flanagan finds resonate in these times. She tells an old-fashioned type of tale, the morality play, stylishly and well.

The stupidest robocall tactic

CNN's headline is "It's not just any call. It's from your number".

The article is about robocalls that use numbers of people in your phone's address book to get around our understandable refusal to answer if we don't recognize the originating number.

Using my friends' and family's numbers would indeed be a heinous step up from the often badly chosen fake numbers used by the useless parasites of the world today.

But your own number? That's a different story.

The article's writer picked up the call out of sheer curiosity. What was she expecting, that her phone was calling to see how she was? Of course it was a scammer.

The easiest fake call to spot is the one that purports to come from your own number.

Now, the geniuses who pursue this line of moneymaking haven't all figured this out: at least one of them has tried it on me. The attempt was amusing, I'll admit. Yet even the dimmest bulb will eventually realize what a stupid tactic it is.

In the long run, better gear up for your "friends" and "family" to be threatening you with jail for unpaid taxes that can conveniently be paid off with prepaid debit cards.

Barr is covering for Trump

Attorney General William Barr has been sitting on Robert Mueller's report for a week. He supposedly is busy redacting "four categories of information":

grand jury information, information related to intelligence sources and methods, information pertinent to ongoing investigations and anything that could harm the "reputational interests" of "peripheral third parties."

As Rachel Maddow noted, Robert Mueller's team filed dozens if not hundreds of indictments and other legal briefs to federal courts, all or nearly all of which contain heavy redactions. Mueller and his team knew their report would be of intense interest to the public. It's inconceivable, then, that they would not have prepared a redacted version of the final report.

Barr, therefore, need not spend time redacting at least the second or third categories of information. As for the first, grand jury information, prior investigations into Watergate, Whitewater and other alleged presidential misconduct all provided grand jury information to Congress; a prosecutor need only seek permission from a judge. Barr, however, has not indicated he is seeking such permission. Why not?

As to the fourth category, "reputational interests", where is that defined in the law? What gives Barr the legal right to redact on that ill-defined but presumably highly subjective basis?

Don Trumpone and his cronies get themselves into trouble by lying to and withholding information from both law enforcement and the public. At least one of those cronies, Paul Manafort, has tried to lie to the courts, too. The consequences have been unpleasnat for him.

Barr may have had a sterling reputation going into his confirmation hearings, but that reputation is shot now as he dances as fast as he can to avoid providing every word of Mueller's report to anyone but Rod Rosenstein and himself.

The public may not be entitled to see sensitive intelligence discussed in Mueller's report. but Congress, and especially the intelligence conmmittees, are entitled — under the law.

As for the rest, I don't know whether we, the public, are entitled to see testimony given to the grand jury. I'm certain we aren't entitled to see information pertaining to ongoing investigations.

But "reputational interests"?

If Mueller didn't charge a person, it's because he didn't have evidence that that person committed a crime. But that person might have behaved in a way that makes the rest of us queasy. He might, for instance, have shown a painful inclination to trust Vladimir Putin over fellow Americans. That's just one possibility, of course. In any case, if that person occupies a position of trust in our government, do we, the public, not have a right to know such a thing?

Even if there's an argument to be made that the public should not see such information — and to be clear, I don't imagine there is such an argument — there is absolutely no way to justify withholding such information from Congress.

Congress is not limited to investigating crimes. Congress may investigate anything that its members deem necessary. Given that members of Congress take an oath to defend the Constitution, it's their sworn duty to investigate anything that may threaten the nation. They not only have the right, they have the positive responsibility to see if Mueller's team uncovered any non-criminal but still threatening activities. "Reputational interests" are irrelevant to "national (security) interests".

If Barr redacts as much information as he's suggesting he will from what he provides to Congress, I would argue he is obstructing Congress from fulfilling its Constitutional responsibilities.

Every second Barr delays getting the full report to Congress, along with its underlying materials, lends weight to the suspicion that he is protecting Don Trumpone by eating up time Congress requires to digest the Mueller report and its implications.

Barr may be comfortable with Don Trumpone but the rest of us aren't. Everything Barr has done so far makes us less and less comfortable with him, too.

