Robert Reich last night:

Let me get this straight: Ivanka Trump — who has myriad business interests that overlap with her father’s – is now moving into the West Wing as a top White House advisor, getting a security clearance and government-issued communications devices. But she’s not being sworn in, will hold no official position, and so will not be a government employee who must by law adhere to official ethics rules.

Doesn’t the Trump administration have enough ethics problems? Aren’t there already enough conflicts of interest to sink a ship?

Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, is now an official senior adviser in the White House – but at least his status is an official government employee, he was sworn in, and he has to abide by ethics laws. Why can’t Ivanka do the same?

Ivanka still owns her eponymous fashion and jewelry brand, and is also publishing a book, “Women Who Work,” due out in May. But she says she’ll distance herself from the day-to-day operations of the Ivanka Trump brand and convey her interests to a trust that will be controlled by her brother-in-law, Josh Kushner, and her sister-in-law, Nicole Meyer.

Oh, sure.

It’s as if a coup has occurred, and the dictator’s family has now moved into the palace — and are about to the loot the country. The utter disdain of the Trumps for ethics is jaw-dropping.

David Leonhardt spells it out, starting with the stipulation that not all untruths are lies.

But the current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about — among many other things — Obama’s birthplace, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud and his groping of women.

He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate — as well as the condescending notion that most of Trump’s supporters enjoy his lies.

So, what about Russia?

Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign was an attack on the United States. It’s the kind of national-security matter that a president and members of Congress swear to treat with utmost seriousness when they take the oath of office. Yet now it has become the subject of an escalating series of lies by the president and the people who work for him.

As Comey was acknowledging on Monday that the F.B.I. was investigating possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump was lying about it. From both his personal Twitter account and the White House account, he told untruths.

A few hours later, his press secretary, Sean Spicer, went before the cameras and lied about the closeness between Trump and various aides who have documented Russian ties. Do you remember Paul Manafort, the chairman of Trump’s campaign, who ran the crucial delegate-counting operation? Spicer said Manafort had a “very limited role” in said campaign.

The House investigation will probably not be uncovering the truth behind Trump’s lies, because Republicans are in charge.

It fell to Adam Schiff, a Democratic representative from Southern California, to lay out the suspicious ties between Trump and Russia (while also hinting he couldn’t describe some classified details). Schiff did so in a calm, nine-minute monologue that’s worth watching. He walked through pro-Putin payments to Michael Flynn and through another Trump’s aide’s advance notice of John Podesta’s hacked email and through the mysterious struggle over the Republican Party platform on Ukraine.

“Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated, and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible,” Schiff said. “But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated, and that the Russians used the same techniques to corrupt U.S. persons that they have employed in Europe and elsewhere. We simply don’t know, not yet, and we owe it to the country to find out.”

He was on Maddow’s show last night, and he’s my new favorite person. He’s a former prosecutor, so he has that forensic way of thinking that comes in so handy. He dissented from part of Maddow’s take, which she derived from Comey: the idea that the second documents dump was done “loudly” as opposed to covertly because the Russians wanted everyone to know they were doing it. Schiff offered a less dramatic interpretation as also plausible.

Leonhardt concludes:

Comey, as much as liberals may loathe him for his 2016 bungling, seems to be one of the few public officials with the ability and willingness to pursue the truth. I dearly hope that Republican members of the Senate are patriotic enough to do so as well.

Our president is a liar, and we need to find out how serious his latest lies are.

So that we can get rid of him.

The disintegration proceeds.

The testimony of Mr. Comey and that of Adm. Michael S. Rogers, his National Security Agency counterpart, will most likely enervate and distract Mr. Trump’s administration for weeks, if not longer, overshadowing good news, like the impressive debut of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, his Supreme Court nominee, on the first day of his confirmation hearings Monday.

But it’s the obsessiveness and ferocity of Mr. Trump’s pushback against the Russian allegations, often untethered from fact or tact, that is making an uncertain situation worse.

Mr. Trump’s allies have begun to wonder if his need for self-expression, often on social media, will exceed his instinct for self-preservation, with disastrous results both for the president and for a party whose fate is now tightly tied to his.

Ya think?

Let’s change the wording a little. People who were hoping to profit from Trump’s win are afraid his terrifying brew of rage, narcissism and stupidity will frustrate those hopes. Well yes, of course they are, but what did they expect? Did they think the monstrous ignorant bully we saw during the campaign was going to turn into a reasonable thoughtful adult on January 20th?

Over the past several weeks, Republicans in Congress and members of their staffs have privately complained that Mr. Trump’s Twitter comment on March 4 — the one where he called Barack Obama “sick” and suggested that the former president had ordered a “tapp” on his phone — had done more to undermine anything he’s done as president because it called into question his seriousness about governing.

People keep saying “several weeks” and similar. It’s not several, it’s a little over two. But anyway: yes, of course it did, and his continuing refusal to admit he simply made it up out of his own thick head has only underlined that. But then, again, did anyone ever really believe he had any seriousness about governing? Really? He certainly never gave any sign of such a thing. This seems like buying a bucket of rotting fish and expecting it to become fresh if you wait a few weeks.

