monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Except when they're as dishonorable as yours.

Yes, I certainly am.

Except when they're as dishonorable as yours.

Of course he's not going to say that there was anything suspicious, unusual, or improper while he's serving in the president's cabinet. This only shows that Bolton acted properly when representing the Trump administration, behaving like a diplomat and keeping his personal opinions to himself.

Refocusing a debate on President Donald Trump's moves in the Middle East in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial, the Democratic-controlled House on Thursday approved measures reasserting congressional authority over war powers.

The House passed a proposal to repeal the 2002 congressional authorisation for the war in Iraq, as well as a plan to prevent tax dollars from being used to take military action against Iran without congressional approval. Repeal of the 2002 authorisation was approved by a 236-166 vote, while the funding measure on Iran passed 228-175.

The actions follow a January 9 vote by the House asserting that President Trump must seek approval from Congress before engaging in further military action against Iran.

Democrats said the three measures, taken together, would reassert Congress's constitutional authority in questions of war and peace and sending American forces into harm's way.

"For far too long, Congress has been missing in action on matters of war and peace," said Democratic Representative Barbara Lee, who sponsored the measure repealing 2002 war authorisation.

She called the repeal vote long overdue. "It is time to end giving blank checks to any president to wage endless wars,'' she said.

Noting that presidents from both parties have used the "outdated" 2002 resolution to justify military action in a host of countries, Lee said leaving the resolution in place "is not only dangerous but irresponsible".

Republicans said Lee and fellow Democrats were the ones acting irresponsibly.

"After President Trump took decisive action to take out a brutal Iranian terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, Democrats now seek to restrain our president and restrict his ability to protect our nation,'' said Representative Steve Scalise, the number 2 House Republican.

The bills sponsored by Lee and Representative Ro Khanna, "severely restrict the president's authority to protect Americans from terrorist threats and fight ISIS,'' Scalise said, referring to ISIL.

The Democrats' bills "do not offer solutions" to concerns about war authorisation, "only constraints that embolden Iran", Scalise said.

Khanna said the measure does not prevent the president from acting to defend US interests, but said Congress must authorise spending US resources on any military action.

"It's high time Congress reasserted our power of the purse and made clear to any president that they must come to us first before taking any offensive military action. War should always be a last resort," Khanna said.

The House approved a nonbinding resolution January 9 asserting that Trump must seek approval from Congress before engaging in further military action against Iran. The vote followed a January 3 US drone strike that killed top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in announcing the House vote, called the killing of Soleimani "provocative and disproportionate."

Democrats and several Republicans called Trump administration briefings on the attack inadequate, adding that officials did not provide enough details about why the attack was justified.

The Senate has not acted on the proposal by Democratic Senator Tim Kaine asserting that Trump must seek approval from Congress before engaging in further military action against Iran. Kaine said earlier this month that he has at least 51 votes to support the bipartisan resolution.

The United States has asked Iraq for permission to put Patriot missile systems at bases hosting US troops to improve defences against attacks like the January 8 Iranian missile attack that caused brain injuries to more than 50 US troops, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

"That is one of the matters we have to work on and work through" with the Baghdad government, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told a Pentagon news conference. He and Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made clear that they want Patriots in Iraq as part of an effort to improve the protection of US forces there.

The Iran attacks came after the US killed top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq less than a week earlier.

The commander responsible for US forces in Iraq "feels he needs" the Patriot defences, Esper said, and "we support the commander." He did not say what reasons the Iraqi government may have given for not approving the US request thus far.

Iraqi officials did not immediately comment.

The US has about 5,000 troops in Iraq to train and advise Iraqi security forces in their fight against armed groups like ISIL (ISIS). The relationship is especially rocky in the aftermath of the US killing of Soleimani.

The Iraqi government has indicated it could expel all foreign forces, although it has not yet taken action against the US presence.

There were no Patriots or other air defences in Iraq capable of shooting down ballistic missiles at the time of the Iranian attack that hit Ain al-Assad airbase in western Iraq. Milley said the missiles were armed with 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound high-explosive warheads.

Milley said that in addition to securing Iraqi government permission, the US military needs to work through mechanical and logistical issues to move a Patriot battalion to Iraq. There was not already one there because US commanders judged that Iraq was a less-likely target for an Iranian ballistic missile attack than other Gulf countries.

