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

Back when the Affordable Care Act was new, and Republican governors were turning down the FREE MONEY! being offered to their states for the purposes of expanding Medicaid, I remember thinking that everything I'd learned about politics in the Massachusetts State House had been thrown in the hopper forever. One of the first things I learned was that, regardless of the source, you simply never turn down FREE MONEY! And, of course, FREE MONEY! from the Feds is extra-double-good because, relative to other sources, it's fairly clean. But, as it turns out, times have changed and stretching poor people on the rack to entertain your base and to own the libs now take precedence over other, more traditional political incentives, god help us all.

We're seeing the same kind of thing going on now that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is diverting $3.6 billion in military funding to pay for construction of his big, stupid, and largely imaginary wall along the southern border. This diversion includes $48 million from Texas, where Republican Senator John Cornyn is standing for re-election next year, $80 million from North Carolina, where Republican Senator Thom Tillis is standing for re-election next year, and eight-million from Colorado, where Republican Senator Cory Gardner is standing for re-election. There was a time, and not so long ago, where senators would fight like rabid bats to keep their states from losing this kind of FREE MONEY!

Can you imagine trying to pry $48 million in military spending, money earmarked for child-care and new schools, away from Texas when Lyndon Johnson was the senator there? They'd need dental records to identify what was left of your presidency. But this is a new world and nothing is more important than indulging a batty president* and his big, stupid, and largely imaginary wall. And, of course, owning the libs.

There's all kinds of weirdness going on here in the Commonwealth (God save it!). Last weekend, an assortment of sad humanity came to Boston for a "Straight Pride" parade. This naturally drew a substantial number of counter-protestors. Some punches were thrown. Police got involved. And several of the counter-protestors got arrested and tossed in the hoosegow. Their cases came before a muni judge named Richard Sinnott. Earlier this week, Suffolk County DA Rachael Rollins and her prosecutors told Sinnott that they'd like to drop charges against the counter-protestors. Sinnott refused to do so and, as an added fillip, he threw one of their lawyers in jail for contempt because the lawyer had to temerity to present case law that seemed to indicate Sinnott was wrong.

Scott Eisen Getty Images

Since then, Rollins and Sinnott have dug in. An impressive array of professional organizations from both sides of the bar have lined up behind Rollins. On the other hand, Sinnott, whose father was the last public censor in the city of Boston, has the support of the police, which should surprise nobody, since his reputation as a hard-bar has made him a favorite among local law enforcement. Meanwhile, Rollins, who was elected in 2018, is the first woman of color to be elected as an district attorney, and the first woman to hold the job in Suffolk County, so a lot of old Boston is in play in this fight, and Rollins is not shy about being a boat-rocker. From The Boston Globe:

But it is important to understand that her current battle with a Boston Municipal Court judge over whether to prosecute counterprotesters at a Straight Pride’ parade is about more than whether to try a single defendant. It’s a window into a power struggle over how to administer justice. “What I find interesting is that no one ever questioned prosecutorial discretion when it was moving toward the status quo,” Rollins said from Ireland in a telephone interview. “But when it isn’t, it’s an abuse of discretion. Since time immemorial, prosecutors have been able to determine when they choose [to prosecute] or not.”

“We can’t have judges whose skin is so thin that someone reading a case results in them being put in a cell,” Rollins said. “But we have to understand that this happens every day to criminal defendants. And [for them] it’s not three hours in the courthouse — it’s huge bail, long sentences, and massive disparities based on wealth.”

The city has shaken off a lot of its old ethnic carapace. Some pieces of it are still hanging on.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Who Stole The Hot Sauce?" (Amanda Shaw): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's President John F. Kennedy, traveling through Ireland shortly before he was murdered. Hearing that toff British narrator call Eamon de Valera a "fighter for freedom" is worth the watching, and nobody accused JFK of having shat upon any carpets. Times have changed, I guess. History is so cool.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, CNN? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

Subsequent excavations unearthed a nearly complete dinosaur skeleton, described in a study published in Scientific Reports. It belongs to a new genus and species of a herbivorous hadrosaurid dinosaur, the university said in a news release.Scientists named the dinosaur "Kamuysaurus japonicus." The name comes from "kamuy," the word for diety in Ainu, the language of the indigenous people of northern Japan; "saurus," meaning reptile in Latin; and "japonicus" for Japan.The team discovered this dinosaur has three characteristics that aren't shared with other biologically similar dinosaurs: the low position of the cranial bone notch, the short ascending process of the jaw bone and and the anterior inclination of the neural spines of the sixth to twelfth dorsal vertebrae.

I was just saying the other day that the world needed a new species of hadrosaur, which is proof enough that this one loved then to make us happy now.

The Committee was quick to file the post on how Congressman Steve King admitted to having drunk out of a toilet at a border detention facility in the folder marked, "Big Fish, Small Barrel." Sure enough, Top Commenter Jeremy Horn blew away the fat trout swimming closely beneath the surface of the water.

While I chuckled at the line “King ‘20: Almost As Smart As Your Cat”, I have to admit, even my cats jump on the sink and demand that I give them running water....

Smart cats. Share your 88.19 Beckhams with them, good sir.

I'll be back on Monday with the latest from the Oval Office art studio. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and don't be drinking out of toilets. None of the best people do.

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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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