Funny how the Republicans decided late afternoon of the day before a mid-summer holiday would be the ideal time to release their report on the Russian interference with the 2016 election.

The report comes five days after Trump seemed to endorse Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denial, in the face of US intelligence agencies’ conclusions, that Russian interfered in the 2016 election: “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Trump tweeted on Thursday.

We know! Of course they do! People lie sometimes! Russia has been known to lie! The fact that Russia says it doesn’t make it true! Is this the way you did business, taking everyone’s word for everything?!

While Republicans in the House have openlyaimed to discredit the Justice Department’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russian ties, Tuesday’s seven-page report saw the Senate committee’s Republicans siding with US intelligence and law enforcement, including the FBI.

However reluctantly and 3 p.m. on the 3d of Julyly.

The report endorses the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, or ICA, finding Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 with the goals of undermining Americans’ faith in the democratic process and denigrating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The assessment also concludes that Russia “developed a clear preference for” Trump.

“The ICA is a sound intelligence product,” the committee says, noting it was produced after “reasonable, transparent and open” debate. The committee said intelligence analysts they interviewed reported “no politically motivated pressure to reach any conclusions,” and noted that the CIA and FBI had “high confidence” that Russia favored Trump, while the National Security Agency had “moderate confidence.”

Senators are there for a minimum of six years; that probably makes them a little less flaky than Representatives.

Your tax dollars at work:

The Trump White House is abusing a federal, taxpayer-funded Twitter account to launch false attacks against women senators who oppose Trump’s inhumane treatment of immigrants.

On Monday afternoon, the official White House Twitter account targeted Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris in a series of defamatory tweets accusing them of supporting criminals and gangs.

While Trump frequently uses his own Twitter feed to go after dissenters, this is the first time the White House account has been weaponized for such false and personal attacks.

In the first tweet, the White House targeted Warren, accusing her of “supporting criminals moving weapons, drugs, and victims across our nation’s borders.” The tweet also included a link to the website of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency that Warren has said she would like to see replaced “with something that reflects our values.”

A short time later, the government account was used to launch a false smear against Harris, who recently called to “reexamine ICE and its role.”

“@SenKamalaHarris, why are you supporting the animals of MS-13? You must not know what ICE really does. Here is a link to help you out,” the White House tweeted along with a link to a press release describing two deportations earlier this month, including the removal from the U.S. of a Salvadoran with alleged ties to MS-13.

The use of official government social media accounts to attack political opponents is a strategy widely used by authoritarian regimes in countries like Russia, but not in democracies.

As documented in a 2017 report on state-sponsored social media manipulation, singling out political dissidents and opponents in this way is often done with the intent of promoting harassment against the targeted individual(s). The purpose is to silence those particular individuals, and also to send a warning to others who may be thinking of speaking out.

That’s always the purpose of Twitter call-outs. You’d think whoever is behind the official White House account would be above that, but no. It’s probably Stephen Miller.

That’s not normal.

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1013887684861804544

Individual US Senators of the wrong party.

The stories about Pruitt keep piling up.

Two of Scott Pruitt’s top aides provided fresh details to congressional investigators in recent days about some of his most controversial spending and management decisions, including his push to find a six-figure job for his wife at a politically connected group, enlist staffers in performing personal tasks[,] and seek high-end travel despite aides’ objections.

The Trump administration appointees described an administrator who sought a salary that topped $200,000 for his wife and accepted help from a subordinate in the job search, requested aid from senior EPA officials in a dispute with a Washington landlord[,] and disregarded concerns about his first-class travel.

The reason he’s still getting away with it is the fact that his supervisor is Trump.

Don Fox, former acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said in an interview Sunday that the fact that the administrator asked federal employees to perform multiple tasks unrelated to their official work raises serious questions about whether the EPA administrator has violated federal rules of official conduct.

…

Fox said that because most of the behavior Pruitt has been accused of involves violations that fall under federal Standards of Ethical Conduct for executive branch employees, it is up to either the president or his chief of staff to respond.

“If we were talking about any other federal employee it would be that person’s supervisor to take disciplinary action, which could be anything from counseling to dismissal from public service,” he said. “This falls squarely on the shoulders of the president, and he seems to do nothing but go out of his way to praise Scott Pruitt.”

So Pruitt can take bribes from oil companies on national tv and still not be stopped.

I’m sure this is some kind of purple government ethics and it’s only weirdo coastal ayleeets who look at it squinty-eyed.

