ON TAP

Rudy Giuliani, in his role as Trump’s lawyer, has been crowing about an unconfirmed conversation in which Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team supposedly said that an impeachment would have to come before any indictment of the president. In the upside-down world of the Trump defense, this is presented as a victory. To paraphrase the Greek […]

In his inimitable fashion—that of a bigoted ignoramus—President Trump referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” in a meeting with similarly anti-immigrant officials on Wednesday. “Animals” is probably not a term that more politic Republicans would use; it suggests a sensibility too crude for a proper elected official to put on display. But based on their […]

I had one of those “aha” experiences over the weekend. My wonderful nephew, Ben, graduated from medical school. To be precise, he graduated from the medical school of the University of South Carolina, in the state capital, Columbia. The ceremony was lovely. Some 85 med students who had worked their hearts out for four years […]

For more than 30 minutes on Wednesday, President Trump, his face “reddened” (that’s the description in today’s Washington Post), “yelled” (that’s from today’s New York Times) at his cabinet in general, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in particular, about the number of immigrants still crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. Trump’s tirade makes clear what’s behind […]

It is somehow fitting that the indignation of a wronged porn star could lead to the final undoing of Donald Trump. Despite the growing power of the #MeToo movement, and the falling of predatory male icons across the political spectrum, the Predator-in-Chief has gotten away with it—until now. As Deep Throat (whose nickname is now […]

…but the new border policy unveiled yesterday in a speech by Attorney General Jeff Sessions has quickly moved to the head of the pack. Until now, people apprehended while crossing the border without legal documentation have been routinely bused back to Mexico so long as they have no criminal records. Under the new policy, everyone […]

One of the possible charges against disgraced National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and quite possibly against Trump himself is that they violated the Logan Act. That’s the statute that dates to the early years of the Republic, making it a crime for a private citizen to attempt to conduct foreign policy, specifically to “influence the […]

The problem with serial lies is that it becomes hard to keep them straight. Add to that a compulsive liar with a short attention span and a penchant for impulsive outbursts, and you have a first-class challenge. Especially when that serial liar happens to be under criminal investigation by prosecutors who, unlike their target, are […]

…the California Supreme Court rocked the world of actual existing American capitalism by unanimously ruling that workers who are labeled “independent contractors” actually have to be independent and contractors—not mislabeled employees. In a suit brought by truckers for a delivery company who had formerly been that company’s employees until that company re-labeled them, the Court […]