Last Call For Cryer's Remorse

There seems to be a whole heck of a lot of buyer's remorse for Trump among the demographic of white women who voted for him (by ten points I might add) and they're only now just figuring out what total control of women's rights in the hands of Republicans means: things like the end of Planned Parenthood here which bothers USA Today contributor Melody Forbes.

I voted for Donald Trump because I wanted to see change in our country. One change I didn’t want to see was access to health care at Planned Parenthood blocked. 

But Republican congressional leaders have already promised to do just that, with a provision to stop reimbursements for the health care Planned Parenthood provides. 

Just like one in 5 women across the country, I went to Planned Parenthood here in Arizona in my 20s for health care. I was newly divorced, unemployed and uninsured, and I needed health services I could not otherwise afford. 

These are services every woman needs at some point, and they are at risk. Vice President-elect Mike Pence and anti-women’s health members of Congress are pledging to attack Planned Parenthood and block patients from essential care, as they have threatened to do as many times as they could in last 10 years. The difference this time is that they think President-elect Trump, as a Republican, will sign the bill. 

It doesn’t make any sense for Trump, who said he would defend the American people from politics as usual, to sign a bill like this. Millions of mostly low-income people who rely on Planned Parenthood for essential health care like birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, well-woman exams and more, would no longer have access within their communities. And people who already face outsized barriers to getting care, especially people of color and people in rural communities, would face additional hurdles. A bill to defund Planned Parenthood doesn’t cross out a line in the federal budget — it stops people with Medicaid from being able to go to Planned Parenthood for basic reproductive health care.

Well all that is true, but Trump is going to sign the bill anyway because he's promised to do just that.

Yes, because as long as they do the abortion I am not for funding Planned Parenthood but they do cervical cancer work. They do a lot of good things for women but as long as they’re involved with the abortions, as you know they say it’s 3% of their work, some people say it’s 10%, some people say it’s 8%, I hear all different percentages but it doesn’t matter. As long as they’re involved with abortion, as far as I’m concerned forget it, I wouldn’t fund them regardless. But they do do other good work. You look at cervical cancer. I’ve had women tell me they do some excellent work so I think you also have to put that into account but I would defund Planned Parenthood because of their view and the fact of their work on abortion.”

So the question remains ma'am...why the hell did you vote for Trump if Planned Parenthood is that important?

So Long And Thanks For All The Net Neutrality

That the Trump team wants to get rid of net neutrality measures to protect consumers is a given and almost 100% assured at this point.  But remember, Trump is vindictive and destructive, so the real plan is to all but dismantle the FCC completely to make sure the commission never has power to actually do anything ever again.

President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is reportedly pushing a proposal to strip the Federal Communications Commission of its role in overseeing competition and consumer protection.

Multichannel News has what it calls an exclusive report that says the incoming Trump administration has "signed off on an approach to remaking the Federal Communications Commission." The plan, offered by transition team members appointed by Trump, "squares with the deregulatory philosophies of FCC Republicans Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly," who will take a 2-1 majority after Trump's inauguration on Friday, the report said.

Besides restructuring FCC bureaus, the majority of the transition team wants to "eventually move functions deemed 'duplicative,' like, say, competition and consumer protection, to other agencies, particularly the Federal Trade Commission," Multichannel news reported. The story cites "sources familiar" with a recent meeting involving Trump officials and FCC transition team members. The Trump team has not made any on-the-record statements about specific plans for the FCC.

Pai and O'Rielly have already promised to take a deregulatory approach to broadband and telecom industries, and it's within their power to do so. But that doesn't mean the Trump administration could unilaterally reduce the FCC's authority in such a way that the changes last beyond Trump's presidency. Congress would have to be involved in a permanent reduction of FCC authority, though that isn't inconceivable as Congressional Republicans have previously said they'd like to overhaul the Communications Act that gives the FCC its authority.

The FCC transition team appointed by Trump has six people including three individuals affiliated with the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), namely Roslyn Layton, Jeffrey Eisenach, and Mark Jamison. The majority plan offered by the transition team "was said to dovetail with comments from Eisenach and Layton to Congress in 2014," which said FCC "functions are largely duplicative of those of other agencies," Multichannel News reported.

