Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, and Debt:
Mortgage demand falls even further, as rates shoot back up to July highs
Fed Gets New Path to Go Big as Job Openings, Confidence Surprise
As China’s property crisis grows, is the global economy at risk?
Hodlnaut now placed under creditor protection after freezing withdrawals
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
Life expectancy in the U.S. continues to drop, driven by COVID-19
Why Many Americans Turned on Anthony Fauci
China places millions into Covid lockdown again as economy continues to struggle
Politics:
What Do We Know About Where The Mar-a-Lago Probe Is Headed?
Trump Ignores Allies Urging Him to Stay Quiet
In the weeks since the FBI’s unprecedented search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the former president’s allies have pleaded with him to stop publicly commenting on the raid and fight the Justice Department’s investigation in the courts.
Trump isn’t listening.
On Tuesday morning alone, Trump has taken to his Truth Social platform over four dozen times to share memes and posts attacking his political enemies. Some posts are memes attacking President Joe Biden or other Democrats, while others are baseless election fraud claims or attempts to delegitimize the FBI.
Garland bans political DOJ appointees from participating in campaign events
What Bill Barr Did to Clear Trump Is Still a Danger
The memo released last week by the Justice Department closing the book on the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election is a frightening document. Critics have rightly focused on its substance, slipshod legal analysis and omission of damning facts.
But the process by which that memo, sent in March 2019, came to be is just as worrisome. Delivered to the attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, the memo was written by two political appointees in the Justice Department.
Mr. Barr used the memo to go around the special counsel regulations and to clear President Donald Trump of obstruction of justice. If left to fester, this decision will have pernicious consequences for investigations of future high-level wrongdoing.
The Coin Is in the Air for the Senate
Justice Department Has Lengthy Response to Trump
The Justice Department on Tuesday will file publicly in court its response to former President Donald Trump’s bid for a special master to oversee the FBI’s review of materials seized in the Mar-a-Lago search.
The agency was granted permission by Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida to file up to 40 pages after it said the 20-page limit set by the local rules of the court wasn’t sufficient to ‘adequately address the legal and factual issues raised by’ Trump’s filings.
Why Trump’s Documents Case Is Really Just Like a Drug Prosecution
Trump’s Lawyers Advance Broad View of Presidential Powers
A newly unsealed FBI document about the investigation at Mar-a-Lago not only offers new details about the probe but also reveals clues about the arguments former President Donald Trump’s legal team intends to make.
A May 25 letter from one of his lawyers, attached as an exhibit to the search affidavit, advances a broad view of presidential power, asserting that the commander-in-chief has absolute authority to declassify whatever he wants — and also that the ‘primary’ law governing the handling of U.S. classified information simply doesn’t apply to the president himself.
Moscow-appointed Kherson official has left for Russia
Enabler-in-Chief Lindsey Graham And The Echoes Of Fascism
The GOP’s turn away from democracy and toward a low-key fascism (or not so low key, depending on your point of view), hasn’t come in one sudden lurch or entirely at the behest of Donald Trump himself. It’s been a steady transition enabled by countless so-called establishment Republicans. No one quite embodies the elected-Republican-as-enabler quite like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Years ago, I had an odd two-degrees of separation with Gorbachev. In 1990 he came to Minnesota to tout the planned Gorbachev Maxwell Institute of Technology (which fizzled after Robert Maxwell fell from his yacht while peeing naked about a year later). I was living in a duplex in south Minneapolis at the time and some guy came up to me and asked if he could cut off some of the flowering bushes in my front yard to use for Gorbachev’s visit. I thought the guy might be nuts, but, sure buddy, knock yourself out, take a bunch, I’m just a renter here. But the guy wasn’t a nut. The flowers can be seen in this photo that appeared in the newspaper the next day. Meh, I suppose I had several other two-degrees with Gorbachev since I’d met Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, and Jihan Sadat from my time as a room service waiter, all of whom likely met with Gorbachev at one point or another. It’s a small world.
Serendipity:
Brief exposure to rapamycin has the same anti-aging effects as lifelong treatment
