Starr Chamber: Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz and former special Counsel Ken Starr are being named to President Trump’s team of seven impeachment defense lawyers.

  Starr was the lawyer who led the investigation into President Bill Clinton’s affair with an intern, leading to his impeachment and trial. Trump once called him a “lunatic” and a “disaster” during the Clinton impeachment.

  Dershowitz is a retired Harvard law professor who’s defended everyone from wife-killer Claus von Bulow to boxer Mike Tyson, finance criminal Michael Milkin, and OJ Simpson.

  Dershowitz, we should note, worked with the late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and has been accused of having sex with an underage girl. He denies it.

  Poor Alan. He says he’s already being shunned by the summer society on Martha’s Vineyard because he’s been against impeaching the President.

  Trump chose not to appoint any members of the House, even though he was interested in having the firebrand Jim Jordan on his squad. He was advised to keep the trial dignified. Trump did appoint former Florida Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi, who’s one of the dimmest bulbs in the Republican Party.

Dopes and Babies: One revelation in the new book, “A Very Stable Genius,” is that during a tight-security briefing at the Pentagon, President Trump called a group of the highest-ranking military officers “a bunch of dopes and babies.”

  Trump speaks admiringly of generals in public but there’s nothing he admires more than his perception of his own genius, hence, the title of the book taken from his description of himself.

  The book, written by two Washington Post reporters, details the craziness of the Trump presidency. Six months into his term, Trump was invited to a meeting in the secure room known as “the tank” at the Pentagon during which the military leaders hoped to school the President about the problems of the world as well as where and why US troops are stationed.

  Trump became impatient, angry, and dismissive during the meeting, according to the book‘s authors. They describe the event as a turning point at which the President abandoned expert advice and began adhering only to his instincts and prejudices, not to mention his ignorance.

  The President, the book says, started talking about how NATO countries owe the US money — they don’t — and how the US should make a profit getting paid for defense where American troops are stationed overseas.

  Eventually Trump got on to the unending war in Afghanistan, saying, “You’re all losers. You don’t know how to win anymore.”

  The policy in Afghanistan has not been to win, but to train the Afghans to take care of themselves and then get out. Nonetheless, Trump continued to say, “We don’t win wars anymore” before dropping his bomb. Then, the President who got out of the draft claiming he had bone spurs said, “I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

See No Evil: Reporters have been free to roam the halls of Capitol Hill banging members of Congress with questions as they move about. Now the press corps is pushing back against restrictive rules laid down for coverage of the impeachment trial.

  Reporters are being confined to cordoned-off sections of areas where they previously were unrestricted. They can’t walk with senators to continue conversations even when the senator involved is willing to chat. During the trial reporters may not approach senators in the halls surrounding the Senate chamber. Some reporters have already been interrupted during interviews by Capitol police. 

 Nearly 60 news organizations signed a letter urging Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to relax the new restrictions on reporters. “Absent an articulable security rationale,” the letter says, “Senate leaders, the Senate sergeant at arms, and the United States Capitol Police have an obligation to preserve and promote the public’s right to know.” 

  Hostility to the press is rising, particularly among Republicans. The other day CNN’s Manu Raju asked Senator Martha McSally of Arizona whether the trial should include newly identified evidence. Rushing past she replied, “You’re a liberal hack. I’m not talking to you. You’re a liberal hack.”

The Bulletin Board: An avalanche at the Alpine Meadows  ski area on Lake Tahoe killed one person. — Former New York Republican Congressman Chris Collins was sentenced yesterday to 26 months in prison for insider stock trading. His former republican colleague, Duncan Hunter of California, awaits sentencing for bilking his campaign fund. — A painting found hidden in a garden wall has been verified as an original Gustav Klimt stolen from a gallery in the northern Italian city of Piacenza in 1997. More than 100 years after his death, the Austrian painter manages to get in the news every few years. 

Heavy Rap: The rapper Pop Smoke has been arrested on charges that he stole a $375,000 Rolls Royce he borrowed for a video shoot in Los Angeles and then had transported to his mother’s house in Brooklyn on a flatbed truck. That’ll give him something to rap about. 

  The prosecutor said Pop is a flight risk because he uses an alias for his act — Pop Smoke. Evidently the prosecutor doesn’t know much about rap. The name Bashar Barakah Jackson doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.