In other words, say goodbye to the FCC's power to protect American internet consumers as Trump will almost certainly assure internet near-monopolies, total lack of competition, and Americans paying some of the highest internet prices of any developed country.

But after all, that's what you voted for, right?

As Goes Ohio, Goes The White House

Trump's win in Ohio wasn't just impressive for a Republican, in more than a third of Ohio counties it was an historic margin of victory for a Republican president.

With the ascension of Donald Trump coming this week, we decided to look again at Ohio’s presidential election results — and stumbled across some amazing facts that perhaps shed a different light on his victory than what we’ve seen to date. 

In 22 counties — exactly a quarter of Ohio’s total — Trump rolled up the largest percentage of any Republican ever. Yes, that’s since 1856. 

So that’s higher than the Bushes, Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt and several Ohio GOP presidents — all the way back through Abraham Lincoln. 

In 11 additional counties, the Trump share of the vote was the second highest for a Republican in Ohio history. 

Seven of the 22 record-breakers were in southeastern Ohio.

Trump won the Ohio counties along the Kentucky and WV borders by huge margins, and that gave him the state.  He also flipped Montgomery County, where Dayton is.

While much of the focus since Election Day justifiably has focused on traditionally Democratic counties that swung Trump’s way, a pair of new story lines emerges from these numbers. 

One is that many marginally Republican counties went for Trump in a big way. For example, coal country neighbors Belmont and Monroe counties each gave Mitt Romney about 53 percent support in 2012. But this time, 68 percent of Belmont’s voters and 72 percent of Monroe’s went for Trump. 

The other is that numerous faithfully Republican areas went huge for Trump. Adams County, at the southern tip of the state east of Cincinnati, registered from 61 to 63 percent support for every GOP candidate from 2000 on — until last year, when it backed Trump with 76 percent. 

Even Mercer County, the western county that went for Romney with 76 percent, topped that mark with an amazing 81 percent for Trump.

It was a long time coming, but at this point Ohio must be considered a strong red state.  Democrats need to look to somehow securing North Carolina and Florida if they wish to win in 2020.   The good news is that demographics favors the Dems there and in Virginia, not so much in the Midwest anymore.

Outside Illinois and Minnesota, the Dems are in trouble.  They've been dismantled in the Rust Belt locally.  Hopefully Trump will go a long way towards people giving the Dems another chance. Hopefully.

StupidiNews!

• Retired NASA astronaut Gene Cernan, the final man to have walked on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission, has died at age 82 after a lengthy illness.
• Trump National Security Council spokesperson Monica Crowley will depart the transition team after multiple instances of apparent plagiarism across her career were revealed.
• Turkish police say they have captured the suspect responsible for killing 39 in the New Year's Day nightclub massacre in Istanbul.
• British PM Theresa May says the UK will pull out of the EU's existing single market as part of "Brexit" and will negotiate a new trade deal with the EU.
• The FBI has reportedly used facial recognition and prediction software to identify a suspect in an Indiana child molestation case from 17 years ago.

Last Call For The Piggy Bank And The Sledgehammer

Trump's picks to fill his cabinet aren't even pretending anymore to be anything other than outright grifters.  Take HHS pick Rep. Tom Price, who has plenty of experience ripping off taxpayers by playing the ol' pick-a-winner game as a member of Congress.

Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, raising new ethics concerns for President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary. 

Price bought between $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer Biomet, according to House records reviewed by CNN. 

Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until 2018 a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulation that industry analysts warned would significantly hurt Zimmer Biomet financially once fully implemented. 

Zimmer Biomet, one of the world's leading manufacturers of knee and hip implants, was one of two companies that would been hit the hardest by the new CMS regulation that directly impacts the payments for such procedures, according to press reports and congressional sources. 

After Price offered his bill to provide Zimmer Biomet and other companies relief from the CMS regulation, the company's political action committee donated to the congressman's reelection campaign, records show. 

