(Click on the 7:04 AM timestamp to read the twitter thread, or read here).
LA Times:
Outgoing White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly defends his rocky tenure
When Trump picked him to head Homeland Security, and then serve as White House chief of staff, officials from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill expressed hope that Kelly would be one of the “adults in the room” to manage a mercurial president.
To critics, Kelly failed at that task, unable to rein in Trump’s angry tweets or bring order to executive decision-making.
Worse, they argue, he aggressively advocated and implemented harsh immigration measures, including separating migrant children from their parents on the border last summer, that quickly ran aground or were reversed in the courts.
This reads like the anonymous op-ed in the NYT. Was that one authored by John McMaster Mattis?
Lili Loofborough/Slate:
In a Year Full of Heinous Men, Jeffrey Epstein Still Managed to Be Shocking
Few examples have more clearly revealed the toxic inner workings of male social networks.
If it surprised you when Sen. Orrin Hatch said he didn’t care that prosecutors had determined that the president was implicated in a crime; if it startled you to see Rudy Giuliani—who tackled threats to society like turnstile jumpers and squeegee men—so sweatily downplay Donald Trump’s illegal conduct in an interview with Chris Wallace; if you noticed Jerome Corsi doubling down on birtherism, Trump acting like Jamal Khashoggi’s murder was NBD, Alan Dershowitz insisting that Michael Flynn lying to the FBI is “not a crime,” Rep. Steve King endorsing white supremacists, Arnold Kopelson saying “we all did that” to a woman who claimed Les Moonves accosted her and masturbated in front of her, and Minnesota state Sen. Scott Newman dismissing Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged assault of Christine Blasey Ford with “even if true, teenagers!,” then congratulations: You’ve made it to the end of 2018 without becoming irreversibly jaded.
Frankly, I thought I was. I didn’t think much could stun me. But then the Miami Herald published Julie Brown’s exposé of how prosecutors cozily negotiated with Jeffrey Epstein’s defense team to minimize his punishment for raping and trafficking underage girls—and presiding over a sex ring of sorts that he allegedly shared with powerful friends—and my depleted capacity for shock was refreshed. The case is exceptional, and though it’s about a decade old, you might not have heard about it.
See, this is the kind of stuff the lying/disinformation is supposed to protect heinous men from. Knowing and exposing it is part of the correction. see Jack Shafer, Mueller is the correction for the Trump WH but media and the courts have to be the corrective for the rest. If they are suborned, we are in trouble.
Carl Hulse:
‘You Control Nothing’: House Republicans Brace for Life in the Minority
The reign lasted eight years before the November midterms and the Democratic gain of 40 seats, a thorough beating that many Republicans did not anticipate. Mr. Kinzinger said the culture shift might be hardest on those colleagues who, unlike himself, believed the election was going to turn out quite differently.
“We have come to grips with the shock of the election,” he said, “but the shock of governing will still be a wake-up call for some people.”
Sabrina Hersi Issa/NBC:
The 'Year of the Woman' forced us to take a step back for every step forward. That isn't real progress.
It is flooring the ways little has changed but nothing is the same.
When we mistake moments in our culture during which some women are being represented as mere cause for celebration, then we have missed the true call to interrogate ourselves and ask: Why did it take this much pain to get the world to care? Why are we increasingly reliant on the most vulnerable voices in our culture to serve as collective moral wake-up calls to problems we have long known existed, but which we have done little to correct?
Our focus on the inclusion of women’s voices in politics and necessary culture change is misplaced as long as it fails to change the structures and practices that promoted our exclusion in the first place. If we can achieve this shift — one in which there is an expectation for progress for all — then we can create a force of momentum for the many political fights to come.
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