Despite Barr's intervention, we still aren't done

My last entry was written before William Barr summarized Robert Mueller's report for Congressional leaders.

Since then, of course, Barr's later top-line finding — that Don Trumpone didn't conspire with the Russian government to throw the 2016 election — has dominated the news. Trump supporters celebrate it and demand that the rest of us move on.

Hold on a sec.

First, we have not seen Mueller's report. We have only heard Barr's summary of it.

Second, according to Barr, Mueller didn't feel he could come to a conclusion on whether Don Trumpone obstructed justice. Nevertheless, Barr's letter to Congressional leaders declared,

The Special Counsel's decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime.

Why did Barr believe he had to decide?

A little history sets the question in its proper context. By the time of Watergate, the Justice Department had already established its policy that a sitting president could not be indicted. That meant that the results of the grand jury investigation into the scandal could not result in an indictment even if the facts warranted. Yet it would have been perverse if the grand jury findings had simply disappeared into a file cabinet. So with the permission of a judge (grand jury proceedings are normally not made public), the findings were shared with Congress. The reasoning was, if the findings warranted action, only Congress could take it.

If Mueller didn't feel he could definitively state whether or not Don Trumpone obstructed justice, it might well have been because he felt bound by the aforementioned Justice Department policy. That, in turn, would mean only Congress could decide what to do with Mueller's findings.

Even if that's not the reason Mueller did not issue a finding on obstruction of justice, the fact remains that he didn't. So, again, why did Barr? Why did Barr feel the need to do so? And again, if Mueller couldn't decide, how could Barr after spending only forty-eight hours with the data Mueller spent twenty-two months gathering and pondering?

As far as I can tell, Barr improperly substituted his own judgment for that of Mueller and Congress.

The only way for the rest of us to know whether Barr behaved improperly is for him to release Mueller's entire report. The version for public consumption likely will have to be redacted in part, but an unredacted version must be made available to appropriate members of Congress.

And yes, we still have our homework to do. We have to read Mueller's final report for ourselves.

Mueller's done: we aren't

Robert Mueller has wrapped up his work as special counsel.

We don't know what he found under his remit to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump".

Presumably we'll find out what's in the report soon. However, we have gotten entirely too hung up on Mr. Mueller's investigation.

I'm not discounting his work. It has resulted in indictments, guilty pleas and in the case of Paul Manafort, a conviction by a jury. It has produced a mountain of evidence of malfeasance by Trump associates. It has turned up evidence of criminal behavior outside the special counsel's remit, evidence that has been or is being pursued by other U.S. attorneys' offices. That's a lot of bang for the buck. (And this is just what we know publicly.)

However, the significance of his final report has been overstated. It doesn't mark the end of our work as a nation. It's just a milestone.

What's next?

Attorney General Bill Barr must release the report — unedited by the White House. (Redactions by Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller are okay.)

The public must digest the report.

Congress, in addition to digesting the report, must continue its own investigations into suspected Trump administration misconduct. Congressional investigations have a wider scope than Mr. Mueller's and may well turn up information he did not.

What if Mr. Mueller's report doesn't include any evidence of criminal behavior on Trump's part?

It doesn't change much. We already know the doughy Don is not fit to hold office. The question is whether enough of the public can be awakened from its delusive faith in him to acknowledge that.

We have been choking on the stench from what most of us suspect is Trump administration corruption ever since he took office. Multiple Cabinet secretaries have been forced to resign because of ethical violations. Trump himself has refused to release his tax returns or to divest from his financial holdings while in office, as his predecessors since Nixon did. He overruled the recommendation of experts to secure a high security clearance for his son-in-law (and who knows who else). He bragged of firing James Comey to end the investigation into his campaign's links to the Russian government. He revealed sensitive, classified intelligence, garnered by a close U.S. ally, to Russia.

Not all these actions are criminal. Nevertheless, they are not acceptable for any officeholder, including the president. And impeachment does not require criminal conduct. Congress determines what constitutes impeachable behavior.