If confirmed, Price will be a key player in Trump's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump last week said a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare will be submitted "as soon as" Price is confirmed. He will appear before the Senate health committee this week, but must also appear before the Senate Finance Committee. 

The new revelation is the latest example of Price trading stock in a health care firm at the same time as pursuing legislation that could impact a company's share price. The issue has become a major liability for the congressman after The Wall Street Journal reported last month that he traded roughly $300,000 in shares over the past four years in health companies while pursuing legislation that could impact them.

I mean they're not even pretending anymore.  No wonder Republicans are so eager to get rid of ethics oversight and independent watchdogs.  The Trump era is going to make Republicans stinking rich as they profit directly and indirectly from legislation for corporate lobbyists at the expense of taxpayers.

But really, Hillary something something emails, so we had to elect them, right?

Brazile Nuts

I guess it was a requirement, but here we have Donna Brazile apologizing for the DNC's catastrophic screw-up in 2016 as the party still searches in vain for someone who manages to meet the bar of "not as much of a screw-up as Debbie Wasserman Schultz".

Donna Brazile, the outgoing interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, kicked off a series of “future forums,” which will select her replacement, by apologizing for the party's 2016 defeats.

“I'm not going to sugarcoat it: We failed,” Brazile said. “We made some serious mistakes and some strategic errors. We got cocky about our invincible blue wall, and then we saw it crumble because of just a few thousand votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.”

Brazile was elevated to interim chair after the release of emails stolen from the DNC effectively forced Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) from the role. Wasserman Schultz, who was then facing a stiff primary challenge for her South Florida congressional seat, became a villain for supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who blamed her for a late-skewing and limited schedule of primary debates.

But the well-liked Brazile came under fire from another set of stolen emails, including two she'd sent to Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, informing him that CNN — where she was a political analyst — had shared possible primary debate and forum questions with her. That ended her time at CNN.

In her Phoenix remarks, Brazile defended the DNC employees who had spent the second half of 2016 being exposed by hacks.

“Let me just say how proud I am of the DNC and all the staffers who lived through that,” Brazile said. “They were attacked and harassed every day — often attacked by the people who should know better.”

Brazile also condemned the online conspiracy theory that Seth Rich, a young DNC staffer who was fatally shot last July in Northwest Washington, had been killed in a DNC coverup.

Russian hackers, she said, had ended up enlisting the media in a campaign of sabotage.

“We failed under extraordinary circumstances,” she said. “If you are an American, you are a victim of a hostile attack, a murderous dictator who wanted to affect the election. They hired an army of trolls to spread lies and distract from the real issues.”

Which is true, and as I've said before the notion that the DNC screwed up and the Russians helped the GOP can both be simultaneous factors in Clinton's loss.  But my benefit of the doubt for whoever replaces Brazile will at this point be zero.  Whoever does get her job will need to start delivering immediately on getting the Senate back in 2018, or we're not going to have a country much longer.

Schumer Makes The GOP An Offer

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer apparently has made his offer to the GOP over Obamacare repeal.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has made it crystal clear: If Republicans repeal ObamaCare without immediately implementing a plan to replace it, Democrats will not help them out of a pickle down the road.

Senate Democratic sources familiar with Schumer’s thinking say he will not engage in any negotiations to pass a watered-down version of the landmark healthcare reform law if Republicans unilaterally force its repeal first under special budgetary rules.

“That’s not a close call. They’re doing something so extraordinary reckless. You cannot reward hostage taking,” a Democratic senator said. The Democratic senator said.

Republicans have refused to work with President Obama for six years to come up with fixes to improve the law because they wanted to heighten its unpopularity and score political points.

Now, even if the GOP can secure a repeal through the budget reconciliation process – which requires only a majority – they’ll need support from at least eight Democrats to hit the 60 votes needed to pass repeal legislation.

The senator said Schumer’s view and the prevailing view in the Democratic Caucus is that they should not lift a finger to help Republicans out of a political mess if they repeal the healthcare reform law without having a replacement ready to avert severe market disruptions.

