Swift Response from Pro-Crime Party

The (allegedly) tough-on-crime Republicans have left the building now that

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has declared gun violence and drug abuse a public health emergency after a string of recent deadly shootings, some involving children.

The emergency order includes the suspension of open and concealed carry laws in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, temporarily banning the carrying of guns on public property with certain exceptions, according to a statement from Lujan Grisham on Friday.

Lujan Grisham cited the shooting deaths of three children from July through September, as well as a pair of mass shootings in the state.

“The time for standard measures has passed,” said Lujan Grisham, a Democrat. “And when New Mexicans are afraid to be in crowds, to take their kids to school, to leave a baseball game – when their very right to exist is threatened by the prospect of violence at every turn – something is very wrong.”

Under the plan, citizens with carry permits will still be allowed to possess their weapons on private property such as gun ranges and gun stores if the firearm is transported in a locked box or a trigger lock or other mechanism is used to render the gun incapable of being fired, according to the statement.

The order was issued after consultation with public safety officials, including Bernalillo District Attorney Sam Bregman, Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina, and former State Police Chief Pete Kassetas.

The order also prohibits firearms on state property, including state buildings and schools, as well as parks and other places where children gather.

Under the order, licensed firearm dealers will be inspected monthly by New Mexico’s Regulation and Licensing Division to ensure compliance with sales and storage laws. Additionally, state health and environmental officials will begin wastewater testing for illegal substances such as fentanyl at schools.

The order is immediately effective, according to the statement.

In May, two mass shootings in New Mexico six people dead and 11 wounded. The state has one of the highest rates of gun violence and suicide in the nation.

Response from the right was so fierce you'd think that Governor Grisham had neglected to salute the Emperor Donald Trump. A sampling:

Tim Pool, right-wing Twitter enthusiast: "Police should arrest her immediately.

Police should arrest her immediately https://t.co/NyvvpRHKST

— Tim Pool (@Timcast) September 9, 2023

"

No, that's not how these things work. Immediately before her remarks captured on the Twitter video, the Governor stated that she expects a legal challenge, and almost welcomed it. This is not a violation of a state criminal statute or a local ordinance. It is not in the jurisdiction of the police.

Dan Bongino: "You have a duty to ignore this tyranny. She should be immediately impeached and investigated."You have a duty to ignore this tyranny. She should be immediately impeached and investigated.

We'll impeach and thereafter investigate- to stop tyranny.... perfectly good sense.

Tim Pool, right-wing Twitter enthusiast: "Police should arrest her immediately."

No, that's not how these things work. Immediately before her remarks captured on the Twitter video, the Governor stated that she expects a legal challenge, and almost welcomed it. This is not a violation of a state criminal statute or a local ordinance. It is not in the jurisdiction of the police.

Phil Holloway, Town Hall columnist: "NM governor suspends open and concealed carry. Michelle Grisham is a tyrant.... The Covid 'emergency was the opening act."

Well over one million American lives have been taken in the "opening act" of Covid-19. It was not a hoax. It is not a hoax.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor of Arkansas: "Our Constitution doesn’t say 'the privilege to keep and bear arms'” it says 'the right.' If the government can take away one of your most basic rights, it can take away any of them. As long as I’m Governor, Arkansas will not tread on the Second Amendment - or any other."

Neither has Grisham. The alleged constitutional right cited by Sanders is "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." We no longer have a well-regulated militia. The closest we have to a militia is the National Guard, which is not necessary to the security of a free state. And Governor Grisham's order does not infringe on the right to possess or own a firearm, but only to carry it in public. And the Founders were referring to muskets. Aside from that, Governor Sanders has it right.

Joe Scarborough and many others have told us the Republican Party traditionally supported balanced budgets and limited government but now does not. Those were mostly fiction, a matter more of rhetoric than of actual philosophy. Add to those the GOP outrage over urban crime.  We now have a Democratic governor who, enraged about street crime in her state's largest city, has taken decisive and constitutional action, prompting conservative hand wringing. If only there were video of young black men rioting in Albuquerque, perhaps Republicans would do the right thing and support gun safety and crime prevention.

 

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Open Borders Sarah

Sarah Huckabee Sanders- as well as most Republicans- wants to divert our attention. In her rebuttal in February to the State of the Union Address of President Joe Biden, the Arkansas governor declared

Upon taking office just a few weeks ago, I signed executive orders to ban CRT, racism and indoctrination in our schools, eliminate the use of derogatory term, LatinX in our government....

President Biden is unwilling to defend our border....

A rebuilt military and a world that was stable and at peace, are now killed from drug overdoses, largely from fentanyl pouring across our southern border. Yet the Biden administration refuses to secure the border and save American lives.

Do you know who else (or maybe not "else") is unwilling to defend or secure our border? It's Open Borders Sarah. While politicians, pundits, and people affix their glaze upon the governor banning history not taught in public schools and use of a fairly obscure term not widely used in Arkansas (Arkansas!), Sanders is going after her real target. CNN reports

Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill into law this week that rolls back a number of child labor protections across the state, including a measure that had required employers to obtain work certificates for children under the age of 16.

“The Governor believes protecting kids is most important, but this permit was an arbitrary burden on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job,” Sanders’ spokesperson Alexa Henning said in a statement. “All child labor laws that actually protect children still apply and we expect businesses to comply just as they are required to do now.”

Well, no, they don't expect businesses to comply because if they did, they wouldn't be giving encouraging them to employ children. Previously

minors under the age of 16 needed to verify their age and get the written consent of a parent or guardian before a work certificate could be issued by the state’s Division of Labor. But H.B. 1410, known as the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, which passed the Arkansas state legislature earlier this month, no longer requires youth under the age of 16 to have that work certificate as a condition of their employment.

The bill’s passage comes after the Biden administration announced last month plans to crackdown on labor exploitation of migrant children across the country, the New York Times reported, following an investigation conducted by the publication.