A senior editor at the Catholic magazine First Things tells us that we just don’t understand about Trump’s “family values.” Why don’t we? Because we’re the Koastul AyLeeet.

People I knew from college or had met in New York expressed distaste for Mr. Trump’s behavior. If they were religiously conservative, they stressed his infidelity while also objecting to his insults of women. If they were liberal, they objected to his treatment of women and viewed his infidelity as a sign that his religious supporters were hypocrites. Not a single peer of mine in New York — no matter how conservative or religious — publicly supported Mr. Trump.

In contrast, almost all of the people I know in my hometown in Nebraska proudly supported him. They glossed over his infidelities and stressed that he seemed to be a good father. They were impressed by his “respectful” sons and admired the success of his daughters.

But he doesn’t seem to be a good father. He bragged of spending no time doing things like playing with them in the park when they were little, let alone changing diapers. He punched Don Junior to the floor in front of his friends for not wearing a suit for a baseball game. He agreed with Howard Stern on live radio that his daughter is a piece of ass. He’s not a good father, he’s a rich father. He’s made them rich so they stick around.

The people I know in Nebraska have the same moral views as my religious acquaintances in New York, yet they had a totally different view of Mr. Trump as a standard-bearer for family values. What made the difference? In a word, class.

And geography, don’t forget geography. New York versus Nebraska. Subtle enough for you?

In their book “Red Families v. Blue Families,” Naomi Cahn and June Carbone popularized the idea of “blue” and “red” family models. Blue families prize equality and companionship between spouses while putting a low value on childbearing. Red families tend to be inegalitarian or complementarian, viewing the man as the primary breadwinner and the mother as the primary caregiver. Early marriage and multiple children are typical.

Red families tend toward conservatism, and blue tend toward progressivism, but the models share an upper-class stress on respectability and a strong taboo against out-of-wedlock birth.

A third model can be found among working-class whites, blacks and Hispanics — let’s call it purple. In these families, bonds between mothers and children are prized above those between couples. Unstable relationships are the norm, and fathers quickly end up out of the picture.

…

Baffling as it may be to elites, Mr. Trump embodies a real if imperfect model of family values.

Sure, and by the same token he follows a real if imperfect model of ethics.

God they are such grifters.

Since her husband took office Melania Trump has earned six figures from an unusual deal with a photo agency in which major media organizations have indirectly paid the Trump family despite a requirement that the photos be used only in positive coverage.

President Donald Trump’s most recent financial disclosure reveals that in 2017 the first lady earned at least $100,000 from Getty Images for the use of any of a series of 187 photos of the first family shot between 2010 and 2016 by Belgian photographer Regine Mahaux.

It’s not unheard of for celebrities to earn royalties from photos of themselves, but it’s very unusual for the wife of a currently serving elected official. More problematic for the many news organizations that have published or broadcast the images, however, is that Getty’s licensing agreement stipulates the pictures can be used in “positive stories only.”

According to the revenue statement in President Trump’s May financial disclosure, Melania Trump earned between $100,000 and $1,000,000 in photo royalties in 2017 from the Getty deal.

Because that’s all the how precise they’re required to be. It was at least 100k but could be 1,000k…which is a decent piece of change. They could pay for a whole year’s worth of ice cream with that.

NBC News found at least a dozen organizations that had paid to use Mahaux’s restricted images of the Trumps in 2017, resulting in indirect payment to the first family.

Yahoo News, NBC News, Marie Claire, the Daily Mail, My San Antonio, Houston Chronicle, House Beautiful, and SF Gate, the website for The San Francisco Chronicle, are among those that have featured Mahaux’s highly stylized family portraits since Trump took office.

The February 2017 issue of the Russian edition of the fashion magazine Elle included a gilded Mahaux portrait of the first family.

A Mahaux group portrait of Donald, Melania and son Barron Trump was featured on the May page of the White House 2017 calendar that was on sale in the White House gift shop for $14. Bent Publishing, which publishes the calendars, confirmed that it licensed the Mahaux photo for the 2017 calendar.

So the White House gift shop is putting money in Don and Mel’s pockets. That’s not how any of this is supposed to work.

Several news organizations removed the images from their websites after inquiries by NBC News.

Yahoo took them down and said in a statement: “We were not aware of this specific arrangement with Getty nor was our editorial influenced by it. We have removed the image from Yahoo Lifestyle.”

The San Francisco Chronicle deleted the images from its website as well, and said it was looking into how they came to be used.