The spoiler is that the GOP has nothing of the sort.  In fact, they don't have a replacement at all, and haven't had a replacement for the six years that they've been trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.  Schumer is making the right call here: let the Republicans completely own getting rid of health coverage for tens of millions of Americans, and let them completely own trying to replace it.

Of course Republicans will never replace Obamacare, no matter what magical unicorn bullshit Donald Trump is pushing, so it's up to Schumer to make sure that they know up front whatever to try will need Democratic help, which means Chuck is in the driver's seat. We'll see. 

StupidiNews!

• A new Oxfam International report finds the world's eight wealthiest men control $426 billion, the same net worth as the planet's poorest half, some 3.6 billion people.
• Black megachurch pastor Bishop Eddie Long has died from cancer at age 63, Long settled allegations of child molestation after being accused in 2011 of sexual assault.
• The special prosecutor in South Korea's growing impeachment scandal over President Park Geun-hye has issued an arrest warrant for Samsung Group chief Jay Lee on bribery charges.
• In his final interview as president with CBS's 60 Minutes, Barack Obama says he was "surprised" at the level of partisanship in DC and how he became a "lightning rod" for politics.
• Virginia is the latest state to consider legislation banning cities from offering municipal internet service to residents.

Last Call For The Ugly American

If there were somehow still any lingering doubts over the Trump regime being totally beholden to Russian interests in Europe, Trump put those doubts to rest in his weekend interview with German tabloid Bild.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump called NATO obsolete, predicted that other European Union members would follow the U.K. in leaving the bloc and threatened BMW with import duties over a planned plant in Mexico, according to an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper that will raise concerns in Berlin over trans-Atlantic relations.

Quoted in German from a conversation held in English, Trump predicted Britain’s exit from the EU will be a success and portrayed the EU as an instrument of German domination with the purpose of beating the U.S. in international trade. For that reason, Trump said, he’s fairly indifferent whether the EU breaks up or stays together, according to Bild.

Trump’s reported comments leave little doubt that he will stick to campaign positions and may in some cases upend decades of U.S. foreign policy, putting him fundamentally at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on issues from free trade and refugees to security and the EU’s role in the world. On Russia, he suggested he might use economic sanctions imposed for Vladimir Putin’s encroachment on Ukraine as leverage in nuclear-arms reduction talks, while NATO, he said, “has problems.”

“It’s obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago,” Trump was quoted as saying about the trans-Atlantic military alliance. “Secondly, countries aren’t paying what they should” and NATO “didn’t deal with terrorism.”

While those comments expanded on doubts Trump raised about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during his campaign, he reserved some of his most dismissive remarks for the EU and Merkel, whose open-border refugee policy he called a “catastrophic mistake.” 

In contrast, Trump praised Britons for voting last year to leave the EU. People and countries want their own identity and don’t want outsiders to come in and “destroy it.” The U.K. is smart to leave the bloc because the EU “is basically a means to an end for Germany,” Bild cited Trump as saying.

“If you ask me, more countries will leave,” he was quoted as saying.

While Trump blamed Brexit on an influx of refugees he said that Britain was forced to accept, the U.K.’s number of asylum applications in 2015 was a fraction of the 890,000 refugees who arrived in Germany that year at the peak of Europe’s migrant crisis.

With Merkel facing an unprecedented challenge from the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany as she seeks a fourth term this fall, Trump was asked whether he’d like to see her re-elected. He said he couldn’t say, adding that while he respects Merkel, who’s been in office for 11 years, he doesn’t know her and she has hurt Germany by letting “all these illegals” into the country.

Please note we have Trump railing against the three things left keeping Putin's dream of a new Soviet era in check: Germany, the last real holdout against European ultra-nationalism, the EU itself, still a economic behemoth compared to Russia, and NATO, the military alliance keeping Moscow awake at night.

Trump is basically saying he doesn't care about any or all of the three.  I'll tell you what, Putin really got his money's worth turning Trump, didn't he?

It's the gift that will keep on giving for decades to come.

Enemies Of The State

The Trump regime (let's get rid of the term "administration" right now, this is an authoritarian regime, plain and simple) is now openly threatening the Office of Government Ethics. Because who's going to stop them?

