You couldn’t make it up.

Lawyers for Mr. Cohen, the president’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, had sought to keep the identity of one of Mr. Cohen’s clients a secret in a court challenge of an F.B.I. search of Mr. Cohen’s office.

And the mystery client izzzzzzzzzzz

Sean Hannity.

[A]fter several minutes of back and forth between the government and Mr. Cohen’s lawyers, Kimba M. Wood, a judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, ordered that Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan, disclose in open court the name of a client in question, who turned out to be Mr. Hannity.

Before Mr. Hannity’s name was revealed in the courtroom, Mr. Ryan had argued

Oh gee golly I wonder what happened here: a Russian investigative journalist dies after falling from his fifth-floor flat.

Maxim Borodin was found badly injured by neighbours in Yekaterinburg and taken to hospital, where he later died.

Local officials said no suicide note was found but the incident was unlikely to be of a criminal nature.

However, a friend revealed Borodin had said his flat had been surrounded by security men a day earlier.

Total coincidence I’m sure. They were there to pick up cigarette butts.

Vyacheslav Bashkov described Borodin as a “principled, honest journalist” and said Borodin had contacted him at five o’clock in the morning on 11 April saying there was “someone with a weapon on his

Barry Duke at the Freethinker reports:

The Croatian Government voted on Friday to ratify the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, widely known as the Istanbul Convention– and thousands, egged on by the Catholic Church, gathered to protest, saying the move would pave the way to same-sex marriage and will give rights to transgender people.

Because…families can’t beat up family members? So they want to preserve and protect domestic violence? I have to wonder what life is like in their families.

The Convention, agreed in 2011, has now been ratified by 29 countries, including 18 European Union member states. The treaty aims to be an instrument in combating domestic violence

The Times has some highlights of The Interview.

Asked if he believes Mr. Trump is unfit for office, Mr. Comey was quick to say yes, but not for reasons of his mental state.

Instead, Mr. Comey called Mr. Trump “morally unfit.”

“A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it — that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds,” Mr. Comey said.

The Guardian also has a sampling.

Life in the Comey household must have been awkward after the election

Early in the interview, Comey said he

This is…unsettling.

Just passed MICHAEL COHEN sitting & lounging in front of his hotel with his cronies enjoying the NYC Spring weather & looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.

I can report that he WASN’T on the phone with Trump on Friday at 5pm- guess he’s just ready to start the weekend pic.twitter.com/QJ1LFZGt5s

— Alison Greene (@GrassrootsSpeak) April 13, 2018

Sorry I couldn’t get a better picture but I must admit that I found this group a bit intimidating & I think his buddies were blocking my shots.

— Alison Greene (@GrassrootsSpeak) April 13, 2018

A BIT intimidating? She says in the next tweet it felt like a Sopranos Flashback moment.

UPDATE: Blue Suit seems to

The Observer profiles the admirable Caroline Criado-Perez:

Two years ago, a young woman was running through London with her dog. Her route took her through Parliament Square, with the monuments of the establishment on all sides – legislature to the east, executive offices to the north, judiciary to the west and the church to the south. She ran past the bronze statues that lined her route, towering above her on their plinths: Nelson Mandela, Robert Peel, Disraeli, Edward Smith-Standley, Palmerston, Jan Smuts, David Lloyd George and the bronze of Winston Churchill. And she thought: “But they are all men!”

And because it was 8 March, International Women’s Day, and because the woman was the unstoppable feminist activist and campaigner 

In more racism news – a boy gets lost on his way to school so he knocks on a door to ask for directions – and gets shot at.

When 14-year-old Brennan Walker missed his bus Thursday morning, he decided to walk to his high school in Rochester Hills, Michigan. But he got lost, so he knocked on a door hoping to get directions. Instead, he ended up running for his life as a man allegedly fired his gun at the black teenager.

Jeff Ziegler, a 53-year-old retired firefighter, was arrested and charged with assault with intent to murder and a felony charge of possessing a firearm for allegedly shooting at Brennan.

Authorities on Thursday responded to a 911 call

A couple of guys go to Starbucks to meet a friend. They asked to use the restroom and were told it was only for paying customers. (Fun fact: I’ve used the restroom at various Starbuckses without buying anything, and no one batted an eye.) They hung out quietly chatting while waiting for their friend, and then…the police arrived and handcuffed them and arrested them.

Lauren, who asked that her last name not be used, shot video of the two men being arrested at the Starbucks just before 5 p.m. on April 12. She said the incident began after the men asked to use the bathroom and were told that it was only available for paying customers, which Philadelphia

Meanwhile everyone is cross with Theresa May.

Time and again at a press conference at Downing Street this morning the prime minister spelled out the strikes that took place overnight were limited, targeted and a response to the suspected use of chemical weapons in Douma.

With no clear indication of public support or consent, she time and again was at pains to say that she had authorised action for a specific reason – to punish President Assad for gassing his own people, as the government believes he has.

She will face an almighty row in the coming days over going ahead without consulting Parliament.

Her defence is that “security and operational reasons” meant the attack had to go ahead

As suspected, Trump exaggerated with his “Mission Accomplished” tweet. Assad still has chemical weapons at his diposal.

President Donald Trump on Saturday declared “Mission Accomplished” for a U.S.-led allied missile attack on Syria’s chemical weapons program, but the Pentagon said the pummeling of three chemical-related facilities left enough others intact to enable the Assad government to use banned weapons against civilians if it chooses.

So it’s part of mission partly accomplished, but that doesn’t sound quite so perky.

Dana W. White, the chief Pentagon spokeswoman, said that to her knowledge no one in the Defense Department communicated with Moscow in advance, other than the acknowledged use of a military-to-military hotline that has routinely helped minimize the risk of U.S.-Russian

Asifa Bano.

Asifa Bano was 8 years old and wearing a purple salwar kameez when she disappeared on Jan. 10.

A week later, on Jan. 17, her mutilated and lifeless body was found in a forest near Kathua in the Indian-controlled region of Kashmir. It was a mile away from Rasana, the village where her family was currently living.

Reports say she was abducted while grazing her horses in a meadow, taken to a prayer hall nearby, sedated for three days, tortured and brutally gang-raped. She was eventually strangled and hit on the head several times with a stone to ensure that she was dead.

On Wednesday, graphic details of the crime and its perpetrators emerged in a charge

Well they’re saying it was a big success, no planes shot down or missiles intercepted, the targets were hit, the things went bang. Whether or not that means the production of chemical weapons is disabled is not yet known, but they’re not talking about that. Trump himself was stupid enough or defiant enough to use the two words that got Bush into so much grief.

A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2018

Mission of course accomplished only if the sole mission was to break some things. … Read the rest