…

In a standard photo contract, the photographer gets royalties and the photo agency receives fees for each use of an image. Models are not paid royalties.

Paying royalties to the Trumps and limiting the use to only positive stories about a prominent politician is unusual, according to Akili Ramsess, executive director of the National Press Photographers Association. She said that while celebrity wedding or baby photographs are sometimes licensed so part of the fees flows back to the celebrity, it is rare for politicians. Keith Major, another Getty photographer who has also photographed Melania Trump, does not share royalties with her, and agreed that splitting income with a subject is unusual.

Unusual because greedy, sleazy, tacky, piggy. It’s a wonder they don’t send Barron out to Lafayette Park to sell lemonade.

News organizations likely would not have known about the payments to Melania Trump, but could have been aware of the published stipulation about positive coverage in the catalog.

Indira Lakshmanan, a media ethicist at the Poynter Institute, said, “If I’m a news editor, I would use photos that don’t have any restriction attached to them. There’s a lesson for editors, for public figures. There are plenty of photos out there that you can use that don’t have these restrictions.”

…

Most modern first ladies have launched books and other commercial products during their stints in the White House — and then donated the entire proceeds to charity. Laura Bush donated a book advance to education charities, and Michelle Obama gave the proceeds from her book American Grown to the National Park Foundation.

Yeah that’s not what Trumps do. They spend their own foundation’s money on themselves, so obviously they’re not going to give away payments for being photographed to some losers or other.

Huh. The gruesome Michael Cohen says nope he’s not going to fall on his sword for Donnie.

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney who has found himself at the center of multiple legal issues in recent months, told ABC News he will “put family and country,” ahead of any loyalty to the president.

“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen told “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos in an interview that broadcast on Monday. “I put family and country first.”

Or football teams and lemonade flavors. Whatever, anything, as long as it’s not Don.

The FBI raid against Cohen has prompted speculation that he might cooperate with federal prosecutors probing the Trump campaign and allegations that it colluded with the Russian government in 2016. In his interview with ABC News, Cohen said he would not tolerate any effort by the White House to discredit him.

“I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy,” he said emphatically. “I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.”

It’s almost as if Donnie’s strategy of being a shit to everyone doesn’t always pay off.

Speaking of Trump’s assertive racism, and Bears Ears / Escalante, wait there’s more –

While the Ancestral Puebloan people of the Southwest were building citadels like Chaco Canyon, the Fremont people were carving mysterious petroglyphs depicting horned, broad-shouldered triangular men and sweeping carvings of desert snakes. Nowhere is their legacy more apparent than in eastern Utah’s Molen Reef. Fremont artifacts dominate this cultural heritage site, but its rock art ranges from 3,000-year-old panels from the Barrier Canyon tradition to etchings by Mormon pioneers crossing the Utah desert.

They aren’t easy to see, but that’s not a bad thing. You won’t find these cultural treasures on a map, and Jonathan Bailey, a Ferron, Utah-based photographer and author of Rock Art: A Vision of a Vanishing Cultural Landscape, thinks it should stay that way. “There are hundreds of rock art panels in the Molen Reef, and maybe a dozen are known,” he says. “They are mostly pristine, unexcavated sites that have very little vandalism.”

So far.

Bailey worries about the resources being compromised by human activity before they can be cataloged and protected. But the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has different plans for the area. In January 2018, the agency approved the leasing of 32,000 acres for mineral exploration between the San Rafael Swell and Molen Reef—just as it has in many other places in Utah.

Because which is more important – some old cave art? Or the ability to drive the SUV to Costco and back?

In the past, Orr, Bailey, and other rock art enthusiasts have been able to persuade the BLM to defer leasing while they conduct field work to document petroglyphs, habitation sites, and geoglyphs that might be impacted by development. But in 2018, guided by the Trump administration’s “energy dominance” agenda, the BLM’s Price field office has overruled URARA’s protests.

“This is the first year we have not been able to withdraw these leases,” says Bailey.

The BLM this time says it won’t be a problem.

Federal law obligates the BLM to analyze lands nominated for leasing and offer them at auction if it determines that leasing will not harm non-energy resources. Despite the determination of his two predecessors that leasing could damage the rock art, current BLM state director Ed Roberson concluded it would not.

“BLM conducts additional site specific analysis before any surface disturbing activities can occur,” maintains Heather O’Hanlon, BLM’s Utah information officer, in an email. “Strong stipulations . . . give us confidence that we can protect the cultural resources entrusted under our care.”

