Good lord.

Hey @MichaelCohen212 – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) February 26, 2019

I seem to follow a lot of lawyers.

See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(b), 1515(a)(1)(B).

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) February 26, 2019

1st q asked by @NicolleDWallace about this despicable tweet was "is this illegal?" Answer is it's likely witness threat, but q should be why is MOC allowed to act this way even if it wasn't a crime.

— Jill Wine-Banks (@JillWineBanks) February 26, 2019

Aaron Blake at the Post:

A Republican

Trump told an audience of governors yesterday that Princess Ivanka has created millions of jobs. Of course she hasn’t. She and Daddy got some corporations to sign something saying they would offer lots of training – but they were doing that anyway, and signing something isn’t the same as actual jobs. Daddy was telling a whopper as usual.

In July of last year, Trump signed an executive order creating the National Council for the American Worker, co-chaired by Ivanka Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. One of the council’s priorities is asking companies across the US to sign the Pledge to America’s Workers. The pledge involves “committing to expand programs that educate, train, and reskill American workers from

Oh that’s where all the anti-vaxxing is coming from.

In 2008, Vaccinate Your Family, the nation’s largest nonprofit dedicated to advocating for vaccinations, had to stop posting videos to YouTube.

Then known as Every Child By Two, the organization had used its channel on the massive video platform to post interviews with doctors, public service announcements and testimonials from parents of children who had died of vaccine-preventable diseases.

But those messages were quickly sabotaged. YouTube’s recommendation system, which appears alongside videos and suggests what users should watch next, would direct viewers to anti-vaccination videos, according to Amy Pisani, executive director of Vaccinate Your Family.

Yes, it’s The American Way. You’ve read /listened to /watched something reasonable and evidence-based, now … Read the rest

I wrote a thing for The Freethinker about the ludicrous arguments the pope has to resort to when he and his cronies gather to talk about the long history of child-rape by priests.

So now that we’re properly cowed and humbled by the Procession of Ecclesiastical Nomenclature, let’s look at how Frank presents this worrying puzzle of how Mister God let all this rape of children by priests go on for decades and, it seems safe to assume, centuries.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

As I thank the Lord who has accompanied us during these days, I would like to thank all of you for the ecclesial spirit and concrete commitment that you have so generously demonstrated.

Problem. We have a

Glinner (Graham Linehan) is seeking anecdotes.

I'd like to collect some anecdotes about when and why you first became involved in the debate about gender ideology/activism. If you don’t feel you can talk about it, you can simply say that. Otherwise, I’d like to hear your stories.

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) February 26, 2019

Lots of interesting replies, as you’d expect.

When women were told to stop talking about their periods or pregnancies because "not all women" can have either of those things.

— Carrie (@polskibyproxy) February 26, 2019

I recognize that one! In my case it was abortion rights, and my response was No. PZ’s goon squad took copious notes.

For me it was your posts, together with @lecanardnoir

Sweaters for elephants. That’s right, sweaters for elephants.

Winters get chilly in Northern India, so volunteers at the the Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Center decided to knit giant sweaters for its rescued elephants.

It takes around 4 weeks to make one sweater, and it does not come as a surprise knowing that elephants are the largest land mammals on the planet. Still, the volunteers make sure that the knits are not only warm and cozy, they are also colorful , and even fashionable.

I hope they’re also washable, because elephants love coating themselves with dirt.

“It is important to keep our elephants protected from the bitter cold during this extreme winter, as they are weak and

The BBC shared a graph last year after the Oscars:

Pretty stunning, isn’t it. Chicago is the only one in which women speak more.

Just think how that seeps into all of our consciousnesses, without our even noticing it. Just think how it’s been seeping in our whole lives, and the implications for how absolutely everyone sees and understands and thinks about women. What does all that silence and absence suggest? That women are an afterthought, an oddity, an exception, a deviation from the normal; that women live in the shadows, doing their weird spooky womany thing, and emerge only occasionally, to say “thanks honey” or cuddle a baby or be raped or murdered or both. That women are … Read the rest

Well, if Barr won’t and Mueller can’t and the Senate won’t, the House can and will.

House Democrats are planning to cross one of President Donald Trump’s red lines: investigating his personal finances.

With special counsel Robert Mueller expected to wind up his work soon, Democrats are launching an investigation to discover why Deutsche Bank was willing to lend the Trump Organization money when other banks wouldn’t and whether Russia was involved.

