The Federalist posted a transcript of Sessions’s theocracy please speech. It’s the usual collection of uninteresting bromides.

And of course it was faith that inspired Martin Luther King Jr. to march and strive to make this country stronger yet. His was a religious movement. The faith that truth would overcome. He said that we “must not seek to solve the problem” of segregation merely for political reasons, but “in the final analysis, we must get rid of segregation because it is sinful.” It undermined the promise, as he described it, that “each individual has certain basic rights that are neither derived from nor conferred by the state…they are gifts from the hands of the Almighty God.”

But of course … Read the rest

Oh, well, Marc Kasowitz should have no trouble getting a security clearance now. Pro Publica follows up its own article:

Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal attorney on the Russia case, threatened a stranger in a string of profanity-laden emails Wednesday night.

The man, a retired public relations professional in the western United States who asked not to be identified, read ProPublica’s story this week on Kasowitz and sent the lawyer an email with the subject line: “Resign Now.’’

Kasowitz replied with series of angry messages sent between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern time. One read: “I’m on you now.  You are fucking with me now Let’s see who you are Watch your back , bitch.”

Just what you … Read the rest

Pro Publica reports that Trump’s lawyer for the Russia inquiries, Marc Kasowitz, doesn’t have a security clearance and doesn’t plan to get one. The trouble with that is that the investigation involves masses of classified material, which Kasowitz can’t see without a security clearance.

Several lawyers who have represented presidents and senior government officials said they could not imagine handling a case so suffused with sensitive material without a clearance.

“No question in my mind — in order to represent President Trump in this matter you would have to get a very high level of clearance because of the allegations involving Russia,” said Robert Bennett, who served as President Bill Clinton’s personal lawyer. Like many Washington lawyers, Bennett has held

Scott Pruitt wants to stage a “debate” about climate change, on the grounds that nobody has discussed the things that in fact many many people have been discussing in great detail for decades. Exactly like Trump, Pruitt is stupid and uninformed enough to think that if he is unaware of X that means X doesn’t exist. That takes profound stupidity and ignorance. It’s a pity that someone that stupid and ignorant, as well as ideologically opposed to environmental protections, is head of the Environmental PROTECTION Agency.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the early stages of launching a debate about climate change that could air on television – challenging scientists to prove the widespread view that global warming

In western Nepal:

Alone and in pain, Tulasi Shahi encountered a poisonous snake.

The Nepali woman had been banished to her uncle’s cowshed as per the “chaupadi” tradition, a centuries-old practice common among Hindus in the western regions of Nepal, though it was outlawed in 2005. Some communities there consider women “impure” while they are menstruating. These women are prohibited from daily activities and left isolated in sheds with straw floors for the duration of their periods.

The snake bit her on the head and leg.

Her family members tried to treat her with home remedies before taking Tulasi Shahi to a clinic near Dailekh, which did not have antivenin. Recent monsoon rains have flooded the area, making a

A Fresh Air interview with a Pro Publica journalist that told me a whole lot of things I didn’t know, all of them bad.

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. In an era of mass incarceration, why was only one top banker convicted after the financial collapse of 2008? My guest Jesse Eisinger tries to answer that question in his new book.

It’s titled The Chickenshit Club, which Gross couldn’t say on the air because while we fail to prosecute bankers who ruin the lives of millions of people, we’re very strict about saying “shit” on the radio.

The source is, oddly enough, Jim Comey.

But it actually comes from a speech. Now, you may know and your listeners

Sports journalist Christine Brennan asks officials at the U.S. Golf Association, assembled to speak at the opening news conference before the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open at Trump National, if the USGA has a position on sexual assault. You’d think it would be a softball question, wouldn’t you…but no.

But when you’re in business with Donald Trump, the man who appeared on the infamous Access Hollywood videotape bragging that he could sexually assault women without having to worry about the ramifications, your values start to fade.

Your principles waver. Your admirable efforts to try to attract women and girls to a game with a long history of discriminatory and exclusionary practices run head-long into your need to prostrate yourself at

Adrian Chen at the New Yorker looks at what HanAssholeSolo and his apology tell us about the harassment culture on Twitter.

The apology is a fascinating document, in part because it is addressed to his fellow Internet trolls. “My fellow redditors,” he wrote. “First of all, I would like to apologize to the members of the reddit community for getting this site and this sub embroiled in a controversy that should never have happened.” The_Donald is a community of more than forty thousand users that has become the beating heart of Trump’s online grassroots army, producing a steady stream of bite-sized pro-Trump propaganda tuned perfectly to go viral. Within this community, the Internet is treated as a venue for

I learned a new fact about Steve Bannon this morning. It’s a rather exhilarating fact.

Bannon became a vital figure in Trump’s orbit during the early days of his political rise. The two met late in 2010, when David Bossie, the veteran conservative activist, brought Bannon along on a trip to Trump Tower to offer advice about how Trump might prepare for a presidential run. Like Trump, Bannon was a businessman and born deal-maker. With experience on Wall Street and in Hollywood, he was nothing if not high energy, a mile-a-minute talker with a volcanic temper who rarely slept and possessed a media metabolism to rival Trump’s own. And Bannon, too, had a healthy self-regard. On his office wall hung