The rock art army is not reassured. Though O’Hanlon claims that “the BLM-Utah completed the most intensive pre-lease inventory survey that we have ever done,” Bailey says that the agency has yet to inventory many rock art sites around Molen Reef. “They have not inventoried a good chunk of this land, so they can’t judge the impacts,” he says.

But they have very good instincts, just like Trump.

The normalization continues apace.

Ron Paul, for instance.

Former politician and presidential candidate Ron Paul shared a racist political cartoon featuring stereotypical caricatures of people of multiple races Monday morning — only to delete it minutes later.

“Are you stunned by what has become of American culture?” Paul’s tweet read. “Well, it’s not an accident. You’ve probably heard of ‘Cultural Marxism,’ but do you know what it means?”

Attached to the original tweet was a Ben Garrison political cartoon featuring racist caricatures of Jewish, Asian, Latino and black people with their arms melding together into a single red fist emblazoned with the communist hammer and sickle. The arm is seen punching Uncle Sam, and above it is a speech bubble coming from the four caricatures saying “cultural Marxism.”

Not “people” as Raw Story twice says, but men. Racist caricature PLUS erasure of women.

Not normal.

Not ok.

Not acceptable.

Updating to add: it’s not a Ben Garrison cartoon but a modification of one. I read somewhere that there’s a Reddit group dedicated to doing that.

Jeffrey Toobin says it’s important to spell out what Trump’s next Supreme Court pick is going to mean, because they won’t spell it out for us.

As with Gorsuch, the nominee will be supported with meaningless buzz phrases: he or she will be opposed to “legislating from the bench” and in favor of “judicial restraint.” Like Gorsuch, the nominee will rely on airy generalities rather than on specific examples. It’s all the more important, then, to articulate in plain English what, if such a nominee is confirmed, a new majority will do.

It will overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortions and to criminally prosecute any physicians and nurses who perform them. It will allow shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hotel owners to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds. It will guarantee that fewer African-American and Latino students attend élite universities. It will approve laws designed to hinder voting rights. It will sanction execution by grotesque means. It will invoke the Second Amendment to prohibit states from engaging in gun control, including the regulation of machine guns and bump stocks.

And these are just the issues that draw the most attention. In many respects, the most important right-wing agenda item for the judiciary is the undermining of the regulatory state. In the rush of conservative rulings at the end of this term, one of the most important received relatively little notice. In Janus v. afscme, a 5–4 majority (including Kennedy) said that public employees who receive the benefits of union-negotiated contracts can excuse themselves from paying union dues.

Them that’s got will get even more, them that’s not will lose even more.

More on the Portland street brawls yesterday.

From CBS:

Two opposing protest groups — Patriot Prayer and antifa —  clashed in downtown Portland Saturday, CBS Portland affiliate KOIN reports. Portland police said failure to leave the area could leave to arrests, calling the demonstration a riot.

More than 100 members of Patriot Prayer group gathered at Terry Schrunk Plaza for a “freedom rally,” while more than 100 counter protesters with an antifa group gathered across the street at Chapman Square for rallies before a march. Police revoked Patriot Prayer’s permit for the rally after the two groups began to clash.

From NPR:

What began in downtown Portland Saturday as a permitted march by the far-right group Patriot Prayer was quickly declared a riot and halted by police after altercations with anti-fascist counter-protesters escalated, with reports of projectiles causing several injuries.

…

Supporters of Patriot Prayer, led by its incendiary leader Joey Gibson, who is also running for a U.S. Senate seat in Washington state, began to assemble in parks along Third Avenue in downtown Portland early Saturday afternoon.

Far-left antifa protesters congregated in similar or greater numbers nearby.

The two groups lobbed insults at each other across a heavy law enforcement presence, clad in riot gear, there to keep the two sides apart and screen for weapons.

…

Around 6 p.m. local time, Patriot Prayer initiated its permitted march, working its way along Third Avenue. But projectiles quickly began flying. Police then cancelled the permit, used bullhorns to declare the situation a riot and deployed flash bangs and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

Portland police have officially declared a riot and are ordering people to leave immediately. pic.twitter.com/yIJKOq1s93

— Scott Bourque (@sdbourque1) July 1, 2018

Many fine people on both sides.

In light of the slaughter of journalists in Annapolis the other day, this promo by the National Rifle Association’s Dana Loesch hasn’t worn well.

H/t Asha Rangappa

You literally made a video for the NRA called "We are coming for you, New York Times." https://t.co/JukE2p9d8p

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) June 29, 2018