However, it appears the government in Little Rock is pleased to encourage exploitation of the labor of migrant children while

Proponents of the legislation argued that removing the certificate would eliminate a tedious step that stood in the way of minors getting a job quickly in the state. They also said that the bill would restore decision-making to parents about their children and streamline the hiring process for minors.

But opponents of the legislation have argued that the work certificate served as a form of protection for vulnerable youth, especially immigrant youth, who may not always have a parent or guardian to sign off for them to work and who could be exploited without that certificate.

“When we think about kids working who are 14, we think about who this might protect, it’s not the 14-year-old who’s working at the ice cream parlor in your hometown, whose parents have given them permission to work. We’re worried about the children who are at risk of being exploited and who are being exploited today,” Laura Kellams, the northwest Arkansas director of the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a group that advocates for children’s rights in the state, said earlier this month during a committee hearing on the bill.

It's not good for the rights of children because they will be easily exploited. It's also not good for the wages of adults and young men and women as children enter the workforce, compete for jobs, and drive wages down.

It is good, however, for private sector employers who want to pay their employees as little as possible with as few rights and benefits as possible. It's good for the business of immigration, legal and illegal, which Sarah Sanders is promoting.

Evidently, employing children is big business, one which the Governor is doing her best to encourage whileSanders’ signing of the bill comes after a major US food sanitation company that operated facilities in eight states, including Arkansas, recently paid a $1.5 million civil penalty for employing minors in hazardous conditions.

Packers Sanitation Services illegally employed at least 102 children between the ages of 13 and 17 in jobs that required them to use toxic chemicals and clean razor-sharp saws.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is striving to be the kind of Republican the party movers and shakers are looking for.  Get the left outraged about the indignities foisted upon racial and sexual minorities while boosting the interests of business by employing children of immigrants, keeping wages down and workers subservient. driven by a surprising source. woke capitalism is thriving in Arkansas.

 

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The "Trump Vaccine"

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, press secretary to President Donald Trump and now GOP candidate for governor of Arkansas, has written an op-ed explaining why she decided to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Expert opinion and the experience of millions of other Americans be damned, she took the shot(s) on the advice of her doctor. And she argued

When the Trump administration initiated Operation Warp Speed in May 2020, the president stated that a vaccine would become available by December of that year at the very latest. From the moment he made his announcement, the "expert" class tried to undermine those statements with baseless fear-mongering.

The New York Times ran an opinion piece claiming that whatever the Trump administration released would likely be a dangerous political stunt. CNN did the same. But no one did more to undercut public confidence in the vaccine than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden doubted that the vaccine would be "real," while Harris said in a nationally-televised debate that she would not take any vaccine the Trump administration had a hand in creating.

Sanders has conveniently forgotten that in early October of 2020 Trump asserted

 “no president’s ever pushed” the Food and Drug Administration like he has as concerns mount that the administration is pressuring the agency to quickly authorize a vaccine for the coronavirus.

The FDA on Tuesday published new guidance for vaccine manufacturers that said they need to provide at least two months of follow-up safety data after vaccinating trial participants to apply for emergency use authorization. That makes the authorization of a vaccine before the Nov. 3 presidential election highly unlikely.

“We’re going to have a great vaccine very, very shortly. I think we should have it before the election, but frankly the politics gets involved and that’s OK. They want to play their games,” Trump said in a video posted on Twitter. “The FDA has acted as quickly as they’ve ever acted in history. ... No president’s ever pushed them like I’ve pushed them either, to be honest with you.”

Trump wanted to make the vaccine available before the election. If he couldn't he could at least make voters believe that if they stuck with him, it would be here very shortly.

In her piece, Huckabee Sanders twice referred to the "Trump vaccine" and once to the "Trump vaccine plan." That's three times more than the ever-modest Trump has referred to a "Trump vaccine."

That's not by accident.  It has been widely reported that nationally the vast majority of individuals who have chosen to avoid the vaccine are Trump supporters. Sanders claims

If President Biden, Vice President Harris, and others on the left truly care about increasing the vaccination rate and saving lives, they should admit they were wrong to cast doubt on Operation Warp Speed and give President Trump and his team the credit they are due for the development of a safe and effective vaccine in record time.

But of course, that's ridiculous. It's widely speculated that many people refusing the vaccine are doing so precisely because Democrats- especially the incumbent President- are vigorously encouraging them to do otherwise. If Biden, Harris, and "others on the left" gave more credit to Trump for Operation Warp Speed, they actually might sow doubt in the latter's supporters that the former President is responsible for development of the vaccine.

There is no reason Biden, Harris et al. should bend over backwards to give Donald Trump credit for something he himself doesn't want to take credit for.  Moreover, Trump's actions over the past eighteen months and statements over the course of his adult life suggest the most likely reason he doesn't want to be closely associated with the vaccine. If he boasted in it, a lot of his supporters currently resistant probably would change their mind and get the vaccine.

Additional people would be saved from contracting Covid-19 and its variant. Fewer people would be hospitalized and fewer would die. That would undermine President Trump's objective of culling the herd. Can't let that happen.

 

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Trump And God, A Dyad

He's out of touch, and not only because he likes touching men and women who don't want to be touched. When criticized for praising GOP members of Congress during the fall campaign, Joe Biden responded in January

I read in the New York Times today that one of my problems if I were to run for president, I like Republicans. OK, well, bless me father for I have sinned. From where I come from, I don't know how you get anything done. I don't know how you get anything done unless we start talking to one another again.

From where I come, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God, but he has his Christian church and I have mine.

