If Benjamin Wittes says “Yeesh” it’s worth paying attention. He said it about the Independent’s reporting on the Trump people’s attack on their own intelligence services.

…overshadowed by the publicity around the impeachment, is the ever-broadening investigation by William Barr, the attorney general, which the White House sees as a game-changer. An investigation which is seeking nothing less than to overturn the conclusion of the US intelligence services and special counsel Robert Mueller that Russia interfered in the last US presidential election.

This has now been designated a criminal investigation with power of subpoena and the possibility of prison sentences for those who have been allegedly involved in criminal actions, although exactly what these criminal actions entail remains unclear.

The Post reports that history is repeating itself as Bozo Trump bullies and harasses witnesses and legislators in an effort to obstruct the impeachment inquiry.

President Trump has sought to intimidate witnesses in the impeachment inquiry, attacking them as “Never Trumpers” and badgering an anonymous whistleblower. He has directed the White House to withhold documents and block testimony requested by Congress. And he has labored to publicly discredit the investigation as a “scam” overseen by “a totally compromised kangaroo court.”

All of that is attempted obstruction, and obstruction itself is an impeachable offense. Trump seems to be too stupid and too ignorant to grasp that, since he’s doing it all in public, rather than in secret as Nixon tried to … Read the rest

From the Department of First World Problems (aka Dear Muslima aka You Think YOU Have It Bad aka We Walked 10 Miles To School In A Blizzard) – the ACLU’s star Trans Person Chase Strangio tweets:

The cost of being trans: I still get mail in my old name. Because of this, I am afraid to check my mail. Because of that, I sometimes miss bills that I need to pay. Because of that those outstanding bills have gone to collection. Because of that, my credit gets worse.

Replies are not universally sympathetic.

• I have the same surname as my violent abusive alcoholic father. I’ve never thought about using it to get out of paying my mortgage but thanks

The Mirror doesn’t mess around.

Racist American President Donald Trump has endorsed Boris Johnson, praised Nigel Farage and attacked Jeremy Corbyn.

The bumbling bigot waded into the British election just hours after Mr Corbyn warned that Tory trade plans would see sections of the NHS auctioned off to American companies.

The US leader, who caged children on the American border before sending them to detention camps, told Nigel Farage that he believed that Mr Johnson was “the right man for the times”.

Ok but tell us what you really think.

Earlier today, Mr Trump was told impeachment proceedings into allegations he withheld aid to Ukraine, to try and bounce them into investigating potentially politically embarrassing allegations against Jo

A tweet:

Antivax nurse brags about deliberately infecting children with chicken pox. @qldhealthnews @QldPolice #StopAVN

I tried to find the post on the Stop Mandatory Vaccination Facebook page but gave up, but an Australian news outlets reports the story:

An apparent push by an anti-vaxxer mum from Brisbane to contaminate Halloween lollies with chicken pox then distribute them to others is being investigated by police.

Pro-vaccination charity Light for Riley has shared a screenshot of a post to the Facebook page Stop Mandatory Vaccination in which the woman claims to want to “help others with natural immunity”.

“So my beautiful son (name redacted) has the chicken pox at the moment and we’ve both decided to help others with

Trump’s people have to be careful not to…confuse him.

He tweeted this on Tuesday:

Why are people that I never even heard of testifying about the call. Just READ THE CALL TRANSCRIPT AND THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX IS OVER! Ukrain said NO PRESSURE.

That’s Trump shouting in public that he’s never even heard of his own NSC people.

Steve Benen at MSNBC explains:

At first blush, that didn’t make any sense: how could the president, who’s been deeply engaged on U.S. policy toward Ukraine for months, not know his own top Ukrainian expert?

Yesterday, the answer to that question came into focus, though the answer wasn’t altogether satisfying.

After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration in May, Vindman was eager

When it all becomes just mindless knee-jerk formulas with absolutely no thinking involved…wtf can you do?

Jean Hatchet asked Marks & Spencer a question:

Cubicle or no cubicle. Curtain or no curtain. Open space changing or not. Men should not have access to any of these female spaces alongside women. @marksandspencer please clarify your policy on female changing rooms.

The reply was a mindless formula:

As a business, we strive to be inclusive and therefore, we allow customers the choice of which fitting room they feel comfortable to use, in respect of how they identify themselves. This is an approach other retailers and leisure facilities have also adopted.

But that’s not “inclusive.” It excludes people who don’t want … Read the rest

Pliny wishes us all a happy Halloween:

 … Read the rest

Helen Saxby on Garden Court Chambers and the monstering of Allison Bailey:

Two years ago, on Tuesday October 3rd 2017, I attended a meeting in central London entitled ‘Progress and Challenges in Advancing Equality for Trans People in the UK’. It was held at Garden Court Chambers, in association with the Human Rights Lawyers Association. The meeting took place just two weeks after a well-publicised assault on a middle-aged woman in Hyde Park by a young male protester, which resulted in a conviction for assault by beating. The conflict between increasing rights for trans people and the rolling back of women’s rights was in the news. The Hyde Park Corner incident illustrated the lengths to which trans allies were

Ah yes, climate change as an opportunity to rake in the bucks with your Monopoly On Water.

WINTHROP, Okanogan County — Follow the water and you’ll find the money.

That’s how it often works in the dusty rural corners of Washington, where a Wall Street-backed firm is staking an ambitious venture on the state’s water.

Crown Columbia Water Resources since 2017 has targeted the water rights of farms on tributaries of the mighty Columbia River.

This March, the company sealed a $340,000 deal for Douglas County water.

The same day, it paid $1.69 million for a farming partnership’s water in Columbia County.

And so on. Buying up water rights – the way some movers and shakers did in the … Read the rest

I wrote a column for The Freethinker about being interrupted by Jehovah’s Witnesses the other day.

Barry Duke, the editor, provided fine illustrations.

… Read the rest

Three (male, of course) sociologists of sport look at trans activism and sport:

“A biological male claiming to be a transgender woman, won the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles over the weekend.” That’s how the alt-right news website Breitbart greeted Rachel McKinnon’s victory last October. Since then McKinnon, a Canadian track cyclist who transitioned from male to female and competed in the women’s 33-39 sprint category, has been in a kind of limbo, never properly acclaimed as a world record holder, derided by some as a counterfeit champion, but praised by many as a trailblazer for gender fluidity. Recently, in Manchester, McKinnon successfully defended her title. Again, the response was ambivalent.

If they … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Embrace the diversity.

It really is so lazy of Taylor isn’t it. She says she thinks it’s possible that “safe spaces and diversity can coexist” but she wants to silence the only person around who is actually doing the work of thinking and talking about how to fairly make that happen.

If you want women’s rights and trans rights to coexist, you have to let both sides have a say.

Let’s flash back to the year 2005 for a moment. (Picture it: Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps” on the radio; Harry Potter 4 at the movieplex; Grey’s Anatomy on the teevee… It wasn’t that long ago, is what I’m saying.)

That was the … Read the rest

Vindman says he tried to make the transcript more truthful.

The National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that he tried to make changes to the White House’s rough transcript of the July phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President, including that Trump mentioned tapes of former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified that one example of his attempts to change the transcript was to include Trump telling Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky there were tapes of Biden, which The New York Times reported occurred where there’s an ellipsis in the transcript that was released. The change was not made. The assertion