In addition to using the presidency to enrich himself, which is incontrovertible (and, in case you've forgotten, illegal), we are left to wonder: is he also compromised by a foreign nation, compelled to do its bidding under threat of blackmail? Might he also be hiding what he knows or suspects are criminal acts he and/or his staffers committed?

Wholesale corruption, coercion by a foreign power (or by a domestic one, for that matter), obstruction of justice — any of these should be grounds for impeachment.

Unless, that is, you're okay with a president squirreling away millions of dollars in what are effectively bribes laundered through his business, or being under Moscow's thumb, or letting his friends get away with murder (metaphorically or, heaven forbid, literally).

What we already know of Trump's own actions, as well as those of his staffers and associates both during his campaign and while in office, stinks to high heaven. More indefensible behavior may come to light: Congress, U.S. attorneys, federal agencies including the I.R.S., states, and cities are pursuing civil and criminal investigations above and beyond Mr. Mueller's.

Mr. Mueller's report doesn't mark the end of anything except his job as special counsel. The real work is just starting — and it's up to the rest of us.

We have to decide whether we'll continue to suffer Trump's corrosive and un-American corruption of our democracy.

Yeah — the fate of our nation is on us. Not Mr. Mueller. Us.

Going after dead people

Out of nowhere, the toddler-in-chief recently whined that he hadn't been thanked for supposedly approving a state funeral for the late John McCain.

It's not clear that the honors our domestic Dear Leader approved constitute a "state funeral", at least as Wikipedia describes one. However, set that aside and assume that McCain's services in D.C. did constitute a state funeral. Suppose, too, that the McCain family didn't drop a little thank-you note through the White House mail slot.

So what?

Shouldn't a president have better things to do? (I was going to ask "Doesn't" rather than "Shouldn't", but clearly this president really doesn't.)

Oh, and Donnie? You're doing a bang-up job of showing how big and brave you are by going after a dead man. That's so presidential, Donnie. That'll get you the respect you crave.

Once again, you've shown yourself to be thoroughly useless.

Avoiding all-or-nothingism discussing female politicians

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) had a somewhat tense encounter with some young Green New Deal activists recently. I haven't seen the video of the encounter but I find the headlines of the commentary pieces illuminating. Either Feinstein is a doddering old fool who condescended to passionately idealistic youngsters who would have preferred she help them change the world, or, as the subtitle to an Atlantic piece put it, "Confronted by passionate schoolchildren, the senator held a master class in patience, grace, and asserting her well-earned authority".

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has been accused of abusive behavior by (anonymous) former staffers, first in BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post, then in the New York Times. Again, the commentary has been illuminating (especially since I've read some of it), with opinions split between "there's no excuse for throwing stuff at your staff, no matter your sex" and "isn't it odd that female senators top the Senate's 'bad boss' list?". An example of the latter comes from Laura McGann in Vox; her piece is, "The suspiciously sexist views of Amy Klobuchar's management style, explained".

Yes, it is odd and troubling that, as McGann notes,

Of the top 10 “worst bosses” in the Senate in 2016, seven were women and just three were men. At the time, then, about a third of female senators were worse bosses than nearly 96 percent of all male senators. That could be objectively true. Or maybe there’s something else going on.

The accusation that sexism underlies Klobuchar's former staffers' complaints does not sit well with them since so many of those who spoke to reporters were women. As McGann notes, "Their point is that women can be bad bosses. They should be held accountable for their actions, even if men have gotten a pass for too long."

Then McGann continues:

At an individual level, this makes sense. ...

In aggregate, though, there’s a red flag waving above the Klobuchar narrative. The breadth of complaints extend beyond egregious behavior. The handful of truly bad boss moments from the last decade-and-a-half are dwarfed by more modest complaints that are taken to an extreme. Klobuchar once quipped that she was so thirsty she’d trade three of the staffers next to her for a bottle of water. Is it the nicest thing to say? No. Is it probably a joke? Yes. Is it proof a decade later that she shouldn’t be president? Come on.

That second paragraph is an example of what's wrong with the defenses of Klobuchar I've read.

