So Mike Flynn chatted with the Russians weeks before he was part of the US administration.

Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials.

Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said.

The accounts of the conversations raise the prospect that Mr. Flynn violated a law against private citizens’ engaging in diplomacy, and directly contradict

The ruling.

Go to page 26. Read:

The Government has not shown that a stay is necessary to avoid irreparable injury. Nken, 556 U.S. at 434. Although we agree that “the Government’s interest in combating terrorism is an urgent objective of the highest order,” Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1, 28 (2010), the Government has done little more than reiterate that fact. Despite the district court’s and our own repeated invitations to explain the urgent need for the Executive Order to be placed immediately into effect, the Government submitted no evidence to rebut the States’ argument that the district court’s order merely returned the nation temporarily to the position it has occupied for many previous years.

The

Via

… Read the rest

Donnie lost, and he’s screaming about it on Twitter.

SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

No. It is not. Mass killings are horrible, but they don’t endanger the entire country – and Trump’s random ban wasn’t The Fix to prevent mass killings anyway. Trump’s ban was just a dopy arbitrary Show of Force.

A three-judge federal appeals panel on Thursday unanimously refused to reinstate President Trump’s targeted travel ban, delivering the latest and most stinging judicial rebuke to his effort to make good on a campaign promise and tighten the standards for entry into the United States.

The ruling was the first from an appeals

Reuters has an exclusive:

In his first call as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads as a bad deal for the United States, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the call.

When Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty, known as New START, Trump paused to ask his aides in an aside what the treaty was, these sources said.

Trump then told Putin the treaty was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, saying that New START favored Russia. Trump also talked about his own popularity, the sources said.

So that’s worrying. I … Read the rest

Dan Rather on Trump’s outrageous attacks on a federal judge:

When James Robart, who was appointed by George W. Bush and approved for the bench by a 99-0 vote in the Senate, had the audacity to rule against the Trump Administration’s immigration ban, you knew a tweet was coming.

And the President lived up (or down) to expectations:
“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!”

This reminded me of another statement from a former president who was previously considered our most autocratic and controversial, and who also swept to office on a populist wave – Andrew Jackson. When Chief Justice John Marshall ruled against him in

Yesterday Trump talked to a law enforcement conference in DC yesterday, and seized the opportunity to set the assembled law enforcement people straight about the law.

Trump kicked off his remarks by reading out loud the Immigration and Nationality Act, the law that gives the president authority to stop the flow of classes of aliens entering the U.S. The Trump administration has used that law as its legal standing for a controversial order temporarily banning all immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, a policy that created mass chaos at America’s airports and drew criticism even from some Republicans.

“It’s sad, I think it’s a sad day. I think our security is at risk today. And it will be at risk

Dayum, they just don’t get it, do they – they are not allowed to use the office to flog their merchandise. That’s forbidden.

Yet Kellyanne Conway did just that, on television.

Conway, speaking to “Fox & Friends” viewers from the White House briefing room, was responding to boycotts of Ivanka Trumpmerchandise and Nordstrom’s discontinuation of stocking her clothing and shoe lines, which the retailer said was in response to low sales and which the president assailed as unfair.

“I’m going to give it a free commercial here,” Conway said of the president’s daughter’s merchandise brand. “Go buy it today.”

They’re setting a new benchmark for shameless public corruption. “Hi, I work for the president of the US, go … Read the rest

Amy Davidson at the New Yorker tells us that the core issue in the hearings on Trump’s ban is whether the courts or the people have any recourse when a president lies.

There was the ban, then the restraining order, then a request for an emergency stay of the restraining order.

The three judges on the appeals court—Michelle Friedland, Richard Clifton, and William Canby—wanted to know what, exactly, the emergency was.

As, I think, we all do. I for one want to know whether Trump even thinks there’s an emergency, or whether he simply thinks he needs to do something new and different rather the way a dog thinks this shrub needs a new spray of piss – to … Read the rest

Neil Gorsuch is not impressed by Trump’s repeated attacks on the judiciary over the past week. He had a meeting with Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Dem, today.

Trump on Wednesday morning declared that an appeals court’s hearing Tuesday night regarding his controversial immigration executive order was “disgraceful,” and that judges were more concerned about politics than following the law.

The remarks followed earlier tweets from Trump disparaging “the so-called judge” who issued a nationwide stop to his plan and saying the ruling “put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system.”

Blumenthal said Gorsuch, whom Trump nominated to the Supreme Court just over a week ago, agreed with him that the president’s language was out

Another Donnie tweet, from later today. He seems to have…ah…missed the implications of the photo that goes with his link. He also left off a crucial word in the NBC headline.

'Majority in Leading EU Nations Support Trump-Style Travel Ban'
Poll of more than 10,000 people in 10 countries…https://t.co/KWsIWhtC9o

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

… Read the rest

It appears that Trump really can’t read – not just that he doesn’t like to, but that he can’t.

It’s a pity he didn’t realize that makes him unable to do the job properly.

… Read the rest

Donnie from Queens tweeted four hours ago (so late morning in DC):

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

Yeah that’s a good look – the president of the US attacking a private company for not marketing his daughter’s merch to his liking.

But wait, there’s more. There’s worse.

The POTUS account retweeted it.

So it’s not just Donnie from Queens saying it, it’s the president of the US saying it, in his official role as president of the US.

Josh Voorhees at Slate says Trump may have just provided Nordstrom with the … Read the rest

The Times editorialists are blunt about the disgustingly sleazy plans of Melania Trump to use Donnie’s presidency as a money-attracting tool.

[A]ny veneer of plausible deniability about the Trump family’s greed and their transactional view of the most powerful job in the world was shattered this week by a defamation lawsuit the first lady, Melania Trump, filed…

…As a result of the report published in August, Mrs. Trump contends in the suit, her “brand has lost significant value, and major business opportunities that were otherwise available to her have been lost and/or substantially impacted.” The suit offers no specific examples of lost business opportunities.

The timing of the story was particularly injurious, according to the lawsuit, considering that Mrs. Trump