The Commentariat -- December 22, 2017

Afternoon Update:

Eileen Sullivan & Michael Tackett of the New York Times: "President Trump signed the most consequential tax legislation in three decades on Friday, even as he complained that he has not been given credit for his administration's accomplishments during a turbulent first year. Mr. Trump decided against doing a formal signing ceremony early next year because television news networks questioned whether he would keep his promise to sign the legislation before Christmas. Mr. Trump said he saw the coverage Friday morning and hastily called his staff to say that the legislation needed to be signed 'now,' prompting a last-minute Oval Office ceremony for the president's greatest achievement in his first year in office." ...

... Naomi Jagoda of the Hill: "Congress's tax scorekeeper said Friday that the tax-cut package President Trump signed earlier in the day won't fully pay for itself through economic growth. After accounting for macroeconomic effects, the bill would reduce federal revenue by $1.07 trillion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). While that's less than the $1.46 trillion price tag the JCT put on the bill before accounting for economic growth, the committee says the bill still isn't close to being deficit-neutral. The JCT's report was released hours after Trump signed the tax package into law at the White House. The president said that the tax cuts will be 'fantastic for the economy.'" Mrs. McC: Yeah, & Ivanka Trump said the tax heist would pay for itself. So the JCT must be wrong. ...

... Jesse Drucker & Audrey Carlsen of the New York Times: "President Trump would save about $11 million on his taxes, if the new Republican tax overhaul were applied to his 2005 tax return, a New York Times analysis has found. The savings would be a roughly 30 percent cut. He would also save another $4.4 million on his eventual estate tax bill."

Mattathias Schwartz in New York: "Multiple news organizations have calculated that the death toll [in Puerto Rico] from Hurricane Maria exceeds 1,000; the New York Times, reviewing mortality data from previous years, identified an increase of 1,052 deaths during the first 42 days alone. This, too, is surely an incomplete reckoning. Even as the federal government winds down its response..., some homes are not expected to regain electricity for months. Experts are warning that, with the ballooning mosquito population and lack of clean drinking water, Puerto Rico is at risk of an epidemic. Though Donald Trump has mostly ignored it, he is presiding over a historic tragedy. By the time the island returns to normalcy, Maria could easily have surpassed Katrina to become the country's deadliest natural disaster in living memory."

Ana Swanson of the New York Times: A year ago, "Mr. Trump pledged to build roads and bridges, strengthen 'Buy America' provisions, protect factories from unfair imports and revive industry, especially steel. But after a year in office, Mr. Trump has not enacted these policies. And when it comes to steel, his failure to follow through on a promise has actually done more harm than good.... Foreign steel makers have rushed to get their product into the United States before tariffs start.... That surge of imports has hurt American steel makers, which were already struggling against a glut of cheap Chinese steel." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's amazing how many Trump voters knew he was a non-stop liar but still thought whatever he said that profited them was the one true thing.

Andrew Restuccia & Seung Min Kim of Politico: "About 100 of ... Donald Trump's nominees have been kicked back to the White House, prolonging an unusually high number of vacancies across his administration and escalating the Senate's long-running nomination wars. While the Senate agreed to keep roughly 150 of Trump's picks for consideration next year, it refused to do so on roughly 100 others, according to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office. That means the White House will have to renominate them if Trump wants them installed.... Any one senator can object to allowing a nominee to be carried over. Though it's likely Democrats are responsible for most of the rejections, Republicans also could have triggered some, too.... Democrats said the caliber of Trump's nominees warranted [the holds]. In an interview earlier this week, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said he would look for obstacles to oppose nominees with 'egregious conflicts of interest,' an 'appalling lack of knowledge about the job,' or 'who are inclined to destroy the very agencies that they;re assigned to support the mission of.'"

Rick Gladstone & David Sanger of the New York Times: "The United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Friday that significantly choke off new fuel supplies and order North Koreans working overseas to return home within two years, in what may prove the last test of whether any amount of economic pressure can force it to reverse course on its nuclear program. The sanctions, adopted by a vote of 15 to 0, were the third imposed this year in an escalating effort to force the North into negotiations. China and Russia joined in the resolution, though American officials have charged that in recent months the Russians have secretly been opening new links to the North, including new internet connections that give the country an alternative to communicating primarily through China."

Wow! Haley Invites Some Lucky Diplomats to a Party! Julia Manchester of the Hill: "U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley issued thanks to the countries that did not vote for a U.N. resolution condemning the United States' decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Haley on Thursday sent invitations to a January reception to the eight countries that voted 'no' on the resolution, as well as the 35 countries that abstained from the vote and the 21 that did not cast a vote. Haley's invitation asks the nations who voted 'no,' abstained from voting or didn't cast a vote 'to a reception to thank you for your friendship to the United States.'" Mrs. McC: How stupid is this?

Raphael Satter, et al., of the AP: "... the hacking group known as Fancy Bear ... [targeted] at least 200 journalists, publishers and bloggers.... The AP identified journalists as the third-largest group on a hacking hit list obtained from cybersecurity firm Secureworks, after diplomatic personnel and U.S. Democrats. About 50 of the journalists worked at The New York Times. Another 50 were either foreign correspondents based in Moscow or Russian reporters like Lobkov who worked for independent news outlets. Others were prominent media figures in Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics or Washington. The list of journalists provides new evidence for the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Fancy Bear acted on behalf of the Russian government when it intervened in the U.S. presidential election. Spy agencies say the hackers were working to help Republican Donald Trump."

Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have sought bank records about entities associated with the family company of Jared Kushner..., according to four people briefed on the matter. In recent weeks, prosecutors from the United States attorney's office in the Eastern District of New York subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank, the giant German financial institution that has lent hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kushner family real estate business. Mr. Kushner, who was the Kushner Companies' chief executive until January, still owns part of the business after selling some of his stake."

Billy House of Bloomberg: "... Donald Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon and his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have been asked to testify to House lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Both men were sent letters this week by the House Intelligence Committee asking them to testify in early January.... The committee hasn't yet received a response from either Bannon or Lewandowski. The invitation, which didn't come in the form of a subpoena compelling them to testify, was for a 'voluntary interview' in the committee's offices, which means it would be held behind closed doors, the official said."

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Just Kidding Edition. Judd Legum of Think Progress: "Some right-wing media outlets went to extreme lengths to discredit the women accusing Roy Moore of child sex abuse. Now, two men in charge of organizations involved in those smear campaigns claim they actually believed Moore's accusers all along.... In an interview with CNN, Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow said the claims of Leigh Corfman, who said she was sexually assaulted by Moore when she was 14, 'had a lot of credibility.'... James O'Keefe, the founder of the pseudo-journalism outlet Project Veritas, told Mediaite that he believed Moore's accusers. He didn't let that belief interfere with his work trying to discredit them, however, because 'it’s not my subject matter.' O'Keefe claims his effort was about 'bias in the media.' O'Keefe tasked an operative to pose as a fake Roy Moore rape victim and approach Washington Post reporters with a false story.... The operation failed after the Post did basic background research on the woman, but the clear purpose was to undermine the credibility of the real accusers in the Washington Post's initial report -- which O'Keefe now says he believes was accurate."

*****

The Cheese Stands Alone. Rick Gladstone & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "A lopsided majority of United Nations members rebuked the United States on Thursday, denouncing its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ignoring President Trump's threats to retaliate by cutting aid to countries voting against it. In a collective act of defiance toward Washington, the United Nations General Assembly voted 128 to 9, with 35 abstentions, for a resolution demanding that the United States rescind its Dec. 6 declaration on Jerusalem, the contested holy city. The resolution is nonbinding and therefore largely symbolic, but the vote indicated the extent to which the Trump administration's departure from a 50-year international consensus on Jerusalem's status has unsettled world politics and contributed to America's diplomatic isolation. Major allies like Britain, France, Germany and Japan voted for the resolution, though some allies, like Australia and Canada, abstained." E-I-E-I-O. ...

... "Trump Is Trying to Corrupt the U.N." Martin Longman in the Washington Monthly: "The basic premise of the United Nations, according to the Trump administration, is that the U.S. spends a lot of money on the organization and in return other members should vote the way we want them to vote. If they don't, we may punish the entire organization. We may punish individual countries in other ways by withholding or canceling economic or military or humanitarian aid. We also will react negatively to anything that can be perceived as disrespect, and if the United Nations as a whole questions our foreign policy decisions, that is definitely a sign of disrespect rather than substantive or moral disagreement.... This behavior is corrupt.... Threats we can't keep don't make us stronger or more respected, and they certainly don't increase the likelihood that we'll get the votes we want in the future. Overall, this has been a shameful and horrid day for the United States on the international stage." ...

... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: It's worth remembering that millions of Americans voted for Old MacDonald based on his overarching sales pitch that he was a great dealmaker who would use his incredible negotiating skills to MAGA. If continually issuing petty threats that alienate friend & foe alike are MAGA, then the Trumpbots were right. ...

... "Narcissistic, Vengeful Autocrat." David Ferguson of the Raw Story: "Former CIA Director John O. Brennan joined Twitter back in September but never used his account until Thursday and when he broke his silence, it was to slam ... Donald Trump. First, Brennan remembered the victims of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1998, but his next tweet was aimed squarely at the White House. 'Trump Admin threat to retaliate against nations that exercise sovereign right in UN to oppose US position on Jerusalem is beyond outrageous,' wrote Brennan, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. 'Shows @realDonaldTrump expects blind loyalty and subservience from everyone -- qualities usually found in narcissistic, vengeful autocrats.'" ...

