(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

Back in 2004, President George W. Bush made a funny at a banquet about the weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist, but that he’d sent other people’s kids to die looking for anyway. What a funny man.

On Friday, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III made a funny at a banquet about meetings with the Russians that he may or may not have fibbed about under oath before a Senate committee. From Bloomberg:

“Is Ambassador Kislyak in the room," Sessions said Friday, referring to the former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. “Any Russians? Has anybody been to Russia? Got a cousin in Russia?" Sessions asked at a conference of lawyers hosted by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. His comments received a roaring ovation.

What a funny man.

In all this hilarity, you might have been wondering if Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was still being a dick these days? Wonder no longer, dear friends. Justice Neil is continuing his headlong sprint to make people forget what a dick Antonin Scalia was. From Think Progress:

One, the law is telling me to do something really, really stupid. Two, the law is constitutional and I have no choice but to do that really stupid thing the law demands. And three, when it’s done, everyone who is not a lawyer is going to think I just hate truckers.

The gentleman’s name was Alphonse Maddin, and he nearly froze to death in the incident that Gorsuch now finds such a hoot. Gorsuch’s dissent was based essentially on the notion that Maddin should have stayed with his crippled rig until he died. Now, it’s a punchline for the Federalist Society. What a funny man.

Jesus, these really are the fcking mole people.

It doesn’t matter, though, because we’re all freaking doomed. From BioScience:

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of their call, we look back at their warning and evaluate the human response by exploring available time-series data. Since 1992, with the exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse (figure 1, file S1). Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels (Hansen et al. 2013), deforestation (Keenan et al. 2015), and agricultural production—particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption (Ripple et al. 2014). Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.

Humanity is now being given a second notice, as illustrated by these alarming trends (figure 1). We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats (Crist et al. 2017). By failing to adequately limit population growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere.

This is our second notice before Nature forecloses.

I am told by people I respect greatly—and by people I don’t respect at all—that it is time for Democrats and liberals to “reckon” with the continued existence of Bill Clinton in our public life. Part of the reckoning appears to be a retroactive opinion that Bill Clinton should have resigned in 1998. This is a bold position to take since there is absolutely no downside to taking it in 2017. Senator Kristen Gillibrand, her eyes squarely on the prize, is the most recent Democrat to chime in. In 1998, however, this would have paved the way for Tom DeLay and the Republican fire-eaters in the House to impeach President Al Gore on charges that he sold the 1996 presidential campaign to the Chinese.



It was a very strange time to be an American. While it certainly would look noble in retrospect, a Clinton resignation in 1998 would have been a signal victory for some of the worst people in American politics, the same people who are not many votes away at the moment from their final victory over legitimate self-government. And now, the Democrats are willing to submit not only women, but old folks, poor folks, people of color, LGBT folks, the mentally ill, the drug addicted, and the children of people whose only sin was their yearning to be free to what ever indignities the Republicans want to inflict not only on their bodies but on their their minds.

Donald Trump learned the hard way that it's not possible to weaponize Clinton's past. When he brought Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, and Paula Jones to the presidential debate in St. Louis, his cheap political trick only served to cheapen the women, and their stories. The idea that Impeachment Survivor Bill Clinton is now going to be held personally accountable for his transgressions is ludicrous. But if the Democrats keep this up, a lot of people are going to be asked to pay for his sins.

If that makes me insensitive, I’m sorry. But what are the Democrats supposed to do now in their reckoning? Maybe they should nominate a woman for president? No, wait…

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Geronimo Rock and Roll” (Jerry McCain): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.



Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here’s Minister John Profumo watching a new power saw in action. Profumo came to roughly the same end as Parnell did. History is so cool.

Another unfortunate exercise in Second Amendment freedom. From ABC News:

The church members were discussing weapons in places of worship on the heels of the shooting at a Texas church earlier this month that killed over two dozen people, Parks said, and "one of the gentlemen said, 'Well, I take my gun with me everywhere.'" The 81-year-old man took his handgun out of his pocket, removed the magazine, cleared the weapon and handed it to other churchgoers who wanted to see it, Parks said. He then took his weapon back, placed the magazine back in it, put the gun back in his holster and placed it in his pocket, Parks said.

When another man came over and asked to see the weapon, the man pulled his gun back out of his pocket and accidentally hit the trigger, firing one round, Parks said. A single bullet struck the gun owner in his right hand before hitting his 80-year-old wife, Parks said. That bullet went through the woman's left side of her abdomen and came out of the right side of her abdomen, after which it struck her inside right forearm, came out of her forearm, struck the wall, ricocheted and landed at her wheelchair, Parks said.

Perhaps it’s time for another reading by Brother Maynard from the Book of Armaments: “For thou art Peter, and upon this Glock will I build my church.”

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, LiveScience? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!



Amazingly, that's what paleontologists have discovered in eastern France — 110 fossilized footprints belonging to a long-necked sauropod that lived during the Jurassic period. At more than 500 feet (155 meters) long, the footprint-speckled path is the longest sauropod trackway on record, according to the researchers. This lengthy trackway is a few yards longer than the previous record holders: a 465-foot-long (142 m) and a 482-foot-long (147 m) sauropod trackway in Galinha, Portugal, dating to the middle Jurassic, the researchers said.

Dinosaurs have been extinct for millions and millions of years, and yet they’re still setting records by which we can be astounded. Proof enough that dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

The Committee was fairly sure that this week’s Top Commenter of the Week would be someone who had something to say on the subject of ol’ Judge Roy Moore, the Don Juan of the Cinnabon. Turns out Top Commenter Rob Cervenak managed to sum up this entire past 18 months while sticking the landing atop ol’ Judge Roy’s noggin.

The Gob has been smacked on this one so hard it is screaming the Safe Word.

And that will be 77.65 Beckhams for unreasonable optimism.

I’ll be back on Monday with some gropey, changey gobshitery. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, or I’m sending you to church at Our Lady of the Shootin’ ‘Arns down there.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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