Switching awkwardly from the people of the Old Testament and the New Testament to the people of solely the Old Testament, I refer to Wikipedia, which explains

Dayenu (Hebrew:דַּיֵּנוּ) is a song that is part of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The word "Dayenu" means approximately "it would have been enough", "it would have been sufficient", or "it would have sufficed" (day in Hebrew is "enough", and -enu the first person plural suffix, "to us"). This traditional up-beat Passover song is over one thousand years old. The earliest full text of the song occurs in the first medieval haggadah, which is part of the ninth-century Seder Rav Amram.[1] The song is about being grateful to God for all of the gifts he gave the Jewish people, such as taking them out of slavery, giving them the Torah and Shabbat, and had God only given one of the gifts, it would have still been enough.

If we had the Internet and not YouTube, it would have been enough. Still, we have one of the interpretations below from YouTube and lyrics here. 

Nonetheless, you need not bother with learning those lyrics praising God for what he did not have to do, yet chose to do. Norm Coleman, who was somehow a United States senator from Minnesota until the great Al Franken (barely) defeated him, is now chairperson of the Republican-Jewish coalition. Introducing President Trump on Saturday at the organization's annual convention, he

led the audience in an adapted version of the Passover reading “Dayenu,” as he recounted what Trump had done for Israel.  “Dayenu” which roughly means "it would have sufficed" is a song of thanks found in the haggadah traditionally sung at during the Seder.

Coleman praised Trump with a speech riffing off the song with phrases like, "Had President Trump only put two conservative Supreme Court judges...Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, we would say: DAYENU. Had President Trump only appointed Nikki Haley ambassador to the UN, sending a powerful message that we will not tolerate the UN's anti-Israel bias: DAYENU."

Coleman was helpfully blasted by Jews including respected blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, William Kristol, and Alaska senator Brian Schatz, the latter asserting “This is not my kind of Judaism and I suspect I’m not alone in that view."

Credit to all those speaking  up for the Judaism Coleman chose to denigrate. Donald Trump has denigrated Christianity for a few years now, and there has been far too little pushback from Christians, especially from those who know better. The Jewish community, the vast majority of which has refused to be suckered by Trump, can handle this swipe at Judaism.So for those of us not Jewish, the main issue is somewhat different.

If Coleman's remarkable insinuation is roundly criticized by Republicans, I'll issue a mea culpa. The chance of that happening is slim and none, and slim has been observed riding out of town.This is not Donald Trump's party. He has not only taken over the party; the party is now Trump.

While most GOP politicians probably don't actually believe that President Trump is God, they at least want voters to believe that he is. Therefore, there will be no compromise. There can be no compromise with God.

Forty-five of every 82 Republicans with an opinion believe God wanted Trump to be President. Sarah H. Sanders claimed God "wanted Donald Trump to become President and that's why he's there."  It was a slippery slope from God putting Trump in the White House to Trump becoming God. God no longer has chosen sides. He is one side.

The disease infecting the GOP is not limited to Donald J. Trump, who retains the approval of nearly 90% of the Republican electorate.Unfortunately, Biden isn't the only Democratic presidential hopeful who does not understand that the problem is not limited to one man. O'Rourke, Buttigieg, are among those who don't recognize that the GOP, headed by the man with God's blessing, believes it is in a death match with its enemies.

However, Biden alone served as Vice President to a President whom Republican voters were unconvinced was born in the USA and whom they wanted obstructed at every opportunity. The other Democrats who want to be President are relatively inexperienced and may still learn.  Joe Biden has had plenty of opportunity and seems still to be completely unaware.

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God's Will?

It was not strategically unwise, nor necessarily inaccuratewhen

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said she believes God wanted President Donald Trump to win the 2016 election, the Christian Broadcasting Network reported on Wednesday.

"I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that's why he's there," Sanders told CBN's David Brody and Jennifer Wishon, according to a transcript of the interview provided by CBN.

"I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about," Sanders added.

Shoring up support among white evangelicals is critical to Donald Trump's re-election effort, assuming there is one.  Nor can we mere mortals assume that God did not particularly want Donald Trump to become president. David Corn logically asks

Sarah Sanders on CBN: "[God] wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that’s why he’'s there."

So did God want @BarackObama to be president? Or did he take off those eight years?

Did he want the House Dems and @RepAOC to win in November? Or was he napping then?

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) January 30, 2019 

Most people are familiar with Newton's Third Law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It emerged to apply to physics, but also may address American national politics. 

Barack Obama was elected partly in response to the eight years of George W. Bush, who waged the deadly and futile Iraq War opposed by Illinois state senator Barack Obama. Eight years later, "no drama" Obama was replaced by Donald Trump, whose racial views, personality, character, and corrupt business background were roughly 180 degrees from his successor.

So perhaps God did will the election of Barack Obama, followed by the election of Donald Trump and subsequent return of control of the House of Representatives to Democratic control. If rejection of Trump and of his right-wing policies continues, a Democrat will be elected President in 2020 and the Senate probably turn Democratic in 2022, when 12 Democratic, and 22 GOP, seats are expected to be up for grabs. Additionally, it might explain the investigations of the President, his family member(s) and associates threatening Trump's presidency.

With a Democratic Senate, House, and presidency, there likely would be passage of the bill now known as HR 1, which would curb corruption in all three branches of government, extend voting rights, and help take money out of politics.

Or maybe, as is generally believed, God has a sense of humor while sitting in heaven. King David probably had it right when he wrote (Psalm2:4-6, ESV)

4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;

    the Lord holds them in derision.

5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,

    and terrify them in his fury, saying,

6 “As for me, I have set my King

    on Zion, my holy hill.”

Alternatively, when Sanders claimed "he wanted Donald Trump to become President," she was merely substituting "he" for Vladimir Putin, James Comey, and an intimidated media effectively in the tank for candidate Donald Trump.

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Prayers

I was going to praise Sarah Huckabee Sanders when I read

Strongly condemn the evil act of senseless violence in Annapolis, MD. A violent attack on innocent journalists doing their job is an attack on every American. Our prayers are with the victims and their friends and families.