... New York Times Editors: "Many elements of President Trump's first National Security Strategy report could have been endorsed by his predecessors.... Where the exercise runs aground is in the disconnect between the strategy, as it appears on paper, and which in some respects reflects mainstream thinking, and Mr. Trump's tweets, statements and actions that present the unpredictable public face of his policies -- including his comments ... introducing the document.... Nowhere are the contradictions between Mr. Trump and the strategy document more obvious than on the subject of Russia.... [Trump's] boastfulness and belligerence and tendency to self-aggrandizement are not only costing America worldwide support, but also isolating it. Case in point: [the Jerusalem fiasco]." ...

... Declan Walsh of the New York Times: "Vice President Mike Pence's planned visit to the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, ought to have had a particular poignancy in the days before Christmas. When he first floated the idea of a trip in October, Mr. Pence, an evangelical Christian, vowed to highlight the persecution of Christians at the hands of Islamic State extremists, and he scheduled meeting with several Christian leaders, which was sure to play well with his conservative American base.... But then on Dec. 6, President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, smashing seven decades of American policy and provoking violent protests. One by one, Christian leaders publicly canceled their meetings with Mr. Pence. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority -- a critical figure in the Trump administration's ambitious plans for a sweeping Middle East peace deal -- also canceled. Then Mr. Pence himself canceled the whole trip, saying he needed to stay in Washington to oversee an important tax reform vote -- an assertion that drew a measure of skepticism." ...

Christianity now faces an exodus in the Middle East unrivaled since the days of Moses. -- mike pence, "in a speech sprinkled with biblical references" ...

Those must be the Christians for whom Jesus parted the Red Sea? -- Patrick, in yesterday's thread

Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "In a legal victory for the Trump administration, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit on Thursday that accused President Trump of violating the Constitution by continuing to own and profit from his business empire. The complaint, filed this year in the Southern District of New York, said that Mr. Trump had harmed plaintiffs in the restaurant and hotel business, including an organization representing more than 200 restaurants and thousands of employees. The lawsuit said that the plaintiffs competed directly with restaurants that Mr. Trump owns or in which he has a financial interest and that they had suffered as a result of his failure to fully distance himself from his businesses.... Judge George B. Daniels of United States District Court in Manhattan found that the plaintiffs had failed to show that they had lost revenue because of specific actions by Mr. Trump. Even before Mr. Trump took office, the judge said, 'he had amassed wealth and fame and was competing against' the plaintiffs." Mrs. McC: Daniels was appointed by Bill Clinton. ...

... MEANWHILE. Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post: "All six defendants in a crucial trial involving demonstrators arrested during ... Donald Trump’s inauguration were found not guilty of all charges on Thursday. The trial of the six defendants ― Jennifer Armento, Oliver Harris, Brittne Lawson, Michelle Macchio, Christina Simmons and Alexei Wood ― began in mid-November. It raised major First Amendment issues and was seen as a bellwether that could determine whether the government will proceed with the prosecutions of many of the nearly 200 other defendants who have trials scheduled throughout the next year. Despite Thursday's verdict, Justice Department prosecutors appeared ready to take all of the remaining defendants to trial.... The first six to go on trial include a photographer who had solicited a news outlet for inauguration-related work and two women who acted as 'street medics' that day and were carrying medical supplies."

The Trump Russia Scandal

Caroline Orr of Shareblue: "In a move that went largely unnoticed last week, Donald Trump quietly handed Russian President Vladimir Putin ... an invitation to continue undermining American democracy, with no strings attached.... Hours after signing the annual defense spending bill called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Trump released an accompanying presidential signing statement formalizing his opposition to a slew of measures aimed at enforcing a tougher U.S. policy towards Russia. The measures, which passed with large bipartisan majorities in both chambers of Congress, focus on combatting Russian aggression in the U.S. and around the world, with a specific focus on hybrid warfare operations. They were included in the NDAA as part of a broader response to Russian election interference and ongoing influence campaigns waged by the Kremlin.... In the statement, Trump explicitly objected to over 40 provisions included in the bill, most of which were aimed at bolstering our defenses against Russian aggression. Among other things, Trump ... specifically noted his objection to the subsection directing the military and other government agencies to strengthen our defenses against cyberattacks, as well as developing new strategies to counter the 'use of misinformation, disinformation..., active measures, propaganda, and deception and denial activities of the Russian Federation in the United States and Europe, through traditional and social media.'" ...

... Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: "FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe faced numerous questions this week about his interactions, conversations and correspondence with his one-time boss, former FBI Director James Comey, spanning both the FBI's Russia investigation and its probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server, according to multiple sources from both parties with knowledge of his testimony. In private testimony before the House Intelligence Committee this week, McCabe told lawmakers that Comey informed him of conversations he had with ... Donald Trump soon after they happened, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter. The testimony suggests McCabe could corroborate Comey's account, including Trump's ask that Comey show him loyalty, which the President has strongly disputed. Comey previously testified that he briefed some of his senior colleagues at the FBI about this conversation with Trump. McCabe appeared for more than 14 hours of testimony behind closed doors in two sessions this week before members of the House Intelligence, Oversight and Judiciary committees, amid growing calls for his firing from Republicans critical of the FBI's handling of both investigations." ...

... Where "Oversight" = Collaborating & Interference. Natasha Bertrand of Business Insider: "Republican lawmakers' sustained attacks on the FBI and the special counsel Robert Mueller in recent weeks have raised questions about whether the White House has coordinated or influenced the effort. Three House Republicans most opposed to Mueller's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election -- Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz & Ron DeSantis -- have indicated that they have spoken to the White House -- and ... Donald Trump directly -- about it.... It is unclear whether [Devin] Nunes has remained in contact with Trump.... Nunes ... has for weeks been meeting secretly with a group of House Intelligence Committee Republicans to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI mishandled the contents of the Trump-Russia dossier -- a raw intelligence document compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele outlining allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow." ...

... Richard Painter & Norman Eisen in a New York Times op-ed on the ways Trump & his allies are working to undermine Robert Mueller & his investigators. ...

... Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "The selection of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) as the ranking member on Judiciary was the clearest sign yet of how seriously House Democrats consider the possibility of a full-blown constitutional showdown with Trump. You wouldn't know it from how many of them talk. When it comes to the I-word, most Democrats have walked a tightrope -- with even Nadler hesitant to mention impeachment in interviews before votes were cast Wednesday.... Nadler won [the committee leadership post in] a secret ballot 118 to 72, demonstrating that this caucus wants to be ready to clash with Trump if it vaults into the majority after next year's midterm elections." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Greg Sargent: "This is exactly what Democrats should be doing -- right now. Not just because an impeachment battle might actually happen, but also for another reason: Democrats will need to find a more effective way to talk to the American people about the serial degradation of our democracy we are seeing in the Trump era, for the good of the party, yes, but also for the good of the country.... Trump's ongoing self-dealing and abuses of power, the facts being unearthed in the Russia probes, the obvious efforts earlier this year to hamstring the FBI investigation, the blithe lack of concern about future assaults on our democracy, the uncontrollable contempt for governing norms and the rule of law, and the profound inability to grasp the most basic obligations that come with his office -- both to the public and to the integrity of our system of government -- plainly add up to an aggregate level of degradation that commands a serious effort to determine whether he is fit to continue." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Stephanie Baker & Irina Reznik of Bloomberg: Robert Mueller's team is looking into a sham U.S. foundation "financed by $500,000 in donations, mostly from wealthy Russians with ties to Petr Katsyv, deputy director of Russian Railways and a longtime acquaintance of Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika. Rather than a nonprofit helping unite Americans with Russian adoptees, the foundation was a lobbying vehicle against sanctions.... Most of the Russians financing the foundation said in interviews that they knew nothing about U.S. adoptions of Russian children, contradicting the foundation's U.S. disclosure forms.... [Robert] Akhmetshin, a former Soviet intelligence officer [who is a lobbyist for & employee of the 'foundation']..., met with senior officials of the Donald Trump campaign in New York: the candidate's son, son-in-law and campaign manager." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Luke Nozicka of the Des Moines Register: "... Donald Trump on Wednesday commuted the prison sentence of former Iowa slaughterhouse executive Sholom Rubashkin, who was sentenced to 27 years for bank fraud and money laundering, the White House said. In a statement, the White House said the decision, which is not a presidential pardon, had bipartisan support from leaders across the political spectrum, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Trump's action does not vacate Rubashkin's conviction and leaves his term of supervised release and a restitution obligation, the White House said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: For one thing, Trump sees nothing wrong with bank fraud & money laundering.

Roger Cohen of the New York Times: "If this is America...." Cohen, with a little help from Rudyard Kipling, reminds us of what Trump & Trumpistas have wrought. "This is not America. It must be fought for and won back." ...

... Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "There's been a synthesis, in which Trump and establishment Republicans adopt one another's worst qualities. Trump, who campaigned as a putative economic populist -- even calling for higher taxes on the rich -- will soon sign into law the tax plan of the House speaker Paul Ryan's Ayn Randian dreams. The majority of elected Republicans, in turn, are assuming a posture of slavish submission to Trump, worshiping their dear leader and collaborating in the maintenance of his alternative reality.... The mounting authoritarianism of the Republican Party under Trump is particularly blatant when it comes to the Russia investigation." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: You may have noticed that when today's columnists try to figure out what has gone wrong with this country, they inevitably turn to philosophers & other observers who studied Nazism & other totalitarian phenomena. ...