Reince Priebus, chief of staff to President-elect Donald Trump, issued a stern warning to the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on Sunday.

Walter Shaub Jr., who heads the ethics office, has been sounding the alarm about Trump’s decision to turn the management of his business over to his sons instead of setting up a blind trust.

“I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be president of the United States of America,” Shaub said in a speech last week.

On Sunday, Priebus suggested that Shaub should “be careful” about criticizing Trump.

“The head of the government ethics ought to be careful because that person is becoming extremely political,” Priebus said, adding that Shaub “may have publicly supported Hillary Clinton.”

“And [Shaub] is calling out the president (sic) with information on Twitter about our detangling of the business over a month ago,” he continued. “So I’m not so sure what kind of standing he has anymore in giving these opinions.”

How long before the Trump regime tries to get rid of Shaub for being "partisan"?  How long before Republicans in Congress legislate themselves the power to remove Shaub or dissolve the office completely?  Trump will sign something like that, for sure.  How long do you think Senate Democrats will be able to hold out?

Fascism comes in a thousand small steps towards consolidating power.

Sunday Long Read: The Music-less Man

This week's Sunday Long Read sees the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik argue that Hollywood and pop culture's refusal to play Trump inauguration is a deeply disturbing sign that our next president's heart and soul is deaf to anyone but himself.

One of the pleasures of music-streaming services is that, day after day, they remind you effortlessly of the almost incredible wealth and beauty of American popular music—from the blues and Tin Pan Alley to jazz, R. & B., country, rock and roll, and on to hip hop—and of its strange, snaking unity. The great critic Kenneth Tynan once wrote that, sometime in the nineteen-thirties, the “ ‘serious’ music tradition finally withered, curled up and died,” and what took its place was American song. It became the century’s sublime, achieved sound, and the beat, as the song says, goes on. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee’s duos bring one back to the jazz duets of Bobby Hackett and Jack Teagarden, whose choice of familiar tunes then leads one to the great singers of the first songbook of standards, Ella singing Gershwin, and on and on. In this context, Bob Dylan’s award for the Nobel Prize in Literature must seem, even to doubters, earned, especially if it’s seen, so to speak, as an award to Frank Loesser and Duke Ellington, as well—as a tribute to the entirety of those American words and music.

This music was often made in protest, and frequently made best by the most oppressed among us. And so politics and our political life have always wrapped and unwrapped around that music, left and right and in between. Back in the sixties, Dylan seemed to state the times they were a-changin’, and Merle Haggard sang out for the Okies from Muskogee—and then Dylan ended up learning more from Merle than Merle did from him. The intertwining of country music with the George W. Bush years—“Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?” for example—was as credible and deeply felt as any of the enwrappings by, say, Springsteen of Obama.

And so the inability, so far, of Donald Trump to get any significant musicians from any of those traditions, rock or country or blues or Broadway, to sing at his Inauguration is not a small comic detail but a significant reflection of this moment in history. It reminds us of just how aberrant Trump and Trumpism is. When the Rockettes have to be coerced to appear at your show—or you’re left to boast of the military bands, directly under your orders, who are playing—one is witnessing not just some snobbish hostility on the part of “Hollywood” entertainers but a deeper abyss between the man about to assume power and the shared traditions of the country he represents. There is no music in this man.

I'd argue the opposite: he has music in his soul, but it's basically John Williams' Imperial March.




Seriously, I don't think we've ever witnessed anyone so blatantly authoritarian, elected by a minority vote of a minority vote. We will come to regret his election, some of us more than others.

Trump Declares War On The Free Press

It appears that if Trump's handlers have their way, one of the first acts of the new administration next week will be to have the press thrown out of the White House completely.

The upset to the existing order caused by the presidential election has been acutely felt by no one, perhaps, so much it has by the national press. At Donald Trump's press conference on Wednesday, reporters found themselves not only subject to a scolding ("Fake news!" "Disgraceful!") but also awakened to the strong suggestion that, at least in tactical terms, the showdown had been won by the president-elect.

The media's sense of dislocation may soon become literal.

