Top Items:
Washington Post:
'You're a bunch of dopes and babies': Inside Trump's stunning tirade against generals — There is no more sacred room for military officers than 2E924 of the Pentagon, a windowless and secure vault where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet regularly to wrestle with classified matters.
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Josh Wingrove / Bloomberg:
White House Considers Changes to Law Banning Overseas Bribes — Kudlow says administration has heard complaints from companies — Book says Trump clashed with Tillerson over bribery law — President Donald Trump's administration is weighing whether to seek changes to a 1977 law …
Discussion:
Above the Law and Raw Story
Leo Shane III / Military Times:
Trump blasted top military generals as ‘a bunch of dopes and babies’ according to new book
Discussion:
Washington Post, Political Wire and Raw Story
Joe Otterson / Variety:
Hillary Clinton Urges Dems to ‘Vote for the Person Most Likely to Win’ in 2020 — Hillary Clinton called for Americans to come to grips with “basic facts” of reality in an appearance at the Television Critics Association winter press tour on Friday. — “We've got to somehow understand …
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Susannah Luthi / Politico:
Supreme Court will again review Obamacare birth control mandate — The Supreme Court on Friday said it will revisit whether employers must guarantee free birth control coverage for their workers. — It marks the third high court review of the contraception mandate stemming from Obamacare …
Discussion:
Associated Press
Pete Williams / NBC News:
‘Faithless elector’: Supreme Court will hear case that could change how presidents are chosen
Discussion:
Associated Press
Marisa Fernandez / Axios:
Virginia AG asks state Supreme Court not to overturn gun ban
Discussion:
NBC News
Laura Reiley / Washington Post:
USDA proposes changing school menus to allow more fries and fewer vegetables, reversing a Michelle Obama effort — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken another whack at former first lady Michelle Obama's signature achievement: Establishing stricter nutritional standards for school breakfasts and lunches.
Discussion:
The Hill, Mother Jones and Raw Story
RELATED:
Justin Baragona / The Daily Beast:
Meghan McCain: McSally 'Didn't Earn' the Senate Seat She Inherited From My Dad — “She didn't win that seat. I think that's important.” — The View's Meghan McCain took some shots at Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) on Friday after the lawmaker personally insulted a CNN reporter …
Discussion:
Twitchy and Contemptor
RELATED:
Tim Miller / The Bulwark:
The McSally Maneuver — At this point, the goal of impeachment is simply forcing Republican senators to admit the truth. — On Thursday, in the halls of Congress, Senator Martha McSally was asked a simple question by reporter Manu Raju: “Should the Senate consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial?”
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, Politico, NBC News, CNSNews, CNN and Vanity Fair
Chris Cillizza / CNN:
Martha McSally's staggering cynicism
Discussion:
Vox, The American Independent and Talking Points Memo
Aaron Blake / Washington Post:
Trump's defense will be led by a ‘lunatic,’ ‘wacko’ and ‘off his rocker’ Ken Starr, according to Trump himself — President Trump chose the people who will be defending him at his impeachment trial on Friday. And one of them is “a lunatic” who was “a disaster” during the last impeachment of a president, according to Trump himself.
Discussion:
Raw Story
RELATED:
Colby Hall / Mediaite:
Alan Dershowitz Distances Himself From Trump Legal Team: 'I'm Not a Full-Fledged Member'
Discussion:
Axios, Law & Crime, The American Independent, The Federalist and Townhall
Washington Post:
Impeachment trial live updates: Trump expands legal team to include Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr and others
Discussion:
Raw Story, Politico, Washington Monthly, NBC News, MSNBC, PJ Media Home, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Daily Kos, The Week, Fox News, The Crime Report and Althouse
New York Times:
Joe Biden: Former vice president of the United States — The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. — This interview was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times …
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Variety:
Disney Drops Fox Name, Will Rebrand as 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures — The mouse has officially killed the fox. — In a move at once unsurprising and highly symbolic, the Walt Disney Company is dropping the “Fox” brand from the 21st Century Fox assets it acquired last March, Variety has learned.