... Masha Gessen of the New Yorker: "Donald Trump has scored a legislative victory with staggering costs. The price of the tax bill has to be measured not only in the loss American society will face in the increase in inequality, in the impact on public health, and the growth of the deficit, but also in the damage to political culture inflicted by the spectacle of one powerful man after another telling lies of various sorts.... There is the [political speech] genre of the thoroughly insincere pronouncement that is all empty ritual.... These kinds of speeches are usually given in dictatorships: their intended audience is not the public but the tyrant. This is what we observed in Washington on Wednesday, and it's the scariest part of Trump's big tax triumph."

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "An Oval Office meeting involving President Trump and his top advisers on Wednesday devolved into a heated exchange between his former campaign manager [Corey Lewandowski] and the White House political director [Bill Stepien], people briefed on the discussion said." Trump was mellow.

Republican Family Values. Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is considering measures to halt a surge of Central American families and unaccompanied minors coming across the Mexican border, including a proposal to separate parents from their children, according to Trump administration officials with knowledge of the plans. These measures ... would also crack down on& migrants living in the United States illegally who send for their children. That aspect of the effort would use data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to target parents for deportation after they attempt to regain custody of their children from government shelters." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: As cruel as this proposal sounds, it's perfectly consistent with the Roy Moore school of philosophy. In this school of thought, the only "family values" are "white family values," so it is quite all right to tear apart non-white families. It is one thing, of course, to hear an old crank like Moore voice an opinion about superior family values in the good old, pre-Civil War days, and quite another to learn a high-level federal official is making the break-up of families part of a plan for the future. Feliz Navidad, people.

Lisa Friedman, et al., of the New York Times & ProPublica: "More than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels last seen during the Reagan administration.... The departures reflect poor morale and a sense of grievance at the agency, which has been criticized by President Trump and top Republicans in Congress as bloated and guilty of regulatory overreach. That unease is likely to deepen following revelations that Republican campaign operatives were using the Freedom of Information Act to request copies of emails from E.P.A. officials suspected of opposing Mr. Trump and his agenda.... Within the agency, science in particular is taking a hard hit. More than 27 percent of those who left this year were scientists.... Scientists, for the most part, are also not being replaced.... Political appointees, however, are on the rise."

When You Think They Can't Get Worse.... Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions is rescinding an Obama-era Justice Department letter that asked local courts across the country to be wary of slapping poor defendants with fines and fees to fill their jurisdictions' coffers, part of a broad rollback of guidance that Sessions believes overreached. It's the latest move in Sessions's effort to dramatically reshape the Justice Department by undoing many of the reforms imposed by his predecessors and giving the institution a harder edge. Sessions is revoking 25 previous guidance documents dating back decades and covering topics as diverse as ATF procedures and the Americans With Disabilities Act." Mrs. McC: Do we still have to call it the "Justice" Department?

Cold Case Files. Tom Winter, et al., of NBC News: "On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics have linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton, multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News. The interviews with FBI agents are part of the Justice Department's effort to fulfill a promise an assistant attorney general made to Congress last month to examine whether a special counsel was warranted to look into what has become known as the Uranium One deal, a senior Justice Department official said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Despite Trump's Best Efforts.... Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The Trump administration said Thursday that 8.8 million people had signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act's federal marketplace, a surprisingly large number only slightly lower than the total in the last open enrollment period, which was twice as long and heavily advertised."

** Mike DeBonis & Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "The House passed a short-term spending measure Thursday to avert a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday and advanced a separate $81 billion disaster relief bill to aid victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires. The Senate is expected to vote Thursday evening on the stopgap, which passed the House 231 to 188 and will push back delicate decisions on spending, immigration, health care and national security until Jan. 19.... The Senate is not expected to take up the disaster bill until January; it passed the House 251 to 169. Thursday's congressional votes are expected to be the last of 2017." ...

     ... Update: "Congress passed a stopgap spending bill Thursday, averting a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday but pushing into January showdowns on spending, immigration, health care and national security. Among the issues still to be resolved is federal aid for victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires. The House on Thursday passed a separate $81 billion disaster relief bill, but the Senate did not immediately take it up amid Democratic objections.... It passed the House 231 to 188 and cleared the Senate 66 to 32. Thursday's congressional votes are expected to be the last of 2017."

Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post: "Sen. Al Franken bade farewell to Capitol Hill on Thursday with a lengthy broadside against the policies of the Trump administration and a call for politicians to commit themselves to 'honesty in public discourse.' The speech put to rest questions about whether Franken (D-Minn.) would follow through on his promise to resign over more than a half-dozen allegations that he had touched women inappropriately. Until Wednesday, Franken had not announced the date he would leave the Senate, and at least two Democratic colleagues -- Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) -- recently said that he should reverse his decision. In his farewell address, Franken lamented what he described as the degradation of truth in the national political debate and the hyper-partisan environment this has produced. He will resign his seat on Jan. 2 and his successor, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Tina Smith (D), is scheduled to be sworn in on Jan. 3." ...

Jan Wolfe of Reuters: "Democratic-leaning states may take legal action to challenge the cap on deductions of state and local taxes under the sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code, and even though such lawsuits would face long odds they could help galvanize Democrats for next year's mid-term election." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Paul Krugman points to some of the winners in the tax heist. Here's one group: "The centerpiece of the legislation is a huge tax cut for corporations. Republicans claim that this tax cut will be passed on to workers in the form of higher wages, but most independent studies conclude that even in the long run only between one-fifth and one-quarter of the tax cut will trickle down to workers. And the fraction will be much lower in the short run -- say, the next few years. So this is basically a tax cut for shareholders. And who are these shareholders? About a third of the total benefits will go to foreigners." ...

... AND Ivanka Trump vouches for Sen. Bob Corker's "real integrity." Mrs. McC: So never mind anything negative I wrote about the Corker Kickback. And never mind that Ivanka & family will make millions on that kickback, too. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Dumber than a Post(card). Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: Ivanka Trump is "a walking advertisement for the danger of nepotism, an exemplar of class privilege and a perfect representative for Republican know-nothingism. She was supposed to be the brains of the family and the moral ballast; instead, she's a self-righteous enabler.... She was out talking nonsense again on Thursday: 'I'm really looking forward to doing a lot of traveling in April when people realize the effect that this has ... The vast majority will be [doing their taxes] on a single postcard.' Thunk. There's no postcard. That was a prop. And the filing for the first year under the new tax code will be in 2019." She also claimed the tax heist would eliminate the national debt. "In fairness to Trump, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also advanced this hooey, but you would think that she would at least have witnessed the pummeling Collins took for her phony assertion and learned from that. When one is not used to be being contradicted, one is perhaps less concerned with accuracy."

Jane Mayer of the New Yorker: "On Tuesday, in a convention center in West Palm Beach, Florida, amid chants of 'USA!' and 'The wall is going to be built!,' Donald Trump, Jr., kicked off a three-day annual summit for Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit. Based outside of Chicago, Turning Point's aim is to foment a political revolution on America's college campuses, in part by funnelling money into student government elections across the country to elect right-leaning candidates. But it is secretive about its funding and its donors, raising the prospect that 'dark money' may now be shaping not just state and federal races but ones on campus. Turning Point touts its close relationship with the President's family.... Internal documents that I obtained, as well as interviews with former employees, suggest that the group may have skirted campaign-finance laws that bar charitable organizations from participating in political activity.... Turning Point USA is also alleged to have fostered an atmosphere that is hostile to minorities."

The Commentariat -- December 21, 2017

Happy Birthday, Sun Gods. Today is the day many ancient peoples, not to mention a few nutty new ones, celebrated -- or prayed for -- the rebirth of their sun gods. For a more technical explanation of the winter solstice, Justin Grieser of the Washington Post obliges. Those of us skeptical of mythology can only hope that yesterday actually was our darkest day here in the U.S. ...

Afternoon Update:

Jan Wolfe of Reuters: "Democratic-leaning states may take legal action to challenge the cap on deductions of state and local taxes under the sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code, and even though such lawsuits would face long odds they could help galvanize Democrats for next year's mid-term election." ...

... AND Ivanka Trump vouches for Sen. Bob Corker's "real integrity." Mrs. McC: So never mind anything negative I wrote about the Corker Kickback. And never mind that Ivanka & family will make millions on that kickback, too. ...

     ... P.S. Still looking for a holiday gift for a special lady? Here's a suggestion, (Too pricey? Just tell the clerk you'll pay for it when you big tax cut comes thru.):

Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "The selection of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) as the ranking member on Judiciary was the clearest sign yet of how seriously House Democrats consider the possibility of a full-blown constitutional showdown with Trump. You wouldn't know it from how many of them talk. When it comes to the I-word, most Democrats have walked a tightrope -- with even Nadler hesitant to mention impeachment in interviews before votes were cast Wednesday.... Nadler won [the committee leadership post in] a secret ballot 118 to 72, demonstrating that this caucus wants to be ready to clash with Trump if it vaults into the majority after next year's midterm elections." ...