For more than two years we’ve known there was this Deutsche Bank issue but it’s been buried because the Republicans successfully stole everything.

The House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees have been staffing up for their probes into the bank and Trump’s Russia ties. Democrats on the

… Read the rest

I don’t usually link to the Washington Times, but there are exceptions to (almost) everything. Andraya Yearwood is a junior at Cromwell High School in Connecticut, and is trans.

She recently finished second in the 55-meter dash at the state open indoor track championships. The winner, Terry Miller of Bloomfield High, is also transgender and set a girls state indoor record of 6.95 seconds. Yearwood finished in 7.01 seconds and the third-place competitor, who is not transgender, finished in 7.23 seconds.

In short, they have a physical advantage and they’re not ashamed to exploit it. They should be, but they’re not.

(Imagine you felt like a child in an adult’s body. Set aside the problems with that idea [what … Read the rest

The Times is barely concealing its laughter.

President Trump has talked for years about hosting a patriotic parade in Washington, and on Sunday he announced that something of the sort would take place in a Fourth of July “gathering” at the Lincoln Memorial.

“HOLD THE DATE!” Mr. Trump said in a tweet about the event, which he said would be called “A Salute to America.”

The president, who is also fond of hosting rallies for his supporters, added that the celebration would include a “major fireworks display, entertainment and an address by your favorite President, me!”

Very po-faced, very solemn.

Mr. Trump said at a meeting of his cabinet at the White House this month that he was

Oh look, a poll.

Graham Linehan has threatened to sue me for calling him a bigot. It is a view many would agree with. I am going to do a poll, if I lose I will retract my tweets & apologise. Is @Glinner a bigot for his transphobic views YES or NO?

— Anthony Watson (@AnthonyWatson) February 23, 2019

Hahaha I’m kidding, of course; a question on Twitter is not a real poll because the respondents are not randomized. It’s a poll-within-a-set, if you like, but it doesn’t demonstrate anything.

And yet…

Please help @AnthonyWatson with his research poll … it’s important. https://t.co/JpIqYtjYRs

— Jan Gooding (@Jan_Gooding) February 24, 2019

His research poll. His research poll. Come on. It’s Twitter. … Read the rest

Speaking of men and sex and consent and men who send other men photos and videos of women without consent…Joan Acocella wrote about New York City Ballet (of Balanchine fame) in the New Yorker last week. One story she tells jumped off the page at me.

She starts with a rumination on ballet at its best as an emblem of truth, beauty and the good.

The better the dancer’s first arabesque penché—the more exact, the more spirited, the more singing its line—the more he or she will embody the promise of the ancient Greeks, lasting at least up to Keats, that beauty, truth, and virtue are inseparable, that we live in a good world.

Such thoughts, however, are unlikely

Peggy Orenstein in the Times notes that men tend to define “consent” to suit themselves (which misses the point by quite a large distance, doesn’t it, since the whole point of consent is that it involves the not-self).

The truth is, men are not the most reliable arbiters of whether sex was consensual. Consider: When Nicole Bedera, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Michigan, interviewed male college students in 2015, each could articulate at least a rudimentary definition of the concept: the idea that both parties wanted to be doing what they were doing. Most also endorsed the current “yes means yes” standard, which requires active, conscious, continuous and freely given agreement by all parties engaging

Meanwhile…

https://twitter.com/lesbianleftie/status/1099359254266421248

Labour Students elect a boy National Women’s Officer, because girls are just girls, while boys who “identify as” girls are infinitely more significant and interesting and woke. That’s feminism.

https://twitter.com/Lsgirlgang/status/1099342880630558720

Happy to announce your next @LabourStudents Women’s Officer will be a boy.… Read the rest

Perhaps the tide is starting to turn.

The chief executive of the campaign group Stonewall, Ruth Hunt, has resigned after a growing protest by leading gay and lesbian supporters against her stance on promoting transgender rights.

Two of the charity’s former ambassadors and donors revealed this weekend they had withdrawn their support in protest because “Ruth Hunt called it wrong and Stonewall is no longer a worthy champion of our rights”.

Maureen Chadwick, creator of hit television programmes including Bad Girls, Footballers’ Wives and Waterloo Road, said that she and her partner, Kath Gotts, quit after Stonewall embraced what they called “the ‘trans’ cause”.

They were big donors until Stonewall went all trans all the time.

This weekend she