According to three senior officials on the transition team, a plan to evict the press corps from the White House is under serious consideration by the incoming Trump Administration. If the plan goes through, one of the officials said, the media will be removed from the cozy confines of the White House press room, where it has worked for several decades. Members of the press will be relocated to the White House Conference Center—near Lafayette Square—or to a space in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.

"There has been no decision," Sean Spicer, Trump's press secretary, said about the plan today. But Spicer acknowledged that "there has been some discussion about how to do it."

Spicer cast the possible relocation of the press corps as a matter, in part, of logistics. "There's been so much interest in covering a President Donald Trump," he said. "A question is: Is a room that has forty-nine seats adequate? When we had that press conference the other day, we had thousands of requests, and we capped it at four hundred. Is there an opportunity to potentially allow more members of the media to be part of this? That's something we're discussing."

Another senior official, however, suggested a more pointed motivation for the move. According to the official, the potential relocation reflected a view within the transition team that coverage of Trump has been so hostile as to indicate that the press has abandoned its role as neutral observer.

"They are the opposition party," a senior official says. "I want 'em out of the building. We are taking back the press room."

Trump isn't going to even bother with the press, I'm thinking.  He has Twitter and press releases and that's all America needs or deserves, according to him. Considering his disastrous press conference where he screamed and threatened CNN like a five-year-old denied ice cream for breakfast, what did you expect?

So yes, we have an incoming administration that literally considers the free press to be the opposition party, and wants them gone.  I have little sympathy for them, after spending my entire lifetime being gossiping courtesans more than actual journalists, but Trump's goons kicking them out of the White House is yet another in a long string of authoritarian moves that Trump will continue to make.

Expect a lot more such moves, backed up by the considerable power of the US government that the Republicans will completely control starting next weekend.

The Story Of Lewis And Bark

Donald Trump is a walking orange chancre and I dislike him immensely.  

That was my opinion of the man before he made the mistake of going after Rep. John Lewis on Twitter this morning.

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday morning returned fire on a top Democrat who said he was not a “legitimate president.”

A day after Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Trump was not legitimate, the president-elect told him to worry about his own district instead.

“Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!” Trump wrote in a series of tweets.

What set off the Tantrum Of The United States this time?  The fact that Rep. Lewis came out of the Comey briefing Friday with a very dim view of the President-elect.

Lewis on Friday told NBC News he wouldn’t attend next week’s inauguration, saying he doesn’t believe Trump is a "legitimate president."

"I believe in forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It will be hard. It's going to be very difficult. I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” Lewis said.

“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton,” he added.

“I don't plan to attend the inauguration. It will be the first one that I miss since I’ve been in Congress. You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.”

Trump's assumption that Georgia's 5th Congressional district is "in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)" because all black Congressmen from urban districts are from the goddamn ghetto to this piece of human excrement is classic racism, and this man is going to be President in a week.

Let that sink in.  By the way, GA-5, which includes Atlanta and some surrounding areas?  According to the US Census Bureau, it's a majority black district with a median income of $48,000 and a mean income of $73,200 or so, with 40% of the district having a bachelor's or higher and 88% having a high school diploma.  That actually makes it one of the highest-educated districts in the nation, and it should, with multiple colleges and universities like Georgia Tech, Emory, Georgia State, Morehouse and Spelman.

It's not falling apart, unless by that Trump means "The Atlanta Falcons".  They're having a bad year.

You know, like Trump is about to.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Looks like whatever intelligence briefings members of Congress have gotten late this week have been enough to finally get Senate Republicans to agree to open an investigation of the incoming President.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said late Friday that his committee will investigate possible contacts between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, reversing himself one day after telling reporters that the issue would be outside of his panel’s ongoing probe into Moscow’s election-disruption efforts.

Burr and the intelligence panel’s top Democrat, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, said in a joint statement that the committee's probe would touch on "intelligence regarding links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns" as well as Russian cyberattacks and other election meddling outlined in an intelligence report released last week.

The committee will use “subpoenas if necessary” to secure testimony from Obama administration officials as well as Trump’s team, Burr and Warner said.