... Greg Sargent: "This is exactly what Democrats should be doing -- right now. Not just because an impeachment battle might actually happen, but also for another reason: Democrats will need to find a more effective way to talk to the American people about the serial degradation of our democracy we are seeing in the Trump era, for the good of the party, yes, but also for the good of the country.... Trump's ongoing self-dealing and abuses of power, the facts being unearthed in the Russia probes, the obvious efforts earlier this year to hamstring the FBI investigation, the blithe lack of concern about future assaults on our democracy, the uncontrollable contempt for governing norms and the rule of law, and the profound inability to grasp the most basic obligations that come with his office -- both to the public and to the integrity of our system of government -- plainly add up to an aggregate level of degradation that commands a serious effort to determine whether he is fit to continue."

Stephanie Baker & Irina Reznik of Bloomberg: Robert Mueller's team is looking into a sham U.S. foundation "financed by $500,000 in donations, mostly from wealthy Russians with ties to Petr Katsyv, deputy director of Russian Railways and a longtime acquaintance of Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika. Rather than a nonprofit helping unite Americans with Russian adoptees, the foundation was a lobbying vehicle against sanctions.... Most of the Russians financing the foundation said in interviews that they knew nothing about U.S. adoptions of Russian children, contradicting the foundation's U.S. disclosure forms.... [Robert] Akhmetshin, a former Soviet intelligence officer [who is a lobbyist for & employee of the 'foundation']..., met with senior officials of the Donald Trump campaign in New York: the candidate's son, son-in-law and campaign manager."

Cold Case Files. Tom Winter, et al., of NBC News: "On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics have linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton, multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News. The interviews with FBI agents are part of the Justice Department's effort to fulfill a promise an assistant attorney general made to Congress last month to examine whether a special counsel was warranted to look into what has become known as the Uranium One deal, a senior Justice Department official said."

Luke Nozicka of the Des Moines Register: "... Donald Trump on Wednesday commuted the prison sentence of former Iowa slaughterhouse executive Sholom Rubashkin, who was sentenced to 27 years for bank fraud and money laundering, the White House said. In a statement, the White House said the decision, which is not a presidential pardon, had bipartisan support from leaders across the political spectrum, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Trump's action does not vacate Rubashkin's conviction and leaves his term of supervised release and a restitution obligation, the White House said." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: For one thing, Trump sees nothing wrong with bank fraud & money laundering.

*****

Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "The House, forced to vote a second time on the $1.5 trillion tax bill, moved swiftly to pass the final version on Wednesday, clearing the way for President Trump to sign into law the most sweeping tax overhaul in decades.... The final House vote was essentially a formality, as the changes, which were made to comply with Senate budget rules, did not significantly alter the overall bill." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Trump Says He & GOP Lied to Sell Tax Bill. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "President Trump was so excited about passing his first major piece of legislation Wednesday that he blurted out that the Republican Party had misrepresented the entire bill, handing Democrats some ... talking points for the 2018 midterm elections. Speaking at the White House just before the House prepared to sign off on the tax-cuts bill one last time, Trump reveled extensively in his win before turning things over to Vice President Pence to heap praise upon him continuously for a few minutes. It was a thoroughly unique spectacle, even as victory dances and Trump Cabinet meetings go.... While talking about the corporate tax rate being cut from 35 percent to 21 percent, Trump said, 'That's probably the biggest factor in our plan.'... The problem? Republicans have been selling this legislation as a middle-class tax cut, first and foremost.... [Then Trump] argued that repealing the individual mandate was basically the same as repealing Obamacare. But, he said, he told Republicans not to talk about that. Trump said he told allies to 'be quiet with the fake news media because I don't want them talking too much about it.'" ...

     ... Dana Milbank: "With those admissions now on tape, Trump has officially claimed full ownership of the health-care system for himself and fellow Republicans. Whatever it is now -- or isn't -- is Trumpcare.... Premiums for the most popular health insurance on the individual market exchanges are estimated to rise 34 percent on average next year.... Employer-based health insurance costs are forecast to rise in 2018 by the most since 2011, at 4.3 percent, according to the human resources consulting firm Mercer, and overall medical costs will be up 6.5 percent, the first increase in the rate in three years...." ...

... Ruth Marcus assesses the bill:

... The Victory of the Kleptocracy. What Massive Corruption Looks Like. Drew Harwell of the Washington Post: "The Republicans’ first legislative triumph of 2017 will ensure a financial windfall for the president and his family in a way that is virtually unprecedented in American political history, experts said.... Exactly how much the president could save under the plan is unknown, since Trump has broken with 40 years of White House precedent by refusing to release his tax returns." Mrs. McCrabbie: This corrupt scheme involves not just the President, but about 95 percent of GOP members of Congress. It takes a conspiracy to overthrow traditional democratic norms, & that's what we're seeing: the president, the Congress, the right-wing media, and soon enough, the judiciary.

... ** Charles Pierce: "Paul Ryan dreamed of this day because Paul Ryan dreams of plutocracy. And now, with this bill, he has successfully arranged the first piece of his career-long effort to turn the clock of the American economy back to the 1890s. When he comes for what he calls 'entitlement reform' -- which he will, as soon as this idiot bill explodes the deficit -- that will be the second piece. The Supreme Court (through Citizens United, McCutcheon, and Shelby County) already has cooperated in this great project. The president* is on board because he's basically made of greed and ignorance. The large media conglomerates will go along for the ride because they are conglomerates first, and news-gathering entities second." ...

.. Eric Levitz reports on some of the grotesque compliments Republicans gave Trump yesterday for essentially doing nothing but accepting the huge tax cuts Congress gave him. Mrs. McC: mike pence & Orrin Hatch were the worst, but it was a lively contest among experienced sycophants. ...

     ... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "... the adulation from the Republican lawmakers signaled an even bigger moment: Many were embracing not only a shared accomplishment with Trump, but also his unorthodox presidency itself." ...

... Say, maybe you're all excited that some big-name corporations -- especially those that currently or often find themselves under the thumbs of federal regulators & legislators -- are indeed promising to pass their windfall on to employees: ...

... Liz Moyer of CNBC: "Fifth Third Bancorp will pay more than 13,500 employees a bonus and raise the minimum wage of its workforce to $15 an hour after the passage of the Republican tax plan that will cut the bank's corporate tax rate.... Wells Fargo ... also said it would be boosting its minimum wage for employees to $15 an hour, which was prompted by the tax plan. The San Francisco-based bank also said it would target $400 million in donations to community and nonprofit organizations next year." ...

     ... Addy Baird of ThinkProgress: "Well[s] Fargo did announce Wednesday that it will be increasing its minimum wage to $15 an hour -- an actual living wage -- but the money being funneled to stock buybacks far exceeds that being devoted to bonuses or wage increases."

... AT&T: "Once tax reform is signed into law, AT&T* plans to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 and pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 AT&T U.S. employees -- all union-represented, non-management and front-line managers. If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays." ...

     ... Kevin Drum: "In the most recent quarter, American companies increased their investments in equipment by 6.3 percent. AT&T appears to be planning an increase of 4.5 percent. I am unimpressed.... There's also this: December 15: 'AT&T today provided details of a tentative agreement reached with the Communications Workers of America in Mobility Orange contract negotiations.... Among provisions of the offer: Retroactive wage increases back to Feb. 12, 2017, and a $1,000 lump sum, if the agreement is ratified by Jan. 12, 2018.'... Why do I have a feeling that this $1,000 bonus was already in the works for everyone, not just Mobility Orange folks? I guess I'm just cynical. In any case, AT&T sure does seem to be going out of its way to suck up to President Trump. I wonder why that could be? It's a mystery...." ...

     ... Emily Stewart of Vox: "AT&T on Wednesday announced plans to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States after the passage of the Republican tax bill. President Trump read the announcement at a ceremony at the White House celebrating the tax bill on Wednesday afternoon. 'That's pretty good,' he said. It was also pretty good when AT&T made essentially the same announcement in November." ...

     ... Addy Baird (linked above): "... a Communication Workers of America (CWA) spokesperson told ThinkProgress Wednesday that the $1,000 [AT&T] bonus was 'a drop in the bucket compared to what was promised.'... The move is seen as an olive branch to Trump, who has been hostile to AT&T's proposed takeover of Time Warner, a merger that would be worth $84.5 billion." ...

... Brian Stelter of CNN: "Based on the passage of tax reform and the FCC's action on broadband,' Comcast is giving 'special $1,000 bonuses to more than 100,000 eligible frontline and non-executive employees.'" ...

     ... Addy Baird (linked above): "... like AT&T's bonuses, the bonuses are only temporary, one-time paycheck increases, not the investments in wages Republicans have promised." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Baird's main point is this: "Share buybacks are a way of enhancing the shareholder wealth, and, facing the prospect of a major tax cut, that's exactly what many large corporations have decided to do. The repurchasing does not create new jobs or increase wages for workers." Among large U.S. corporations that have announced share buyback programs in the run-up to passage of the tax heist: Home Depot, Boeing, pharmaceutical company Pfizer, banking group ANZ, Hyatt Hotels, Jet Blue, T-Mobile, Liberty Global & Wells Fargo. ...

... Josh Marshall: "There's no doubt each of these companies is, corporately, extremely happy with the passage of this bill.... It's just as obvious this is a choreographed effort to validate administration claims that the bill's payoffs to the super wealthy will actually be passed down to ordinary Americans.... Despite the President's behavior and that of his obsequious appointees and confederates, the US is not yet an authoritarian strongman government. But that is clearly what the President aspires to and feels is his right. But it is in the nature of authoritarian government's to secure lockstep alliances with major corporate entities seeking favor and preferment. This can all happen very quickly." --safari ...