There are more serious complaints about Klobuchar that merit discussion and consideration. She blocked (however passively) one of her aides' opportunity to work in the Obama Treasury Department, McGann notes. That may, in the end, not be relevant to how she'd do as president, but offhand I can say I'm glad I know that happened. She threw a binder in anger; it hit one of her staffers. She apparently wasn't aiming at the staffer. These things are good to know. Whether binders hit anyone or are intended to hit anyone might not matter: some might wonder whether throwing binders at all is something a president should do.

McGann points out, correctly, that men who are objectively putzes are seen as "strong" leaders, with the famously volatile and abusive Rahm Emanuel being the quintessential example of an asshole who nevertheless hasn't been hurt by his eruptions.

Maybe he should have been.

Maybe we should have been less than happy that Obama chose Emanuel as his chief of staff. Maybe we should have registered our disgust with Emanuel's bothersome track record.

Maybe Congress should have refused to seat Rep. Greg Gianforte after he body-slammed a reporter. You might think he's a man's man (and if so you and I should not socialize) but is that kind of quickness to violence what you really want in the guy supposedly trying to work with other elected reps to get stuff accomplished?

Maybe it's not good enough to give Klobuchar a free pass just because a bunch of men have gotten away with just as bad, or even worse, behavior. Maybe it would be better to stop holding men to a laxer standard.

As to Feinstein, the Atlantic piece by Caitlin Flanagan makes her out to be the patient, wise elder teaching a bunch of ignorant, misbehaving children that the world isn't all unicorns and rainbows.

It’s the most wildly transgressive thing you’ve ever seen. Children are our future! They must be coddled and exalted, their ideas about politics and the environment received as though they are the unpublished thoughts of Bertrand Russell. Seeing their rudeness treated in the measured and unyielding way that adults use to speak to misbehaving children is weirdly thrilling.

The condescension that oozes from every line of Flanagan's piece is difficult to stomach, especially since it emanates from a sense that women past a certain age have a wisdom that does not permit contradiction. In fact, the problem with Flanagan's piece isn't Feinstein's attitude so much as Flanagan's. Feinstein might well have been justified in lecturing these kids, but Flanagan asserts not just that Feinstein has earned her right to be dismissive, but that the kids had it coming to them for being so entitled as to insist on a meeting with their senator.

Flanagan's piece characterizes those who demanded the meeting as "[a] group of jackbooted tots and aggrieved teenagers". Oh, that was your attempt at humor? Ah. Well. It flopped. As did your whole argument.

Maybe it's possible to admit that Feinstein was justified in being exasperated with her very young constituents' stridency, even while admitting that their concern is about as justified as anything can be. Maybe explaining all the reasons she thinks she can't help was less useful than figuring out how she could.

For crying out loud, you don't have to be a raging misogynist to think Klobuchar's and Feinstein's critics might have a point. You also don't have to think Klobuchar or Feinstein is unfit for public office to be one of their critics, either.

It is not an attack on women, or female politicians, or even these female politicians, to admit to being troubled by these stories. Not, anyway, unless you relish ass-kicking and consdescension when perpetrated by a man. Which I don't, and which I'd bet a lot of others don't, either.

Can we get a little nuance, people?

(I have a suggestion that might help, especially with the Klobuchar situation. Can we get a few stories about why the men on the Senate's "bad bosses" list go through staffers so quickly? Do they throw binders, too? Or do they do even worse things, perhaps?)

Trusting Trump is fatal

Andrew McCabe's book, to be released tomorrow, is already being pilloried by Trump supporters. They're pointing out that he's an alleged liar (the FBI's inspector general accuses McCabe of lying to department officials about leaks to reporters) and accuse him of attempting a coup against Trump by contemplating removing Trump from office via the 25th Amendment.

So the choice before us is, should we trust Andrew McCabe or Donald Trump?

That's not a choice that should comfort Trump or his supporters. In fact, Trump's supporters really should question whether their trust in him is well-advised.

First, let's consider the 25th Amendment story. The 25th Amendment requires buy-in from not just the Vice President but a majority of the Cabinet. Trump picked every one of these people. Could they have been enticed or coerced into taking such action?

