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So are the Dems going to watch what polls do now to see if this Mueller episode 'did it' for them before they take any action?

Steve Bannon's Big Shot Friend In The Catholic Church Is Done With Steve Bannon
Cardinal Raymond Burke dumped Bannon after the former White House staffer allegedly said he was open to priests marrying and that many clergy members in the Vatican are gay.

BuzzFeed, June 25, 2019
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lesterfeder/steve-bannon-cardinal-raymond-burke-priests-marry

An influential conservative cardinal with ties to Steve Bannon called their relationship quits on Tuesday. The news followed a report that stated Bannon endorses allowing priests to marry and that he believes a majority of clergy members in the Vatican are gay.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, who was removed from a high-ranking Vatican post following clashes with Pope Francis, is the longtime chair of an organization in Rome working with Bannon to create a far-right political institute.

"I disagree completely with a number of Mr. Bannon's statements regarding the doctrine and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church," Burke said in a statement posted to Twitter Tuesday, highlighting Bannon's endorsement of letting priests marry.

Burke also said, "I have never worked with Mr. Bannon in his organization," and that he has only met with him "on occasion to discuss Catholic social teaching regarding certain political questions."

Burke issued the statement in response to a post published June 24 on the anti-abortion LifeSite News that said Bannon had proposed making a movie of the book In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy by left-wing French journalist Frédéric Martel. The book is based on years of reporting and describes an underground gay culture that allegedly pervades the top levels of the Vatican hierarchy.

Martel told BuzzFeed News that Bannon invited him to lunch in Paris on May 19 to discuss his book. During the lunch, Martel said, it was suggested that Bannon's allies in Rome were probably gay, and Bannon agreed that was likely true. Martel said Bannon endorsed allowing priests to marry and other changes to the church's sexual doctrine so that the church can focus on "the important issue: China, Islam, immigration and so on."

Martel said Bannon was interested in making a movie of In the Closet of the Vatican to expose the reality of the church. He also made clear to BuzzFeed News that he was not interested in making a movie with Bannon. [...]

In his statement repudiating Bannon, Burke also announced that he was resigning from the advisory board of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, a 10-year-old organization that describes its mission as "supporting Christians in public life."

The meeting between Bannon and Martel was arranged by Ben Harnwell, the director of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which was working with Bannon to develop a political training program. The institute also helped connect Bannon inside the Vatican, including hosting a 2014 address in which Bannon spelled out his sweeping vision to build a "global tea party movement."

Burke was then already chair of the institute's advisory board; he was recently made its honorary president. News reports suggested he was also enthusiastic about the political school, telling Reuters in 2018 he thought the collaboration would “promote a number of projects that should make a decisive contribution to the defence of what used to be called Christendom.”

"In recent time, the Institute has become more and more identified with the political program of Mr. Bannon," Burke said in his letter on Tuesday. "I have, therefore, effectively immediately, terminated any relationship with the Dignitatis Humanae Institute."

MILAN (Reuters) - Italy’s culture ministry has said it will revoke the lease on a state-owned monastery where a right-wing Roman Catholic institute close to former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon had planned to train political activists.

In a statement on Friday, the ministry said it would revoke the concession on the mountaintop property outside Rome granted to the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, citing violations of various contractual obligations including a failure to pay concession fees and do maintenance work.

Benjamin Harnwell, director of the institute based in the Trisulti monastery, had told Reuters in September that Bannon was helping to craft the curriculum for a leadership course aimed at right-wing Catholic activists to be held in the 800-year-old monastery.

Bannon, who has launched a campaign to build a populist movement across Europe, has also been raising funds for the institute, Harnwell said.

An official at Italy’s culture ministry, Gianluca Vacca, said in the statement that inspections ordered by authorities had found a number of irregularities with the concession that allowed the institute to use the property.

“Proceeding with the revocation is thus a duty,” Vacca said.

The project for a right-wing leadership academy had been criticized by Italy’s left parties and local media had raised doubts over whether Harnwell’s institute fulfilled the requirements of its agreement with the government.

Vacca, a member of the anti-establishment 5-Star party which has been ruling Italy in a coalition with the far-right League since last year, said there were no political motives behind the decision to revoke permission for the institute.

He said the procedure to award the concession to Harnwell’s association - whose board of advisers is chaired by Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading Vatican conservative - had been completed under the previous, center-left government.

I think your legal knowledge isn't as good as you pretend.

Did I miss passage of a new EU law against talking about its dissenters? Must have.

I was watching Boris, Corbyn et al this morning, and was surprised to hear Corbyn make similar allusions about ‘America’ threatening the ‘NHS’? I don’t know where this is coming from. Haven’t heard a word about this here. Will search.

Stockholm (AFP) - US rapper A$AP Rocky will be tried for an alleged assault next week over a June street brawl, a Swedish court said Thursday, in a decision likely to infuriate fans already indignant over his three weeks in custody.

"Today I have pressed charges against the three suspects for assault, because in my judgement what has happened amounts to a crime, despite the objections about self-defence and provocations," prosecutor Daniel Suneson said in a statement published Thursday morning.
[...]
According to the charge document filed with the Stockholm District Court, the evidence includes surveillance footage, witness testimony and text conversations that the prosecutor says prove there was no need for self defence and that a bottle was used as a weapon in the alleged assault.
[...]
The trial is scheduled to take place over three days, starting on July 30 and then continuing on August 1 and 2.

