Presidential pardons are used by responsible presidents to correct gross miscarriages of justice, not to reward corrupt political allies as a "get out of jail free" card. But, few would ever call Donald Trump "responsible" and he seems to have a soft spot for the ethically challenged. So, yesterday Trump pardoned former GOP Representatives Duncan Hunter of California and Chris Collins of New York, two of the earliest GOP lawmakers to back his campaign in 2016. They had pled g

Reading George Will is always a pleasure, even when he's wrong, but his most recent column in the Washington Post about Donald Trump, corruption and the 2020 election is one of his better efforts. It captures the feeling that so many have about the monumental incompetence and corruption of the Trump administration and the importance of soundly defeating him on November 3rd. Will, Washington Post: "Under the most frivolous person ever to hold any great nation’s highest office,

After Donald Trump leaves office, it may take decades to unravel all the corrupt acts he and members of his administration have perpetrated while president. And, historians and political scientists will marvel at what he has gotten away with in plain sight, almost begging [or challenging] us to rein him in. So, his commutation of Roger Stone's sentence yesterday is not at all surprising. Corrupt and detestable, but not surprising. Washington Post Editorial Board Statement: ..

Attorney General William Barr is trying to remove a federal prosecutor who is conducting a criminal investigation into Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, in a campaign finance case, along with several of Giuliani's associates. Barr issued a statement yesterday saying Geoffrey Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York was "stepping down." Berman, however, made it clear several hours later that Barr had lied and that he had no intention of leaving hi

Political Scientists wonder aloud these days if there will ever be a moment when the sheer volume of corruption within the Trump administration will bother his supporters or Republicans in Congress. The answer, unfortunately, may be that Trump is normalizing malfeasance in such a way that many Americans are becoming numb to each new revelation, each new outrage. Jim Lardner of the American Prospect made that point recently in discussing the Ukraine scandal and the President's

In an unprecedented and powerful display of unity and sense of purpose, almost 2000 former Justice Department prosecutors and FBI officials, including those appointed during both Democratic and Republican administrations, have called on Attorney General William Barr to resign over his "repeated assaults on the rule of law." They argue that Barr's decision to drop the prosecution of Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's disgraced national security advisor, was done to "further Preside