Well, if they could have been enticed, they wouldn't be trustworthy or loyal. That would speak poorly of Trump's vetting process and/or his judgment of character.

If they could have been coerced, that would suggest the Deep State (TM) has truly frightening power. Yet consider this: nobody has tried it. If the Deep State (TM) has that power, why hasn't it acted?

The more logical interpretation of McCabe's 25th-Amendment story is, Trump's outward behavior and statements were so at odds with U.S. national interests that senior government officials whose job it is to watch for threats to national security had to consider the possibility that he was acting with ulterior, dangerous motives.

Now, as for McCabe the alleged liar, let's assume he did lie as the FBI inspector general says. That's one proven lie. Trump has lied hundreds if not thousands of times, in public. He lies as readily as he eats.

Even if McCabe is found to have lied as the FBI inspector general alleges, his credibility is infinitely better than Trump's. Trump has zero credibility except among his own supporters.

Trump lies to justify his misbegotten policies. He accuses legitimate experts, including his own Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, of lying or being deluded when they contradict him with facts and truth.

Trump lies by omission, too. He will not produce his tax returns. What has he to hide? (Incidentally, his claim that his returns are unavailable due to being audited is also a lie: the IRS does not prevent him or anyone else from releasing a return that is being audited.)

Why hasn't Trump told anyone else in his administration what was said in his private meetings and phone calls with Vladimir Putin? Why did he try to hide that those meetings and calls even took place?

Is Putin holding something over Trump's head?

Is Trump acting in Putin's best interests rather than the U.S.'s?

Trump doesn't just lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. He lies about really, really important things, too, things that affect the whole country — like the fact that Russia attempted to sway the outcome of the 2016 election.

Trusting Trump isn't just unpatriotic. Trusting Trump is fatal for the country.

[UPDATE: Corrected to note that it was the FBI's inspector general, not the Department of Justice's, that accused McCabe of lying.]

Amy Klobuchar didn't address the biggest critique of her

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show tonight. Maddow asked the senator about the several stories now getting a fair bit of play about what a problematic boss she is. To quote the Politico piece (which itself cribs from the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed):

The run-up to Klobuchar’s expected presidential campaign launch on Sunday was sidetracked by former aides, speaking anonymously for fear of retribution, who described a toxic office environment including demeaning emails, thrown office supplies and requests for staff to perform personal chores for the senator. It’s a sharp departure from the public brand that Klobuchar has built to get to this moment: a pragmatic, aw-shucks Minnesotan who gets things done and wins her state by landslide margins.

[links omitted]

In answer to Maddow, Klobuchar acknowledged that she's a "demanding" boss, but noted that she has several long-serving staffers and that others who left later returned to her staff.

That's all well and good, but it ignores the issue at hand.

Many of us have worked for demanding bosses. However, a demanding boss is not the same as an abusive one.

I've had demanding bosses whom I respected because they never abused their authority. Such bosses weren't always shy about rebuking me when I didn't meet their expectations, but they rebuked without yelling or throwing things.

Holding subordinates to high standards is practically a job requirement for a president. But another practically-a-job-requirement is keeping your cool under trying circumstances. Klobuchar has not denied any of the troubling incidents alleged in the press, which raises the question of whether she could hold onto talented staffers if she became president.

Klobuchar herself is in a particularly tough spot because her political brand trades on "Minnesota niceness". The allegations by former staffers strike at the heart of that branding. Niceness is supposed to extend to your subordinates as well as voters and fellow elected officials. You can be demanding and (relatively) nice at the same time.

Klobuchar has to convince people like me, people who have no other reason to dislike or to distrust her, either that she understands she has a problem, or that these allegations are false. Right now they're hanging out there in the wind, shadowing her, and she's just taking pretend swings at them. She looks evasive rather than forthright.

A crappy temper is not a disqualifying trait for a president. All things being equal I'd rather have one who doesn't have that problem, but nobody is perfect and I will happily pull the lever for Klobuchar if that's her biggest flaw — but only if she recognizes it and she pledges to get help addressing it.

A question Trump must answer

Trump met with Vladimir Putin without American staff present — again — during the November 2018 G20 summit in Argentina.

