Democratic calls for Congress to launch an investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct against President Donald Trump grew louder Tuesday, with Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, urging the committee to swiftly open a probe and take the claims seriously.

“Congress is in the midst of a critical and long-overdue examination of allegations against its own Members—both before and after they were elected to Congress,” the Maryland Democrat wrote in a statement Tuesday. “It is extremely hard for Republicans to argue that Congress should ignore these multiple allegations. They deserve a bipartisan review, and I hope Chairman [Trey] Gowdy [R-S.C.] will launch an investigation immediately.”
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Last year, at least 17 women accused then-candidate Trump of sexual misconduct. He has denied every accusation. He previously threatened to sue his accusers after the election, though he has yet to do so.

Trump on Tuesday lashed out at Democratic senators who the day before said the president should resign over the allegations. He specifically singled out Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), claiming in a tweet that she had previously begged him for campaign contributions and had offered to “do anything” in return.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/key-house-democrat-wants-investigation-into-sexual-misconduct-allegations-against-trump/#

It's common for politicians to send out press releases detailing where they will be on election day. If the press release comes from Senate candidate Roy Moore, you can also find out where his horse "Sassy" will be.

In keeping with family tradition, Moore's campaign said he plans to ride Sassy to vote at the Gallant Fire Department on Tuesday morning. He will be joined by his wife, Kayla, who will also be on horseback. The couple plans to vote around 10 a.m.

Moore, who often dons a cowboy hat for events, said he rides Sassy to the polls for every election.

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/12/roy_moore_will_ride_his_horse.html

Washington (CNN)Candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and others in the Trump Organization received an email in September 2016 offering a decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, according to an email provided to congressional investigators.

The September 4 email was sent during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race -- two months after the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee were made public and one month before WikiLeaks began leaking the contents of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's hacked emails.

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Congressional investigators are trying to ascertain whether the individual who sent the September email is legitimate and whether it shows additional efforts by WikiLeaks to connect with Trump's son and others on the Trump campaign. The email also indicated that the Trump campaign could access records from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose hacked emails were made public by a Russian front group 10 days later.

The email, which was described to CNN by multiple sources and verified by Trump Jr.'s attorney, came from someone who listed his name as "Mike Erickson." It was addressed to Trump, Trump Jr., Trump Jr.'s personal assistant and others, and turned over to Congress as part of the documents provided by the Trump Organization.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/08/politics/email-effort-give-trump-campaign-wikileaks-documents/index.html

On what he called the worst day of his political life, Senator Al Franken articulated two points that are central to understanding what has become known as the #MeToo moment. In an eleven-minute speech, in which Franken announced his intention to resign from the Senate, he made this much clear: the force that is ending his political career is greater than the truth, and this force operates on only roughly half of this country’s population—those who voted for Hillary Clinton and who consume what we still refer to as mainstream media.

There was one notable absence in his speech: Franken did not apologize. In fact, he made it clear that he disagreed with his accusers. “Some of the allegations against me are simply not true,” he said. “Others I remember very differently.” Earlier, Franken had in fact apologized to his accusers, and he didn’t take his apologies back now, but he made it plain that they had been issued in the hopes of facilitating a conversation and an investigation that would clear him. He had, it seems, been attempting to buy calm time to work while a Senate ethics committee looked into the accusations. But, by Thursday morning, thirty-two Democratic senators had called on Franken to resign. The force of the #MeToo moment leaves no room for due process, or, indeed, for Franken’s own constituents to consider their choice.

Still, the force works selectively. “I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party,” said Franken, referring to Donald Trump and the Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. Trump and Moore are immune because the blunt irresistible force works only on the other half of the country.

That half is cleaning its ranks in the face of—and in clear reaction to—genuine moral depravity on the other side. The Trump era is one of deep and open immorality in politics. Moore is merely one example. Consider Greg Gianforte, the Montana Republican who won his congressional race earlier this year after not only being captured on tape shoving a newspaper reporter but then also lying to police about it. Consider the tax bill, which is stitched together from shameless greed and boldface lies. Consider the series of racist travel bans. Consider the withdrawal from a series of international agreements aimed at bettering the future of humanity, from migration to climate change to cultural preservation. These are men who proclaim their allegiance to the Christian faith while acting in openly hateful, duplicitous, and plainly murderous ways. In response to this unbearable spectacle, the roughly half of Americans who are actually deeply invested in thinking of themselves as good people are trying to claim a moral high ground. The urge to do so by policing sex is not surprising. As Susan Sontag pointed out more than half a century ago, Christianity has “concentrated on sexual behavior as the root of virtue” and, consequently, “everything pertaining to sex has been a ‘special case’ in our culture.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/al-franken-resignation-and-the-selective-force-of-metoo/amp?__twitter_impression=true

January is a month of disciplined eating for many attempting to drop extra pounds gained during two months of holiday parties and dinners. But for Lauren Peckman, four weeks of dining on lentils and rice were not an attempt to lose weight. The 32-year-old nonprofit worker maintained this strict diet to keep her grocery budget as low as possible. For many years, after celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, she would spend January living as frugally as possible to replenish her bank account.

Peckman, who lives in St. Louis, is single. And she has found herself overwhelmed by the expenses of family obligations and expectations during Thanksgiving and Christmas — expectations that affect her married relatives’ lives in significantly different ways.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/soloish/wp/2017/12/04/december-is-an-expensive-time-to-be-single/