... Juan Cole: "The Republican Party did not just overhaul the tax code and they did not cut 'your' taxes. They engineered a coup against the middle and working classes and they threw enormous amounts of public money to private billionaires and multi-millionaires.... Americans' wealth amounts to about $88 trillion. If you divided up all the privately held wealth equally, every household in the US would be worth $698,000.... But needless to say, the wealth isn't divided up equally. The top ten percent of households, 12.6 million households own 76% of the privately held wealth.... This tax bill won't create jobs, won't spur investment, and won't bring companies back home. It will make the 1.26 million households even more fabulously wealthy than they already are, and ensure that the rest of us get poorer." --safari ...

... Corporations Win, Sick Kids Lose. Lachlan Markay, et al., of the Daily Beast: "Shortly before [GOP lawmakers] gathered with Trump to applaud ... passing a major tax package that will, largely, benefit the wealthy and corporations..., news broke that they'd failed to advance a bill that would re-authorize a program providing healthcare to 9 million children.... But that is just one of the many pressing issues that the Congress has left for the next year. The others include protections for undocumented children, money for community health centers, and the funding of the actual government. Sources close to the White House said on Wednesday that they were fully anticipating the possibility that this brew of major items could result in a government shutdown, thereby negating some of the economic gains that the tax cuts would facilitate." ...

... Congress & Amtrak Should Have Prevented the Washington Train Accident. They Didn't. Patrick McGeehan, et al., of the New York Times: "After investigators determined that [a 2008 train] crash could have been prevented by automatic-braking technology, Congress ordered all passenger railroads to install new systems by 2016. Since then, Congress has extended that deadline and trains have kept speeding into preventable disasters, including the Amtrak derailment that killed three people in Western Washington on Monday.... Over the years since the mandate, railroads have continued to spend money on other priorities, including new trains and stations and passenger amenities. Since the Philadelphia accident [in 2015], Amtrak has put the technology into use on the Northeast Corridor, from Boston to Washington. But it is not installed on most other passenger lines, including Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit.... [In this week's deadly derailment in Washington state,] the train was going 80 miles an hour into a curve with a limit of 30 miles an hour, and..., although equipment for the automatic-braking system was in place, it was not yet in use."

Trump Threatens World. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut off American aid to any country that votes in favor of a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly denouncing his recent decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Mr. Trump's statement, delivered at his last Cabinet meeting of the year, followed a letter from the American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, in which she warned that the United States would take note of any country that votes in favor of the measure." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So now we know what Donald Grump & his elf Nikki Haley plan to do with her naughty list. In 2017's USA, threatening every nation in the U.N. is called "diplomacy."...

... Juan Cole: "The thuggish Trump and his gun moll Nikki Haley have threatened member countries of the UN General Assembly with a cut-off of US foreign aid if they vote against the US on Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.... The right wing in the United States has long spread around the false story that the US government gives away enormous amounts of money to other countries.... The actual US foreign aid budget is $41.9 billion, about one percent of the Federal budget. Having retailed a ridiculous narrative for decades, the GOP has now been caught in its own trap, making threats on the basis of facts not in evidence.... The US doesn't give out much aid, and therefore can't hold it over the heads of many other countries. The aid it does give out is for establishing US influence, and discontinuing it is an opening for China to get US clients instead. I very much doubt anyone will pay attention to Trump's threats." --safari

The Trump Russia Scandal

** Obstruction. Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "Just days after the inauguration, White House Counsel Don McGahn learned -- and warned ... Donald Trump -- that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had probably violated federal laws, according to a new report out Wednesday. Foreign Policy reported that the Special Counsel has obtained 'records' that reveal McGahn ... conclude[d] that Flynn had likely committed a crime.... Most significantly, the records now in the possession of ... Robert Mueller indicate McGahn 'warned Trump about Flynn's possible violations' for holding those discussions and lying about them to the FBI.... Legal experts told TPM that such advance notification about Flynn's potentially criminal acts would significantly bolster the case that the President was trying to obstruct justice when he allegedly asked ... James Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn." --safari ...

... The Trump Russia Scandal, GOP Edition. Kyle Cheney & John Bresnahan of Politico: "A group of House Republicans has gathered secretly for weeks in the Capitol in an effort to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperly -- and perhaps criminally -- mishandled the contents of a dossier that describes alleged ties between ... Donald Trump and Russia, according to four people familiar with their plans. A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee's high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They haven't informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the House's general counsel.... GOP lawmakers have become increasingly fixated on the FBI's use of the dossier describing sometimes salacious allegations of Trump's ties to the Kremlin.... [Rep. Adam Schiff, (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the committee,] said committee rules require consultation between Republicans and Democrats, but House Speaker Paul Ryan must enforce bipartisan cooperation if he wants it to occur. 'And at this point, you have to conclude that he doesn't,' Schiff said. Ryan's office declined to comment." ...

     … Mrs. McCrabbie: So, in other words, Paul Ryan, among his many other glaring failings, is part of a plot to undermine the DOJ & FBI in furtherance of his support for the corrupt foreign activities of an unfit president. On a more humorous level, Nunes & his whack-job friends must be having great fun "studying" the "salacious details" of the Steele report. We have a two-party system, one that's populated by greedy lunatics & the other that's run by well-meaning incompetents. What an exceptional country! ...

... ** Yascha Mounk in a New York Times op-ed: "The Republican Party is no longer just obfuscating the truth or defending the president when he is accused of wrongdoing. Rather, Mr. Trump, Fox News and Republicans in Congress seem to be actively using falsehoods to prepare an assault on the institutions that allow American democracy to function.... The most puzzling thing about these claims [against the Mueller investigation & the FBI] is how patently ridiculous they are.... The construction of an alternate reality that obviates the very possibility of conducting politics on the basis of truth is a novelty in this country. And it is increasingly becoming obvious that it will serve a clear purpose: to prepare the ground for egregious violations of basic democratic norms.... The pundits and politicians who have helped to delegitimize Mr. Mueller and his investigation over the past weeks are making themselves active accomplices in a deliberate assault on our democracy. But it is also why those who have failed to condemn these attacks -- like Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader -- are equally to blame." ...

... Murdoch Covers for the Mafia. Bob Brigham of RawStory: "Billionaire right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal delayed and then killed an editorial revealing Donald Trump's mob ties, Esquire reported. WSJ editor Paul Gigot, delayed an editorial by Ted Cruz supporter James Freeman until after Trump was the presumed nominee. Freeman's article supposedly detailed ties between Trump and organized crime. The piece was never published and Freeman became a Trump supporter." --safari...

... Sam Tanenhaus, in Esquire, has a long piece on the bitter battle being waged within the GOP: "'Conservatives have decided they are a tribe,' says Jennifer Rubin, the conservative Washington Post writer who has declared war on both Trump and his GOP. 'They're not Americans first. They're Trump defenders first.' It is ideological groupthink, the Right's own political correctness.... But in truth, 'Conservatism, Inc.' was never the luxury gravy train its critics depicted. It was closer to a Soviet-style nomenklatura, with a good deal of ideological policing." --safari

Juliet Eilperin & Lena Sun of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration is waging a linguistic battle across official Washington, seeking to shift public perception of key policies by changing the way the federal government talks about climate change, scientific evidence and disadvantaged communities.... Multiple references to [climate change] have been purged repeatedly at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. In late summer, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention issued a document to employees and contractors bearing a column of words and phrases to be avoided, alongside a column of acceptable alternatives.... The chasm between President Trump's top deputies and the federal workers charged with carrying out government policies appears particularly wide."

Senate Race. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R-Moore) is "investigating voter fraud" in the recent Senate race R-Moore lost. Charles Pierce explains Merrill's plans as only Pierce can. "Chances are this will come to nothing, but, if we've learned nothing else this year, 'chances are' is a phrase best left to Johnny Mathis. In the United States of 2017, every day is Anything Can Happen Day."

Another Senate Seat May Be about to Open. John Bresnahan of Politico: Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), chair of the Appropriations Committee, has not done any committee business in the last several months. "The 80-year-old's feeble performance has fueled expectations -- among senators and aides who've witnessed his physical and mental decline firsthand -- that Cochran will step down from the Appropriations chairmanship early next year, or resign from the Senate altogether. 'The understanding is that he will leave after Jan. 1,' said a Republican senator who serves on the Appropriations Committee.... A spokesman for the Mississippi Republican said Cochran hasn't divulged his plans."

Elana Schor of Politico: "The congressional office that handles sexual harassment complaints, along with a top Republican senator, have refused to divulge information about taxpayer dollars doled out to settle harassment claims [against senators] -- and pressure is mounting on them to come clean. Congress' Office of Compliance, which oversees payments to resolve sexual harassment claims and other workplace disputes, has given data on the Senate's taxpayer-funded settlements to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). The House has already released the compliance office's settlement totals for that chamber going back a decade. But the compliance office has ... reject[ed] a request from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) to divulge the numbers. And Shelby ... is in talks with his Democratic counterpart on releasing the data as Kaine vows to 'start raising hell' to shake it loose." ...

... AND Paul Ryan says sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump are "other stuff... I'm not focussed on." As a bonus, he tried to shame NBC "Today" host Savannah Guthrie, who was interviewing him, by pointing out that her former co-host Matt Lauer was a serial sexual harasser, too: "... it happened in your industry, in your studio...." ...

