monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I still don't believe anyone is paying to get their message out to such a small group of people that aren't going to be influenced by anything they don't already agree with.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to End Its 146-Year Run

A legal fight to clean up tons of chicken manure fouling the waters of Oklahoma’s bucolic northeastern corner — much of it from neighboring Arkansas — was in full swing six years ago when the conservative lawyer Scott Pruitt took office as Oklahoma’s attorney general.

His response: Put on the brakes.

Rather than push for a federal judge to punish the companies by extracting perhaps tens of millions of dollars in damages, Oklahoma’s new chief law enforcement officer quietly negotiated a deal to simply study the problem further.

The move came after he had taken tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from executives and lawyers for the poultry industry...

The head of Austria's far-right Freedom Party called on Saturday for a total ban on “fascistic Islam.”

Heinz Christian Strache told an audience in Salzburg that he wanted to see a ban of Muslim symbols, something like the Austrian law that bans Nazi symbols. And he warned that Islam posed an existential threat to Europe. “Let us put an end to this policy of Islamization,” he said. “Otherwise we Austrians, we Europeans will come to an abrupt end.”

Professor Angelia Wilson, from the University of Manchester, believes the trail of scandals in the President-elect’s wake has become an “embarrassment” to the Republican party, leaving him vulnerable to impeachment by members of the party seeking reelection to the House.

“I think it is highly likely that he will be impeached in the first 12 to 18 months,” she told The Independent.

"Whether it will be about the Russia dossier or other scandals that are undoubtedly there, he has become a liability for the Republican party. At some point they will need to distance themselves from him in order to solidify reelection for the House."

...According to three senior officials on the transition team, a plan to evict the press corps from the White House is under serious consideration by the incoming Trump Administration.

...Another senior official, however, suggested a more pointed motivation for the move. According to the official, the potential relocation reflected a view within the transition team that coverage of Trump has been so hostile as to indicate that the press has abandoned its role as neutral observer.

"They are the opposition party," a senior official says. "I want 'em out of the building. We are taking back the press room."

I wouldn't say that D'Souza has risen to the top. At least with regard to this incredibly stupid comment about Rosa Parks, who has had far more moral courage than he's ever had.
Blatham, I suppose you're being sarcastic.

Plenty of Hoosiers and others with ties to Mike Pence have already landed positions in the incoming Trump administration, and more could be coming.

I agree and double what you said; stfu.
Any citizen has the right to express their opinion about any politician.

Wake Up America! See article: "Israeli Science: Obama Birth Certificate is a Fake"

If it's not yet clear to you George, I am totally uninterested in how you value my behaviour. You can't possibly think it matters, so why bother. Unless you suppose we could come to some symbiotic relationship where you scold me and I get to tell you what a freeping stuffy fuddy dud with control issues you are. Seriously, don't think for a minute I need or care about your tutalege. I think your a wanna-be elitist with an over-wrought vocabulary. You should be writing torrid bodice-rippers. I think that is much more suitable for you, and if you need more career advice or direction, please don't ask me because I will sure as **** give it to you.

There is not a single sacrifice -- not McCain's, not the Khan family's -- that Trump has respected. Not surprised he disrespected John Lewis

More broadly, the idea that "public service" is supposed to BE sacrifice is utterly foreign to him.

Becoming president means becoming BOSS, getting everything you want, being accountable to no one. No sacrifices.

Many "norms" being trampled, but that's a big one: the idea that government serves at the will of the people, rather than OWNING the office.

Will Trump Avoid A Constitutional Crisis?

...Four years later, at the Constitutional Convention, Franklin’s snuffbox scandal was recalled when the framers drafted what came to be called the Emoluments Clause, an ironclad prohibition against receiving gifts: “No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Zephyr Teachout, whose book “Corruption in America,” from 2014, tells the history of Franklin’s snuffbox, said that, far from being an obscure provision, the gift ban was part of “the animating spirit of the Constitutional Convention,” along with other core American legal concepts such as federalism and separation of powers. “It goes to the heart of the fears at the Convention,” Teachout, a law professor at Fordham University who also ran a primary challenge to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in 2014, said. “The framers were worried about foreign powers because they were so strong and we were so weak. They were worried about corruption overwhelming the new republic. The question was how do we protect against it?”