Discussion:
globalnews.ca, The Week and The Verge, more at Mediagazer »
RELATED:
KUSA-TV:
We caught up with Sen. Gardner at the airport to ask if he supports new witnesses in impeachment trial — Some Senate Republicans may break ranks to add witness testimony in President Trump's impeachment trial. — DENVER — Colorado's U.S. Senators, Democrat Michael Bennet and Republican Cory Gardner …
Discussion:
Raw Story
RELATED:
NBC News:
History shows Chief Justice John Roberts could cast tie-breaking votes at Trump's impeachment trial
Discussion:
Breitbart, MSNBC, New York Post and Los Angeles Times
Savannah Behrmann / USA Today:
Susan Collins surpasses Mitch McConnell as the most unpopular senator in a new poll
Discussion:
Washington Post, The Nation and Daily Kos
Matthew Lee / Associated Press:
Pompeo breaks silence on alleged threats to envoy in Ukraine — WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday broke nearly 72 hours of silence over alleged surveillance and threats to the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, saying he believed the allegations would prove to be wrong …
Discussion:
The Daily Caller
Greg Sargent / Washington Post:
Hannity previews Trump's final defense: So what if he's guilty? — It has long been obvious that Republicans would ultimately converge on this final defense of President Trump: Even if he did everything he's been accused of doing, and perhaps a lot more that we don't know about, it's absolutely fine!
Discussion:
Raw Story, The Bulwark, Digby's Hullabaloo, NBC News, Fox News, Political Wire and HuffPost
Washington Post:
Black Americans deeply pessimistic about country under Trump, whom more than 8 in 10 describe as ‘a racist,’ Post-Ipsos poll finds — President Trump made a stark appeal to black Americans during the 2016 election when he asked, “What have you got to lose?”
Discussion:
CNN, The Hill, Raw Story, The American Independent and Axios
Yaron Steinbuch / New York Post:
ISIS leader dubbed ‘Jabba the Jihadi’ captured in Iraq — He put the fat in fatwa. — A morbidly obese ISIS fanatic dubbed “Jabba the Jihadi” has been captured by Iraqi forces — who loaded him onto a flatbed truck because he couldn't fit in a police car.
Discussion:
Task & Purpose
Wall Street Journal:
Men Discussed Opening Fire at Pro-Gun Rally in Richmond, Officials Say — Other suspected members of white-supremacist group the Base arrested in Georgia — Three suspected white supremacists arrested in Maryland and Delaware this week had discussed opening fire from different positions …
Discussion:
Reason and The Crime Report
Noah Berlatsky / NBC News:
Trump voters motivated by racism may be violating the Constitution. Can they be stopped? — Republicans and Democrats alike have been unwilling to reprimand voters or to hold them accountable. But racist voting isn't an accident. — If the Trump era has taught us anything …
Thomas Chatterton Williams / Harper's:
An Incoherent Truth — Last fall, Tobi Haslett, a young writer and critic with Marxist leanings, noticed a shift in the contours of popular intellectual debate. “Something is happening out there in the dark fields of ‘the discourse,’ ” Haslett wrote in Bookforum. “Incoherence is now a virtue.”
FiveThirtyEight:
Trump May Be Even More Unpopular Than His Approval Rating Shows — Polls have consistently shown that President Trump is pretty unpopular, with only about 42 percent of the American public approving of the job he is doing as president. These numbers are much lower than what one might expect given the bustling economy.
Discussion:
The Banter
Jonathan Chait / New York Magazine:
William Barr Is Going After Trump's Enemies One by One — In May of 2016, shortly after Donald Trump had wrapped up his party's nomination, but when the notion he might win the presidency seemed remote at best, Benjamin Wittes wrote one of the very early essays attempting to analyze …
Discussion:
Raw Story, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, CNN, JONATHAN TURLEY and The Crime Report
BuzzFeed News:
The Iranian Woman In The #IraniansDetestSoleimani Viral Video Was Also A Lobbyist For A Militia In Libya — A viral video titled “Truth from an Iranian,” which has amassed more than 10 million views across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, was created by a registered lobbyist who previously worked …
Amy Walter / The Cook Political Report:
Checking in on Wisconsin — One of the hallmarks of the Trump presidency is that no matter how unpredictable and erratic he may be, opinions of him are incredibly stable. At this point in 2019, for example, the FiveThirtyEight tracker showed President Trump's job approval rating at 41percent …
David Brooks / New York Times:
The Bernie Sanders Fallacy — No, Virginia, there is no class war. — This is a golden age for “Theyism.” This is the belief that there is some malevolent, elite “they” out there and “they” are destroying life for the rest of us. — There is Donald Trump's culture-war Theyism …
Discussion:
No More Mister Nice Blog and BIG by Matt Stoller
Shane Dixon Kavanaugh / Oregonian:
FBI: Saudi government ‘almost certainly’ helps its citizens escape prosecution in US for serious crimes — The FBI believes the Saudi Arabian government “almost certainly” helps its citizens flee the country after they are accused of serious crimes, “undermining the US judicial process,” …
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