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) June 28, 2018

Up until the moment I began this post I was going to praise her.

And then I noticed something interesting which I had not noticed the, oh, seven or eight times I had read the tweet.

There is no pronoun.

Sanders remarks "strongly condemn the evil act of senseless violence in Annapolis, MD." She does not say who strongly condemns the violence. It might be you, your neighbor, some Republicans, most Independents, and virtually every single Democrat.

But is it Sanders who "strongly condemns" the violence? Is it President Trump? We don't know. Admittedly, Sanders adds "our prayers are with the victim" but as we've come to learn from mass shooting after mass shooting, "prayers" generally mean- as Mrs. Trump might put it- "I don't care, do u?"

The evidence indicates that neither Sanders nor her boss is likely to have been terribly exorcised by the murders at Capital Gazette (and exorcism might not be enough to rid Donald Trump of his evil). 

During a press briefing in June, 2017, Sanders stated

I think that we have gone to a place where, if the media can't be trusted to report the news, then that's a dangerous place for America,” Sanders said during an on-camera press briefing. And I think if that is the place certain outlets are going — particularly for the purpose of spiking ratings — and if that's coming directly from the top, I think that's even more scary.

Three months later, after ESPN's Jemele Hill tweeted"Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists," Sanders responded "I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make and certainly something that is a fireable offense by ESPN...” (Hill apologized; CNN caved. The Administration knows what it is doing.)

In merely one of his classics, last October President Trump at a rally in Phoenix referred to the press as "truly dishonest people" and  charged “It’s time to expose the crooked media deceptions, and to challenge the media for their role in fomenting divisions. And yes, by the way — and yes, by the way, they are trying to take away our history and our heritage. You see that.”

And it was less than three weeks ago that Trump, nearly as ignorant of quote marks as he is about the First Amendment, declared

So funny to watch the Fake News, especially NBC and CNN. They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North Korea. 500 days ago they would have “begged” for this deal-looked like war would break out. Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018

It looked like war might "break out" because Trump had taken us to the brink of catastrophic war. Now North Korea is rapidlyupgrading a nuclear site. The President should be glad if the media is "fighting hard to downplay the deal." He might be while merely pretending otherwise.

Nearly every day (below, in Melbourne, Florida on 2/17), the guy Sarah H. Sanders flacks for attacks the press, often whipping his supporters into a frenzy of outrage against it.  Still, my thoughts and prayers are with President Trump in the hope he maintains his health. Unlike the thoughts and prayers of Republicans or thoughts of Mrs. Sanders, I am sincere. A President Pence awaits.

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Maxine Waters Didn't Start The Fire

It's hard to determine which is worse: the statement of Representative Maxine Waters or one of the responses to it. Waters infamously remarked

Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere. We've got to get the children connected to their parents.

Actually, it's not difficult at all. An appropriately restrained Nancy Pelosi contended "In the crucial months ahead, we must strive to make America beautiful again. Trump's daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable."

Slightly more negatively, Chuck Schumer charged "If you disagree with a politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office, but no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American...”

Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education for most of President Obama's tenure, at least was humble when he acknowledged his statement was only "my personal opinion":

My personal opinion:
No matter how much we dislike or disagree with someone, we should not deny them the chance to have a meal.
The history in our country of denying people access to restaurants, to water fountains and even bathrooms is too raw, too real.
We can’t keep dividing.

— Arne Duncan (@arneduncan) June 24, 2018

What is happening is completely unrelated to discriminating against an individual because of an inherited characteristic- race- or against someone born as a man or a woman and comes to realize it's not who he or she is. Still, Duncan seems to realize that bias against blacks and transgendered individuals is a part of our history, and far worse than requiring someone to go elsewhere for her Chanterelle & Scape Risotto. Not so aware, David Axelrod responded to Waters with

Kind of amazed and appalled by the number of folks on Left who applauded the expulsion of @PressSec and her family from a restaurant.
This, in the end, is a triumph for @realDonaldTrump vision of America:
Now we’re divided by red plates & blue plates!#sad

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) June 24, 2018

"Folks on the left" is another shot against progressives by the Democratic establishment. Worse, insertion of the adverb "now" was no accident. It is Axelrod- unlike Duncan- reinforcing the GOP meme that now that some Democrats are uncivil, we have (suddenly) become divided. 

Axelrod, Senator Barack Obama's chief campaign strategist in 2008 and 2012, evidently needs to remember the following (compiled in September, 2016 by CNN's Gregory Krieg):

 1. "Why doesn't he show his birth certificate? There's something on that birth certificate that he          doesn't like."

- March 23, 2011, on "The View"

2. "He's spent millions of dollars trying to get away from this issue. Millions of dollars in legal fees trying to get away from this issue. And I'll tell you what, I brought it up, just routinely, and all of a sudden a lot facts are emerging and I'm starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country."

- March 28, 2011, on Fox News

3. "He doesn't have a birth certificate, or if he does, there's something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me -- and I have no idea if this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be -- that where it says 'religion,' it might have 'Muslim.' And if you're a Muslim, you don't change your religion, by the way."

- March 30, 2011, on The Laura Ingraham Show

4. "I have people that have been studying [Obama's birth certificate] and they cannot believe what they're finding ... I would like to have him show his birth certificate, and can I be honest with you, I hope he can. Because if he can't, if he can't, if he wasn't born in this country, which is a real possibility ... then he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics."

- April 7, 2011, on NBC's "Today" show

5. "His grandmother in Kenya said, 'Oh, no, he was born in Kenya and I was there and I witnessed the birth.' She's on tape. I think that tape's going to be produced fairly soon. Somebody is coming out with a book in two weeks, it will be very interesting."

