Maybe it’s repeated small strokes.

Barack Obama’s former doctor, who served the 44th president for over two decades before his presidency, voiced concern for Donald Trump’s health after the president’s unscheduled weekend visit to a physician placed his well-being under scrutiny.

…

Speaking on CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday’s Erin Burnett OutFront, Dr. David Scheiner expressed his worries about the president’s allegedly failing mental health, which he claims is demonstrated by his occasional inability to string together coherent sentences.

“These aren’t words, these are slips of the tongue,” Scheiner said. “These are words he can’t find and this is happening over and over again. Comedians joke about it, but it’s not a joking matter. I think there is a

But fertility treatment is one thing, and “surrogacy” is another. The Huffington Post reports:

Senate Republicans will vote this week to confirm a lifetime federal judge who claimed that fertility treatments and surrogacy have “grave effects on society, including diminished respect for motherhood and the unique mother-child bond; exploitation of women; commodification of gestation and of children themselves; and weakening of appropriate social mores against eugenic abortion.”

Sarah Pitlyk, President Donald Trump’s nominee to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, argued those points in opposing a California statute that protects the right to assisted reproductive technology like in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and gestational surrogacy.

Pitlyk, who is special counsel to the

More from the Guardian’s live impeachment reporting:

Democratic counsel Norm Eisen asked the legal experts testifying at today’s impeachment hearing whether the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden was an impeachable act, even though the country ultimately did not launch the probe.

“The attempt itself is the impeachable act,” said Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, who noted that Richard Nixon’s efforts to cover up the Watergate break-in were ultimately unsuccessful. But the attempts themselves clearly constituted impeachable behavior, Feldman said.

Pamela Karlan and Michael Gerhardt echoed that opinion with hypothetical situations emphasizing the soliciation itself is the issue.

Seems only right, doesn’t it? Failure doesn’t render the attempt perfectly fine.

Constitutional scholar Noah Feldman: "If we cannot

He did what?

From the department of “you really can’t make this up”: the New York Times is reporting that Rudy Giuliani traveled to Europe this week to meet with former Ukrainian prosecutors who have pushed baseless corruption allegations against Joe Biden.

The Times reports:

Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort.

The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played

latsot’s review of Kate Smurthwaite’s show:

Kate’s gig took place in the immediate aftermath of some Facebook misogyny so braying that it was simultaneously almost impossible to believe and entirely expected. Kate gets called “bitch” a lot on Facebook and other sundry internet places so she called her tour “Bitch”, intending to talk about that. Facebook was entirely sanguine about the bitch-calling business but decided that Kate’s calling her own gig “Bitch” violated their community guidelines so they refused to advertise the York one even though Kate had paid them to do that. Consequently, the show wasn’t well-advertised.

Yeah. Like I said, almost impossible to believe but at the same time entirely expected. It’s why I went to the show. … Read the rest

Trump left the NATO gathering early because he mad.

US President Donald Trump called Justin Trudeau “two-faced” Wednesday after Canada’s Prime Minister was caught on camera appearing to joke about Trump with other world leaders at a Buckingham Palace event the night before.

So…until that moment he thought Trudeau liked him?

I don’t know why I keep being surprised, but I do. My theory of mind isn’t good enough to grasp the complete lack of theory of mind in Trump.

The video appeared to show British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte having a laugh about Trump’s behavior during the summit.The 25-second clip, which has gone

What Trump has unleashed, part 47 thousand.

You forgot about Pocahontas. https://t.co/V3TlbSnBNp

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) December 3, 2019

Yeah. Haw haw. This is one of our Congressional Representatives, making racist jokes right out in the open. Perfect.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by latsot on Let’s be serious.

And Trump does the thing he always does when someone else is talking* which is to jerk his head around in apparent annoyance, roll his eyes and blow out his cheeks in boredom until it’s his turn. Then say something absolutely blithering to the deep embarrassment of everyone else on the planet.

Over here we have Trumps junior – Johnson and Farage – stoking our xenophobic instincts. It’s as though we forgot to tell foreigners how much we hate them for a few decades, while all the time employing them to do vital jobs for low pay and then throwing them out of the country with no possibility of appeal … Read the rest

Uh oh, Devin Nunes looks to be in trub-ble.

The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released its report on its central findings in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and buried within it were details on phone calls between Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California and several key figures implicated in the inquiry.

The report said that “phone records show contacts” in April between Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee and one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Congress; Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who’s now Trump’s personal lawyer; the Ukrainian-born businessman Lev Parnas; and the investigative reporter John Solomon, who has written several articles for The Hill peddling conspiracy theories about Ukrainian

Trump is the landlord, and he keeps jacking up the rent and these deadbeats keep not paying it! It’s an outrage!