... NYT Bars Sexual Harasser from Covering Sexual Abuser. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "The New York Times said it will suspend, rather than fire, political reporter Glenn Thrush, who was accused of harassing women when he worked for another publication. Following a lengthy internal investigation, the newspaper said Thursday that Thrush would be given a two-month suspension and then stripped of his prestigious beat covering the White House. He will be reassigned once his suspension is up next month, Executive Editor Dean Baquet said in a statement.... Baquet declined to explain the Times's reasoning for Thrush's suspension or why he is being removed from covering the White House, where he was among the most prominent beat reporters. But his continued presence on the beat could have raised questions about his impartiality, given that both he and President Trump have been accused of sexual harassment."

Ben Collins of The Daily Beast: "The Twitter bot @CongressEdits tracks every change made on Wikipedia from the U.S. Capitol building. Any edit made with a Capitol IP address is preserved with a screenshot and posted instantly, which has won it an avid following of 60,000 Beltway obsessives.... Days later, [intern Kate] Kohn, in a conversation with The Daily Beast, became the first member of what she says is a secret society of interns editing Wikipedia pages with political messages they know will reach some of the biggest names in Washington to out herself." --safari

Linda Greenhouse has a terrific piece on why judges matter & how the Trump administration's white, male, conservative, incompetent nominees will undermine the judiciary, which for decades had been growing more diverse.

Jessica Glenza of the Guardian: "Life expectancy in the US has declined for the second year in a row as the opioid crisis continues to ravage the nation. It is the first time in half a century that there have been two consecutive years of declining life expectancy. Drug overdoses killed 63,600 Americans in 2016, an increase of 21% over the previous year, researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics found. Americans can now expect to live 78.6 years, a decrease of 0.1 years. The US last experienced two years' decline in a row in 1963, during the height of the tobacco epidemic and amid a wave of flu." --safari: Good thing we have Kellyanne Conjob on the case.

Celeste Katz of Newsweek: "Students ripped off by for-profit college loan programs may face a painful lesson in the workings of government thanks to the federal Education Department's decision to change the rules about forgiving their debt. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced Wednesday that the department is altering the Obama Administration's promise of completely erasing loans taken out by students defrauded by the Corinthian Colleges chain. DeVos said under the new standards, forgiveness will now be tied to students' income as a way of measuring whether they did enjoy some benefit from their educations -- even if they were deceived about the worth of their diplomas." --safari

Beyond the Beltway

Ryan Poe of USA Today: "The city of Memphis sold two public parks containing Confederate monuments to a nonprofit Wednesday in a massive, months-in-the-planning operation to take the statues down overnight.The City Council unanimously approved the sale of Health Science Park, home of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, and its easement on Fourth Bluff Park, home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, for $1,000 each to Memphis Greenspace Inc. Fourth Bluff, or Memphis Park, is owned by a group called The Overton Heirs. The sale -- which is almost certain to result in a lawsuit from statue supporters -- allows Greenspace to legally do what the city of Memphis cannot: Remove the statues from their visible perches in the parks." --safari

Corrupt Republican Judges Overturn Virginia Recount. Jim Morrison, et al., of the Washington Post: "Control of Virginia's legislature hung in limbo Wednesday after a three-judge panel declined to certify the recount of a key House race, saying that a questionable ballot should be counted in favor of the Republican and tying a race that Democrats thought they had won by a single vote. 'The court declares there is no winner in this election,' Newport News Circuit Court Judge Bryant L. Sugg said after the panel deliberated for more than two hours.... All of [the judges] were elected by a Republican-controlled legislature.... James Alcorn, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said the winner will likely be chosen by placing names on slips of papers into two film canisters and then drawing the canisters from a glass bowl (or his bowler hat). He said he is conferring with staff to figure out the date and method.... If the loser of the coin toss is unhappy with that result, he or she can seek a second recount." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Republicans argued that the voter, because s/he voted for other Republicans, intended to vote for Yancey, the Republican. Really? Take a look at the ballot, a copy of which is included in the report. The voter filled in the bubble for Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie AND put an "X" over the Gillespie bubble. The House of Delegates part of the ballot says, "Vote for only one." The voter filled in the bubbles for both Yancey & the Democrat Simonds, but also appears to have put an X over the bubble for Simonds. There is no logical way you can read this ballot as a vote for Republican Gillespie (bubble + X) but not for Democrat Simonds (bubble + X). The instructions are clear. Whatever the voter's intention, s/he tried to vote for two candidates for Delegate where only one was allowed. That part of this ballot must be disregarded. These Republican judges are not stupid. They are corrupt.

The Commentariat -- December 20, 2017

Afternoon Update:

Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "The House, forced to vote a second time on the $1.5 trillion tax bill, moved swiftly to pass the final version on Wednesday, clearing the way for President Trump to sign into law the most sweeping tax overhaul in decades.... The final House vote was essentially a formality, as the changes, which were made to comply with Senate budget rules, did not significantly alter the overall bill."

*****

** Thomas Kaplan & Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Republicans took a critical step toward notching their first significant legislative victory since assuming full political control, as the House and Senate voted along party lines on Tuesday and into early Wednesday to pass the most sweeping rewrite of the tax code in decades. The $1.5 trillion tax bill, which is expected to head to President Trump's desk in the coming days, will have broad effects on the economy, making deep and lasting cuts to corporate taxes as well as temporarily lowering individual taxes.... The Senate voted 51 to 48, with no Republican defections and no Democratic support.... The day was not without hiccups, however, as several small provisions in the tax bill were found by the Senate parliamentarian to violate the budget rules that Republicans must follow to pass their bill through a process that shields it from a Democratic filibuster. As a result, the House will need to vote again on the tax bill, probably on Wednesday, since both chambers must approve identical legislation. The approval of the bill in the House on Tuesday came over the strenuous objections of Democrats, who have accused Republicans of giving a gift to corporations and the wealthy and driving up the federal debt in the process.... The House voted 227 to 203 to pass the bill, with 12 Republicans voting against it and no Democrats voting for it. Eleven of the 12 Republicans were from California, New Jersey and New York, states that would be hit hard by a provision in the bill limiting the deduction for state and local taxes.... 'Today, we are giving the people of this country their money back,' Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin said before the House vote. When the bill passed the House, a giddy Mr. Ryan smiled broadly and banged the gavel with force as he declared victory." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: You've done enough, Mr. Ryan. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency? ...

Look, we expect that it likely will, certainly on the personal side, could cost the president a lot of money. -- Sarah Sanders, yesterday

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post already gave that one . Sometime, just to throw us off, you should try moving your lips without lying. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

... Adam Cancryn of Politico: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) thinks criticism of her support for the tax heist is "unbelievably sexist." "She's also been criticized for conditioning her support for the Senate's tax bill on passage of a pair of bills aimed at stabilizing Obamacare markets. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged to her they will pass -- but House Republicans have balked at any 'bailout' for insurers. That prompted speculation that her demands won't be met, as it's still not certain that the House will accept the insurance measures in a year-end spending bill." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Really, Senator? You're taking money out of Mainers' pockets & giving it to Donald Trump & what irritates you is that pundits have suggested GOP leaders have duped you? And that's so sexist? Well, I for one don't think you've been duped. I think you know exactly what you're doing -- transferring money from ordinary Americans to people like yourself. Your vote on this bill is conscious & unconscionable. Getting all huffy about it doesn't make your shameful act of Grand Theft America any less shameful. I'd say the same about every one of your deplorable GOP colleagues, of whatever gender. Now don't you feel a little grateful that some people think you're just a dimwitted naif & not a mean, craven hypocrite? On the other hand, I've been picking on Bob Corker just because he's a man. ...

     ... Anyway, let's find out what-all the GOP leadership is doing to keep its ObamaCare promises to you. ...

     ... Rachel Bade & Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are about to lock horns over Obamacare -- part of a House-Senate clash that needs to be resolved by Friday to avert a government shutdown. McConnell promised moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine that he would prop up President Barack Obama's signature health law in a must-pass, year-end spending bill -- so long as she backs tax reform. But Ryan's more conservative conference is flatly rejecting that idea and urging the Wisconsin Republican to stand firm against his Senate counterpart.... If [Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer [N.Y.] doesn't back the subsidies language -- or the funding bill altogether -- it's possible that McConnell won't have the votes to move the legislation through his own chamber, letting Ryan off the hook." ...

     ... Collins Bills DOA in House. Alice Ollstein of TPM: "Just a few hours before the Senate prepares to vote on a massive overhaul of the American tax system, a host of House Republicans told reporters that the promises made to secure the vote of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) have no chance of passing the lower chamber and becoming law. Collins announced Monday that she would vote for the tax bill based on promises from President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to support two health care bills aimed at mitigating the expected damage from the tax bill's provision killing Obamacare’s individual mandate." ...

     ... Steven Dennis of Bloomberg: Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the "The No. 2 Senate Republican, said Tuesday that the GOP's tax bill will make Obamacare 'unworkable,' which he hopes will force Democrats into negotiations to replace the law.... Senator John Thune [South Dakota], the No. 3 Senate Republican, also said he hoped there would be a bipartisan deal but said another option is trying to find 50 votes for a modified version of the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: But you know Mitch is going to tell Susan he really, really tried to keep his promise to her & Susan is going to look "concerned" all the way to the bank. Is it "unbelievably sexist" to call this whole charade a Kabuki dance? ...