- April 7, 2011, on MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

Donald Trump never would have become President Donald Trump, would never have even sniffed the GOP presidential nomination, were it not for his campaign to convince voters that Barack H. Obama was not born in this country.  It's analogous to Obama's opposition to the upcoming Iraq War, inasmuch as the Illinois senator would never have been considered for his party's presidential nomination had he never given this impressive speech. 

Axelrod's worship of his former boss knows no bounds. When Axelrod maintains "now we're divided by red plates & blue plates, he suggests that in the Age of Obama we were contentedly sitting in a circle and singing "Kumbaya." And, yes, we noticed the hashtag- "sad"- popularized by Donald J. Trump himself, likely employed here without sarcasm.

We don't even have to go back to 2011.  The morning after Red Hen restaurant turned Sarah Sanders and her party away, she tweeted about the incident in a relatively restrained (albeit probably illegal) manner. Encouraged by the President to lead Monday's news conference with a statement, Sanders unremarkably stated "Healthy debate on ideas and political philosophy is important, but the calls for harassment and push for any Trump supporter to avoid the public is unacceptable."

However, in between, President Trump stirred the pot with

The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2018

Criticism of critics of Truimp, combined with nostalgia for the America which Axelrod imagines existed oh, say, 17 months ago, does not mollify Republicans.  One GOP snowflake, Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, has introduced a resolution to censure Representative Waters and has proposed she apologize to the President, release a public statement denouncing harassment and violence, and resign. 

No good can come from Maxine Waters' remarks, especially because if the GOP retains control of both houses of Congress after November, game over.  However, even before the restaurant confrontation and the ensuing fallout, it was clear Republicans will not be soothed or placated. They will not compromise. It is now Donald Trump's party. They will accept only total victory. 

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Hoisted By Her Own Petard

Under the category "things I wish I had tweeted":

Restaurant owner says to Sarah Sanders: “Hobby Lobby.” https://t.co/SD62kfJPbg

— Tim O'Brien (@TimOBrien) June 23, 2018

Employees of Red Hen restaurant in southwestern Virginia had called owner Stephanie Wilkinson to report that President Trump's press secretary and her party were dining under a reservation made in the name of Sanders' husband. After arriving, Wilkinson polled her employees, some of them gay, then spoke to Mrs. Sanders, who was politely ejected.  Early the next morning, Sarah Sanders broke federal law with

Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) June 23, 2018

Sarah Sanders earns her pay ardently defending a President who had made over 3,000 "false or misleading claims" as of May 1.  A nasty piece of work, she is a good match for a boss who has made clear his contempt for Democrats, Republicans, ethnic minorities, women, veterans, and gays (and practically everyone else not named "Trump.")

Yet no one should be denied service simply because a business owner or professional, citing conscience, is offended. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration doesn't agree and in January we learned

Health care workers who want to refuse to treat patients because of religious or moral beliefs will have a new defender in the Trump administration.

The top civil rights official at the Department of Health and Human Services is creating the Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom to protect doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to take part in procedures like abortion or treat certain people because of moral or religious objections.

"Never forget that religious freedom is a primary freedom, that it is a civil right that deserves enforcement and respect," said Roger Severino, the director of HHS's Office for Civil Rights, at a ceremony to announce the new division.

The establishment of the division reverses an Obama-era policy that barred health care workers from refusing to treat transgender individuals or people who have had or are seeking abortions.

That Obama rule was challenged in court by the Franciscan Alliance, a Christian health care organization in Texas, and a judge in 2016 blocked enforcement as the case played out in court.

The new division appears to be primarily aimed at preventing health care workers from participating in abortion services that go against their religious beliefs. The division cites a 2011 federal regulation guiding the enforcement of conscience protections that mentions abortion more than 30 times.

There is an obvious term for that: discrimination. 

What goes around, comes around. When a bakery owner who identified as Christian alleged his religion supports the right to discriminate, Sanders supported him, though without identifying any New or Old Testament verse.  The owners claimed providing service to a gay couple affronted their conscience; so, too, did serving President Trump's press secretary affront the conscience of the employees of Red Hen restaurant. The dangerous "freedom of conscience" door swings both ways.

Mrs. Sanders has been given a perfect opportunity to profess a change of heart or mind, explaining that she now recognizes that a business or a professional is obligated to serve its paying customers, whether a gay couple, a woman seeking an abortion, or an individual dining out on a Friday night.

She will not, of course, because she is Sarah Huckabee Sanders and she works for Donald J. Trump. And therein lays the problem.

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Lie Of The Day (June 5, 2018)

It's the GOP fallback position, and very, very important.

Chris Cuomo interviewed an uncomfortably smiling Sarah Huckabee Sanders on "Cuomo Prime Time" Wednesday night about a variety of topics.  They included the credibility of the Presidential Press Secretary compared to that of the press, the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the allegation of an FBI "spy" inside the White House, veterans, tariffs, the budget deficit, and immigration.

But what Sanders really wanted to talk about was the economy.  She realizes, after all, that it is the issue on which the Administration is least likely to get challenged- by Cuomo, other journalists, even Democrats. She even stated "I wish we spent a lot more time talking about the economy," she said at one point.

And she said "Multiple people have said that we have the strongest economy that we've had since World War II."

That may well be true. She may have gone home one night and said to her husband and two children "repeat after me: 'we have the strongest economy that we've had since World War II.'" They may have complied. Multiple people.

Better, we have Donald Trump on Tuesday:

The U.S. has an increased economic value of more than 7 Trillion Dollars since the Election. May be the best economy in the history of our country. Record Jobs numbers. Nice!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2018

It would be "nice," even "cool" or "awesome"- were it true.

Unfortunately it's not, and fortunately we have Jeanna Smialek to explain

Judging solely by gross domestic product, perhaps the simplest way to gauge a nation’s progress, the decades that followed World War II were the hottest in American history. Pent-up consumer demand, a housing boom and a vibrant manufacturing sector all melded into the economy’s Golden Age. By the GDP yardstick, the current pace of the expansion pales in comparison…

Still, the overall jobless rate -- 3.8 percent in May -- has been lower in the past, dipping below 3 percent during the 1950s. The time it takes unemployed people to find work also remains elevated. And while wage growth has slowly picked up, past expansions have seen much bigger gains. That’s true even after accounting for today’s modest inflation.

