Here’s an extraordinary thing:

A statement from the White House did not address the allegations of Russian government interference and focused only on what was not in the indictment.

“Today’s charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result. This is consistent with what we have been saying all along,” the statement said.

Think about that. I saw tweets quoting the “no allegations” minutes after the story broke, but I neglected to think about them at first.

That’s a statement from the White House about criminal interference with an election – and all it says is “See, it doesn’t say we did it” – it … Read the rest

Much of the US government is saying on Twitter that Trump should cancel the meeting with Putin.

DOJ's criminal charges provide hard evidence that Russian intel agents attacked America to boost their favorite candidates, undermine others, and influence our elections. @realDonaldTrump, cancel your ridiculous Putin summit and get your butt on a plane back to the United States.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 13, 2018

Cancel the Putin meeting. Now. https://t.co/SqdhVDafH7

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 13, 2018

Journalists and legal experts agree.

What's most harrowing to me is the depth of the treason. We're past just Trump & his campaign. We're talking about most of the GOP. PAC's. Billionaires. Private citizens. That is what is most alarming –

New charges.

Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, on Friday announced new charges against 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The announcement came just a few days before President Trump is expected to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland.

The 11-count indictment includes charges of conspiracy by the Russian intelligence officials against the United States, money laundering and attempts to break into state boards of elections and other government agencies.

The indictment is part of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trumpniks on Twitter are jumping up and down shouting that none … Read the rest

Go go go.

Huge #TrumpProtest in Portland Place. Can’t see how it will move south down Regent St as thousands are still heading north from Oxford Circus, being corralled round onto Mortimer St then Gt Portland St to join rear.. which is now up near the park. pic.twitter.com/FIah4lToX2

— John Wilson (@JohnWilson14) July 13, 2018

The camera pans south to catch the crowd filling every bit of space as far as the eye can see.… Read the rest

Not surprisingly, many European leaders have decided Trump is not so much a calculating enemy as an out of control lunatic moron.

Trump’s wildly unpredictable performance over two days in Brussels left many European leaders convinced that there is little method to the American president’s rhetorical madness, and simply no way to anticipate what he might do next.

“Nobody knows when Trump is doing international diplomacy and when he is doing election campaigning in Montana,” Danish defense minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said. “It is difficult to decode what policy the American president is promoting. There is a complete unpredictability in this, and one of the things you need in this alliance is predictability towards Russia.”

Well that’s what you get … Read the rest

Oh good god.

A very nice note from Chairman Kim of North Korea. Great progress being made! pic.twitter.com/6NI6AqL0xt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2018

A nice note from that nice Mister Kim. Isn’t that nice. Isn’t that nice? It’s so nice. It’s so nice it’s very nice. It’s nice when notes are nice. I like nice things. Nice things are nice. Great progress being made!… Read the rest

The pitfalls of being woke:

Dundee’s children and families convener has apologised after being blasted over a series of expletive-laden outbursts on social media.

Not just expletives though. “Expletive” is a bit of a euphemism, as so many words that name this behavior are. There is swearing, and then there is…that thing there is no one word for, that is about expressing hatred of people for being female or not white or lesbian or gay or foreign and so on. Saying fuck is one thing, and calling people cunts or niggers is another. The Dundee guy did both.

Councillor Gregor Murray launched into a stream of explicit tirades on Saturday following reports of an anti-trans protest at a London

So it all went very well, apparently.

NATO diplomats are dumbfounded by President Donald Trump’s barrage of acidic rhetoric at the annual summit in Brussels on Wednesday.

Trump came out brawling in his first public comments, accusing NATO ally Germany of being “a captive of Russia,” calling members of the alliance “delinquent” in their defense spending and insisting they increase it “immediately.”

“It’s like the world has gone crazy this morning,” one senior European diplomat told CNN. “Trump’s performance was beyond belief.”

Because he’s a genius and an original and a drainer of swamps.… Read the rest

Wendi Winters fought back.

Janel Cooley, a survivor of the shooting that killed Winters and four others, spoke about her experience for the first time in an interview with The Capital. She said she watched from under her desk as the 20-year newspaper veteran rose to meet her attacker.

Winters charged forward holding a trash can and recycling bin, said Cooley, a sales consultant. Winters shouted something like, “No! You stop that!” or “You get out of here!” like she was warding off an unwanted dog.

“She may have distracted him enough that he forgot about me because I definitely stood up and was looking at the door,” Cooley said. “I’m sure he wasn’t expecting … anyone to charge

The Daily Beast reports:

Business Insider removed a post about portrayals of trans individuals in Hollywood after staff complained internally about the column, saying the article did not meet the publication’s standards.

On Friday, conservative columnist Daniella Greenbaum published a piece titled: “Scarlett Johansson is being unfairly criticized for doing her job after being cast as a transgender man.”

…

Several Business Insider staff told The Daily Beast that some employees were offended by the column.

The publication took down the piece on Friday, and appended an editor’s note to the page on Tuesday saying that “Business Insider removed the column because, upon further review, we decided it did not meet our editorial standards.”

So it must have been … Read the rest

The Daily Beast is harsher.

The explosion was almost instantaneous—over breakfast, no less—at the beginning of this year’s NATO summit in Brussels. With cameras switched on, and no question they were recording, Donald Trump told his Atlantic Alliance counterparts that Germany is “totally controlled by Russia.” Berlin buys from Moscow more and more of the natural gas it uses. So, in one of his trademark versions of common sense, which commonly ignores basic history and fundamental facts, he asked why the U.S. should spend a lot of money to defend Germany from Russia if Germany was dependent on Russia for energy. Trump incorrectly inflated Germany’s reliance on Russian energy to convey, yet again, a picture of

Trump is at the NATO meeting embarrassing us all, as usual.

President Trump kicked off his trip to Europe with a biting critique of the United States’ longtime allies, declaring at a breakfast meeting that Germany “is captive to Russia.” Next to him, three of his senior officials seemed uncomfortable at times, pursing their lips and glancing away from the table.

I watched the video this morning, feeling ill as always – he looks like an intrusion, an eruption, a mistake. He looks like the one person in the room who does not belong there – a passing Tupperware marketer who wandered in by mistake.

In the clip shown above, Trump begins by citing German imports of