I thought so. The Post reports that the White House official identified as a person of interest last week is Kushner.

Jared Kushner has just been revealed as the senior White House adviser who is under investigation in the Russia probe — which is news that comes as little surprise. Indeed, when The Washington Post reported last week that a then-unnamed top Trump adviser was a focus, many quickly assumed it was Kushner.

But while those assumptions were based on his known contacts with Russians and his status as one of few senior White House aides, there’s another reason his naming fits the puzzle: He’s related to Trump.

My guess was based on all three of those, definitely … Read the rest

Europe doesn’t like Trump.

When President Donald Trump lectured NATO members on their contributions to the trans-Atlantic alliance, he demonstrated a lack of understanding about how the group works and potentially alienated the US’ closest allies, analysts said.

The speech comes at a time when Washington’s longstanding partnerships with the UK and Israel have endured friction over intelligence gaffes by the new administration.

“Diplomatically, the speech was inept at best and deliberately insulting at worst,” said Jeff Rathke, deputy director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

I’m going to go with both inept and deliberately insulting. That’s very Trump, after all.

Trump’s remarks Thursday, alongside his continued misrepresentation of how the alliance works

Sean Hannity is losing advertisers because of his relentless flogging of a nasty made-up conspiracy theory about the random murder of Seth Rich last summer. Good.

The automotive classified site Cars.com and several other companies pulled advertising from Sean Hannity’s Fox News show after he came under fire for promoting a conspiratorial account of the slaying of a former Democratic National Committee staffer.

“We don’t have the ability to influence content at the time we make our advertising purchase,” Cars.com said in a statement Wednesday. “In this case, we’ve been watching closely and have recently made the decision to pull our advertising from Hannity.”

The mattress maker Leesa Sleep, the exercise company Peloton, and the military financial services

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Teaching about sexual and reproductive anatomy.

Belief in word-magic is certainly alive and well in the 21st century. In my militant atheist days I frequently ran into some version of the following “argument” (this is going to be pretty philosophically sophisticated, so you better be ready):

1. The word “God” refers to X (X = Life, the Universe and Everything etc.).

2. X exists.

3. Therefore the word “God” refers to something that exists.

Of course by the time we arrived at 3, Life, the Universe and Everything had invariably mutated into a supernatural, intelligent creator of the universe who, by the way, was the father of Jesus, had authored the … Read the rest

The Manchester police aren’t waiting on what May and Trump say to each other in Brussels; they’ve closed the door themselves.

British police have stopped sharing evidence from the investigation into the terror network behind the Manchester bombing with the United States after a series of leaks left investigators and the government furious.

The ban is limited to the Manchester investigation only. British police believe the leaks are unprecedented in their scope, frequency and potential damage.

Downing Street was not behind the decision by Greater Manchester police to stop sharing information with US intelligence, a No 10 source said, stressing that it was important police were allowed to take independent decisions.

Again, imagine the fury if they did this … Read the rest

CNN reports:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not disclose meetings he had last year with Russian officials when he applied for his security clearance, the Justice Department told CNN Wednesday.

Well. It’s hard to see how he can explain that away. “Oh, I didn’t realize I was supposed to.” “Sir, you’re the nation’s top law enforcement official. It’s your job to know.” “Oh it was just a little slip.” “Sir, this is Russia we’re talking about. Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

Sessions, who met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least two times last year, didn’t note those interactions on the form, which requires him to list “any contact” he or his family had with a “foreign government” or its

Turkey called in the US ambassador to complain about how the US treated those nice Turkish security people who kicked and beat up protesters in DC last week.

Turkey summoned the American ambassador on Monday to protest what it called “aggressive and unprofessional actions” by American security personnel against Turkish bodyguards during a violent incident last week in Washington. The U.S. ambassador told Turkey’s government its guards violated U.S. laws, a senior U.S. official said.

Turkey’s action appeared to represent retaliation for the forceful U.S. criticism of the Turkish guards’ behavior in the American capital, where they accompanied President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his visit. The U.S. summoned Turkey’s U.S. ambassador last week after the Turkish security officers were seen

Amanda Marcotte also wrote about the dud hoax, along with the fakenews story about the murder of Seth Rich.

The authors claimed in Skeptic that the publication of their fake and silly article demonstrated that the “echo-chamber of morally driven fashionable nonsense coming out of the postmodernist social ‘sciences’ in general, and gender studies departments in particular,” is damaging academia.

This is, as Phil Torres explained for Salon, also utter nonsense. Torres pointed out that the authors had their bogus paper rejected from a reputable, peer-reviewed journal and published instead in a pay-to-play one that isn’t even about gender studies. In fact, these two guys demonstrated only their inability to have their fake article accepted by a reputable

Golly. Planned Parenthood Ottawa tweets:

PPO supports the right of every person to determine their identity for themselves. We fully support implementation of #BillC16. pic.twitter.com/15Gj2IXGcn

— PPO (@KnowPPO) May 17, 2017

… Read the rest

So now Trump is sucking up to the pope, and we’re being nudged to do the same.

Pope Francis welcomed President Trump to the cradle of Roman Catholicism on Wednesday, delivering a message of peace even as the pontiff emphasized his role as the world’s moral counterpoint to the president’s nationalist agenda.

No. The pope is not “the world’s moral counterpoint to the president’s nationalist agenda” or the president’s anything else. The pope is not the world’s anything. He’s the top official of a global organization, but many people can claim that title. There’s no such thing as a single human moral counterpoint to Trump or Trump’s agenda, and if there were it most certainly would not be the … Read the rest

And despite being told to stop, they’re still doing it.

US officials disclosed fresh details of the investigation into the Manchesterbombing to journalists within hours of Amber Rudd warning them to stop the leaking.

The steady drip of details from the US – as well as from France – is hampering the investigation by British police, who are trying to control the release of information for operational reasons.

The home secretary reflected the frustration and dismay of the UK security services in a series of interviews on Wednesday morning. She described the leaks as “irritating” and said she had made it clear to the US that it should not happen again.

However, within hours, American reporter Richard Engel of

Yes, the US really did blab the name of the Manchester suspect yesterday even though they’d been told not to. Yes the UK really is pissed off at us. Yes that really is a staggeringly stupid and irresponsible thing to do. Yes I really am ashamed of this country; yes so are most of us.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has said she is irritated with the US for releasing information about the Manchester bomber before UK police would have liked.

Ms Rudd said the British had wanted to control the flow of information to “keep the element of surprise”.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she had been very clear with Washington “that it should not happen again”.