“If you’re a new data scientist, or Ph.D. economist, yeah, it’s a great time to look for a job,” Lawrence Katz, a Harvard University economics professor who served as the Labor Department chief economist during the Clinton administration, said when asked if this is the best time to look for work. “If you’re a janitor, a construction worker in some places -- No.”

Katz noted that in the late 1960s and late 1990s, wage growth was booming for such everyday employees. And in the 1960s, jobs put workers on a path toward benefits and economic security in the longer run -- more of a rarity today, in a world where unions and pension plans are few and far between.

Michael Bordo, an economics professor at Rutgers University and an authority on monetary history, agrees with Katz on that timing. The best economic period judging by unemployment was the 1960s, he said. In terms of economic growth, it was the 1960s and the 1990s.

Bloomberg's Timothy L.O'Brien notes

As you might have guessed just from reading this, "increased economic value" in this context is a bogus metric, one Trump has ginned up to describe something that isn't actually happening.

Trump's $7 trillion figure refers to how much the overall value of the U.S. stock market has risen since he was inaugurated as president last year. It has nothing to do with the growth in the value of goods and services — which is known as "gross domestic product," not "increased economic value."

More important, Trump isn't presiding over "the best economy in the history of our country." 

Unemployment is at an 18-year low, 3.8 percent, but the unemployment rate was lower in the years right after World War II (it was 2.5 percent in 1953, for example). GDP growth is ticking along at about 2 percent to 3 percent annually, but in the 1960s it was about 5 percent annually. Wage growth is slower today than in the past and the labor force participation rate also lags.

That's not to say that things aren't good right now in many ways. They are. They're just not as good as Trump is saying.

In the interests of full disclosure: O'Brien added "I suspect that Trump isn't riffing on "increased economic value" simply out of ignorance. By tying an economic assessment to the stock market's ascent, Trump can clearly distinguish himself from his predecessor, Barack Obama."

But that is why he is not simply ignorant.  The Chaos President does virtually everything- the pardons, the Iran nuclear deal, health care, taxes, trade- in a manner meant to distinguish himself from No Drama Obama. And it is hard to believe the 71-year-old Trump, proud graduate of the esteemed Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, is unaware of the booming economy enjoyed by his country (in this case, the USA, not Russia) in the years immediately following World War II.

Best economy since WWII? Increased economic activity by $7 trillion dollars.

Democrats have been ceding ground to President Trump on "the economy." They should not. 

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Mike Huckabee Checks In From Another Planet

Jim Carrey is a better pundit than comedic actor, but that's setting the bar fairly low. On St. Patrick's Day,  Carrey tweeted the exceedingly unflattering portrait he drew of Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders with the caption "This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous!"

This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous! pic.twitter.com/MeYLTy1pqb

— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 17, 2018

If conservatives were honest- if, say, cows could fly- they would have slammed Carrey by noting that Mrs. Sanders is more attractive than he gave her credit for. Instead, we got such thoughts as

Jim Carrey is the poster boy for the modern liberal man.
Failed, broken, and mentally unstable.
His movie career has disintegrated! Carrey now spends his days insulting conservative women like .@PressSec
Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Mental illness is a common trait among leftists!

— Jake Highwell (@JakeHighwell) March 19, 2018

Meanwhile, it's taboo to ask whether the man bragging he has "a bigger and better button" than "rocket man" might not have all his snaps fastened.  With less generalization but more sensitivity, one woman tweeted "In the last week Jim Carrey and Hillary Clinton have both attacked women.Hate and intolerance has taken over the left. I’m so disgusted daily by the constant hypocrisy. Call these people out!"

They are so easily offended. Jim Carrey criticizes an individual who is proud of her Christian faith while lying effortlesssly- and he has "attacked women." And it will be a long wait until a Republican argues that Hillary Clinton, who maintained some women are overly influenced in their vote by a husband ora  male boss, is wrong.  They probably figure that's the way it should be.

The most substantive criticism came from Sanders' father, former Arkansas governor, Fox News host, GOP presidential candidate, and pastor Mike Huckabee, who tweeted

Pathetic BULLY, sexist, hater, bigot & "Christaphobe" @jimcarrey attacks @PressSec for her faith; what would be hypocritical Hollywood reaction if he called someone a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew?" #classlessCarrey https://t.co/HCqHoER0Ru

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) March 19, 2018

Pathetic BULLY, sexist, hater, bigot & "Christaphobe" @jimcarrey attacks @PressSec for her faith; what would be hypocritical Hollywood reaction if he called someone a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew?" #classlessCarrey https://twitter.com/foxandfriends/status/975698398069243904 …

8:07 AM - Mar 19, 2018

He probably didn't notice that we didn't notice that it is precisely, probably solely, the Christian right demanding the privilege to ignore societal norms and the law in opposing same-sex marriage, gay rights, and reproductive freedom on the basis of its interpretation of God's will.  Evidence that Christianity,the Bible, or God is opposed to equal rights for women, gay individuals,or whatever group is today's target of discrimination is unnecessary; one merely has to claim that a higher power demands favor of one group over another.

Except in exceedingly rare instances, this right to discriminate is not being claimed by Jews, atheists, or Muslims, but by self-identified Christians. However, the extraordinary discretion claimed need not be limited to these groups because as Ian Millhiser wrote in 2014

while LGBT Americans are the current target of this effort to repackage prejudice as “religious liberty,” they are hardly the first. To the contrary, as Wake Forest law Professor Michael Kent Curtis explained in a 2012 law review article, many segregationists justified racial bigotry on the very same grounds that religious conservatives now hope to justify anti-gay animus. In the words of one professor at a prominent Mississippi Baptist institution, “our Southern segregation way is the Christian way . . . . [God] was the original segregationist.”

