WRITTEN IN PENCIL: Trade talks between Canada and the US broke down over the weekend triggering stiff new tariffs on Canadian goods, causing Prime Minister Mark Carney to say Canada is “at war” with the United States and that his country will retaliate “dollar for dollar.”

  Carney said he suspended talks because the American negotiators  introduced last-minute terms that were “unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal.” He followed that with a speech saying, “We’ve recognized from the start that America has changed. We recognize that sometimes, its signature is written in pencil.”

  The collapse came Friday only hours after President Trump claimed a deal was close. Then yesterday he posted on his social media that, “Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!”

  The American tariffs of up to 50 percent went into effect Saturday on an estimated $20 billion worth of Canadian exports, everything from beer made with malt, to ice hockey equipment, and 36 kinds of plywood.

  The generally conservative Wall Street Journal reiterated its editorial position that this is “the dumbest trade war in history” that comes “a mere 10 weeks before midterm elections.”

POSTPARTUM: Closing arguments begin today in Plymouth, Massachusetts in the murder trial of  Lindsay Clancy, 36, who admits having killed her three children in what her defense says was an episode of extreme postpartum psychosis. 

  It is a case that tests whether a jury will find that a form of mental illness that occurs in motherhood can explain and possibly excuse the extremity of what she did. Is she someone failed by doctors or a stone cold killer? The trial has been repeatedly paused as Clancy has broken down in sobs during testimony.

  Supporters dressed in pink gather outside the courthouse every day.

  Clancy admitted that in January of 2023 she killed her three children, ages 5, 3, and 8 months while her husband was out doing errands. She then dove out a window in an attempt to kill herself and is now in a wheelchair.

  Clancy had attempted for months to get treatment for postpartum derangement.

  The question of murder vs. insanity for a mother who kills has been tested repeatedly. Twenty-five years ago, a Texas nurse named Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub. After two trials she was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

  Shaila Dewan writes in The NY Times: “In cases like the Clancy killings, the debate may boil down to this: Is the crime so heinous that insanity cannot excuse it, or is it so heinous that only insanity can explain it?”

YOU’VE GOT MAIL: The US Postal Service has prepared rules governing mail ballots that would go into effect if President Trump’s executive order limiting and restricting voting by mail gets a pass from the Supreme Court.

  The Constitution gives control of voting to the states and the Postal Service is an independent agency that does not answer to the President, yet it is ready to do just that. The 90-page set of rules says the Postal Service will deliver mail ballots only in states that share their voter data with the agency.

  The regulations say that the USPS would review every ballot envelope for compliance with the new standards, including that the recipient is enrolled with the Postal Service to receive a mail ballot.  The service says that if the regulations are enacted,  they would refuse to deliver mail ballots to voters in states that do not comply.

  President Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail voting is rife with fraud although he voted by mail in Florida’s most recent primary election.

TO TELL THE TRUTH President Trump doesn’t like disagreement. He’s threatening a $5 billion lawsuit against a think tank that issued a report saying the his deployment of the National Guard to several major cities did not reduce crime as he claimed. 

  Trump’s personal lawyer Alejandro Brito last Friday warned the Center for American Progressthat he would sue if the organization by 5 pm if they did not fully retract the report issued on July 13^th and apologize to the President. Brito claimed that the report about the National Guard was full of malicious and false statements.

  Trump has used the legal system many times to punish opponents even when his case may have no merit. To win a libel or defamation case a public figure most prove that the statements were made with malicious intent and were knowingly false. In this case Trump would be suing the CAP for exercising its First Amendment right to free speech and discussion of a public issue.

 INFINITE SCROLL:

— President Trump posted a graphic of the Strait of Hormuz titled, “NEW U.S. Territory.”

— Immigration and Customs enforcement (ICE) has begun fitting ankle monitors on immigrants who formerly had the “Temporary Protected Status” that has been ended by the Trump administration. 

  TPS was granted to people from extremely troubled and dangerous countries. The NY Times reports that so far about 100 people, many of them Haitians in the Springfield, Ohio area, already have the monitors.

THE SPIN RACK: Walmart posted its slowest sales growth in six years in the last quarter, an indication that life is becoming too expensive for Americans even at the big box discount store. — CNN reports that its own Trump-friendly conservative political analyst Scott Jennings is angling for the position of press secretary to replace the departing Karoline Leavitt. The outlet reports that Jennings has met with Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. — As the West’s Lake Mead reservoir continues to shrink under serious drought, human remains keep being found, revealing the results of drownings and murder. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Grand Prix race cars screamed around the streets of Washington yesterday in President Trump’s last big event of the summer. Trump was driven around the route in “The Beast” for a ceremonial first lap.

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