Trump won't commit to coming to the defense of fellow NATO members if they're militarily attacked pic.twitter.com/RKMplISNyT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2019

Also…

REPORTER: Are you concerned about rising sea levels at all? TRUMP: “You know, I’m concerned about everything, but I’m also concerned about…

He’s concerned about everything, but he’s also concerned about…

Words, how do they work.… Read the rest

The shame of a nation.

“Would you like some nice ISIS fighters?” President Trump asks.

“Let’s be serious,” President Emmanuel Macron of France replies.

Watch the tense exchange between the leaders ahead of this week's NATO summit in London. https://t.co/AY5isJOIy8 pic.twitter.com/C7OIV1kX4v

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 3, 2019

Macron talks like an adult on a serious subject, in an informed way – in a language not his own. Trump can’t even talk like an adult in his own language, let alone an informed one.… Read the rest

Ooh, good question, that’s a tough one.

Yes it’s probably the law that they have to put you on the table and put your feet in the stirrups and tell you to let your knees fall wiiiiide apart and then…um…I guess give you a good hard poke in the balls with the speculum? … Read the rest

UCU is the University and College Union; UoE is University of Edinburgh.

The UoE UCU Branch is aware of a teach-out scheduled for Wednesday morning discussing gender and sex. While the branch supports academic freedom, this event will not be held under the UCU banner as it contravenes national and local equality and inclusion policy.

— UCU Edinburgh (@ucuedinburgh) December 3, 2019

Many have asked how, exactly, the event contravenes national and local equality and inclusion policy. Explanation has not been forthcoming.

Even another branch of the UCU is taken aback.

Can you clarify for all national members and fellow branches, how your branch perceives a talk about sex and gender to contravene national and local equality and inclusion

Trump, in London, making a spectacle of himself.

Trump on Adam Schiff: "I think he's a maniac. I think Adam Schiff is a deranged human being. I think he grew up with a complex for lots of reasons that are obvious. I think he's a very sick man." pic.twitter.com/Ta591vESgj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2019

If you want to get the full glory –

Another gender-discussion event shut down (“postponed”) by people making threats:

An Edinburgh University event discussing how gender issues are taught in Scotland’s schools has been cancelled amid claims that the safety of women speakers and attendees was at risk.

The research seminar on schools and gender diversity, organised by the university’s Institute for Education, Teaching and Leadership, was due to be held next week, but despite plans for increased security staff, the event has been postponed.

…

Organisers had arranged the event in light of the Scottish Government’s plan to produce new schools guidance on supporting transgender pupils, after it announced that previous advice, written by charity LGBT Youth, was to be replaced as it risked “potentially excluding other

Oh, brilliant, Trump is in London lecturing other people on being “nasty” and “disrespectful.” Trump is.

Macron had tried to galvanise the agenda for the summit in London by calling the 70-year western alliance “brain dead”, but Trump said: “Nato serves a great purpose. I think that’s very insulting.”

He added: “Nobody needs Nato more than France. It’s a very dangerous statement for them to make.”

Macron made his criticism of Nato in an Economist interview partly to reflect his frustration that Turkey, a Nato member, had entered northern Syria in October without coordination with any Nato partner apart from Trump. Macron believes the invasion has undermined the fight against Islamic State.

But Trump appeared to side with the

Oooh yes, so it might, thank you for spotting that. Feeling more comfortable in trousers is definitely likely to mean not that you want to be warm enough, or don’t want bare skin chafing, or want to feel free to run or do headstands or sit on a bus without worrying about showing your bum, it’s likely to mean you want to “identify as male” despite being female and having the body to prove it, either now or in the future or indeed in the past. Never mind those silly body things, nobody cares about those, they’re chaff, husks, dirt, the true reality is clothes.

They uniform now also consists of shoes that are 3ft long, in case

Anti-vaxxing makes it hard to remember how to word.

James Kirkup at the Spectator addresses the “how did this become mandatory dogma so fast?” question.

Well, thanks to the legal website Roll On Friday, I have now seen a document that helps answer that question.

The document is the work of Dentons, which says it is the world’s biggest law firm; the Thomson Reuters Foundation, an arm of the old media giant that appears dedicated to identity politics of various sorts; and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organisation (IGLYO). Both Dentons and the Thomson Reuters Foundation note that the document does not necessarily reflect their views.

The report is called ‘Only adults? Good practices in legal gender recognition for youth’. Its purpose