monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Here's a look at what the president has said about various misconduct allegations.
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"We wish him well. He worked very hard. This is obviously a tough time for him but he did a very good job while he was in the White House. And we hope he has a wonderful career. Hopefully he will have a great career ahead of him. ... And I think you have to remember that, he said very strongly yesterday he's innocent."

Trump, speaking Friday about Porter, who resigned after public reports that two ex-wives have accused him of abuse.
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"He totally denies it ... He says it didn't happen. And look, you have to look at him also."

Trump, in November 2017, on the accusations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who was accused of pursuing romantic relationships with teenagers when he was in his 30s.
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"Some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he's helped them, and even recently. And when they write books that are fairly recently released, and they say wonderful things about him. And now, all of a sudden, they're saying these horrible things about him."

Trump, in July 2016, on the late Roger Ailes. Ailes was ousted from Fox News after being accused of assaulting women.
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"How do you know those bruises weren't there before?"

Trump, in March 2016, defending former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski against a battery charge stemming from an altercation with reporter Michelle Fields.
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"He is a good person. I think he shouldn't have settled; personally I think he shouldn't have settled. Because you should have taken it all the way ... I don't think Bill would do anything wrong."

Trump, in April 2017, speaking about Bill O'Reilly, the host forced out by Fox News after multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.
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"That's locker room."

Trump, to reporters in October 2017, when asked about allegations against him and the "Access Hollywood" recording in which he spoke of groping women without their consent.
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"Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign. Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over."

Trump, during an October 2016 campaign rally. No lawsuits have been filed against the more than a dozen women who say Trump harassed or assaulted them.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency responsible for weather predictions, ocean science, and climate research, has been threatened with major budget cuts by the Trump administration over the last year. But it got a nice chunk of funding today (Feb. 9) when Trump signed a stopgap government spending deal passed by Congress.

The spending deal is intended to keep the government running until March. It includes various special sections, like one devoted to disaster relief for the three devastating hurricanes that struck the US last year.

Within that special hurricane relief section, NOAA was allocated some serious money for its core science priorities. These funds are not part of NOAA’s overall budget for 2019, which will come out later.

NOAA receives funding for the things typical of disaster relief that fall under its purview—$200 million to mitigate “fisheries disasters” caused by the storms, $18 million for marine debris removal, and money to repair their instruments and federal property damaged in the storms.

But also included in the spending bill are are funds for the agency to get better weather satellites, improve hurricane intensity forecasting, and enhance their supercomputing infrastructure. John Culberson, the Republican congressman who runs the appropriations process in the US House of Representatives where the bill originated, is from Houston. The city was badly hit by Hurricane Harvey in August.

Here are those line items from the hurricane disaster section of “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018”:

$50,000,000 for “improvements to operational and research weather supercomputing infrastructure and for improvement of satellite ground services used in hurricane intensity and track prediction,”

$29,232,000 for “repair and replacement of Federal real property and observing assets,”

$12,904,000 for “repair and replacement of observing assets, Federal real property, and equipment,”

$40,000,000 for “mapping, charting, and geodesy services,”1

$50,000,000 to “improve weather forecasting, hurricane intensity forecasting and flood forecasting and mitigation capabilities, including data assimilation from ocean observing platforms and satellites.”

The president’s original budget proposal for 2018 called for a 17% cut to the NOAA budget, along with a 6% cut for the National Weather Service, the agency under NOAA responsible for gathering and analyzing virtually all the US’s weather forecast data. After Hurricanes Harvey and Irma barreled into the US, the Verge noted that NOAA and the National Weather Service were agencies that provided advance notice of the seriousness of the storms, and when they would hit.

I’d heard about ‘rooftop’ celebrations which were debunked. Someone went out of their way to try to sell that story because I saw footage in the days after 911 that purported to show that celebration, but that was before I was aware of such a degree of propaganda operating seemingly fluently in the US.

Analysis: The DOJ lost its No. 3. Why that matters to Mueller.

The news that Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand — the third-highest official in the Justice Department — is resigning after a little less than nine months in office to take a position with Walmart set off a double-barreled firestorm on social media Friday night.

