"lingering like a fart in a public elevator"

This is the best description of Cohn's departure that I have read:

Mike Pence says making abortion illegal saves lives. History proves the opposite.

Speaking at an event hosted by an anti-abortion group in Nashville on Feb. 27, Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech highlighting the numerous anti-choice initiatives the Trump administration has launched and suggesting (hoping?) that legal abortion will end “in our time.”
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There’s only one problem: Making abortion illegal will not in fact end abortion in America. Doing so will merely drive it underground, making it unsafe and unregulated, and will result in the needless deaths of women. How’s that for restoring the sanctity of life?
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Because we know what will happen if we make abortion illegal. Before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in its historic Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, scores of women died from illegal abortion care. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that focuses on reproductive health, the death toll associated with illegal abortions was significant: In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women, or 18% of maternal deaths recorded in that year. In 1965, death-by-illegal-abortion accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth that year. And those are just the reported cases.
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Desperation drove up to 1.2 million women per year to terminate their pregnancies in the 1950s and 1960s, even though it meant putting their lives and health at risk. Where there is a will, there’s a way. And this pattern will surely repeat if Pence gets his way.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/mike-pence-says-making-abortion-illegal-saves-lives-history-proves-ncna853031

Georgia Violated Deltas First Amendment Rights

If corporations are people, the airline has a free speech case against the state over its stance against the NRA.

On Monday, Georgia Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle lashed out at Delta, announcing he would seek to kill broader tax legislation that also would provide the company a $50 million tax break on jet fuel. He made his rationale clear on Twitter, saying the benefit would not be returned unless Delta “changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA.” Cagle concluded: “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.” On Thursday, the Georgia Legislature passed the larger tax measure, now stripped of the jet-fuel cut, and the GOP governor announced he would sign it.
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If the legislature punished Delta by taking away a state benefit because of its stand on the NRA, it would be a clear violation of the First Amendment’s restriction on viewpoint-based discrimination. Should it matter that the tax benefits were new? Probably not. Georgia could not, for example, make admission to a new state college exclusive to NRA supporters. The reason we don’t see many such cases is a matter not of principle but of evidence. There might be a host of reasons why a provision in a proposed bill gets yanked, and courts would not want to assume legislators have unconstitutional motives. But retaliation for a disfavored viewpoint is a constitutional harm. And while it might be difficult to prove sometimes, it is not here. Just reread the lieutenant governor’s tweet.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/georgia-violated-deltas-first-amendment-rights.html?via=homepage_taps_top

Reminder: Trump disbanded the DHS/FBI domestic terrorism task force.

He ordered them to solely focus on Islamic sources of terrorism:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-extremists-program-exclusiv/exclusive-trump-to-focus-counter-extremism-program-solely-on-islam-sources-idUSKBN15G5VO


Please keep that in mind as you come across various right wingers on the internet who are blaming the FBI for not stopping Nikolas Cruz.

Eric Trump Gets Mercilessly Mocked On Twitter Over New Magazine

On Friday, President Donald Trump’s second son shared a snap of what looked to be the front cover of a new “Trump” magazine to Twitter:
https://twitter.com/EricTrump/status/961988534092619776

He captioned the photograph, which features an image of Trump International Hotel in Washington, with the hashtag #HotOffThePress.

Trump offered no more information on the publication, which promotes Trump properties on the cover. It’s not clear when it will be available, how often it will be published, how many pages it contains or whether it will be sold on newsstands.

But Time noted  it could be the latest attempt by the Trump family to enter the magazine industry. Its last title, “Trump Magazine,” was reportedly closed in 2009 following the global financial crisis, per the New York Post.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a7eb3eee4b08dfc930451d3
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My fave tweet in response:

Nice! An even shittier magazine for Stormy Daniels to smack your dad around with!!

https://twitter.com/NatureBoyRRC/status/962361232689909762

Dead goose falls from sky, knocks Maryland hunter unconscious

A Maryland waterfowl hunter was flown to the hospital Thursday after he was struck unconscious by a duck he had just shot out of the sky, authorities say, CBS Baltimore reports. Robert Meilhammer, 51, was hunting with others in Easton near the Miles River shortly before 5 p.m. when the dead goose fell from the sky.