The issue is not that Trump met with Putin. The issue is that Trump met with Putin without American witnesses — except for his wife Melania. Trump didn't even bring his own translator.

Trump keeps meeting with Russian officials without other Americans present.

Trump confiscated the notes of the American translator on the one occasion such a translator was present.

What is Trump trying to hide?

This is not a question Trump can be allowed to evade.

He is not running his own business, he is running the country. He does not get to whisper sweet nothings into Putin's ear, or hear sweet nothings from Putin in his own, without other Americans knowing what was said.

A normal president is entitled to keep secrets for the good of the country. However, Trump is not a normal president. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he cannot be trusted to put the nation's interests before his own. He also has never explained his unfathomable tendency to favor Russia and Putin in defiance of both national opinion and his own intelligence agencies' urgent recommendations.

Absent a clear and convincing explanation, we can only assume that Trump is acting contrary to American interests when he holds these private, unwitnessed discussions.

Trump the traitor? That may piss you off. But what else can we conclude when he goes to such unprecedented and insane lengths to keep other Americans (besides his wife) from hearing what he and Putin say?

Either Trump comes clean or he gets comfortable with "Trump the traitor" as his official title.

The real shutdown holdout

Francis Wilkinson at Bloomberg identified the real obstacle to resolving the current government shutdown: Mitch McConnell.

Some of McConnell’s Republican colleagues are looking at an uncertain path to re-election in their states. They are eager to get the government open, appear sensible, moderate and competent, and move on.

Pelosi should put the onus for doing so squarely and completely on McConnell — not Trump. After all, when two parents have a squabble, they don’t sit around and wait for their 2-year-old to resolve it.

This has been bloody obvious for weeks.

Our domestic Dear Leader doesn't give a shit about penniless federal workers whom he suspects don't like him anyway.

He doesn't give a shit about average citizens who are hurt by closed federal agencies. Again, he suspects those citizens don't like him anyway.

He doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. His bottomless neediness doesn't leave room in his shriveled heart for anyone else. So he can't be shamed into compromise or rational behavior like a normal person.

McConnell, however, is slightly more human. He's a cold-blooded political opportunist with the morals of a crime boss, yes, but he is also more sensitive to bad political optics than our domestic Dear Leader.

The Senate's resident snake has been keeping a low profile, hoping we won't notice he's hiding behind our domestic DL's abnormal girth. Those of us paying attention, however, have snickered at his excuse of needing to have a bill he knows our domestic DL will sign. That's a crock. Nobody can say in advance what Don Trumpone will do, perhaps least of all Don Trumpone himself. Reneging on agreements is a Trumpone specialty; it's why he has been sued so often. The idea that if Donnie says he will sign off on a budget, he actually will, is ludicrous.

However, by putting the onus on Donnie, Mitch hopes he can stay out of the bruising fight. That's cowardly and it's time Mitch was called on his cowardice. You got your Justices and federal judges, Mitch. Now it's time to pay the price.

Madame Speaker, bring the pain to the snake of the Senate. That's the only way this shutdown will end.

A nonpartisan suggestion for future shutdowns

Government shutdowns due to failures of budgeting are squarely the fault of Congress and the president. No matter which party controls which house of Congress or the Oval Office, the legislative and executive branches have failed to do their jobs.

Whether you deplore or cheer a given shutdown, including this one, you should feel a pang of pity for the folks caught in the middle: government employees. They are never the ones who cause shutdowns, but they're the ones who miss mortgage payments when shutdowns occur.

So if Congress and the president screw up and cause a shutdown, why shouldn't their salaries be docked until they fix their failure? Let the dollars that would otherwise go to the politicians instead go to the federal workers who are sidelined by the screwup. And neither Congress nor the president should receive back pay afterwards to make them whole. (Furloughed workers should still be made whole, minus whatever they got during the shutdown.)

Oh, and why shouldn't Congress and the president have to stay in session in D.C. until they fix things?

The docked salaries would only be a pittance compared to what the furloughed federal workers should have earned, but at least our elected representatives would share the pain they inflict by not doing their jobs.