Sharice Davids

She won.

Rob's comment: I really like these new Democrats.

President Trump vs. "The Enemy of the  People."

Later: see also White House Releases Doctored Video, Expels CNN Journalist.

Still the greatest danger

From The Five of Hearts:

[Henry] James must have felt somewhat misplaced among the Americans at Surrenden in the summer of 1898. Far from sharing their zeal for the conquests of Cuba and the Philippines, he looked at the war and saw "nothing but madness, the passions, the hideous clumsiness of rage." 

Like his psychologist brother William, who believed that Theodore Roosevelt was "still mentally in the Sturm and Drang period of early adolescence," Henry James was deeply suspicious of the brand of patriotism exalted by the most famous of the Rough Riders. 

The same week the United States declared war on Spain, the novelist had reviewed American Ideals, Roosevelt's collection of manifestoes on "The Manly Virtues," "True Americanism," and kindred matters. A hopeless puerility muddled Roosevelt's thinking, James said, and he frostily observed that in a task as momentous as the shaping of national character, "stupidity is really the great danger to avoid."

Matt Whitaker is a religious crackpot

From The Friendly Atheist:

Trump’s Pick to Replace Sessions Thinks Judges Need a “Biblical View” of Justice

...Whitaker’s statements on the biblical views of judges can be traced back to 2014, when he was running for the U.S. Senate[from Iowa]. He actually specified that, if elected, he would only support federal judicial nominees who looked at “justice” through a biblical (New Testament) lens:

“If [judges] have a secular world view, then I’m going to be very concerned about how they judge,” Whitaker said at an April 25, 2014, Family Leader debate.

Whitaker didn’t return my call to his office, but as a lawyer, one might expect him to know that setting religious conditions for holding a public office would violate the Iowa and U.S. constitutions. He was effectively saying that if elected, he would see no place for a judge of Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, agnostic or other faith, or of no faith. Yet no one in the audience or on the podium seemed to have a problem with that, and his answer drew applause...

“Natural law often times is used from the eye of the beholder and what I would like to see — I’d like to see things like their world view, what informs them. Are they people of faith? Do they have a biblical view of justice? — which I think is very important...”

“I’m a New Testament,” continued Whitaker. “And what I know is as long as they have that world view, that they’ll be a good judge”...