monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

They considered Madagascar I think.

Can Democrats, who are more philosophically invested in showing that government can function, really bring themselves to replicate Mr. McConnell’s obstructionist methods?

Recall that in the summer of 2009 Mr. McConnell allowed three Republicans, led by Chuck Grassley of Iowa, to spend months meeting with three Democratic counterparts on health care reform. The negotiations came to naught, allowing Mr. McConnell to claim that his party’s eventual monolithic vote against the Affordable Care Act came only after the Democrats’ refusal to move off their “far left” proposal.

The meetings also dragged out debate around the bill, helping sour the public on the legislation. As Robert F. Bennett, then a Utah senator and close McConnell ally, who died last year, told me of Mr. McConnell in early 2014: “He said, ‘Our strategy is to delay this sucker as long as we possibly can, and the longer we delay it the worse the president looks: Why can’t he get it done?’ ” He remembered the party leader’s promise to “delay it, delay it, delay it as long as we can.” The main lesson: “Every time something would come up, he would find a way to delay it.”

“We don’t have a conventional president,” he said. “We’re seeing behavior that could lead us right down the path to martial law or authoritarian rule. These are dangerous times, and you have to think through your strategy in that context.” For Democrats, using “leverage to pull us back from the brink of something that shatters our fundamental system is now in order.”

what we’re hearing sounds like a man who is out of his depth and out of control, who can’t even pretend to master his feelings of personal insecurity. His first two weeks in office have been utter chaos, and things just keep getting worse — perhaps because he responds to each debacle with a desperate attempt to change the subject that only leads to a fresh debacle.

America and the world can’t take much more of this. Think about it: If you had an employee behaving this way, you’d immediately remove him from any position of responsibility and strongly suggest that he seek counseling. And this guy is commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military.

Thanks, Comey.

President Trump has been in office for barely two weeks, but Congress is already in diplomatic damage control.

Senators are huddling in meetings or on embarrassing phone calls with ambassadors of major allies, assuring them that, yes, America is still their friend.

Can Democrats, who are more philosophically invested in showing that government can function, really bring themselves to replicate Mr. McConnell’s obstructionist methods?

what we’re hearing sounds like a man who is out of his depth and out of control, who can’t even pretend to master his feelings of personal insecurity.

His first two weeks in office have been utter chaos, and things just keep getting worse — perhaps because he responds to each debacle with a desperate attempt to change the subject that only leads to a fresh debacle.

America and the world can’t take much more of this.

Think about it: If you had an employee behaving this way, you’d immediately remove him from any position of responsibility and strongly suggest that he seek counseling.

Members of Mr. Obama’s national security team pushed back Thursday at Mr. Spicer’s description of how the former president had set the stage for the decision. They said the attack had not been approved by Mr. Obama, and that materials left for the Trump team emphasized considerable risks.

“Not what happened,” Colin Kahl, the national security adviser to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., wrote on Twitter after Mr. Spicer’s briefing.

Mr. Kahl’s colleagues said that Lisa Monaco, Mr. Obama’s homeland security adviser, told the national security staff in early January that Mr. Obama was not prepared to approve the concept for the raid.

The Nazis had Madagascar in mind

European leaders are now watching the Trump administration with increasing alarm, fearful that the United States could be the biggest threat yet to a bloc already mired in discord.

...The concerns have spiked to the point where European Council President Donald Tusk listed the United States alongside terrorism, Russia and China as threats to the European Union in a letter to European leaders this week laying the groundwork for the summit.