Assault carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail in Sweden.
[...]
Since his arrest, fans, fellow artists and US Congress members have campaigned for the artist to be freed.

US President Donald Trump contacted Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven directly to discuss the case, and tweeted Saturday he had been assured that Mayers would be "treated fairly".

"I assured him that A$AP was not a flight risk and offered to personally vouch for his bail, or an alternative," Trump added.

Lofven's press secretary Toni Eriksson confirmed the call and told AFP that "the prime minister was careful to point out that the Swedish justice system is completely independent".

I was watching Boris, Corbyn et al this morning

This is awkward. Stanley Johnson, the father of the new prime minister, has appeared on Press TV - the Iranian state controlled network. In the Commons earlier, the PM was berating Jeremy Corbyn for appearing on the programme several years ago.

In his statement in parliament, Mr Johnson said: "How on earth could he ask about Iran?

"The right honourable gentleman who has been paid by Press TV of Iran.

"Who repeatedly sides with the mullahs of Tehran rather than our friends in the United States over what is happening in the Persian Gulf."

Boris Johnson has been Britain’s prime minister for not quite a day, and the reviews are in. He’s a disaster! A fraud! A Trumpy toff and shameless showman whose ego is inversely correlated to his merit and whose tenure of office won’t just be bad for the United Kingdom, but very possibly the death of it.

Johnson might be half-inclined to agree. As he once said of himself: “You can’t rule out the possibility that beneath the elaborately constructed veneer of a blithering idiot, there lurks a blithering idiot.”

I’ve always had a vague distaste for Johnson, based mainly on his history as a journalistic fabulist, as well as the unflattering testimony of friends who’ve dealt with him personally. Also, I opposed Brexit, which Johnson recklessly championed in 2016 and which he now promises to see through, one way or another, by the end of October.

But I’m rooting for him, hard, as you should, too. And there’s reason to suspect that, this time, the man might be suited for the challenge and the hour.

I’m rooting for him, first, because the alternatives are much worse. Waiting to feast on the entrails of a failed Johnson premiership are, from the left, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn — a man who called for closing down NATO, eulogized Hugo Chávez, and kept company with Holocaust deniers — and, from the right, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage — a man who said he’d get rid of anti-discrimination employment laws because “there should be a presumption for British employers in favor of them employing British people as opposed to somebody from Poland.”

As between (a) an anti-Semitic bigot and (c) an anti-immigrant bigot, I’ll choose (b): Boris, who has even called for amnesty for some illegal immigrants.

I’m rooting for him, second, because Britain needs a successful Brexit, and he may be the only political figure in Britain who can do it.

It would be nice to think that the U.K. could simply hold a second referendum and that the “Remain” camp would prevail this time. Yet there’s no guarantee it will. And even if it did, a second referendum leading to a different result would convince nearly half the country that they had been cheated of their democratic due.

That could only energize, radicalize and even weaponize the populist right, at a moment when populism is a swelling force in global politics.

Britain voted for Brexit, foolishly, but Brexit is what Britain now needs to get.

I’m rooting for him, third, because the United States not only needs Great Britain. It needs Britain great.

One of the frequent criticisms of Johnson and other Brexiteers is that, like Victorians born a century late, they have an exaggerated sense of the U.K.’s significance. Yet for all of its relative decline, Britain has four of the world’s 10 best universities, the fifth-largest economy, the fourth-largest navy (by tonnage), and a globally deployed military. It is second only to the U.S. in Nobel laureates, just as London is second only to New York as a global financial capital. Its literary and artistic scenes remain fecund and globally influential, and its political leaders, until dismal Theresa May, always punched above their weight.

All this means Britain remains a pillar of the Western world. If Johnson fails badly, more than just his mandate or career go down with him.

And yet I have an inkling that he isn’t going to fail. His mistakes are many, but many of them are venial: He was sacked by The Times of London, for instance, for making up a quote concerning the love life of King Edward II (1284-1327). He has loads of enemies, but by many accounts he has a gift for personal friendship and, unlike his three immediate predecessors, a deep political base. He has a profound sense of history, and writes remarkably well about it. His two terms as mayor of London involved some harebrained schemes, but he still managed to leave office with a near-60 percent approval rating in a city that leans left. His close association with the Brexit campaign gives him a chance, as May never had, to command its allegiance.

He has charisma. He’s eloquent and disarming. He is capable of winning people over.

He’ll need to, if he’s going to bring Britain out of the political deadlock that led to the crushing defeats of May’s Brexit plan. He’ll need it, too, to negotiate a trade deal with the U.S., which Johnson has promised and which post-Brexit Britain cannot do without. For once, Britons should be grateful that Johnson, who in 2015 described Donald Trump as “clearly out of his mind,” has done so much to cultivate a relationship with the president.

Johnson is often compared to Trump, but it’s inapt. Trump is a lout masquerading as a political virtuoso. There’s reason to suspect the new prime minister is much closer to the opposite. For Britain’s sake, but not just Britain’s, I hope that’s true.

Quote:

Johnson is often compared to Trump ...

You really hate Britain don't you?

Corbyn won't start any wars,