So he barfed out those idiotic tweets yesterday morning.

People close to the president say Mr. Trump’s Twitter torrent had less to do with fact, strategy or tactic than a sense of persecution bordering on faith: He simply believes that he was bugged in some way, by someone, and that evidence will soon appear to back him up.

He “believes” that and, crucially, he has no understanding that “belief” is really beside the point. He has no awareness of the need to examine one’s own beliefs, in case they are wrong. He apparently thinks that his belief makes anything he says true.

Still, there’s some evidence that the president’s magic medium is losing its effectiveness, in part because Mr. Trump’s Twitter persona seems to have shifted from puckish to paranoid.

“Puckish”? When was it ever “puckish”? He used it to share his lies about birtherism, to rant about “Crooked Hillary” and “Pocahontas,” to call Alicia Machado “disgusting” and cite a sex tape that doesn’t exist. Racism and misogyny and targeted insults are not “puckish”; they’re evil.

Focus groups and polls conducted by two Democratic strategists this month have shown that many voters, even some who support Mr. Trump, have grown weary of his tweets as president. That was also borne out by a Fox News poll last week, showing that a mere 35 percent of Trump voters approve of his Twitter habits, and that only 16 percent of all voters approve of them. Some 32 percent said they “wish he’d be more careful” with his feed.

“His tweeting defines him, and not in a good way,” said Geoff Garin, a veteran Democratic pollster. “Voters not only think Trump’s use of Twitter is unpresidential, they also see the tone and content of his tweets as an indication that he is lacking in self-control.”

That, yes, but he’s also lacking in basic humanity.

Meanwhile, on a day when Trump’s lies have been discussed in Congress and all over the press, he’s off for yet another “rally” – to drink in the adoring cheers of the 27 people who still think he’s awesome.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/843961248811225089

Trump was resuming his campaign-style events at the start of a consequential week for his young presidency. Confirmation hearings for his nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, opened Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The House was expected to vote Thursday on the GOP-backed healthcare bill.

Trump’s Louisville rally, his third since his inauguration, followed a daylong congressional hearing in which FBI Director James B. Comey acknowledged for the first time that the agency was investigating whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian officials seeking to influence the 2016 campaign.

MAGA, baby.

The Post’s fact-checker reports on Trump’s long day of telling lie after lie.

With the House Intelligence Committee on Monday prepared to hold hearings on Russian influence in the 2016 election, the president issued tweets that did not hold up well as the testimony unfolded.

The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign. Big advantage in Electoral College & lost!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017

James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. This story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017

But in his opening testimony, FBI Director James Comey announced that a criminal investigation into possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign was indeed active and ongoing:

“I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.”

In an unusual declassified report released in January, the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency had announced that they had “high confidence” that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election” and that “Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.” Comey’s statement was the first official confirmation that activities of people associated with the Trump campaign also were being investigated.

Moreover, Comey firmly rejected Trump’s tweeted claim on March 4 that former president Barack Obama had ordered wiretaps of him in the Trump Tower. “I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI,” Comey said. “The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components. The department has no information that supports those tweets.”

Comey made it clear that no president on his own could order a wiretap; such an action must be approved by a judge.

It goes on like that – comparing Trump’s tweets from the Donnie account and the POTUS one with what Comey said to the committee.

Grade: 4 Pinocchios

Brad Jaffy on Trump’s expensive golf weekends and his past rages at Obama for taking fewer shorter cheaper golf breaks.

Trump today made his 10th trip a Trump-owned golf course in 8 weeks as president.

Here are his previous tweets about presidents and golf: pic.twitter.com/VTV5hAVx20

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 18, 2017

In case you missed Trump’s budget director saying the thing about coal miners and PBS, here’s CNN reporting it – starting with the fact that Mike Pence actually supported public tv not long ago:

But in 2014, Vice President Mike Pence, then Indiana’s governor also known for frugal budgets, made a passionate defense for the role of public television.

“I believe the state has the primary responsibility for educating our children and I will say from my heart through all of my life, one thing has been clear: Public television plays a vital role in educating all of the public, but most especially, our children,” he said during an acceptance speech at that year’s Public Media Summit.

Including, thank you very much, the children of coal miners and chicken processors, farm workers and janitors, fry cooks and factory hands – and all those people themselves.

But that’s not how Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney sees it.

“It’s a simple message by the way: I put myself in the shoes of that steelworker in Ohio, the coal-mining family in West Virginia, the mother of two in Detroit, and I’m saying, ‘OK, I have to go ask these folks for money, and I have to tell them where I’m going to spend it,’ ” he said during Thursday’s White House press briefing.

“Can I really go to those folks, look them in the eye and say, ‘Look, I want to take money from you, and I want to give it to the Corporation (for) Public Broadcasting.’ That is a really hard sell, and in fact, it’s something we don’t think we can defend anymore.”