Asked whether the Iranian missiles could have been shot down before reaching their target if Patriots had been deployed at Ain al-Assad, Milley said, "That's what they're designed to do. Can't say for certain, obviously" that they would have succeeded.

Lawyers for a woman who accuses President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s are asking for a DNA sample, seeking to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress she says she wore during the encounter.

Advice columnist E Jean Carroll's lawyers served notice to a Trump lawyer Thursday for Trump to submit a sample on March 2 in Washington, DC, for "analysis and comparison against unidentified male DNA present on the dress".

Carroll filed a defamation suit against Trump in November after the president denied her allegation. Her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, then had the black wool coat-style dress tested. A lab report with the legal notice says DNA found on the sleeves was a mix of at least four people, at least one of them male.

Several other people were tested and eliminated as possible contributors to the mix, according to the lab report, which was obtained by The Associated Press. Their names are redacted.

While the notice is a demand, such demands often spur court fights requiring a judge to weigh in on whether they will be enforced.

The Associated Press sent a message to Trump's lawyer seeking comment.

Carroll accused Trump last summer of raping her in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

In a New York magazine piece in June and a book published the next month, Carroll said she and Trump met by chance, chatted and went to the lingerie department for Trump to pick out a gift for an unidentified woman. She said joking banter about trying on a bodysuit ended in a dressing room, where she said Trump reached under her black wool dress, pulled down her tights and raped her as she tried to fight him off, eventually escaping.

"The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening," she wrote. She donned it for a photo accompanying the magazine piece.

Trump said in June that Carroll was "totally lying" and he had "never met this person in my life". While a 1987 photo shows them and their then-spouses at a social event, Trump dismissed it as a moment when he was "standing with my coat on in a line".

"She is trying to sell a new book - that should indicate her motivation," he said in one of various statements on the matter, adding that the book "should be sold in the fiction section".

Several other people were tested and eliminated as possible contributors to the mix, according to the lab report, which was obtained by The Associated Press. Their names are redacted.

While the notice is a demand, such demands often spur court fights requiring a judge to weigh in on whether they will be enforced.

The Associated Press sent a message to Trump's lawyer seeking comment.

Carroll accused Trump last summer of raping her in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

In a New York magazine piece in June and a book published the next month, Carroll said she and Trump met by chance, chatted and went to the lingerie department for Trump to pick out a gift for an unidentified woman. She said joking banter about trying on a bodysuit ended in a dressing room, where she said Trump reached under her black wool dress, pulled down her tights and raped her as she tried to fight him off, eventually escaping.

"The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening," she wrote. She donned it for a photo accompanying the magazine piece.

Trump said in June that Carroll was "totally lying" and he had "never met this person in my life". While a 1987 photo shows them and their then-spouses at a social event, Trump dismissed it as a moment when he was "standing with my coat on in a line".

"She is trying to sell a new book - that should indicate her motivation," he said in one of various statements on the matter, adding that the book "should be sold in the fiction section".

Carroll sued Trump in November, saying he smeared her and hurt her career as a longtime Elle magazine advice columnist by calling her a liar. She is seeking unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump's statements.

"Unidentified male DNA on the dress could prove that Donald Trump not only knows who I am, but also that he violently assaulted me in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman and then defamed me by lying about it and impugning my character," Carroll said in a statement Thursday.

Her lawyer, Kaplan, said it was "standard operating procedure" in a sexual assault investigation to request a DNA sample from the accused.

"As a result, we've requested a simple saliva sample from Mr Trump to test his DNA, and there really is no valid basis for him to object," she said.

Trump's lawyer has tried to get the case thrown out. A Manhattan judge declined to do so earlier this month, saying the lawyer had not properly backed up his arguments that the case did not belong in a New York court.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they come forward publicly.

Carroll said she did not do so for decades because she feared legal retribution from Trump and damage to her reputation, among other reasons. But when the #MeToo movement spurred reader requests for advice about sexual assault, she said, she decided she had to disclose her own account.

Trump, a Republican, is not the first president to face the prospect of a DNA test related to a woman's dress.

Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, underwent such a test during an independent counsel investigation into whether he had a sexual relationship with onetime White House intern Monica Lewinsky and then lied in denying it under oath.

After Clinton's DNA was found on the dress, he acknowledged an "inappropriate intimate relationship" with Lewinsky.

