I missed this last August. I was alerted to it just now by Walter Shaub.

People are talking about Bill Shine's ethics waiver. His waiver only covers part of the impartiality regulation (5CFR2635.502). Does NOT cover the extraordinary payment regulation (5CFR2635.503), the criminal conflict of interest statute (18USC208) or the ethics pledge (EO13770). https://t.co/i0zQbJH9bw

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) November 24, 2018

Waiver? thought I. What waiver? So I looked it up.

Oh. That waiver.

It is “in the public interest” for the White House’s top communicator to be excused from federal ethics laws so he can meet with Fox News, according to President Donald Trump’s top lawyer.

Bill Shine, Trump’s newly minted communications director, and Larry Kudlow, the White

Hillary Clinton says the way to stop xenophobia is to be more xenophobic.

Europe must get a handle on immigration to combat a growing threat from rightwing populists, Hillary Clinton has said, calling on the continent’s leaders to send out a stronger signal showing they are “not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support”.

Definitely. Combat that threat from rightwing populists by being a rightwing populist. Totally makes sense.

Clinton urged forces opposed to rightwing populism in Europe and the US not to neglect the concerns about race and identity issues that she says were behind her losing key votes in 2016. She accused Trump of exploiting the issue in the election contest – and

Katha Pollitt asks some pointed questions about the beliefs of others.

For almost three years now, reporters have been begging tired farmers and miners eating their pancakes at Josie’s Diner in Smallville, Nebraska, to say they’ve seen the light. They never do. White evangelical women sneaking away from the Republican Party make for a good story—but they didn’t stop Ted Cruz from getting 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in Texas.

After Trump took the White House, and even after political scientists and pollsters figured out that many Trump supporters were not out-of-work Rust Belters but just your basic well-off Republicans, there was an orgy of self-criticism among Democrats and progressives. Somehow, those voters were our fault; we

Elevating the discourse:

Conservative commentator Anna Paulina had her wires crossed on Fox News, and somehow, her Thursday segment only got worse from there.

She was brought on to discuss investigating Hillary Clinton.

Let me interrupt for just a second to ask: why? Why talk on a purported news show about “investigating” Hillary Clinton?

But Paulina opened on the southern border and a bizarre history of century-old legislation that federalizes reservist troops. Another guest tried to quell the confusion before careening back to Clinton’s emails — a favored Fox News topic.

Though his show prompted the discussion about Clinton, host Rick Leventhal said it was incredible that Clinton still captured attention.

“She won’t go away,” Paulina said. “She’s like

Jeet Heer notes that the NY Times ran an op-ed today written by two guys at two Saudi-funded think tanks, without mentioning the Saudi-funded part.

On Thursday, The New York Times published an oped headlined, “Trump is crude. But he’s right about Saudi Arabia.” Written by Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and  Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the op-ed  offered a full throttle defense not just of Saudi Arabia but also, specifically, of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA believes ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Hudson Institute and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies – they sound so respectable and thinky, don’t they?… Read the rest

The rich and the poor are equally free to sleep outside in the snow.

At least 320,000 people are homeless in Britain, according to research by the housing charity Shelter.

This amounts to a year-on-year increase of 13,000, a 4% rise, despite government pledges to tackle the crisis. The estimate suggests that nationally one in 200 people are homeless.

This isn’t Haiti or Bangladesh, it’s the UK. (It’s worse in the US. There are more homeless people here and we do less for them.)

Shelter says its figures, which include rough sleepers and people in temporary accommodation, are likely to be an underestimate of the problem as they do not capture people who experience “hidden” homelessness, such as

A friend of mine posted a couple of photos together under the heading “Two presidents, two Thanksgivings.”

… Read the rest

Trump phoned the troops to boost morale and express thanks.

Or he meant to, or he was supposed to, but it didn’t come out quite right.

President Donald Trump struck a nakedly political tone during a Thanksgiving call with US service members stationed around the world as he steered the conversation toward controversial political topics.

Speaking with a US general in Afghanistan, Trump likened the fight against terrorists to his efforts to prevent a group of migrants from illegally entering the United States, and he assailed federal judges who have ruled against his administration. The President also pressed the commanding officer of a Coast Guard ship in Bahrain on trade before touting his trade policies and arguing that “every nation

17 year old Sudanese girl sold to the highest bidder:

Five hundred cows, two luxury cars, $10,000, two bikes, a boat and a few cell phones made up the final price in a heated bidding war for a child bride in South Sudan that went viral after the auction was pointed out on Facebook. It is the largest dowry ever paid in the civil war-torn country, the government said.

The highest bidder was a man three times the 17-year-old’s age. At least four other men in Eastern Lakes state competed, said Philips Anyang Ngong, a human rights lawyer who tried to stop the bidding last month. Among the bidders was the state’s deputy governor.

“She has been reduced to

Anna Denejkina at Foreign Policy on Russia’s decriminalization of violence against women:

The numbers of dead are staggering: 14,000 Russian women die annually from domestic violence-related injuries.

That’s about 38 women killed every day, almost two women every single hour, and one every 40 minutes. Making matters worse, Russia’s political system condones such violence.

In 2017, according to Human Rights Watch, up to 36,000 Russian women and 26,000 children faced daily violence and abuse. And most of the time—perhaps as much as 91 percent, according to 2013 data from the ANNA Center for the Prevention of Violence—the aggressor is a woman’s husband. Domestic violence is so common, in fact, that it affects one in four Russian families, according to

A judge in Detroit has ruled a federal law against FGM unconstitutional…

…thereby dismissing the key charges against two Michigan doctors and six others accused of subjecting at least nine minor girls to the cutting procedure in the nation’s first FGM case.

The historic case involves minor girls from Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, including some who cried, screamed and bled during the procedure and one who was given Valium ground in liquid Tylenol to keep her calm, court records show.

Some? Surely they all bled, and cried and screamed too.

U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman concluded that “as despicable as this practice may be,” Congress did not have the authority to pass the 22-year-old federal law that criminalizes female