.. Alex Shephard of the New Republic: "Over the course of the year, [a few] Republicans have condemned Trump on the Sunday shows and on social media. And now they have banded together to give Trump a major victory: not only a historic restructuring of the tax system, but also a partial repeal of Obamacare.... These Republicans have alternated between bolstering Trump and chastising him, but have never acted with any larger strategy or taken any meaningful action to constrain a president they distrust.... The reason they have caved to Trump is because, for all their objections to Trump's tweeting and the innumerable ways he has damaged democratic traditions in this country, concerns about the deficit or the integrity of the Oval Office or the rule of law or the rights of minorities simply don't have much traction in the modern Republican Party. As many have noted, it has only one, unifying agenda: tax cuts and deregulation. As a result, the efforts to reform Trump's Republican Party from within have all collapsed, out of deference to these narrow policy goals." ...

... Rebecca Kysar & Linda Sugin, in a New York Times op-ed: Republicans have built a tax "system that will not last." The writers blame, in part, the GOP's choice to exclude Democrats from the process. But the writers, who are both law professors, also cite a number of the soon-to-be law's most glaring deficiencies. Most of them we know, but here's one we've missed: "On the international side, an area badly in need of permanent reforms, Republicans have erected planks that appear to violate World Trade Organization agreements. Eventually the United States is likely to have to repeal major parts of the law or face sanctions. Rather than ending tax maneuvers in which corporations shift money abroad, the international system envisioned by the bill actually loses money. What's more, the new international system arguably increases incentives for offshoring assets and income." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Pardon me for being a suspicious witch, but it seems likely that the instability of the tax heist is actually a feature -- one which benefits GOP members of Congress only (okay, and some of their lobbyist friends). Suppose Republicans had done what they campaigned on: a middle-class tax cut, a simplified tax code & a lower corporate rate, which, by eliminating loopholes more equally distributed the burden on corporations. Okay, done. Their donors AND voters are happy. But by creating tax law that Democrats are bound to dismantle ASAP, Republicans have a permanent cudgel with which to batter their donors: "If you don't support us bigly, you will lose all the generous cuts we gave you." This bill uses GOP donors' greed to satisfy the GOP Congress's greed. Neat. ...

... Mark Murray of NBC News: "The tax plan ... has grown more unpopular in the last two months, with nearly two-thirds of Americans believing it's designed mostly to help corporations and the wealthy, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. In addition, the survey finds that Democrats have overtaken Republicans on which party better handles the economy -- their first lead on this question since 2013 and their largest since 2009." ...

... "The Trump Tax." Dana Milbank: "The deeply unpopular bill has the support of only a third of Americans, most of whom (correctly) perceive that it's a giveaway to rich people and big corporations.... USA Today reported last week that the bill had 'the lowest level of public support for any major piece of legislation enacted in the past three decades, including the Affordable Care Act in 2009.'... Republicans are making impossibly high promises, and if anything goes wrong -- if the economy doesn't boom, wages don't soar and the middle class doesn't rebound -- it will be the fault of this legislation, soon to be labeled 'the Trump Tax' by Democrats.... While the 'forgotten man' Trump lured with phony populism gets little benefit, the things that bothered the forgotten man about the tax code -- a tangled mess of loopholes for businesses, the rich and Wall Street -- remain intact." ...

Why are my taxes going down and my assistant's is going up? Can someone explain how that is fair? -- Jason Harbor, a real estate investor ...

... Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times: "The tax bill soaks some ... rich Americans -- but it does not soak the richest.... Some executives are already calculating that they will be paying additional seven-figure sums in taxes. OK, you might want to get out get out your smallest violin.... The two most popular games for the very wealthy will be running their income through pass-through companies, which pay a lower rate, or using a corporation to pay themselves a tiny salary and huge dividends, which will be taxed at the lower capital gains rates.... Private equity and real estate executives, as has been well documented, will make out like bandits under the new system. According to the Tax Policy Center, 5 percent of taxpayers would pay more in taxes in 2018; 9 percent in 2025 and 53 percent in 2027." ...

"The Stealth Repeal of ObamaCare." Joanne Kenen of Politico: "Obamacare survived the first year of ... Donald Trump, but 's badly damaged. The sweeping Republican tax bill on the verge of final passage would repeal the individual mandate in 2019, potentially taking millions of people out of the health insurance market. On top of that, the Trump administration has killed some subsidies, halved the insurance enrollment period, gutted the Obamacare marketing campaign, and rolled out a regulatory red carpet for skimpy new health plans that will change the insurance landscape in ways that are harmful to former President Barack Obama's signature health care law. None of these individually represent a death blow. But in aggregate, the past year adds up to a slow, stealthy erosion of the law. 'They obviously couldn't kill it, so they're trying to starve it slowly,' said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, which helped write the original law."

The Trumpeteers -- All for One & (Sometimes) One for All. Jonathan Chait: "Trump and the congressional Republicans ... have essentially merged into a politically coterminous entity. Trump has absorbed all the liabilities of the congressional party, while his distinctive grossness largely extends to them. Nothing has brought together the union quite so vividly as the tax cuts, Trump's singular legislative achievement, and one the entire party has greeted almost ecstatically.... Americans see the Republican Party as enriching its donor class, and the president personally, at the expense of the broader public. Republicans have addressed these liabilities by simply lying about them.... The regular Republican Party of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of polluters and the financial industry once seemed to be set apart from its clownish demagogue presidential candidate. In rapid order, the strands have merged together into a party disdainful of transparency and united in self-enrichment."

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Democrats are backing away from a pledge to force a vote this month over the fate of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children, angering activists but probably averting the threat of a government shutdown at a critical moment in spending negotiations with Republicans and President Trump. With a deadline of midnight Friday to pass spending legislation, dozens of Democrats had vowed to withhold support if Republicans refused to allow a vote on a measure, known as the Dream Act, that would allow roughly 1.2 million immigrants to stay legally in the United States. But a group of vulnerable Democratic senators facing reelection in conservative states next year aren't willing to go that far -- meaning the party is unlikely to muster the votes to block the spending bill." ...

... Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Top senators and White House officials are laying the groundwork for a major immigration deal in January to resolve the fate of young undocumented immigrants whose legal protections were put in limbo by ... Donald Trump." Mrs. McC: Read the story & draw your own conclusions. It looks to me as if this group of senators is acting more-or-less in good faith, while colossal dickhead John Kelly is refusing to tell them how high a U.S.-Mexico border wall he & Fuckface von Clownstick will demand in return for not deporting these young Americans.

Amanda Terkel of the Huffington Post: "The Senate banking committee rejected ... Donald Trump's choice to lead the Export-Import Bank on Tuesday, voting 10-13 against advancing his nomination to the full Senate. Two Republicans joined with Democrats in opposition. Scott Garrett, who was a tea-party-aligned Republican congressman from New Jersey until he lost his re-election bid in 2016, has faced intense opposition from the business community ― including corporations like General Electric Co. and Boeing> ― and many traditional GOP allies, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. That's because Garrett once wanted to shutter the institution that he now is trying to run, and he consistently voted against reauthorizing it. In 2015, he lambasted the Export-Import Bank as an institution that 'embodies the corruption of the free enterprise system.'... Sens. Mike Rounds (S.D.) and Tim Scott (S.C.) were the two Republican votes against Garrett." ...

... Zachary Warmbrodt & Andrew Restuccia of Politico: "The decision by a bipartisan group of senators to block ... Donald Trump's pick to lead the Export-Import Bank marked a stinging defeat for Vice President Mike Pence, who worked for months to boost the nomination despite doubts from some administration officials. Pence continued to push senators to support former New Jersey Republican Rep. Scott Garrett's nomination to lead the bank until the final hours before the Senate Banking Committee met for a vote Tuesday morning.... [Pence & Garrett] served together in the House and are said to share similar worldviews." Mrs. McC: It is discouraging to be reminded that there are others who share pence's pinched "worldviews."

The Top Trumpeteer. Everything Good Is Because Trump. Michael Scherer & Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "During the first presidential debate in September 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump argued that the booming performance of the stock market under the Obama administration should not be trusted. 'Believe me: We're in a bubble right now. And the only thing that looks good is the stock market -- but if you raise interest rates even a little bit, that's going to come crashing down,' Trump said. 'We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble. And we better be awfully careful.' More than a year later, President Trump has turned similar record stock market bench marks into his favorite measure of his personal success in office. [Mrs. McCrabbie P.S.: the Fed has raised interest rates three times this year & five times since the financial crisis of 2008.]... 'DOW RISES 5000 POINTS ON THE YEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER -- MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!' the president tweeted ... Tuesday, marking the 58th time he has mentioned the stock market on Twitter since taking office.... In recent weeks, the president has taken full credit for market performance, even though the recent rate of increase largely matches the bullish run under Obama, which began after the market hit bottom in 2009.... Presidents traditionally have avoided commenting directly on stock values.... Part of the reason is that stock gains typically are not felt by many voters who remain frustrated by their economic situation."

Michelle Nichols of Reuters: "The 193-member United Nations General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states on ... Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, sparking a warning from Washington that it will 'take names.'... U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of U.N. states on Tuesday..., warned that the United States would remember those who voted for the resolution.... 'The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue,' Haley wrote. She echoed that call in a Twitter post: [']The U.S. will be taking names.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I doubt leaders of other countries care about your empty threat, Madame Ambassador. Your crazy boss has turned a once-admired great nation into a pitiful, if dangerous, rogue state. Even if & when the Congress or the voters throw him out of office, the damage he has done will be long-lasting. Who would trust a country where someone like Donald Trump can become its titular leader & a compliant legislature props him up? Rather than making a list & checking it twice, you might want to try seeing oursels as ithers see us. ...