Clinton was impeached by the House in December 1998 and later acquitted by the Senate.

So, I show you a video with his words and it's unbelievable...

Do you not see how this looks from my angle?

“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation,” he said in a statement released at 11 p.m. “When elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law. But the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.”

...Even in a cynical pursuit of political advantage, the Republicans might have maintained the form of a real trial (scrutiny of verbal and written evidence) without its substance (a genuine weighing of guilt and innocence). They decided instead to have neither the form nor the substance. Because the Senate’s proceedings do not look much like a trial, its declaration of Trump’s innocence on both charges will not look much like a vindication. Whatever Roberts would like to imagine, the Republicans are not even bothering to keep up appearances.

The question, though, is, Why not? And the answer is both significant and disturbing. It is because the point of the trial is not just to vindicate Trump. It is to vindicate Trumpism, to normalize not just Trump’s conduct in relation to Ukraine but the whole style of authoritarian conduct of which it is but one—albeit egregious—example. The order of the Senate’s proceedings—verdict first, then trial—mirrors the order of the norms Trump has established in his administration: presidential fiat first, then a show of deliberation. It thus extends the distortion of the executive branch of government into the deliberative branch and even, in the arguments of Trump’s lawyers, into an understanding of the Constitution.

The House indictment of Trump is based on two intertwined democratic assumptions: evidence and accountability. In a well-functioning democracy, decisions are made and implemented on the basis of some evidence about their effects. This is what allows for those making the decisions to be held accountable—without evidence, there can be no scrutiny. Trump accepts neither evidence nor accountability. The only force that matters is his own will. In a video clip played by Schiff on the first day of the hearings, Trump tells an audience, “Then I have an Article II [of the Constitution] where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”...

By "myth" I do not mean an idea that is simply false, but rather one that so effectively embodies mens' values that it profoundly influences their way of perceiving reality and hence their behavior - Richard Hofstadter

Matthew Gertz
@MattGertz
Fox’s message in sending Sean Hannity to conduct President Trump's Super Bowl interview is clear: When the stakes are highest and the spotlight is brightest, the network produces right-wing propaganda, not journalism.

Tens of millions of Iranians are grappling with the ravages of United States economic sanctions that have raised the price of food staples and led to shortages of medicines, including life-saving ones. But some token relief is heading their way.

On Thursday, a Swiss humanitarian channel to bring food and medicine to Iran kicked off trial operations, the US Department of the Treasury and the Swiss government said.

The Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA) seeks to ensure that Swiss-based exporters and trading companies in the food, pharmaceutical and medical sectors can sell their products to Iran without landing in the crosshairs of the US Treasury.

SHTA gives firms that sell humanitarian goods a secure channel with a Swiss bank through which payments for their exports to Iran are guaranteed, the Swiss government said.

After President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal with world powers in 2018, Washington has hammered Iran with a "maximum pressure" campaign that has seen waves of sanctions imposed on the country's oil and banking sectors, effectively isolating the country within the global economy.

Though life-sustaining goods such as food, medicine and medical devices are exempt from US sanctions, fear of falling afoul of Washington has made many banks wary of processing any financial transactions - including humanitarian ones - with the Islamic Republic.

The first transaction processed through the Swiss humanitarian channel - which has been under development since 2018 - involved exports of cancer and organ transplant drugs worth 2.3 million euros ($2.54m), according to the Swiss government.

The US Treasury said the new channel is "subject to strict due diligence measures to avoid misuse by the Iranian regime".

"This Administration has full confidence that, together with our partners abroad, this mechanism will improve the flow of humanitarian goods to the Iranian people," said US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement on the US Treasury's website. "Humanitarian transactions are currently allowed under our sanctions programs, and we encourage companies to use this humanitarian mechanism. We would like to thank the Swiss authorities for working with us."

A report released in October by Human Rights Watch concluded that the consequences of US sanctions "whether intentional or not, pose a serious threat to Iranians' right to health and access to essential medicines" and have "almost certainly contributed to documented shortages ... ranging from a lack of critical drugs for epilepsy patients to limited chemotherapy medications for Iranians with cancer".

After Iran suffered devastating floods last year that left an estimated two million people in need of humanitarian assistance, the Iranian Red Crescent Society said that US sanctions had impeded its relief efforts - including receiving foreign financial aid to help flood victims.