monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Those Icelanders don't take a lot of ****, unlike our chloroformed lemmings.

Although this seems to have worked well. I notice our press didn't have much to say...

A lawyer for Donald Trump says the US president's legal team is not looking at ways he could pardon himself.
"I don't know where this came from. There is nothing to pardon," Jay Sekulow said.
On Saturday, Mr Trump said he had "complete power" to issue pardons, following reports he had asked advisers about the scope of his authority.
Criminal and congressional inquiries are underway into alleged collusion between Russia and Trump's campaign.
Earlier in the week, the Washington Post reported that Mr Trump had inquired about his ability to pardon himself, family members or aides in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into claims Russia interfered in the US election.
Mr Trump has reportedly been infuriated that the inquiry has widened to consider his finances and close family.
Presidents have broad abilities to issue pardons and Mr Trump could potentially restrict Mr Mueller's investigation.
His tweet said: "While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us. FAKE NEWS."
But Mr Sekulow said they were not looking into the question of pardons.
"We're not researching it, I haven't researched it because it's not an issue we're concerned with or dealing with," he told ABC.
He went on to say whether a president could pardon themselves remains an open question.
"With regard to the issue of a president pardoning himself, there's a big academic discussion going on right now," he added. "From a constitutional, legal perspective you can't dismiss it one way or the other."
A spokesman for the Democratic Party called the reports Mr Trump could pardon himself "extremely disturbing".
US intelligence agencies think Russia tried to help Mr Trump to power. Russia denies this, and the president says there was no collusion.

An admission that the constant stream of leaks to media re the WH have nothing to do with any "deep state" or "Obama holdovers" but rather with the team this administration itself has put together.

The House and Senate have reached a deal on a bill that would impose new financial sanctions on Russia and allow Congress to review and veto any attempt by President Trump, or any other president, to independently ease those sanctions in the future. The Senate, looking to punish the Kremlin for meddling in last year’s presidential election, passed a version of the bill by a nearly unanimous margin in June, but it has been stalled in the House for weeks due to procedural issues, pressure from industry groups, and a White House bent on weakening the proposed congressional-review power. On Saturday, however, negotiators from the House and Senate ironed out a deal that did not include the changes the Trump administration wanted.

Regardless, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders now says that the White House supports the new version of the bill. That would seem to indicate that Trump will sign it into law, but wait until the ink is dry when it comes to anything this administration says.

In addition to the measures against Russia, the bill includes new sanctions on Iran (over its ballistic-missile tests) and North Korea (over its nuclear program). It also somewhat eased the concerns of the oil-and-gas industry, which worried that American companies would face an impossible amount of red tape if they attempted to partner with Russian businesses.

The tweaked bill will likely receive a full vote on Tuesday and is expected to pass with wide bipartisan support, setting up a potentially difficult choice for the president. Trump has never seemed to take Russia’s meddling in last year’s election very seriously — instead trying to downplay it — and the president has also never seemed overly concerned about appearing too friendly with the Kremlin, either. (In Trump’s defense, any White House administration would object to Congress attempting to reduce its authority to deal with foreign powers.) But the New York Times reported on Saturday that “two senior administration officials said they could not imagine Mr. Trump vetoing the legislation in the current political atmosphere.” And Trump’s ability to exceed the limits of imagination aside, Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered firmer official support on Sunday. During an appearance on ABC’s This Week, the new White House press secretary was asked if the president would sign the bill, and she indicated that he would:

If Sanders is wrong and Trump does veto the bill, it will be interesting to see if Republicans in Congress would be willing to override him. Then again, even if the bill does become law, there is no guarantee that GOP lawmakers will challenge any attempt by Trump to ease the sanctions — though members of the House’s majority party won’t be the only ones who get to call for such a review. Minority Whip Steny Hoyer declared on Saturday that he was pleased with the legislation, which he says “ensures that both the majority and minority are able to exercise our oversight role over the administration’s implementation of sanctions

As we used to say, ay chihuahua. Ay Chihuahua! is a Mexican expression. Literally, the expression translates to "Oh, Chihuahua...

A lawyer for Donald Trump says the US president's legal team is not looking at ways he could pardon himself.
"I don't know where this came from. There is nothing to pardon," Jay Sekulow said.
On Saturday, Mr Trump said he had "complete power" to issue pardons, following reports he had asked advisers about the scope of his authority.

White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci on Sunday said he and President Donald Trump discussed pardons during a meeting last week in the Oval Office.

“I’m in the Oval Office with the President last week, we’re talking about that, he says he brought that up,” Scaramucci said on “Fox News Sunday,” referring to Trump’s tweet about pardons.

Criticism[edit]
In November 2005, Legal Times published an article which alleged that Sekulow "through the ACLJ and a string of interconnected nonprofit and for-profit entities, has built a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle—complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia." In the article, former donors and supporters claimed that Sekulow engaged in a pattern of self-dealing to finance his "high-flying lifestyle." According to a ranking by the American Institute of Philanthropy, a charity watchdog group, Sekulow was the 13th highest paid executive of a charitable organization in the United States.[14]

On June 27, 2017, The Washington Post reported that "Jay Sekulow's family has been paid millions from charities they control".[15]

On June 27 and 28, 2017, The Guardian reported, that documents obtained by them confirmed later that "millions in donations" were steered to his family members,[16] that Sekulow "approved plans to push poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60m to Sekulow, his family and their businesses",[16] and that attorney generals in New York and North Carolina opened investigations of Jay Sekulow’s group Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE) for possibly using pressure tactics in telemarketer calls to raise money which was allegedly misdirected to Sekulow and his family.[17]

Sekulow is a real piece of work.