Summations Only

The doctor probably signed the paper because Trump insisted on it. If Trump is actually taking anything the doctor might have given Trump a placebo, but there is no way to say. But have no doubt, this is driven by Trump not medicine.From what I remember Trump’s doctors (and this one is an osteopath!) tend to cave in to Trump’s demands,

And Kellyanne Conway is encouraging harassment of Twitter’s Head of Site Integrity for daring to expose Trump’s lies..Integrity - Conservatives hate it. The Verge

The fact that Barr ordered protestors in the area to be cleared out - with tear gas - only shows how bad it’s got.For even more fun it seems that Ted Cruz was asked if the act was an abuse of power. He said it was an abuse of power - by the protestors. So much for the right to peacefully protest.No wonder Trump wants to ban opposition to fascism.

Twitter has taken down a Trump campaign video and of course Trump is attacking Twitter and claiming that the action is illegal.Unfortunately for him that action was required by law. Twitter received a valid DMCA takedown notice and had to obey. If Trump wanted to complain that the DMCA made it too easy to take down videos and wanted reform that might be a good thing. But no, he decides to escalate his vendetta With Twitter regardless of the facts or the law. Even sillier he’s talking about Section 230 even though it isn’t relevant.Just another sign that Trump is unfit to be President and that the Republican Party should be deeply ashamed of supporting him.

Guess what, the decision to drop the prosecution is politically motivated and without any basis in law. Who would have guessed? here it isFlynn negotiated with the Russians unofficially before Trump took office, worked to oppose current US policy and lied about it to officials and the FBI. That’s not a mistake or an accidental lie (and people have been in serious trouble for those) - it was covering up serious misbehaviour, Ultimately Gleeson argues that the court should deny the motion to dismiss and proceed to sentencing.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

CNN publishes a poll that Trump doesn’t like, so of course the Trump campaign issues legal threats. Backed up by the opinion of a second-rate polling company.

...has decided that is is illegal to sack people for being homosexual or transgender. Gorsuch voted with the majority. You can probably guess the dissenters.Much wailing from those conservatives who were hoping for an ideological ruling.Meanwhile Ted Cruz has got into a twitter fight with Ron Perlman
and Ted Cruz is not coming out well.Finally, it turns out John Bolton refused to testify in the impeachment trial of Trump because he was saving the juicy stuff for his book, which is due out next week.Edited by PaulK, : Corrected judge’s name

I think Gorsuch’s vote is the big surprise. And yes, some people like Anne Coulter and Eric Erickson are upset.

And Pence is not much better. Pence is trying to attribute the increase in Covid-19 cases to increases in testing. While that can happen, the rate of positive tests should drop (since those with the highest risk should get tested first)In Arizona the rate of positive tests is increasing.Also, hospitalisations for Covid-19 provide another check. They’re increasing in Texas, North Carolina and Oregon. Ars TechnicaEdited by PaulK, : Remove space from url tag

The Trump administration has gone to court - late - to try to prevent the release of Bolton’s book.They claim it includes classified material. Is it a coincidence that Trump claimed that all conversations with him are classified? (Nope, it isn’t)I really hope they try that line in court. BBCEdited by PaulK, : No reason given.

And it’s even sillier than I thought.They want the court to make Bolton tell the publisher not to proceed even though the books have already been printed and ought to be in distribution by now (and maybe even in storage at bookstores - it’s not unknown for books to go on the shelves early).At this point they should be trying to get an injunction against the publisher. That they don’t makes it look like an attempt to appease Trump by seeming to be doing something to stop the book getting out - without doing anything that would stop the book getting out.

Amazon pre-orders really don’t mean much.Anyway I skimmed the complaint.The complaint is that Bolton didn’t get the necessary sign offs and National Security is endangered. Supposedly the government only found out a week ago.Which really raises the question of why they’ve taken a week to launch a case which is likely to be completely ineffective - is the publisher really likely to listen to Bolton at this point? If Bolton really decides to publish without getting a sign-off is he going to give the order?I almost wonder if this is a pay-off. Bolton keeps the really damning stuff out of the book and in return the DoJ makes a presence of trying to get it banned.

Yesterday, Barr announced that the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York was stepping down and was being replaced.This was news to said Attorney, Geoffrey Berman who refused to resign.Even stranger, Berman is a Republican, who had even given a contribution to the the Trump Campaign. He was appointed to the position after Trump forced the resignation of his predecessor, Preet Bahara (itself suspicious).The fact that SDNY has seen the prosecution of a number of the crooks in the Trump camp may be relevant. As is the fact that an investigation of Giuliani is underway. Whatever is going on it seems that something is brewing that would be worse for Trump than firing a US Attorney for political reasons. Well, I guess we can count on Trump’s base to overlook the corruption - that’s one reason we call them deplorable.

For more fun, Trump toldreporters that he didn’t fire Berman, it was Barr. Barr write to Berman saying that Trump had fired him. It matters because Trump probably has the power to do it but Barr doesn’t. Even if Trump does it, it’s going to court and will likely be delayed long enough that it will take too long to stop whatever they’re scared of.Whatever is going on in the Trump camp is unbelievably stupid.

Apparently Berman has agreed to go - but only because Barr caved on his successor. Barr tried to sneak in an unqualified political appointee, but gave up on that rather than continue the fight.What this means for the investigations, I don’t know - but presumably Berman expects them to continue (even if Barr doesn’t)