The Maryland Natural Resources Police said the hunter was sent to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center where he was treated for head and facial injuries. Meilhammer has been listed in stable condition, officials said.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-meilhammer-dead-goose-falls-sky-knocks-baltimore-maryland-hunter-unconscious/

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So many analogies to what's going on in the news...

U.S.airstrikes in Yemen have increased sixfold under Trump

Source: NBC News

The U.S. military stepped up its air campaign in Yemen dramatically in 2017, conducting more than six times as many airstrikes as in 2016, according to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) data.
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By October, the U.S. military counterterrorism operations grew to include strikes and missions against ISIS, specifically a regional group called ISIS-Yemen (ISIS-Y). CENTCOM spokesperson Lt. Col. Earl Brown said in December that targeting ISIS "is required to prevent ISIS-Y from filling the vacuum left by a diminished AQAP footprint or influence in the region."

Despite that, a U.S. intelligence estimate contends that ISIS-Y doubled in size in 2017.


Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mideast/u-s-airstrikes-yemen-have-increased-sixfold-under-trump-n843886

White House will return secret memo to House Intelligence Committee

Source: CBS News

Two sources directly involved in the process say the GOP-authored House Intelligence Committee memo will not be released Thursday. The plan now is for the White House to return the memo – with redactions approved in consultation with the FBI – to the Intelligence Committee Friday. 
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The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is objecting to the memo's release, claiming Wednesday there were "material changes" made to the memo after the committee voted on its release, but before the Republican majority sent the memo to the White House for review earlier this week. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California demanded another vote be held on the release of what he's referring to as the "modified document." Schiff wants the memo, as delivered to the White House, be withdrawn and proposed that a new vote be held on Monday, Feb. 5. 


Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/secret-memo-to-be-returned-by-white-house-to-house-intelligence-committee/

Devin Nunes' high school photo-- #ReleasetheMullet

US News Editorial: "State of Banality"

Trump has a well-deserved reputation as a rambling and often incoherent speaker; but a second Trump emerges when he is obliged to make more of a formal, set-piece address like the State of the Union, or his speech in Davos, Switzerland last week or his speech to Congress last year. This more restrained Trump is faithful to his prepared text, which often sounds less like the president and more like a speechwriter's generic conception of how a president ought to sound.

But of course Donald Trump can only be so conventional.
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So he promised the people of Puerto Rico, among other localities still recovering from Hurricane Maria, that "we are with you, we love you, and we will pull through together," on the night before the Federal Emergency Management Agency will officially "shut off" food and water aid to the island where one-third of the population is still without power; he spoke of how important he views the opioid crisis, stirring words underscoring his administration's dearth of action on the issue (Trump "has not really done anything about [opioids], except insofar as he has pushed for massive cuts in Medicaid, which would produce massive cuts in substance-abuse treatment programs," Politico's Michael Grunwald noted this week in cataloguing Trump's broken promises from last year's address to Congress); "there has never been a better time to start living the American Dream," Trump said in describing his "New American Moment," before directing that instant specifically at "every citizen watching at home tonight," never mind that that dream has not traditionally been confined to the citizenry but has also served as a beacon to others around the world who are yearning to breathe free and make a better life for themselves and their families.

There was something mystifying about listening to Trump declare the "era of economic surrender" to be over at the end of a year in which his withdrawal from avenues of American global leadership have left voids which China, for example, has been more than happy to fill. That fact, along with Trump's declaration that "rivals like China and Russia … challenge our interests, our economy, and our values," when he's aided the former and abetted the latter.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thomas-jefferson-street/articles/2018-01-31/trumps-conventional-banal-forgettable-state-of-the-union-address