While assistant associate attorneys general typically do not make headlines, Brand's departure raises questions about who will succeed her and what her departure (and her replacement's selection) might portend for the future of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The succession question is actually a bit complicated. By default, under an obscure statute known as the Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, Brand's temporary successor as the "acting" associate attorney general is her principal deputy, Jesse Panuccio. That same statute would also allow the president to choose someone else to serve as the "acting" AAG on a temporary basis for up to 210 days; the pool of individuals from which the president could draw in this case includes individuals already holding Senate-confirmed positions elsewhere in the executive branch (like EPA administrator Scott Pruitt) or senior civil service lawyers in the Justice Department, specifically.

So if the president wanted someone other than Panuccio to be acting AAG, he'd have plenty of choices, at least on a temporary basis. Of course, Trump is also free to formally nominate anyone to replace Brand on a permanent basis, but that option would require Senate confirmation.

However, because Panuccio is not Senate-confirmed, he would not act as attorney general (or deputy attorney general) if those offices were also to become vacant. Instead, under the Justice Department's own succession statute and guidelines implementing that law issued by Attorney General Loretta Lynch in November 2016, Brand is replaced in that line of succession by Solicitor General Noel Francisco (the solicitor general is the nation's chief legal representative in front of the Supreme Court).

The reason why all of this matters is because the associate attorney general is the designated successor to the Justice Department's second-highest ranking official, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. And it is Rosenstein, thanks to the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who authorized Mueller's investigation in the first place — and who is the only government official with the legal authority to directly fire Mueller and otherwise terminate his investigation.

In other words, Rosenstein is the crucial fulcrum between the political leadership of the Trump administration and the quasi-independent special counsel. The president cannot directly interfere with the special counsel's investigation without going through — or getting rid of — Rosenstein.

To be sure, various Republicans in Congress have expressed their support for both Mueller and Rosenstein, but there have been increasing signals from the White House in recent weeks that Rosenstein may be in the crosshairs — including as a potential casualty of the faux #ReleaseTheMemo scandal. And if Rosenstein resigns or is fired, it would usually be the associate attorney general who would inherit his authority vis-à-vis Mueller. Now, however, that honor would fall to the person next in line to act as attorney general — in this case, Francisco.

Simply put, if the president were to fire Rosenstein tomorrow, Francisco would take over supervision of Mueller and his investigation. Thus, for those worried that the president might try to prevent the Russia investigation from running its course, Brand's resignation reduces the number of Senate-confirmed officials who would have to agree with the president (or whom the president would have to fire) to bring about that result. In this case, Brand was an official generally perceived to be deeply faithful to the rule of law — and therefore unlikely to interfere with Mueller's investigation without good cause.

Of course, Senate confirmation ensures neither integrity nor loyalty. Someone confirmed to a senior Justice Department post is not automatically less likely to do the president's bidding than someone temporarily assigned to that position without Senate approval. After all, it was then-Solicitor General Robert Bork who famously complied with President Richard Nixon's order to fire the Watergate special prosecutor after Nixon's attorney general and deputy attorney general both refused (and resigned) — a sequence of events that's come to be known as the "Saturday Night Massacre."

But as that episode underscores, the more officials who have to be forced out before the president can achieve a particular result, the greater the political costs. And so with every presumably voluntary departure of someone like Brand, the political costs of direct presidential interference with the Russia investigation may well go down.

But even if Brand's departure ends up having no bearing on the Russia investigation, specifically, it's still an ominous sign more generally. After less than nine months, the third-ranking official in the Justice Department resigned, according to an associate, "ecause she is very smart, accomplished, and talented, and wants to protect her career."

If someone as smart and accomplished as Brand came to the conclusion that the best way to protect her career was to leave the Trump administration, one can only imagine — the Russia investigation aside — exactly what she is trying to protect her career from.

President Trump on Saturday raised questions about a lack of due process after two White House aides resigned this week following allegations of past domestic abuse.

"Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new," Trump tweeted.

"There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?"

... one can only imagine...

But let's be clear: This is not how the White House treated the Nunes memo.

which isz clearly jusgt the often uninformed,opinion of its hifrelings

the unvarniushed truty, which it clearly is not.