The bipartisan Senate announcement came hours after several House Democrats aired their frustrations with FBI Director James Comey following a classified briefing on Russian election disruption. The Democrats were livid that Comey refused to confirm whether he is conducting an inquiry into potential Trump ties to Russia — a question that he publicly declined to answer earlier this week.

Note that Burr was going to ignore Trump's Russia connections completely until the concerns about incoming National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and FBI Director James Comey became too much to take.

Burr said late Thursday that he did not plan to touch on possible contacts between Trump emissaries and Russia, asserting that the issue likely falls under the FBI's purview. "We don't have anything to do with political campaigns," the Republican said.

But Warner had said during a Tuesday committee hearing that he wanted the probe to touch on possible contacts between Moscow or its emissaries and political campaigns, putting the two senators potentially at odds. Warner told reporters late Thursday that his view hadn't changed, meaning that the Friday joint announcement effectively brought Burr around to the Democrat's perspective.

Also note that the House side still won't budge on hearings, as the chair of the House Intelligence Committee is on the Trump transition team.

The Senate move also creates a split with the House, where intelligence panel chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told POLITICO earlier on Friday that Congress should not be investigating any possible contacts between Russia and the Trump camp.

"House committees don't go operational like that, that I know of," said Nunes, who is a member of Trump's transition team. "It's a law enforcement issue."

A Nunes spokesman said late Friday that the Senate's decision had not changed the House chairman's view.

The joint announcement from Burr and Warner commits the Senate intelligence panel not only to probing possible Trump-Russia ties, but also to releasing "both classified and unclassified reports" that will include its conclusions and holding some open hearings. However, "the bulk of the committee's business" during the investigation will be tackled in private, the senators said.

Again, I have abysmally low expectations of this investigation, but there's always the chance that Mark Warner may actually find something.

Last Call For Heartbeat (Bill) Of America, Con't

Folks, you knew this was coming, and I've been warning you about it for months. Republicans are making their move early to eliminate legal abortion in America, and of course the man behind it is Steve King.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Thursday introduced the first federal “heartbeat bill” modeled on a failed Ohio attempt to end legal abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy—before many people know they’re pregnant.

“Heartbeat bills” amount to total abortion bans. They have been declared unconstitutional in federal court.

King’s office confirmed that HR 490 marked the first introduction of a so-called heartbeat bill in the U.S. Congress. Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) introduced a forced ultrasound bill in 2011, but her measure did not ban abortion—King’s stated goal.

A King press release called Roe v. Wade unconstitutional, adding that under HR 490, “if a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected.”

His spokesperson provided Rewire with legislative text specifying that an abortion provider “who knowingly performs an abortion and thereby kills a human fetus” without determining a heartbeat, informing the patient of a heartbeat, or proceeding regardless of a heartbeat would face fines and up to five years in prison. The bill includes limited exceptions for the physical health of the pregnant person but not for “psychological or emotional conditions.”

King worked on the bill with anti-choice activist Janet Porter, the Faith2Action leader deemed too extreme for Christian talk radio, the congressman’s spokesperson said. Porter was behind Ohio Republicans’ recent failed attempt to push through a total abortion ban. Anti-choice Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) vetoed the measure the same day he signed a 20-week ban into law, reasoning that the 20-week ban would be more constitutionally prudent. It’s not.

Porter persuaded King to act while both attended the funeral of Phyllis Schlafly, the notorious Equal Rights Amendment opponent, as People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch first reported in October.

“I gave him a packet and he has agreed to introduce a federal Heartbeat Bill, which would protect every baby whose heartbeat can be detected,” Porter said on a conference call at the time. “That will actually end abortion in nearly every case. Ninety to 95 percent of the abortions will be ended with that bill.”

It's bad enough that this will probably pass the House (and hopefully dies screaming in the Senate) but King outright calling Roe unconstitutional is nonsense.  It's pretty clear what King expects, that this will be the vehicle to destroy Roe and end legal, safe abortion in America and move it to back alleys and illegal clinics.

How far it will go, we'll see.  But expect many more attempts to end Roe over the next two years, minimum.