Mike Huckabee can defend his daughter and even, against all logic and reality, imply a parallel between calling someone a "so-called Christian" and calling her a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew." Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State has explained

Ironically, the single greatest threat to religious freedom comes from a radical redefinition of the idea itself...I think the Framers of the Constitution would be appalled at the radical revisionism of the First Amendment being advocated by some. More importantly, I think the America of the future will look askance at efforts to elevate majority faiths or subject not so traditional believers to the status of an orphan class to be denied genuinely equal treatment in this diverse country.”It might. I was never convinced Trump would (successfully) lean on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Assistant Attorney General Andrew McCabe, but I've never been slick enough to be elected President of the United States of America. Donald Trump has.

Jim Carrey could apologize, something along the lines of "I apologize if anything I am construed as having implied might have hurt your delicate feelings. I will learn to be more politically correct."

Or maybe he can lean on irony, as did comedian John Fugelsang, who remarked succinctly "Jim Carrey under fire from Trump loyalists who really don't like it when famous people say rude things about others."




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Let Sleeping Dogs Lie.

This post isn't about sex.  It also isn't about money or about the law.

Each plays a role in the Stormy Daniels/Stephanie Clifford-Donald J. Trump story. But this isn't about the corrupt businessman and the pornographic star. It pertains to President Trump's reaction to Sarah Huckabee Sanders' remark about the affair, and how that provides insight into Trump's surprise victory in November of 2016.

James Comey and Mrs. Sanders have something in common, other than belonging to the GOP.  Mediaite (and with different words, everybody) reports

President Donald Trump is reportedly somewhat less than thrilled with his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for her comments during Wednesday’s briefing addressing the Stormy Daniels story.

According to CNN’s Abby Phillip (citing reporting from Jim Acosta), Trump believes that Sanders essentially breathed life into the Stormy Daniels controversy with her Wednesday remarks.

“According to this source, Sarah Sanders’ comments were essentially putting the Stormy Daniels storyline on steroids yesterday,” Phillip said.

Sanders, in the Wednesday briefing, said “the president has denied the allegations against him. And again, this case has already been won in arbitration.”

Those comments from Sanders led many to point out that the White House was confirming that Trump engaged in some sort of legal agreement with the porn star.





Other than being confusing and possibly inaccurate (not unusual or counte-productive in the Trump presidency), there is nothing wrong with this statement. On the contrary, Sanders essentially repeated a great Trump theme: I'm a winner.  She contended the President a) has denied the allegations; and b) won. Case closed; let's move on.

But Trump, with magnificent political instincts, is upset with Sanders. Not, as far as we know, because of what she said but because she said anything, hence giving the public an opportunity to focus on the matter. If nothing else, it resurrected the issue from the political coffin.

And that's not good. Sometimes it matters less what the facts (in this case, contested) are than that an item is in the public consciousness.

Enter Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey. Last May, numbers-cruncher Nate Silver wrote

Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.

The letter isn’t the only reason that Clinton lost. It does not excuse every decision the Clinton campaign made. Other factors may have played a larger role in her defeat, and it’s up to Democrats to examine those as they choose their strategy for 2018 and 2020.

But the effect of those factors — say, Clinton’s decision to give paid speeches to investment banks, or her messaging on pocket-book issues, or the role that her gender played in the campaign — is hard to measure. The impact of Comey’s letter is comparatively easy to quantify, by contrast. At a maximum, it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward Donald Trump, swinging Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him, perhaps along with North Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its impact might have been only a percentage point or so. Still, because Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, the letter was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.

It is highly unlikely, as Silver suggests, that Comey's letter of October 28 did not move at least one additional percent of voters into Trump's column.

Yet, it's likely also that the Director's letter of November 6, 2016- largely exonerating the Democratic nominee- also helped Trump.

The Real Clear Politics average of Pennsylvania polls from 10/29/16-11/5/16 gave Clinton a lead of 2.7%; she lost by .7%.  In Michigan, the average of polls of 11/1/16-11/06/16 had Clinton up by 3.6%. She lost the state by .3%. The RCP average of polls taken 10/26/16-11/01/16 in Wisconsin had Clinton up by 6.5%; she lost by .7% to Trump.

Either there was a whole lot of lying going on- or Clinton lost additional ground in the 2-3 days following Comey's letter of 11/6/16.   The news for her was favorable, but it brought the issue back to the fore. Similarly, Sanders gave a fairly clever defense of Trump's status- but brought the issue back from the dead.

That is what Donald Trump appears to believe. And his instinct, a sense of where people are at any particular time, has proven quite sound.




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Verify, Do Not Trust

Huffington Post reports

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told a meeting of Democratic lawmakers that President Donald Trump’s campaign pledges to curb immigration ― including his promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border ― were uninformed, and that such a structure was unlikely to happen in full, according to multiple media reports.

Kelly made the comments to members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Wednesday in a closed-door session that was first reported by The Washington Post. His comments were confirmed by Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), who was at the meeting.

“I can confirm that Chief of Staff Kelly said today that the President’s campaign was not fully informed about the wall he was promising to voters,” Gutiérrez said in a statement. “Kelly went on to say that many campaigns are not fully informed about every policy and that campaigning and governing are two different things and that governing is harder.”

We don't have a quote from the Chief of Staff himself, but only an interpretation of his remarks by a member of Congress and immigration advocate.  But it sounds as if Kelly was, if he referred to "campaigns," giving the boss cover while attempting to make himself out as the voice of reason. The latter seems likely because

Gutiérrez also went on to confirm reporting by The New York Times that Kelly took credit as the “one who tempered” Trump’s more extreme opinions on the wall and the viability of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative, also known as DACA.