     ... OR, as Marvin S. put it more succinctly in yesterday's thread, "... America First is working. Looks like we no longer have any allies."

What the Russia Matter Is Really About:

I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president.... You have to remember Putin's background. He's a KGB officer. That's what they do. They recruit assets. And I think some of that experience and instincts of Putin has come into play here in his managing of a pretty important account for him, if I could use that term, with our president. -- James Clapper, on CNN Sunday ...

... ** Martin Longman of Booman Tribune: "James Clapper spent over a half a century working in the American intelligence community, capping his career with a six-year stint as the Director of National Intelligence. It's true that he lied to Congress in 2013 about what kinds of information the NSA collects on U.S. citizens, a crime exposed by Edward Snowden and for which Clapper paid no price whatsoever. You shouldn't forget that when assessing his credibility, nor should you ignore the fact that career intelligence professionals aren't necessarily or generally known for being forthright and honest in their public statements.... Yet, even a skeptic has to note the highly unusual spectacle of a customarily taciturn and circumspect intelligence officer of Clapper's rank accusing the president of being a witting agent and pawn of the Russian state.... His opinion is shared widely in the intelligence community which is precisely why Clapper felt free to express it without any concern that he'd be seen as a kook or somehow shunned by his peers. He was speaking for them, or at least a large plurality of them." Longman links Clapper's remarks to the Steele dossier & points out that Robert Mueller's team "serve[s] and answer[s] to a president whom they highly suspect of being compromised at best and a witting agent of a hostile foreign power at worst." ...

... John Schindler, former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer, in the New York Observer: "... [James] Clapper went on CNN to drop an unimaginably large bombshell on ... Donald Trump.... America's most experienced spy boss publicly termed our president an asset -- that is, a witting agent -- of the Kremlin who is being controlled by Vladimir Putin. Even if meant only 'figuratively,' this is the most jaw-dropping statement ever uttered about any American president by any serious commentator.... This, of course, is precisely what Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation are trying to get to the bottom of -- and, not coincidentally, what President Trump and his supporters are trying just as hard to prevent Team Mueller from unraveling.... In our Intelligence Community, it's widely understood that Donald Trump possesses longstanding ties to the Kremlin which are at best suspect and at worst reflective of an unsettling degree of Russian influence over our commander-in-chief." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say, have we mentioned that the publisher of the New York Observer is Jared Kushner? (The site is now in a "blind" family trust, but guess what? His brother-in-law Joseph Meyer is the current publisher, making the "blindness" of the trust exactly as sight-impaired as are the doings of the Trump Organization is to one Donald Trump.) Everything is getting curiouser & curiouser. ...

... Paul Waldman: "If Trump's allies thought the facts would prove the president's innocence and that of everyone else involved, they wouldn't be in such a panic.... But there's one Republican who's convinced Trump will be fully exonerated: Donald Trump.... The latest twist, however, is one that could bring the scandal to an entirely new level. Mueller's team has obtained thousands of emails written by members of Trump's presidential transition team.... As Mueller's spokesperson said in response to the White House's assertion that the GSA shouldn't have given Mueller the emails, 'When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner's consent or appropriate criminal process.' The repetition of the word 'criminal' should send shivers down a few people's spines." ...

What Winger Conspiracy Theorists Say the Russia Matter Is All About:

... Eli Watkins of CNN: "... Donald Trump's eldest son suggested Tuesday that the investigation around his father's campaign has been fueled by government higher-ups who have conspired to block the President's agenda. 'There is, and there are, people at the highest levels of government that don't want to let America be America,' Donald Trump Jr. told a gathering of young conservative activists in West Palm Beach, Florida.... In his remarks Tuesday, Trump Jr. railed against special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and attacked the media's coverage of the Russia story, saying the ongoing probe was emblematic of the kind of 'rigged system' the President had railed against during the campaign." ...

... Annals of "Journalism," Fever Swamp Edition. Daily Beast: "A Fox News guest-host on Tuesday suggested the FBI plotted to assassinate ... Donald Trump before he took office. While discussing the text messages of two bureau agents formerly working on the FBI's probe of Russian election interference, right-wing radio host and Outnumbered guest-host Kevin Jackson said he hopes the Senate Judiciary Committee presses deputy FBI chief Andrew McCabe on whether certain texts point to a specific intent, 'whether it was an assassination attempt or whatever.'" Mrs. McC: Just another day at Fox "News." ...

I think ... the Clintons and their operatives in the FBI ... are going to go ahead and make their move to kill the president. I think in the next 30 days, I think they're going to make an assassination attempt. I just -- my gut -- I see all of them together, they're that desperate. They're either going to give up or they're going to activate their cells. -- Alex Jones, Monday ...

I'll take a wild guess & vote for "they're going to give up." That Hillary just has no stamina. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

... Kyle Swenson of the Washington Post: "... on Tuesday, [Republican] criticism [of Mueller's investigation] hurtled across an even more extreme line, when Fox News contributor Kevin Jackson suggested the FBI might have had plans to assassinate President Trump. It's a conspiracy theory that has already been percolating on the extreme fringe, the petri dish for much of the 'deep state' rhetoric.... By his own admission, Jackson's fears of assassination came from 'social media stuff.' But the Fox News commentator was picking up on a frequency beamed out only a day before by InfoWars's Alex Jones.

Eli Rosenberg of the Washington Post: "The White House has taken down a popular online tool created by President Barack Obama's administration that allowed the public to create online petitions, some of which required an official response. All of the petitions, including one that called on President Trump to release his tax returns -- the most popular, with more than a million signatures -- disappeared from Petitions.WhiteHouse.Gov as part of what a statement posted on the site said was part of a maintenance effort to improve its performance. The statement said that the site, as well as all of its existing petitions, would be restored by the end of January.... The Trump White House has not responded to any of the petitions that have circulated on the site since the president took office, many of which have taken a particularly grave tone." Emphasis added.

Fake News Quashes EPA Covert Ops. Rebecca Leber, et al., of Mother Jones: "The Republican PR firm that was awarded a $120,000 EPA contract for media monitoring has pulled out of the deal, days after Mother Jones first revealed the controversial arrangement. The no-bid contract drew widespread scrutiny in recent days, in part because the for-profit firm, called Definers, is overtly partisan and& is connected to a network of GOP political groups ... that have performed opposition-style research on environmentalists.... Mother Jones first reported on Definers' EPA contract on Friday. Later that day, the New York Times reported that an employee at the firm had filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records from EPA staffers who had been critical of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. The controversy continued to grow over the weekend. On Tuesday, two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Kamala Harris(Calif.), called for the contract to be canceled. The senators quickly got their wish." ...

... MEANWHILE. AP: "The head of the Environmental Protection Agency used public money to have his office swept for hidden listening devices and bought sophisticated biometric locks for additional security. The spending items, totaling nearly $9,000, are among a string of increased counter-surveillance precautions taken by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who also requires around-the-clock protection by an armed security team." Mrs. McC: If he can't spy on employees, employees can't spy on him. So there. Maybe living in a cloud of pollution has made Scott Pruitt crazy.

Never Mind. Josh Gerstein & Renuka Rayasam of Politico: "A looming Supreme Court showdown over abortion rights for immigrant children in federal custody appeared to be defused Tuesday night after the U.S. government released one of the pregnant teens at the center of the fight, citing new evidence that she is an adult. Lawyers for the Trump administration said a birth certificate for the immigrant known in court filings as Jane Roe shows her to be 19, not 17 as previously thought.... The Justice Department said the immigrant was turned over to ICE and released on her own recognizance. That leaves her free to seek an abortion if she wishes to do so."

Robert McFadden of the New York Times: "Cardinal Bernard F. Law, whose stature as archbishop of Boston and America's senior Roman Catholic prelate was shattered in a maelstrom of scandal, acrimony and resignation in 2002 after revelations that he had protected abusive priests for years, died Wednesday. He was 86 and lived in Rome. The Vatican confirmed the death in a news release." ...

     ... The Boston Globe, which broke the stories on how Law aided serial child molesters who were priests in the Boston diocese, has links to numerous stories about Law on its front page. They are firewalled, so you can read them only if you have a subscription.

Beyond the Beltway

Your Vote Matters. Gregory Schneider of the Washington Post: "The balance of power in Virginia’s legislature turned on a single vote in a recount Tuesday that flipped a seat in the House of Delegates from Republican to Democrat, leaving control of the lower chamber evenly split. The outcome, which reverberated across Virginia, ends 17 years of GOP control of the House and forces Republicans into a rare episode of power sharing with Democrats that will refashion the political landscape in Richmond. It was the culmination of last months Democratic wave that had diminished Republican power in purple Virginia. Democrat Shelly Simonds emerged from the recount as the apparent winner in the 94th House district, seizing the seat from Republican incumbent David Yancey. A three-judge panel still must certify the results, an event scheduled for Wednesday. Of the 23,215 votes cast in the district on Election Day, Yancey held a lead of just 10 votes going into Tuesday's recount. But five hours later, after a painstaking counting overseen by local elections officials and the clerk of court, Yancey's lead narrowed -- and then reversed. The final tally: 11,608 for Simonds to 11,607 for Yancey."