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

Right at the bell on Friday, the Washington Post provided the definitive answer to the question that had been plaguing the nation. To wit:

Rod Rosenstein: Inanimate Lump of Play-Doh or Careerist Poltroon?

(Pro Tip: Both.)

It is impossible to come out of a newspaper story worse than Rosenstein does here. He is now marked as some weird hybrid of L. Patrick Gray and Uriah Heep, with a dollop of Ottoman eunuch in there somewhere. Gaze in awe.

Rosenstein — who, by one account, had gotten teary-eyed just before the call in a meeting with Trump’s chief of staff — sought to defuse the volatile situation and assure the president he was on his team, according to people familiar with matter. He criticized the Times report, published in late September, and blamed it on former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, whose recollections formed its basis. Then he talked about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and told the president he would make sure Trump was treated fairly, people familiar with the conversation said. “I give the investigation credibility,” Rosenstein said, in the words of one administration official offering their own characterization of the call. “I can land the plane.”

And also:

On multiple occasions, according to people familiar with the matter, Rosenstein told Trump he was not a “target” of Mueller’s investigation — using law enforcement jargon that can refer to people about whom the Justice Department has gathered substantial evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Mueller’s report makes clear that investigators focused on Trump; his attorneys were informed he was a “subject,” a different bureaucratic term meaning his conduct was being investigated. And Mueller’s report details conduct that legal observers have said could constitute obstruction of justice.

Rosenstein also told the president more than once that he agreed Trump was being treated unfairly — though one person familiar with the matter said Rosenstein was probably referring to media coverage rather than the investigation itself. That person, like others in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal government deliberations.

This story, of course, comes a day after Rosenstein gave a speech in which he blasted practically everybody who ever expressed a doubt concerning El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago's honesty.

In his speech Thursday, Rosenstein launched a blistering attack on the media, an offensive likely to hearten Trump. “Some of the nonsense that passes for breaking news today would not be worth the paper it was printed on, if anybody bothered to print it,” he said. He also criticized the Obama administration for not publicizing the “full story” about Russian hacking and social media influence operations and cited a quote from Trump to make a point about the rule of law.

Wait. Let's back up a little on that last part.

...cited a quote from Trump to make a point about the rule of law...

Yeah, that's what he did, all right.



He also praised Mr. Trump for supporting the rule of law, a point Mr. Rosenstein has made repeatedly. He quoted the president saying, “ ‘We govern ourselves in accordance with the rule of law rather than the whims of an elite few or the dictates of collective will.’ ” The choice was notable because Mr. Rosenstein not only oversaw the investigation and was regularly briefed on investigators’ findings about Mr. Trump’s attempts to impede it, but he also witnessed those efforts himself, according to the report.



Rosenstein's credibility, such as it ever was, is now completely in tatters. I suspect that his future includes many appearances before many House committees and perhaps, as my pal, Bill Livingston, the Commodore of the Cuyahoga, once put it, riding every ride at Depositionland. The credibility of the Department of Justice is in even worse shape. We're very likely to hear more and more about Rosenstein's relationship with Robert Mueller and his prosecutors, and I suspect that will not be pretty. At least now we know what accounts for Rosenstein's animatronic mien at William Barr's pre-Mueller press conference.



Hello, and welcome to DisneyWorld's House of Bureaucratic Lackeys.



The Kansas Supreme Court, in case you missed it, dropped the big one on the anti-choice crowd. No words were minced, either. From the Wichita Eagle:

The court found for the first time that the Kansas Constitution — in addition to the U.S. Constitution — protects the right to an abortion. Republican lawmakers vowed to pursue an amendment to overturn the decision. In a frequently plain-spoken opinion, the justices said a woman’s rights under the state constitution allow her “to make her own decisions regarding her body … decisions that include whether to continue a pregnancy.”

Kansas, you may recall, has been ground zero for the violent faction of the anti-choice movement for three decades now. (This includes the murder, in church, of Dr. George Tiller.) So this particular decision took more guts than most decisions state supreme courts make.

The 6-1 majority opinion means that unless the state constitution is changed, abortion will remain legal in Kansas even if abortion rights are one day overturned at the federal level. It also means additional scrutiny for abortion restrictions approved by Kansas lawmakers in recent years. And it threatens to upend the final days of the legislative session. Anti-abortion lawmakers are expected to try hard to advance an amendment to change the constitution.

They're not kidding around and neither am I. Folks better watch their backs.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Lily Of The Valley" (Panorama Jazz Band): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

(By the way, this is my favorite couple of weeks of the year at the mighty, mighty 'OZ, when they broadcast live music from Jazz Fest.)

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: In celebration of the NFL Draft, here we have the Aussies and the French playing a little rugby back in 1914. You will note that the vertical leap was not yet a serious part of the game but, as near as I can tell, right at the beginning, some dude comes out of a scrum and runs 950 yards for a try. (He vanishes into the mist and out of camera range.) Aussies win, oy-oy-oy! History is so cool.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, (gulp!) Fox News? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

That was until October of 2017, when LuJan and his team discovered the remains of a new kind of ankylosaurus, a genus of armor-plated dinosaurs that were among the last of the dinosaurs on Earth. The dinosaur was low to the ground, measuring up to 18 feet long. Despite its fierce appearance, the new ankylosaur was a plant–eater, using its spiked armor and clubbed tail to defend itself from predators.

But it's not just any ankylosaurus, is it, Johnny Olson?

LuJan, who runs a commercial paleontology company called PaleoTex that seeks out fossils to collect and prepare and place in museums and institutions, didn’t realize he had found a new dinosaur at first. He knew a similar animal called Akainocephalus, found in southern Utah, had recently been described in a paper. A visit from Utah paleontologist Dr. James Kirkland soon shed some light on the discovery. “[Kirkland] brought a replica skull of Akainocephalus to compare our fossils to,” LuJan said. “And that’s when we realized ‘Wow, this is a different animal!’ Because it’s very similar, but it’s a new thing–It’s like comparing a bison to a cape buffalo. They’re distinctly different.”

It's a whole new ankylosaurus, Bob! Dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

(By the way, our large flightless birds are pretty damn close to their dino ancestors, especially in attitude. So don't own cassowaries and don't steal emu eggs. What's wrong with you fools? Humans, man. I dunno.)

You're all Top Commenters this week. Enjoy the Beckhams. Share them fairly.

I'll be back on Monday to see how Rod Rosenstein enjoyed his weekend caddying at Bedminster. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and leave the emu eggs alone. You don't know where they've been.

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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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