So that’s what they think of working people then.

One of those items going the rounds on Facebook, original source unknown:

“Why should coal miners pay for PBS”? This was an actual question asked by the Trump administration yesterday. Obviously a blatantly stupid question. We have questions too. Why should a poor black family in Detroit pay for the President to go golfing? Why should a single mother of 3 who’s working 2 jobs in Louisiana be denied health-care so that the CEO of Etna can get a tax-break? Why is the guy washing dishes in Baton Rouge paying for the President’s wife’s secret service protection so she can live comfortably in NYC? We could do this all day. But here’s the real question the Trump administration and the Republicans who empower him need to answer: Do you have a heart? Did no one teach you to care about your neighbors? Do you know what “empathy” means? Did no one ever teach you to “share” when you were in kindergarten? Have you never heard the phrase “do unto others”? I can’t think of a group of people who need to watch Sesame Street MORE than the Republican party. Perhaps they would learn some common decency. Copy and paste folks. This shit is ridiculous.

But there’s another thing, which is how contemptuous it is to assume that coal miners can’t possibly like anything on PBS. Really? No science, no nature, no history? No dance, no music, no drama, no imported comedies and soaps? It’s not as if PBS pumps out a steady diet of Wittgenstein or Derrida, and it’s also not as if all coal miners want nothing but football and porn.

Coal miners, and chicken processors and strawberry pickers and truck drivers, get a lot more out of PBS than they do out of Donnie’s weekends in Palm Beach.

Comey has said what everyone outside of Trump’s pocket expected he would say.

FBI Director James B. Comey on Monday said there is “no information” that supports President Trump’s claims that his predecessor ordered surveillance of Trump Tower during the election campaign.

“I have no information that supports those tweets,’’ said Comey, testifying at the House Intelligence Committee’s first public hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. “We have looked carefully inside the FBI,’’ and agents found nothing to support those claims, he said.

Spicey is currently busy composing variations on the theme “But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” but everyone outside of Trump’s pocket knows that if there had been such evidence for Trump’s libelous assertion the FBI would have it. The fact that the FBI doesn’t have it is good reason to think Trump doesn’t have it either.

Of course Spicey could always just say Comey is lying, but that would have dangers of its own.

Under questioning from the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), Comey said no president could order such surveillance. He added that the Justice Department had asked him to also tell the committee that that agency has no such information, either.

I wonder if Comey now wishes he hadn’t handed the election to Trump back in October.

Comey also acknowledged the existence of a counterintelligence investigation into the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, and said that probe extends to the nature of any links between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government.

Comey said the investigation is also exploring whether there was any coordination between the campaign and the Kremlin, and “whether any crimes were committed.”

The acknowledgment was an unusual move, given that the FBI’s practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations. “But in unusual circumstances, where it is in the public interest,” Comey said, “it may be appropriate to do so.”

Comey said he had been authorized by the Justice Department to confirm the wide-ranging probe’s existence.

Would that be the case if Sessions hadn’t recused himself?

The Republicans, the Post says, are more worked up about the leaks to the press. They’re especially bothered about the Post story reporting that Flynn talked about sanctions with Kislyak before Trump’s inauguration.

As the hearing was going on — in an apparent dig at Comey and carrying the suggestion that Obama administration officials were behind the leaks — Trump’s presidential Twitter account tweeted out “FBI Director Comey refuses to deny he briefed President Obama on calls made by Michael Flynn to Russia.”

Dignified and appropriate as always.

There are factions in the White House.

Inside the White House, they are dismissed by their rivals as “the Democrats.”

Outspoken, worldly and polished, this coterie of ascendant Manhattan business figures-turned-presidential advisers is scrambling the still-evolving power centers swirling around President Trump.

Led by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell — two former Goldman Sachs executives often aligned with Trump’s eldest daughter and his son-in-law — the group and its broad network of allies are the targets of suspicion, loathing and jealousy from their more ideological West Wing colleagues.

Of course this is all relative. “Worldly and polished” compared to Trump…which could mean not all that worldly and polished by most standards.

On the other side are the Republican populists driving much of Trump’s nationalist agenda and confrontations, led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has grown closer to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in part to counter the New Yorkers.

Populist shmopulist. The unabashed misogynist racists, is what they mean. Bannon used to be a banker himself, and he can do “worldly and polished” if he chooses to.

For the most part so far, the ideologues are winning. One revealing episode came as Trump weighed where he would travel this past Wednesday following an auto industry event in Michigan.

Would he jet to New York at the invitation of Canada’s progressive hero, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to attend a Broadway performance of “Come From Away,” a musical that showcases the generosity of foreigners?

Or would he fly to Nashville to dip his head in reverence at the gravesite of Andrew Jackson and yoke himself to the nationalist legacy of America’s seventh president?

The nationalist racist genocidal legacy. The New York faction wanted him to do the less obnoxious thing, and of course he did the more obnoxious thing. He likes it.