“Kelly took credit for educating the President on the wall and that a concrete barrier from sea to shining sea was no longer the conception of border security barriers supported today by the White House,” Gutiérrez said.

It surely is comforting to know, through Representative Gutierrez, that the Chief of Staff does not except a concrete wall to arise out of the Rio Grande and the Colorado River.  The next day the President went even further, backing down from his campaign boasts while pretending otherwise:

The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it. Parts will be, of necessity, see through and it was never intended to be built in areas where there is natural protection such as mountains, wastelands or tough rivers or water.....

The old joke runs "how do you know when X is lying?" Donald Trump has shattered the punch line "when his lips are moving," for he does it quite effortlessly when he tweets as well as when he speaks (no rhyme intended).

Nonetheless, that puts the President not at odds but on the same terrain as his chief of staff. Let us not forget

Video of a 2015 speech delivered by Representative Frederica S. Wilson revealed Friday that John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, misrepresented her remarks when he accused her of bragging about securing $20 million for a South Florida F.B.I. building and twisting President Barack Obama’s arm.

Mr. Kelly, escalating a feud between Mr. Trump and Ms. Wilson, had cast the congresswoman on Thursday as a publicity-seeking opportunist. However, the video, released by The Sun Sentinel, a newspaper in South Florida, showed that during her nine-minute speech, Ms. Wilson never took credit for getting the money for the building, only for helping pass legislation naming the building after two fallen federal agents.

She never mentioned pleading with Mr. Obama, and she acknowledged the help of several Republicans, including John A. Boehner, then the House speaker; Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Curbelo; and Senator Marco Rubio.

John Kelly is different than Donald Trump or Kellyanne Conway or Sarah Huckabee Sanders. He is more serious and reputable, and probably tells the truth more often than he utters falsehoods. But there is a reason all these individuals serve this particular President.





For the latter three, truth is an unpleasant option. For General Kelly, it can be thrown overboard when necessary, which puts him on an ethical plane above Sanders, Conway, or Trump. However, he is a reminder that service in uniform to the country does not inoculate one from dishonesty. As the immigration debate continues, nothing he (or anyone in the Administration) says can be assumed to  be completely accurate.

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GOP Humor

While most of the credible (which obviously excludes Fox News) fixates, justifiably, on Michael Wolff's allegations and revelations about life inside the Trump campaign and White House, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and John Roberts are doing stand-up. We learn from Politico

The White House plans to ban the use of personal cell phones in the West Wing by both staff and guests, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced on Thursday, citing security concerns.

“The security and integrity of the technology systems at the White House is a top priority for the Trump administration and therefore the use of all personal devices for both guests and staff will no longer be allowed in the West Wing,” Sanders said in a statement. “Staff will be able to conduct business on their government-issued devices and continue working hard on behalf of the American people.”

The article continues "The ban will go into effect in the coming days, and it is likely to have the secondary effect of cracking down on leaks, a top priority for White House chief of staff John Kelly."

It would be politically incorrect to point out that the primary aim is to stop leaks, although it is likely to have limited effect because, as Wolff suggests

As details of Trump’s personal life leaked out, he became obsessed with identifying the leaker. The source of all the gossip, however, may well have been Trump himself. In his calls throughout the day and at night from his bed, he often spoke to people who had no reason to keep his confidences. He was a river of grievances, which recipients of his calls promptly spread to the ever-attentive media.

Staff and guests would be banned from bringing their cell phones into the West Wing but no one can stop the sexually insecure Chief Executive from desperately trying to provoke nuclear war by, for instance, tweeting "North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the 'Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.'Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"

But the presidential press secretary is a comedic amateur compared to the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court who

in his annual State of the Judiciary report, said Sunday his branch of government will examine the issue of sexual harassment within the judicial system.

"The judiciary will begin 2018," wrote Roberts, "by undertaking a careful evaluation of whether its standards of conduct and its procedures for investigating and correcting inappropriate behavior are adequate to ensure an exemplary workplace for every judge and every court employee."

That's commendable- but who's going to tell Clarence Thomas he's out?

Well before Harvey Weinstein, there was Clarence " a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves..." Thomas, who has become famous on the Court for saying almost nothing.

Not all invocations of the "race card" are necessarily malevolent, but given that Thomas knew the accusations were both accurate and unrelated to race (and not only because Anita Hill was/is black), his was truly evil. Still, Thomas is best known for withstanding (valid) charges of sexual harassment of  Hill and given life-long tenure on the highest court in the land.

In 2010, in an article Salon entitled "How we Know Clarence Thomas did it," Steve Kornacki helpfully laid out the open-and-shut case against the judge, who denied everything and slandered his accusers as liars and worse.  Among other pieces of evidence, he quotes from a Washinton Post article which explained that the book (written by Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer)

 "Strange Justice" uses statements from Thomas's friends and associates to undermine Thomas's testimony that he never talked dirty with Hill. The authors, after interviewing acquaintances as far back as his college years at Holy Cross, report that he often recounted sexually explicit films in lurid detail. Kaye Savage, a former colleague, reports that the walls of his bachelor apartment were covered with Playboy nude centerfolds. The owner of a video store near the EEOC said Thomas was a regular customer for pornographic movies."

Clarence Thomas as he portrayed himself never would even have imagined behaving in such a manner. Still, he is now on the United States Supreme Court, whose Chief Justice, with no sense of irony, observes "events in the past few weeks have made clear that the judicial branch is not immune" from sexual harassment in the workplace. (First video below is from 4/16; the second from 10/16.)





If Chief Justice Roberts were concerned about sexual harassment in the workplace, he should ask his colleague to resign.If he wants bygones to be bygones, he needs to ask guys named "Franken" and "Moore" about double standards. Meanwhile, we can admire people like John Roberts and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who have gotten so far with so little sincerity, and laugh at their surfeit of gall.









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