Meanwhile, as the agents sift through all those files from Michael Cohen’s office and house and hotel room, there’s the issue of Trump and The Trump Organization and Panama.

Lawyers representing President Donald Trump’s namesake business appealed directly to Panama’s president for help in a dispute over a luxury Panama City hotel, The Associated Press reported Monday.

The AP said it obtained a letter dated March 22 in which the law firm Britton & Iglesias asked Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela to intervene in the legal dispute, arguing that the courts denied the Trump Organization due process and violated a bilateral treaty.

The letter also warned that there could be consequences for Panama if he didn’t, the AP

Originally a comment by Anna Y on A really big blind spot here.

Peak meta indeed, since Harris isn’t even paying much attention to things coming out of his mouth in the course of this discussion itself. I think Klein is (maybe intentionally, to avoid pushing Harris’ buttons) missing a really low hanging fruit in what Harris says to defend his position.

I want to break down his points and emphasize the assumptions he is making, thereby demonstrating precisely what that fruit is:

“Well, what I mean by identity politics is that you are reasoning on the basis of skin color, or religion, or gender, or some particular trait, which you have by accident, which you can’t change — … Read the rest

Is there a free speech right to bully?

Fox’s Laura Ingraham is wrapping herself in the free speech flag.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham returned to her show Monday night following a week vacation in the middle of a mass exodus of the program’s advertisers over controversial remarks she made about a Parkland shooting survivor. Ingraham focused on freedom of speech in her first show back, and attacked the left’s alleged stifling of conservative voices.

Ingraham was returning to her show after announcing on March 30 she would be out the following week for an Easter break to spend time with her children. The announcement came at the end of a week in which more than a dozen sponsors

More of the Harris-Klein conversation, starting where I paused this morning.

Ezra Klein

At the beginning, when you’re talking about why you chose to have Glenn on the show, you say, “My goal was to find an African American intellectual, who could really get into the details with me, but whom I also trusted to have a truly rationale conversation that wouldn’t be contaminated by identity politics.” To you, engaging in identity politics discredits your ability to participate in a rational conversation, and it’s something, as far as I can tell, that you do not see yourself as doing.

So here’s my question for you: On that specific quote, what does it mean to you, particularly when you’re talking

It’s interesting how the people Trump hires to run bits of his administration like to give big raises to the people they hire. Scott Pruitt did it, and Mick Mulvaney did it.

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s appointee to oversee the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has given big pay raises to the deputies he has hired to help him run the bureau, according to salary records obtained by The Associated Press.

Mulvaney has hired at least eight political appointees since he took over the bureau in late November. Four of them are making $259,500 a year and one is making $239,595. That is more than the salaries of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and nearly all federal judges apart

AP reports a shift in Trump, from however reluctantly taking some guidance from his aides, to getting sick of them and doing whatever he wants. Last week in West Virginia he threw his prepared speech up in the air. BO-RING.

This president has never been one to stick to a script, but that abandoned speech illustrates a new phase in Trump’s presidency. He is increasingly at odds with his staff — and growing wise to their tactics.

One favored staff strategy: Guide the president to the right decision by making the conventional choice seem like the only realistic option. Except now, 14 months into his administration, Trump is on to them, and he’s making clear he won’t be boxed

You know how it’s been a theme of the coverage on Prince Jared that there’s this nagging $1.2 billion payment on 666 Fifth Avenue coming due and the Kushners have been sweating bullets trying to come up with the $$$? And how that is of course a massive red flag for corruption or worse? Well, Judd Legum at Think Progress reports that someone has come up with the $$$ and we don’t know who or how. People on Twitter suggest it’s MSB in payment for the secret intel that Jared gave him that prompted him to imprison more than 200 members of the House of Saud.

Upon entering the White House, Jared Kushner divested the property only in the most

Well at least Trump and his friends showed those chickens a thing or two.

The Trump administration officially withdrew an Obama-era rule that would set higher standards for the treatment of animals whose meat can be sold as organic.

The rule, created under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), would require poultry to be housed in spaces large enough to move freely and fully stretch their wings. Livestock would be required to have some access to outdoor space year-round.

The USDA officially overturned the rule Monday, after delaying its implementation three times. It was first created in 2016 and built on seven years of deliberation.

So I guess it’s not like all those reports about what Pruitt was doing when … Read the rest

Another entry in the “my enemies should be killed” department:

Musician and NRA board member Ted Nugent likened Democrats, members of the media and others to “rabid coyotes” on Friday and suggested people should not wait to “get” their guns and “shoot” them on sight.

Nugent, a major proponent of gun rights and the Second Amendment, applied the same comparison to Hollywood and RINOS – the common acronym standing for Republicans in name only – during an interview on InfoWars’ The Alex Jones Show.

“Don’t ask why. Just know that evil, dishonesty, and scam artists have always been around and that right now they’re liberal, they’re Democrat, they’re RINOs, they’re Hollywood, they’re fake news, they’re media, they’re academia, and they’re

Matt Yglesias decided to stir things up yesterday.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/982594029119590400

My guess is that if Hitch were alive today he’d be the leading pro-Trump columnist in America, following the siren song of faux contrarianism to its ultimate end.

That’s an incredibly stupid “guess,” as a number of people pointed out. Hitchens wasn’t right about everything, but he would never have been a toady of Trump’s. The idea is ludicrous.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/982594822195302400

He’d be a regular guest on Tucker Carlson’s show doing segments about the Deep State’s plot against Trump and how the left lost its way, calling Elizabeth Warren a shrill harpy, and denouncing the excesses of political correctness.

He seems to have him confused with Bannon. Other way around, dude – … Read the rest