At least the important stuff is being attended to.

My father just sent me this horrific article which mis-genders Sam Smith SEVEN times in the opening paragraph. Douglas Murray, please fuck off.

Ermergerd! Seven whole times!

But what is “misgendering”?

It’s not anything. It’s a made-up crime. It’s an invented solecism that isn’t a solecism at all unless you believe that “gender” is a real and sacred thing that can be the very opposite of a person’s literal sex. If you decline to believe that, then there’s just calling people she when they’re he or vice versa, by mistake or to be camp or jokey or mean. It’s not in any of those circumstances “horrific” or worth making a … Read the rest

The Guardian is live-reporting the Corey Lewandowski hearing.

“Anyone illegally attempting to impact the outcome of an election should spend the rest of their life in jail.” – Corey Lewandowski

He’s not talking about Trump’s repeated fake claims of voter fraud or Republican voter suppression efforts or even about Russian tampering in 2016, he’s talking about the right-wing conspiracy theory of alleged malfeasance inside the FBI as they investigated the Trump campaign.

Trump tweeted his gratitude from AirForceOne.

Nadler:

Nadler says Lewandowski is the subject of a “bogus claim of executive privilege” made by the White House.

Then he asks whether Lewandowski met alone with the president in the Oval Office in June 2016 as stated in

It turns out people are not shocked and horrified to learn that The Royal National Lifeboat Institution uses a small fraction of its funding to rescue people outside the UK, instead they are impressed and grateful and eager to send money to help.

Rather than being defensive about negative articles in the Times and Mail Online, the RNLI said it was glad of the publicity about its overseas work and hoped the coverage could help it secure a UN resolution on drowning prevention.

The charity’s website has had a month’s worth of traffic in a few days, with many people giving money for the first time.

Kate Eardley, the RNLI’s head of international advocacy, said: “We have been overwhelmed.

The issue of the Acting Director of National Intelligence refusing to hand the whistleblower complaint over to the relevant Congressional committee is still an issue.

On Friday, House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) accused acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of withholding a “credible” whistleblower complaint — made by someone within the intelligence community — from Congress.

It’s not usual to go public on this kind of thing – and it’s even less usual for a DNI to refuse to deal with the House Intelligence Committee.

Congress appears to have only learned of the whistleblower’s existence after Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson deemed the complaint of “urgent concern” and sent a letter to Congress informing it

The Times (the London one) reports on guidelines on transgender pupils for primary and secondary schools from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC):

It seeks to protect not only those who meet the legal definition of gender reassignment but children “who are simply exploring their gender identity”. It applies to pupils of all ages, with or without medical intervention.

In sensitive areas of day-to-day life, where pupils have traditionally been separated by sex, schools will [be either] required or advised to open up to those identifying as the same gender.

So pupils who choose to identify as another gender should be allowed to use the changing rooms of that gender. Girls who are uncomfortable with the presence of a

What kind of idiot pretending to be president goes on Twitter to say we’re “locked and loaded”?

Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!

How not to do foreign policy, how not to inform the public, how not to conduct war, how not to do diplomacy, how not to collect intelligence, how not to do government work – how not to do pretty much everything.

Laurence Tribe:

President Trump seems ready to let murderous Prince Mohammad bin

There’s this idea that the truth is “exclusionary.”

Of course, that’s true, in a sense. Right answers exclude wrong ones; truth excludes falsehood. But it’s not true in the political sense of “exclusionary,” but many people think it is true. (Thus they exclude the claim that it’s false. Bigots!)

There’s a new comet in the sky of Facebook, called This Angry Inclusionist Enby Lesbian. Lets call him Taiel for short. Taiel explains:

You cannot exclude non-binary folks from identifying with whatever labels we choose.

That strikes me as a very odd way of putting it, but it fits with the overall interpretation of “exclusion” that has become fashionable.

Here’s the thing: it’s not “exclusion” the way saying “you can’t … Read the rest

Oh god. More of that cis privilege we rejoice in:

A schoolgirl in Kenya has taken her own life after allegedly being shamed in class for having her period and staining her uniform.

The 14-year-old’s mother said her daughter hanged herself after being humiliated by a teacher, Kenyan media reported.

Kenya passed a law a couple of years ago making sanitary pads free in schools, but not all schools have implemented it.

The girl’s mother said a teacher had called her “dirty” for soiling her uniform and ordered her to leave the class in Kabiangek, west of the capital Nairobi, last Friday.

“She had nothing to use as a pad. When the blood stained her clothes, she was told

C. S. Lewis once wrote a short story [pdf] hinting at how he viewed women. It’s a fantasy, in which an Oxford academic (which Lewis was) is visited by a former student – male of course – and, to the narrator’s annoyance, a woman the student is engaged to. Suddenly everything goes queer, and the narrator finds himself in an unfamiliar landscape.

My first idea was that something had gone wrong with my eyes. I was not in darkness, nor even in twilight, but everything seemed curiously blurred. There was a sort of daylight, but when I looked up I didn’t see anything that I could very confidently call a sky. It might, just possibly, be the sky of a

Now there’s a heartwarming story:

The Royal National Lifeboat Institute has been forced to defend its work saving lives overseas after an article on the Mail Online sparked an angry backlash on social media.

The story highlighted how the charity – famed for its distinctive orange lifeboats manned by volunteers – spends £3.3m a year on projects in Tanzania and Bangladesh yet has been forced to cut around 100 jobs in the UK.

And that “sparked a backlash” because…it’s so wrong to save the lives of people in Tanzania and Bangladesh? They really want to go there?

People need to get inoculated against trumpbrain, immediately. Infection with trumpbrain kills your compassion stone dead and you can never … Read the rest

Out of control:

The nation’s top intelligence official is illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint, possibly to protect President Donald Trump or senior White House officials, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff alleged Friday.

Schiff issued a subpoena for the complaint, accusing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of taking extraordinary steps to withhold the complaint from Congress, even after the intel community’s inspector general characterized the complaint as credible and of “urgent concern.”

They’re not allowed to do that.

Schiff indicated that he learned the matter involved “potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community,” raising the specter that it is “being withheld to protect the President or other Administration officials.” In addition, Schiff slammed Maguire for